Abstract
This article offers a genealogical account of innocence in US jurisprudence alongside an account of the depersonalization of black people in legal proceedings and shows their entanglement. By examining both slavery-era laws as well as the punitive surge of the 1990s, this paper finds that while white people were protected by the presumption of innocence, black people were under siege by the legal presumption of slavery. Even after the Civil War, the presumption of innocence remained illusory through a legally codified correlation between blackness and criminality. The article uses the case study of Rodricus Crawford to show how the focus on exonerations as an antidote to mass incarceration leverages a notion of innocence that helps some get out of prison, while further entrenching the criminalization and punishment of the majority of others. This text argues that the innocence revolution and wave of exonerations is not only insufficient, but harmful. The innocence revolution continues to legitimize and further entrench the validity of “true” guilt as a category deserving punishment.
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