Everyone knows men commit more crimes. Men are also punished more for crimes they do not commit.
Last year Evaristo Salas walked out of Airway Heights Corrections Center near Spokane a free man.
Salas was 16 years old in 1995 when a jury convicted him of murder. Tried as an adult, he was sentenced to 33 years in prison.
Salas always maintained his innocence.
Eventually new evidence emerged. After three days of hearings about the new evidence, the Yakima County Prosecutor asked a judge to dismiss Salas’ conviction. The judge agreed and exonerated Salas.
By the time of his release, he was 42 years old. He had spent 26 years behind bars.
Exonerations like this are rare, but they do happen. These individuals’ ‘lost years’ in prison are heartbreaking to contemplate.
Evaristo Salas after being released from prison, accompanied by two women who fought for his exoneration (photo credit: Colin Mulvany/The Spokesman Review)
Who are Washington’s exonerees?
The National Registry of Exonerations maintains a database of exonerations since 1989. The database allows for sorting exonerees by several variables including sex, race, and the state in which the crime was committed.
The database includes 57 exonerations in Washington. Below are more detailed breakouts of those 57 people, starting with a disaggregation by sex.
1. Number of exonerees in Washington since 1989, by sex
| Sex | Number of people |
| Male | 48 people (84%) |
| Female | 9 people (16%) |
| Total | 57 people (100%) |
Among the nearly 300 years served in prisons by those 57 people, 275 of those ‘lost years’ — or 94% — were male inmates.
2. Years lost by exonerees in Washington since 1989, by sex
| Sex | Number of years lost |
| Male | 275 years (94%) | Average: 6 years |
| Female | 19 years (6%) | Average 2 years |
| Total | 294 years (100%) | Average: 5 years |
Black and Native American people have been overrepresented among exonerated individuals, given their percentages of Washington’s population. Here are the 57 exonerees broken out by race and sex:
3. Number of exonerees in Washington since 1989, by race and sex
| Race and sex | Number of people |
| White Male | 32 people (56%) |
| Black Male | 10 people (18%) |
| White Female | 6 people (11%) |
| Hispanic Male | 4 people (7%) |
| Native American Male | 2 people (5%) |
| Black Female | 1 person (2%) |
| Native American Female | 1 person (2%) |
| Other Female | 1 person (2%) |
| Total | 57 (100%) |
What is an exoneration?
The National Registry of Exonerations provides this basic definition of an exoneration:
“In general, an exoneration occurs when a person who has been convicted of a crime is officially cleared based on new evidence of innocence.”
The Registry also provides a more in-depth definition:
A person has been exonerated if he or she was convicted of a crime and later was either:
(1) declared to be factually innocent by a government official or agency with the authority to make that declaration; or
(2) relieved of all the consequences of the criminal conviction by a government official or body with the authority to take that action. (View their full explanation about exonerations)
Factors leading to wrongful convictions
According to the National Institute of Justice, a conviction may be classified as wrongful for two reasons:
- The person convicted is factually innocent of the charges.
- There were procedural errors that violated the convicted person’s rights. (source)
Nationally, the most common factors that have contributed to wrongful convictions are:
- Perjury or False Accusation: 56%
- Official Misconduct: 51%
- Mistaken Witness Identification: 30%
- False or Misleading Forensic Evidence: 24%
- False Confessions: 12% (source)
Some cases had multiple factors that contributed to a wrongful conviction.
How many innocent people are in Washington’s prisons today?
A national organization called the Innocence Project points to studies that estimate between 2.3% and 5% of people in prisons in the United States are innocent. (The Innocence Project has a local affiliate, the Washington Innocence Project.)
If we assume that only 1% of prisoners in Washington are innocent, and we apply that to our current prison population of 12,987 people, then 130 innocent people are wrongfully behind bars today in Washington. If we assume that imprisoned men and women are equally likely to be innocent, that would mean 122 men and 8 women are unjustly incarcerated in our state prison system today.
Legislation about deception by law enforcement officers during interrogations
When searching for information on the topic of exonerations in Washington, we learned that State Representative Strom Peterson (D-Shoreline) introduced a bill during the 2023-2024 legislative session concerning deception by law enforcement officers during interrogations.
The bill report for House Bill 1062 says it “Requires the Criminal Justice Training Commission to contract with an expert or organization with expertise in interrogation tactics to develop, administer, and periodically revise a training in evidence-based, noncoercive interrogation techniques for law enforcement personnel.”
The legislation received hearings in the Committee on Community Safety, Justice, & Reentry and the Appropriations Committee, but it was not brought up for a vote on the House Floor, so it did not pass.
See also: Rep. Beth Doglio Responds to Question About Washington’s Boys and Men