Today, April 18, 2019, American journalism brims over with awareness that a prosecutor's decision not to pursue criminal charges does not necessarily mean that the person in question is actually innocent. It is not "exoneration" as that term is widely understood.
Mark the date on the calendar and count the days until the next report that refers to the Death Penalty Information Center's so-called "innocence list" of supposedly "exonerated" former death row inmates as if the people on it actually are innocent. I predict it won't be long. Memory is short, and confirmation bias is powerful.
In short, a prosecutor's decision not to re-prosecute after a death row inmate's conviction is overturned for any reason, which may have nothing to do with actual innocence, is enough to qualify for the list. The criteria for inclusion do not require actual innocence, proof of innocence, or even evidence of innocence. For more detail, see Ward Campbell, Exoneration Inflation (2008).
The claim of the notorious Professor Gross that 4% of all people on death row are innocent is based on calculations that use the DPIC's list as a base for who is innocent. As we used to say in the computer programming business, "garbage in, garbage out." If the input data are wrong it doesn't matter if the calculations are correct, the output is still wrong.
Governor Newsom cited Gross's article in his executive order freezing executions in California, but he falsely attributed Gross's estimate to the National Academy of Sciences. The fact that an article is published in a journal sponsored by NAS does not transform the author's claims into NAS findings. But facts don't matter when you are on a crusade, and political correctness of your bottom line is a largely effective shield against scrutiny from today's fact checkers.
"a prosecutor's decision not to re-prosecute after a death row inmate's conviction
is overturned for any reason, which may have nothing to do with actual innocence..."
~~ This is disappointing and enraging. [Not a lawyer here.]
When I was trained as a policeman, guilt and innocence
was all we cared about, beside the general goals of
protecting and serving, and keeping the peace.
Being where 'the rubber meets the road', allowed our determination
of whether to arrest and charge to be of the sort of observation and
eye-witnesses.
With a guilty murderer there need not be any guile, or meaningless
tautologies such as 'better to let a thousand guilty go free rather
than wrongly convict one innocent man.'
I think every American knows the difference between getting out on a
technicality and being exonerated of committing a crime. Aside from
a vested or muddled mind, I can see no reason that justice
professionals cannot differentiate between the two as well.