The U.S. exonerated more prisoners in 2014

The U.S. exonerated more prisoners in 2014 than ever before — simply because it started to look for them

The University of Michigan's National Registry of Exonerations announced in a report released Tuesday that in 2014, a record 125 people across the United States were exonerated of crimes for which they were falsely convicted, beating 2013's 91 exonerees. + This is a positive trend, according to the NRE: "Judging from known exonerations in 2014, the legal system is increasingly willing to act on innocence claims that have often been ignored." + Why is this happening? "[T]he number of people exonerated increases the more the government actually makes an effort to look for them," explains Mic's Tom McKay. "Aggressive law enforcement and prosecutorial tactics appear to play a role too: Forty-seven of the 125 exonerees had pled guilty to the crimes they were accused of, while about 46% had been sentenced for crimes that had never been committed in the first place." + Related: Read Mic's Zeeshan Aleem on what the U.S. can learn from Sweden's remarkable prison system.