Today is #WrongfulConvictionDay! Please help raise awareness by RETWEETING this thread! By our best estimates, at least 1-4% of convictions are wrongful, meaning there are between 20,000 & 100,000 innocent people locked up in U.S. prisons.
Since 1989, there have been over 2800 exonerations, totaling over 25,000 years lost. I spent 4 years wrongly imprisoned. The average in the U.S. is 9 years. Many cases don’t get overturned for decades.
The longest sentence served was that of Anthony Mazza, who spent 47 years wrongfully convicted. law.umich.edu/special/exoner…
There are many factors that contribute to wrongful convictions. 1 in 5 wrongful convictions involved incentivized jailhouse informants offering bogus testimony in exchange for dropped charges or lighter sentences in unrelated cases.
Misused or flawed forensic science is more common than you’d think, occurring in 1 out of 4 wrongful convictions nationally. Many people have been convicted on what we now know to be junk science: bite mark evidence, hair comparison, tire tread evidence.
Even fingerprint analysis can be problematic. Cognitive neuroscientist Itiel Dror has shown that when analysts are given biasing info, like whether or not a suspect confessed, it can alter their analysis of whether a print is a match or not. psmag.com/news/bias-and-…
Many wrongful convictions result from inadequate defense counsel. Public defenders are often overworked. In the worst cases, according to the Innocence Project, lawyers have:
1 in 4 wrongful convictions involves a false confession. How on earth could an innocent person confess to a crime they didn’t commit? Expert Saul Kassin explains here:
Eyewitness misidentification is the greatest contributing factor to wrongful convictions. This is due to problems with suggestive police lineups as well as the inherent fallibility of human perception and memory.
Official misconduct plays a role in 55% of wrongful convictions. More than half the time, prosecutors and police break the rules, often by concealing exculpatory evidence.
When men are wrongly convicted, it’s usually because a crime occurred, but they got the wrong person. When women are wrongly convicted, often there never was a crime. They are accused of killing their infants and intimate partners who actually died of accidents or illnesses.
And, of course, like everything in the criminal justice world, these problems disproportionately affect people of color.
Once exonerations occur, it’s a battle to get compensation for those years lost.
But there are people fighting to change that! Thanks @RepMaxineWaters for introducing the Justice for Exonerees Act! If you want to make it easier for exonerees to be compensated, sign the petition here: bit.ly/3FbUdAh
Every state or region has its own innocence organization. Please support the one closest to you! They all need help to free more innocent people. innocencenetwork.org/directory
Thank you for reading and for sharing this information on #WrongfulConvictionDay!

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More from @amandaknox

2 Oct
It’s #WrongfulConvictionDay! Please RETWEET to help me celebrate these champions of justice who are fighting everyday to free wrongly convicted men and women! Here, I interviewed the founders of the @Innocence Project in NY, Peter Neufeld and Barry Scheck. crimestory.com/2020/04/20/ama…
On the opposite coast, @JustinoBrooks, @MSemanchik of the @CA_Innocence Project! Also here Bill Oberly of the AK Innocence Project. Exonerees @lifeafterten and @BrianBanksFREE
Here, I interviewed Mark Godsey of the Ohio Innocence Project, a former prosecutor who switched teams. crimestory.com/2020/05/06/ama…
Read 10 tweets
2 Oct
It’s #WrongfulConvictionDay, and I want to introduce you to some exonerees! Please RETWEET this thread to help raise awareness about the problem of wrongful convictions and to celebrate those who’ve survived the fire.
There are far too many wrongful convictions with a number in their title. Here’s me and @mandunderbridge with Korey Wise of the Central Park 5. Korey was 16 when he was arrested and served nearly 14 years before he was exonerated.
Here’s Anna Vasquez of the San Antonio 4, a group of gay hispanic women falsely accused of child molestation during the satanic panic. Anna served 15 years before she was exonerated in 2016.
Read 21 tweets
2 Oct
If you're a fan of LABYRINTHS, you may have heard about my pregnancy! I'll have more news for you in the future, but for now, I just wanted to let you know that I'm going to be releasing a series of photos taking you through my journey week by week.

/a continuing thread
It won't be glowing goddess glamour shots! I want to showcase the reality instead - both the quotidian and the psychological. Some of these photos will be posed, metaphorical portraits, others will be day-in-the-life. You can also follow this series on my instagram: @amamaknox
This is from WEEK 1, when I didn't even know I was pregnant. Thanks to everyone who has been so kind to me already as @manunderbridge and I have embarked on this journey which began with miscarriage. And much love to all of you who are still on your own journey.
Read 4 tweets
29 Sep
With all these new #BritneySpears documentaries out, I'm asking myself: Did Britney participate in any of them? Did she consent to them? Did she want them to exist? Does anyone care?

/a thread
The answer to the first two questions is NO. She did not participate, or grant her approval. And while I'm sure the documentary film-makers would have preferred that she gave them her approval, when they didn't, they ploughed ahead anyway. Is that OK?
When the filmmakers @rodblackhurst and @brimcgi approached me about the film that became the Netflix documentary "Amanda Knox," they told me they'd interviewed dozens of people, they'd been in Perugia, covering the case for years...
Read 19 tweets
10 Sep
When I arrived in Perugia as a 20-year-old, I was sexually active, but pretty sheltered. I could count my intimate partners on one hand.

But when I was accused of murder, my rather unremarkable sexuality was distorted and magnified into something deviant.

/ a short thread
They painted me as a femme fatale, and the courtroom and the media ignored the lack of evidence and focused on things like the joke vibrator a friend had bought me, or what underwear I purchased. All to support a fantastical theory about a sex game gone wrong.
The misdirected focus on my sexuality was one the things that bothered me most about the trials. I could have been a professional dominatrix and it shouldn't have mattered. That still wouldn’t make me a killer.
Read 7 tweets
18 Aug
It's unendingly strange to see my face being used yet again, without my consent, to promote products that defame me, this time an essay by @alicebolin for @vulture.
I'll let the comments to this essay speak for themselves about the argument @alicebolin makes, comparing my recent thoughts on #Stillwater to the #CatPerson controversy.
"Imagine a movie 'inspired by' the Central Park 5 in which it turns out their fictionalized avatars were actually indirectly involved in the rape," this commenter writes. "Would that be justifiable, for fiction's sake?"
Read 25 tweets

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