Since the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Furman v. Georgia (1972), which found that the death penalty constituted cruel and unusual punishment, 200 death-sentenced men and women across 30 states have been exonerated, the Death Penalty Information Center announced earlier this month.
According to DPIC’s analysis, these individuals “have collectively spent 2,621 years in harsh prison conditions for crimes they did not commit.” Of those exonerees, 65% are people of color, and 54% of that number are Black, DPIC reports. Florida leads the U.S. with the highest number of exonerations (30), followed by Illinois (22), and Texas (18).
Larry Roberts, whose exoneration in California we reported in May, was the 200th innocent person to walk off death row, according to DPIC.
In 1980, when Roberts was 27 and serving a life sentence at the California Medical Center in Vacaville for killing a high school security guard when he was 17, another individual in the prison was stabbed. The wounded individual picked up the knife and stabbed a guard to death before he died. No other guards witnessed the stabbing, but other incarcerated witnesses testified against Roberts. Roberts was prosecuted for both killings and sentenced to death in 1983. The California Supreme Court later overturned Roberts’ conviction for the death of the guard but left his death sentence in place. However, in May, the state Attorney General’s office agreed to a judgment accepting U.S. District Judge Dale A. Drozd’s order granting the 71-year-old Roberts a new trial and said it wouldn’t retry him.