Look Who\u27s Extrapolating: A Reply to Hoffmann

Abstract

In late March, a reporter called with news of a pirated copy of Professor Joseph Hoffinann\u27s soon-to-be-published attack on our study, A Broken System: Error Rates in Capital Cases, 1973-1995. Did we care to comment? Obtaining our own copy revealed that Professor Hoffmann\u27s fusillade missed its mark (he misstates what we did) and boomeranged (his mischaracterizations of our analysis accurately describe his own). We do care to comment, and Hoffmann and the Indiana Law Journal have graciously let us do so. Hoffmann\u27s main claim is that we extrapolated the 68% rate of reversible error we reported for capital verdicts reviewed during the twenty-three-year study period. We did no such thing. But he did. His 40% counterstatistic is an extrapolation in the purest sense, which proceeds from deflationary assumptions that are factually wrong