THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

Certainly it is good that people falsely convicted do get exonerated, but what does it say that there are so many people who were originally falsely convicted?

A record number of American prison inmates were found in 2015 to have been falsely convicted, according to a report released on Wednesday.

At least 149 defendants were cleared last year, 10 more than in 2014, according to a review by the National Registry of Exonerations, a project of the University of Michigan’s law school that tracks such cases and also aims to reform the criminal justice system.

The inmates had spent more than 14 years behind bars on average. Some served more than three decades in prison.

The annual tally of false convictions has more than doubled since 2011, the registry said. On average, nearly three convictions were overturned every week last year. All told, the project has recorded 1,733 exonerations since 1989.

“The most notable thing is another increase in the rate of exonerations,” said Samuel Gross, the editor of the registry and a University of Michigan law professor. “That just shows that the problems that are causing convictions of innocent people happen on a regular basis.”

Most of the exonerations in 2015 came from two states: Texas, 54, and New York, 17. The registry linked that trend to efforts by district attorneys in Brooklyn and in Harris County, Tex., to review questionable convictions.

Since taking office in 2014, Brooklyn’s district attorney, Kenneth P. Thompson, has overseen a broad review of potentially wrongful convictions, an endeavor that has been watched closely across the country by prosecutors, defense lawyers and inmates.

“If that same effort were put in across the country, we’d find many more of these cases,” Mr. Gross said.

Ther bulk of them come from 2 counties. Boy Howdy! What would the numbers be if this was applied across the country as a whole? The thought is chilling.