DID YOU KNOW? According to the National Registry of Exonerations report Race and Wrongful Convictions in the United States 2022, most innocent defendants who are convicted of crimes are not exonerated. Judging from the rate of false conviction among death sentences, at least several thousand defendants have been falsely convicted of murder in America in the past 40 years. Judging from the exonerations that have occurred, more than half of them were black.
Frederick Burton is one such defendant. Over the nearly 50 years he has been incarcerated, Burton has filed numerous Post Conviction Relief Act and habeas petitions and appeals, and all of them have been denied. These denials are likely due to the fact that convictions involving the murder of law enforcement personnel carry a particularly heavy load. There is little or no forgiveness for such crimes, but when a person is falsely convicted, there absolutely should be.
