Causes of wrongful conviction

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Justifying Justice: Six Factors of Wrongful Convictions and Their Solutions

There have been over 300 post-conviction DNA exonerations in the history of the United States. While this number may initially seem significant, there is still an unfathomable population of wrongfully convicted prisoners who have yet to be considered for retrials. Unaddressed wrongful conviction cases highlight the unacceptable weaknesses in the U.S. justice system, weaknesses that include poor investigative tactics and the acceptance or allowance of inaccurate and unreliable evidence. This paper will dutifully analyze the causes that lead to wrongful convictions and amply discuss potential solutions, all of which includes eyewitness misidentification, improper forensics, false confessions, informants, government misconduct, and insufficient lawyering

Studying Wrongful Convictions: Learning from Social Science

There has been an explosion of legal scholarship on wrongful convictions in the last decade, reflecting a growing concern about the problem of actual innocence in the criminal justice system. Yet criminal law and procedure scholars have engaged in relatively little dialogue or collaboration on this topic with criminologists. In this article, we use the empirical study of wrongful convictions to illustrate what criminological approaches—or, more broadly, social science methods—can teach legal scholars. After briefly examining the history of wrongful conviction scholarship, we discuss the limits of the (primarily) narrative methodology of legal scholarship on wrongful convictions. We argue that social scientific methods allow for more precise and accurate depictions of the multifactorial and complex nature of causation in wrongful conviction cases. In the main body of this article, we discuss and illustrate several social science approaches to the study of wrongful conviction: aggregated case studies, matched comparison samples, and path analysis. We argue these methods would help criminal law and procedure scholars to better understand the causes, characteristics, and consequences of wrongful convictions than a purely narrative approach. Finally, we offer concluding thoughts about improving the dialogue between criminal law and criminology on the subject of wrongful conviction

Innocence, Harmless Error, and Federal Wrongful Conviction Law

This Article examines the body of law emerging in cases brought by former criminal defendants once exonerated, often through DNA testing, which may fundamentally reshape our criminal justice system. Federal wrongful conviction actions share a novel construction - they rely on criminal procedure rights incorporated as an element in a civil rights lawsuit. During a criminal trial, remedies for violations of procedural rights are often seen as truth defeating, because they exclude evidence possibly probative of guilt. In a civil wrongful conviction action, that remedial paradigm is reversed. The exonerated defendant instead seeks to remedy government misconduct that was truth defeating and concealed evidence of innocence. This Article contends that in a civil case, the harmless error rules that limit remedies for violations of criminal procedure rights do not apply. Further, though not generally recognized as such, the Supreme Court has created internal harmless error rules to accompany each of the relevant fair trial claims: the Brady v. Maryland right to have exculpatory evidence disclosed; the right to effective assistance of counsel; the right to be free from suggestive eyewitness identification procedures; and the right not to be subject to a coerced confession. Civil claims suggest the transformative result that for each right, harmless error insulation is stripped away. This Article concludes by reflecting on how wrongful conviction suits may spearhead wide-ranging reform of our criminal justice system and renew substantive development of the constitutional right to a fair trial

Jury instructions on eyewitness identification evidence: a re-evaluation

The primary contribution of this paper is to challenge the accepted wisdom that jury instructions are an ineffective safeguard against wrongful conviction caused by mistaken eyewitness identification. It argues that such a conclusion is based on an erroneous interpretation of the available experimental evidence and that, in fact, there are grounds for optimism about the effectiveness of jury instructions in educating jurors about the risks posed by eyewitness identification evidence and sensitising them to the factors relevant to its evaluation. In order to play a useful role in safeguarding against wrongful conviction, however, instructions need to be easily comprehensible; to reflect the relevant scientific findings; and be provided to jurors in writing (or an alternative format for those who would find written instructions inaccessible). The paper also makes a secondary contribution, which is to warn of the dangers of accepting uncritically the findings of mock jury research as the basis for legal policy formation

Compensation for wrongful conviction

This paper examines the causes of wrongful imprisonment, the nature of losses and the applicability of international approaches and conventions. Definitions of wrongful conviction vary internationally, as do the circumstances and amount of compensation. Australian states and territories can make discretionary ex gratia payments, although determination of compensation amounts is unclear. Compensation levels for wrongful conviction in Australia are not as generous as tortious claims. The current system of ex gratia payments that exists in all Australian jurisdictions (other than the Australian Capital Territory) is arbitrary. The introduction of dedicated legislation or specific guidelines for wrongful conviction would help bring these Australian jurisdictions into line with international human rights best practice. This paper considers the scope of claims made in Australia through some key case studies. However, there is currently no reliable national data on the prevalence of wrongful convictions in Australia; overseas research suggests wrongful convictions may be less rare than we assume

Using a Ratio Test to Estimate Racial Differences in Wrongful Conviction Rates

We show that under arguably plausible assumptions regarding the DNA exoneration process, in expectation, the ratio of DNA exoneration rates across races among defendants convicted for the same crime in the same state provides an upper bound on the ratio of wrongful conviction rates across races among these defendants. Our estimates of this statistic reveal that among those sentenced to incarceration for rape in the United States between 1983 and 1997, the wrongful conviction rate among white defendants was less than two-thirds of what it was for black defendants. Our results with respect to murder are inconclusive

Post-Conviction Review : Questions of Innocence, Independence, and Necessity

STETSON LAW REVIEW, VOLUME 47, FALL 2017, NUMBER 1Peer reviewedPublisher PD