Dataset of Wrongful Conviction Cases in South Africa

Wrongful conviction is broadly defined as the conviction of an innocent person for a crime that they did not commit. The overturning of such a conviction is, in the United States of America (USA), referred to as an exoneration. The National Registry of Exonerations (NRE), which is a database of all known exonerations in the USA, contained 3,737 cases as of October 2025. International research has identified numerous factors that contribute to wrongful convictions, with psychological studies focusing particularly on eyewitness misidentification and false confessions. In South Africa (SA), however, wrongful conviction remains a largely unexplored area of enquiry. This research had two primary aims: first, to systematically collect and analyse cases of wrongful conviction in SA, with a specific focus on cases involving eyewitness misidentification and/or false confessions; and second, to establish a South African database of wrongful convictions using these cases. This repository contains the data that was used in this research, which consisted of publicly available court judgements. The coding sheet contained herein, modelled after databases such as the NRE, is intended to be used for future research, subject to approval.