Life after wrongful conviction.

2012 ◽  
pp. 327-341 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kimberley A. Clow ◽  
Amy-May Leach ◽  
Rosemary Ricciardelli
Keyword(s):  
Wrongful Conviction

The Criminology of Wrongful Conviction

2016 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 82-106 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard A. Leo
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Wrongful Conviction ◽  
Wrongful Convictions ◽  
Cause Analysis ◽  
Academic Field ◽  
Root Cause ◽  
Improve Accuracy ◽  
Current Article ◽  
To Come

This article reflects on the author’s 2005 article, “Rethinking the Study of Miscarriages of Justice,” which sought to describe what scholars empirically knew at that time about the phenomenon, causes, and consequences of wrongful convictions in America. The 2005 article argued that the study of wrongful convictions constituted a coherent academic field of study and set forth a vision for a more sophisticated, insightful, and generalizable criminology of wrongful conviction. In this current article, the author revisits the ideas first developed in “Rethinking the Study of Miscarriages of Justice” to evaluate what scholars have learned about wrongful convictions in the last decade, and what challenges lie ahead for developing a more robust criminology of wrongful conviction. The article concludes that there have been significant theoretical, methodological, and substantive advances in the last decade, but that a root cause analysis of wrongful convictions has yet to come to fruition and urges empirical scholars to begin to study other sources of error and inaccuracy in the criminal justice system. Scholars should develop a criminology of erroneous outcomes, not just of erroneous conviction. By studying both sets of outcomes, scholars can improve accuracy and reduce errors across the board.

scholarly journals Evaluating Earwitness Identification Procedures: The Effect of Pre-Parade Instructions

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harriet M J Smith ◽  
JENS ROESER ◽  
Nikolas Pautz ◽  
Josh P Davis ◽  
Jeremy Robson ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
False Alarms ◽  
Wrongful Conviction ◽  
Voice Identification ◽  
Sequential Procedures ◽  
Testing Performance ◽  
Low Performance ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
Present Standard ◽  
Identification Procedures

Voice identification parades can be unreliable, as earwitness responses are error-prone. Here we vary pre-parade instructions, testing performance across serial and sequential procedures to examine ways of reducing errors. The participants listened to a target voice and later attempted to identify it from a parade. They were either warned that the target may or may not be present (standard warning), or encouraged to consider responding ‘not present’ because of the associated risk of a wrongful conviction (strong warning). Overall accuracy was low. Performance varied according to instructions and procedure. False alarms were lower on target-absent serial parades following the strong compared to the standard warning. However, the strong warning was associated with higher false alarms on target-absent sequential parades. We discuss the cognitive processes that might drive this effect. Our novel analyses shed light on these results, highlighting the challenges of directly comparing procedures, and revealing position-related effects.

Measuring Innocence

2021 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 601-654
Author(s):  
Marvin Zalman ◽  
Robert J. Norris
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Wrongful Conviction ◽  
Conviction Rate ◽  
Felony Conviction ◽  
Time Period ◽  
Death Sentences

What is the rate of wrongful conviction? This question may be implicit in Blackstone’s ratio: “It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.” Scholarship designed to provide an empirical answer, however, emerged only with the rise of the “innocence movement” in the United States. This article does not provide another study estimating the rate of wrongful felony conviction either for a specified sample, such as death sentences within a specified time period, or for an entire jurisdiction. Instead, we evaluate the rate question itself and assess its importance to innocence scholarship and action. We first trace the question’s intellectual lineage, and its historical and ideological roots among innocence believers and innocence skeptics. We then describe and evaluate all or most of the published studies attempting to estimate the wrongful conviction rate. Next, we discuss a reoccurring limitation of this published work, namely, its failure to account for or its unsubstantiated assumptions about guilty pleas and misdemeanor convictions among innocent defendants. Finally, we question the continued importance of the rate question in light of the modern innocence movement and its growing accomplishments.

Wrongful Conviction Litigation

2019 ◽  
pp. 199-217
Author(s):  
Kevin Fox Gotham ◽  
Daniel Bruce Kennedy
Keyword(s):  
Wrongful Conviction
Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document