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On the Records: Texas Exonerations

Texas ranks third in the number of exonerations in the United States since 1989, according to data compiled by Mother Jones. Take a look at how Texas compares to other states across the nation with this map.

This gurney is used to perform executions at Terre Haute by lethal injection.

The state of Texas comes in third behind Illnois and New York in the number of exonerations in the United States since 1989, according to data compiled by Mother Jones.

With the help of the Center on Wrongful Convictions and the Innocence Project, reporters Beth Schwartzapfel and Hannah Levintova built a state-by-state data set of exoneration data. The data includes the number of exonerations, the number of exonerations granted because of DNA testing, the number granted without DNA evidence and whether or not each state has a compensation law that pays the wrongfully convicted for time they spent imprisoned.

The data set (and the resulting map) is a companion piece to Mother Jones' January/February 2012 article that tells the story of when Gov. Rick Perry posthumously pardoned exonerated inmate Timothy Cole.

Signed into law in 2009, the Timothy Cole Act increased financial compensation for Texas exonerees from $50,000 to $80,000 for each year they were wrongfully imprisoned. In September, the Tribune visualized the more than $42 million that has been spent to compensate exonerees who spent more than 700 years behind bars. The Tribune also visualized the 238 executions that have taken place on Perry's watch.

We asked Mother Jones if we could borrow the data and look at it from the Texas perspective, and below we have created a map and built a table of each state's numbers.

 
Known Exonerations in the US since 1989
Data gathered by Mother Jones
with the assistance of the Center on Wrongful Convictions and The Innocence Project
StateTotal ExonerationsDNA ExonerationsNon-DNA ExonerationsHas Compensation Law
Illinois 95 34 61 Yes
New York 83 28 55 Yes
Texas 78 48 30 Yes
California 76 10 66 Yes
Federal Cases 35 0 35 Yes
Michigan 34 4 30 No
Louisiana 33 11 22 Yes
Florida 31 14 17 Yes
Massachusetts 26 9 17 Yes
Ohio 26 9 17 Yes
Pennsylvania 26 11 15 No
Virginia 24 13 11 Yes
North Carolina 23 9 14 Yes
Wisconsin 21 10 11 Yes
Missouri 19 10 9 Yes
Alabama 16 3 13 Yes
Georgia 15 8 7 No
Oklahoma 15 10 5 Yes
Washington 15 3 12 No
Mississippi 13 6 7 Yes
Indiana 12 7 5 No
Arizona 11 3 8 No
Maryland 11 5 6 Yes
New Jersey 10 6 4 Yes
Connecticut 7 4 3 Yes
District of Columbia 7 2 5 Yes
Oregon 7 2 5 No
Tennessee 7 4 3 Yes
Nebraska 6 6 0 Yes
West Virginia 6 6 0 Yes
Kentucky 5 1 4 No
Minnesota 5 1 4 No
Utah 4 3 1 Yes
Montana 3 3 0 Yes
Nevada 3 0 3 No
Arkansas 2 0 2 No
Colorado 2 1 1 No
Idaho 2 1 1 No
Kansas 2 2 0 No
Rhode Island 2 0 2 No
South Carolina 2 1 1 No
Alaska 1 0 1 No
Hawaii 1 1 0 No
Iowa 1 0 1 Yes
New Hampshire 1 0 1 Yes
Puerto Rico 1 0 1 Unknown
Delaware 0 0 0 No
Maine 0 0 0 Yes
New Mexico 0 0 0 No
North Dakota 0 0 0 No
South Dakota 0 0 0 No
Vermont 0 0 0 Yes
Wyoming 0 0 0 No
Number of Exonerations in US since 1989
  0
  0 to 10
  10 to 30
  30 to 75
  75 or more
Data courtesy of Mother Jones.

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Criminal justice State government State agencies Texas death row Texas Department Of Criminal Justice