prison on December 2, 1999; ten years later, a district court judge announced "to a 100 percent moral, factual and legal certainty" that Timothy Cole did not commit the rape. He was posthumously pardoned. The dilemma can occur even before conviction. Kalief Browder was arrested in May 2010 for allegedly stealing a backpack. He spent the next three years on Rikers Island awaiting trial, much of it in solitary. During court appearances, prosecutors routinely asked for a short delay which would turn into a much lengthier wait. At times, Browder was offered plea bargains, and at one point, he was encouraged to plead guilty to misdemeanors, for which he would be sentenced to time already served and released. When he refused the plea deal, insisting on his innocence, the judge noted "If you go to trial and lose, you could get up to fifteen [years]." Eventually, in May 2013, the case was dismissed because prosecutors had lost contact with the only witness they had to the alleged crime. Detriment to society Gabe Tan reported a British conference in 2011, "the dilemma of maintaining innocence", concluded "Denial is not a valid measure of risk. In fact, research has shown that prisoners who openly admit to their crimes have the highest risk of re-offending." In 2011, Michael Naughton suggested the focus on new evidence by the Criminal Cases Review Commission, rather than an examination of serious problems with evidence at original trials, meant in many cases “that the dangerous criminals who committed these crimes remain at liberty with the potential to commit further serious crimes.” Robert A. Forde cited two studies at the conference. One, a ten-year study of 180 sex offenders by Harkins, Beech and Goodwill found prisoners who claimed to be innocent were the least likely to be re-convicted, and that those who 'admitted everything', claiming to be guilty, were most likely to re-offend. He also told the conference research by Hanson et al. in 2002, the denial by the prisoner of their offences had no bearing on their likelihood of re-offend. See also Alternative pleading Recidivism List of wrongful convictions in the United States References External links New York Times video about the Herbert Murray case Penal imprisonment Parole Dilemmas Wrongful convictions