Analyzing Wrongful Convictions beyond the traditional canonical list of errors (original) (raw)
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SSRN Electronic Journal, 2018
in Milton, Massachusetts and at other institutions where she taught courses on restorative justice, the death penalty, and wrongful convictions. Her research involves the death penalty, capital juror decision-making, mental health and intellectual disability defenses, and the structural causes of wrongful convictions. She has served as the book review editor for the
One Hundred Years Later: Wrongful Convictions after a Century of Research, 100
In this Article, the authors analyze a century of research on the causes and consequences of wrongful convictions in the American criminal justice system while explaining the many lessons of this body of work. This Article chronicles the range of research that has been conducted on wrongful convictions; examines the common sources of error in the criminal justice system and their effects; suggests where additional research and attention are needed; and discusses methodological strategies for improving the quality of research on wrongful convictions. The authors argue that traditional sources of error (eyewitness misidentification, false confessions, perjured testimony, forensic error, tunnel vision, prosecutorial misconduct, ineffective assistance of counsel, etc.) are contributing sources, not exclusive causes, of wrongful convictions. They also argue that the research on wrongful convictions has uncovered a great deal about how these sources operate and what might prevent their effects. Finally, the authors urge criminal justice professionals and policymakers to take this research more seriously and apply the lessons learned from a century of research into wrongful convictions.
Illinois Law Enforcement Executive Training and Standards Board Executive Institute, 2015
This article explores the causal factors amalgamating adjudicative and investigative factors of wrongful conviction. It chronicles the interaction between the causal factors of confirmation bias, misleading specialized knowledge, and tunnel vision that are pathways to perfidy in the criminal justice system and are present in all wrongful convictions. This article considers social science frameworks on a broader scale for understanding wrongful convictions and also for understanding what the root causes are and the interactions between the causal factors that cause wrongful convictions. The article concludes with a discussion to stimulate progress on constitutional reform that advances policy on wrongful convictions.
Race and Wrongful Convictions in the United States 2022
SSRN Electronic Journal
African Americans are only 13% of the American population but a majority of innocent defendants wrongfully convicted of crimes and later exonerated. They constitute 47% of the 1,900 exonerations listed in the National Registry of Exonerations (as of October 2016), and the great majority of more than 1,800 additional innocent defendants who were framed and convicted of crimes in 15 large-scale police scandals and later cleared in "group exonerations." We see this racial disparity for all major crime categories, but we examine it in this report in the context of the three types of crime that produce the largest numbers of exonerations in the Registry: murder, sexual assault, and drug crimes. I. Murder • Judging from exonerations, innocent black people are about seven times more likely to be convicted of murder than innocent white people. A major cause of the high number of black murder exonerations is the high homicide rate in the black community-a tragedy that kills many African Americans and sends many others to prison. Innocent defendants who are falsely convicted and exonerated do not contribute to this high homicide rate. Theylike the families of victims who are killed-are deeply harmed by murders committed by others. • The main reason for this racial disproportion in convictions of innocent drug defendants is that police enforce drug laws more vigorously against African Americans than against members of the white majority, despite strong evidence that both groups use drugs pp. 12-13 p. 13 pp. 13-15 pp. 15-16 pp.16-17 pp. 18-19 pp. 20-21
Identifying Patterns Across the Six Canonical Factors Underlying Wrongful Convictions
Wrongful Conviction Law Review, 2022
Research has established six "canonical" factors underlying wrongful convictions including: mistaken witness identification (MWID), false confession (FC), perjury or false accusation (P/FA), false or misleading forensic evidence (F/MFE), official misconduct (OM), and inadequate legal defense (ILD). While we know these factors do not occur in isolation, researchers have yet to examine the patterns across these six factors. In the present article, we apply latent class analysis to explore how these six factors might co-occur across known exonerations. Using data from the National Registry of Exonerations, we identify four latent classes by which the incidence rates across these six factors can be categorized. Among our noteworthy findings: 1) P/FA and OM often co-occur, 2) when MWIDs are high, the incidence of other factors is relatively low, and 3) false guilty pleas had the highest prevalence in a class that was generally associated with Failures to Investigate. Further implications are discussed. I.
Citizens' Attitudes Toward Wrongful Convictions
Criminal Justice Review, 2012
Perhaps no problem challenges the legitimacy of the criminal justice system more than the conviction of factually innocent individuals. Numerous highly publicized exonerations that occurred since 1989 have raised the visibility of wrongful conviction, eliciting the attention of both scholars and policy makers. Much of the research in this area focuses on the causes and incidence of the phenomenon. Despite the growing body of research, however, there has been no examination of how citizens view this problem. Using data from a statewide survey of Michigan residents, the present study aims to fill that gap in the literature by reporting on citizens' attitudes regarding the issue of wrongful conviction. Overall, the results of this exploratory study suggest that respondents not only recognize the incidence of wrongful conviction but also believe that such errors occur with some regularity. Further results show that respondents believe wrongful convictions occur frequently enough to justify major criminal justice system reform. Attitudes varied significantly across demographic groups as well. Additional findings and policy implications are discussed.
Causes of Wrongful Conviction: Looking at Student Knowledge
Journal of Criminal Justice Education, 2008
The current study investigates the impact of a criminal justice education on student knowledge about wrongful conviction. Past research has found fallibility of hard evidence (eg, eyewitness misidentification), police and lawyer behaviors (eg, tunnel vision), and ...