Legislative responses to wrongful conviction: Do partisan principals and advocacy efforts influence state-level criminal justice policy? (original) (raw)

2015, Social Science Research

Why do states differ in their commitment to identifying, preventing, and ameliorating wrongful criminal convictions? Over the last several decades there has been a growing public concern over the possibility that individuals could be convicted and sanctioned for crimes they did not commit (Zalman et al., 2012) and scholarly attention has followed (c.f. Garrett, 2011; Martin, 2001; Huff et al., 1996). This heightened concern has led to the identification of specific public policies and practices that appear to significantly contribute to system fallibility (Free and Ruesink, 2012). In response, advocates for change and legal scholars have advanced a series of legislative changes that can substantially reduce the likelihood of convicting indi viduals for crimes they did not commit. With these available guidelines, individual states have the ability to institute statu tory changes that can begin to reduce wrongful convictions, and also compensate those who are victims of such miscarriages of justice. Such legislative changes are necessary because it is increasingly clear that wrongful convictions do not simply result from chance error by individuals in particular courtrooms, but instead reflect systemic errors (Zalman et al., 2012). Punishing the innocent clearly violates the conscience of an advanced society. But if these errors are inherently part of our system of justice, there are profound legal implications as well. Indications of flaws in our courts not only erode public trust in the legal system but also reveal, as Martin (2001) so aptly points out, that "a double failure" has occurred such that "not only is an innocent person wronged by the conviction but the guilty person is thereby allowed to go free" (pg. 847). Given such serious consequences, it is not surprising that the media, scholars, advocacy groups and policymakers have been work ing for many years to expose such cases and to promote criminal justice reforms that make wrongful conviction less likely. Despite such widespread efforts, there are still important aspects of this process that remain understudied. In particular, Leo Post-print standardized by MSL Academic Endeavors, the imprint of the