To be fair, we also have a significantly higher rate of murder to begin with.
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Yeah, and of course those are but a small sub-set of the cases that had DNA evidence (which was preserved) to begin with - not every contested conviction gets that attention. You still see it in cases where there’s no DNA evidence, with people getting convicted on some incredibly weak evidence (e.g. questionable eye witnesses) and then later exonerated thanks to ubiquitous surveillance giving them an unshakable alibi that was completely ignored by the cops and prosecutors at the time… Then there’s a whole problem of people being convicted based on forensic evidence that cops basically just made up and has no evidentiary value, etc.
Also the “solve rate” is based on arrests, not convictions, so they’re pretty terrible for in general - prosecutors seem more willing to go ahead with prosecutions based on no evidence on lesser charges (probably with the expectation of just getting people to plead rather than go to trial), and the conviction rates are bad (even with a large number of innocent people pleading to avoid extreme sentences). US cops in general seem to be rather incompetent - that they’re locally run, with no consistent training or standards has to be a major part of it.
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Add plea deals and overworked public defenders, too.
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