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On Feb. 22 Reynaldo Munoz<\/a> became the 3,000th incarcerated person whose U. S. criminal conviction was thrown out after it was determined that he had been falsely convicted. That is 3,000 known miscarriages of justice since the National Registry of Exonerations began tracking them in 1989. It is a staggering figure, but the real total is undoubtedly much higher.<\/p>\n The Registry reports<\/a> that these 3,000 men and women who were falsely convicted spent a total of more than 25,000 years behind bars.<\/p>\n Countless more remain behind bars<\/a>, despite the efforts of groups like The Innocence Project<\/a> to free the victims of miscarriages of justice.<\/p>\n Research suggests<\/a> that around 2 percent of currently incarcerated people are actually innocent.<\/p>\n Most of those cases, and the names of the people who suffered such horrible injustices, are unknown to the American people. We don\u2019t know their stories or the systemic problems responsible for what happened to them. This anonymity is understandable given how common exonerations have become \u2014 and how hard it can be to ferret out the true stories of people locked away behind bars.<\/p>\n Breaking through that anonymity and ignorance is essential if we are ever to face up to and address this national scandal. A few people have taken up this important work. They try to turn statistics into stories. Their work makes the human consequences of law\u2019s mistakes and injustices real to the rest of us.<\/p>\n Munoz\u2019s case was unusual because it was covered by USAToday<\/a>. But it made news only because of the happenstance and startling significance of his being the 3,000th<\/sup> exoneree. We need to ask about the fates of so many others, but Munoz\u2019s story can still serve as an exemplary case in how criminal justice can go horribly wrong.<\/p>\n