On March 24, 2008, the New York times published an article about the difficulties inherent in calculating the wrongful conviction rate in the United States.  As the article points out, there is no accepted methodology for calculating the rate at which defendants have been wrongfully convicted.  Those who attempt to make such a calculation differ widely in their results.  On one side of the spectrum is Justice Scalia, who once divided the number of exonerated prisoners by the total of all felony convictions and reached a wrongful conviction rate of .027 percent.  On the other side are those who look at the number of wrongful convictions in Virginia, as proven by re-testing of DNA samples maintained by the state laboratory.  A comparison of that number against all the Virginia cases in which results could be determined yields a wrongful conviction rate of closer to 9 percent. 

MAIP Executive Director Shawn Armbrust is quoted in the article.  To read the article, click here.