Today, we're pleased to share with you an audio essay written and read by Matt Martins,

entitled Three Things That Must Change About the American Justice System.

Matt Martin's new book is Reforming Criminal Justice, a Christian proposal.

Three things that must change in the American Justice System.

Written and read by Matt Martens.

The American justice system has an accuracy problem.

Since the advent of forensic DNA technology in 1989, 3,284 people, have been exonerated after having been convicted of crimes.

These aren't cases of people who later got off on legal technicalities.

These are people who did not commit the crimes, but collectively spent more than 29,000 years in prison before their innocence was discovered.

Last year was a record-setting year for exonerations, with 29,000 years in prison before their innocence was discovered. Last year was a record-setting

year for exonerations, with 234, an average of nearly one every business day. Since the death penalty

was reinstated in the United States in 1973, 2% of people sentenced to death were innocent of the

crimes for which they were condemned. We know this

is a fact because of their subsequent exonerations, usually after decades spent on death row. Statistical

modeling based on the exonerations to date suggests that the number of innocents among those

sentenced to death is actually more like 4% or one out of every 25.

What's especially astounding about this error rate in capital cases

is that these are the cases to which the justice system devotes the most resources to get it right at trial.

The American justice system has an accuracy problem.

And this accuracy problem is a justice problem, a biblical justice problem. The good news is that the cause of our accuracy problem isn't entirely a mystery. Knowing the problem means we can fix the problem. And three changes to our system could go a long way toward fixing the accuracy problem.

First, we must provide the funding needed to assure minimally competent lawyers for the poor.

The overwhelming percentage of those charged with crimes are unable to afford a lawyer.

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