The Innocence Commission: preventing wrongful convictions and restoring the criminal justice system

2008 ◽  
Vol 45 (11) ◽  
pp. 45-6444-45-6444 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Wrongful Convictions

Comparing Plea Bargaining and Abbreviated Trial Procedures

2019 ◽  
pp. 702-727
Author(s):  
Gwladys Gilliéron
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Civil Law ◽  
Plea Bargaining ◽  
The United States ◽  
Wrongful Convictions ◽  
The U.S

This chapter compares U.S. plea bargaining with plea-bargaining-type procedures and penal orders in Continental Europe, with reference to Switzerland, Germany, and France. It first considers consensual criminal procedures across jurisdictions and why they exist, focusing on plea bargaining in the U.S. criminal justice system and abbreviated trial procedures in European civil law systems. It then examines the extent to which abbreviated trial procedures in civil law systems differ from plea bargaining in the U.S. system, the problems inherent in consensual criminal procedures, and the question of whether there are any solutions. In particular, it explains how plea bargaining and penal orders may lead to wrongful convictions. Finally, it discusses prospects for reform of plea bargaining in the United States and in civil law systems in Europe.

scholarly journals Threaten Sentencing Enhancement, Coerce Plea, (Wash, Rinse,) Repeat

2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 261-302
Author(s):  
Wes Reber Porter
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Trojan Horse ◽  
Individual Rights ◽  
Wrongful Convictions ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Clean Break ◽  
The Individual

Our American criminal justice system is too often described as broken. It was not a clean break in a single, isolated location. Instead, our criminal justice system suffers from many, many little nicks, bumps, and bruises at the hands of its keepers. The evolution of sentencing enhancements within our criminal justice system represents the latest nagging, reoccurring injury. In the ultimate Trojan horse to criminal defendants, the Supreme Court sought to protect the individual rights of the accused with its recent decisions on sentencing enhancements. But at the hands of lawmakers, the judiciary, and prosecutors, criminal defendants suffer more. Our criminal justice system also suffers from practices related to sentencing enhancements and the resulting wave of wrongful convictions by guilty plea.

scholarly journals Innocence and Prevention

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 253-269
Author(s):  
James Doyle
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Restorative Justice ◽  
Continuous Improvement ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Wrongful Convictions ◽  
System Failures ◽  
Underlying Theory ◽  
Sentinel Event ◽  
Contemporary Writers

Some contemporary writers argue that wrongful convictions represent system failures in a complex criminal justice system.  Currently explorations are underway into whether pursuit of non-blaming, all-stakeholders, forward-looking “sentinel event” reviews focused on lowering risk rather than laying blame can improve safety from wrongful convictions.  This article reviews the underlying theory of safety-based practices and sketches one model of how work on preventing wrongful convictions might be institutionalized:  made a part of a new culture of continuous improvement that lowers the risk of future wrongful convictions and offers a degree of restorative justice to the victims of errors.

scholarly journals Miscarriages of Justice and the Construction of Criminality in the People’s Republic of China

Amicus Curiae ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 261-267
Author(s):  
Yu Mou
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Criminal Process ◽  
Wrongful Convictions ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
High Profile ◽  
The Media ◽  
Opening Up ◽  
Chinese Criminal Justice

Another high-profile miscarriage of justice was reported recently by the media in China, highlighting widespread issues concerning torture and other police malpractices within the Chinese criminal justice system. Drawing from analysis in my book on the Construction of Guilt in China, this Note outlines the key drawbacks of the Chinese criminal process which contribute to wrongful convictions, namely that none of the legal institutions exhibits the autonomy to check the credibility of the evidence impartially. Alongside the problems caused by miscarriages of justice, they are also indicative of the symptoms of a weak criminal justice system, thereby opening up opportunities for future reforms. Keywords: miscarriages of justice; China; criminal justice; case construction.

scholarly journals Wrongful Convictions and Upstream Reform in the Criminal Justice System

2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 367-393 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine R. Kruse
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Expert Testimony ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Wrongful Convictions ◽  
Warren Court ◽  
Adversary System ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

The DNA exonerations of the late twentieth century spawned a reform movement arguably as influential in the American criminal justice system as the Warren Court criminal procedure revolution. The goal of innocence reform is to prevent wrongful convictions by increasing the reliability of criminal justice system operations. A basic tenet of the adversary system of justice is that an adversary trial will expose and correct factual errors with procedural tools, such as the exclusion of unreliable evidence, vigorous cross-examination of witnesses, and the introduction of expert testimony. However, DNA exonerations have undermined faith in the capacity of the adversary trial system to produce reliable results—shifting the focus “upstream” in the criminal justice system to earlier stages of law enforcement investigations. Upstream reforms target law enforcement investigative practices for improvements that will reduce or eliminate the production of unreliable evidence that will later need to be excluded, attacked, or explained at trial.

1. Introducing criminal justice

2015 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Julian V. Roberts
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Wrongful Convictions ◽  
Probation And Parole ◽  
Adversarial Model

The criminal justice system (CJS) is wide-ranging and involves numerous components and professionals. ‘Introducing criminal justice’ outlines the objectives of criminal justice; how crime can be punished and prevented; the key principles of criminal justice; the two contrasting models of criminal justice—the adversarial model and the inquisitorial model; the various components of the CJS—police, prosecution, judiciary, prisons, probation, and parole; the limits on the power of the CJS; discretion in criminal justice decision-making; the limits on the effectiveness of criminal justice; and criminal injustice through wrongful convictions, wrongful acquittals, over or under punishment, or discrimination.

scholarly journals The David Eastman case: The use of inquiries to investigate miscarriages of justice in Australia

2019 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 60-65
Author(s):  
Jacqueline Fuller
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Wrongful Conviction ◽  
Australian Capital Territory ◽  
Wrongful Convictions ◽  
Australian Capital ◽  
High Profile

The wrongful conviction of David Harold Eastman in the Australian Capital Territory represents one of Australia’s most recent and high-profile public failures of the criminal justice system and highlights the limits of the Australian legal system. Further, the Eastman case draws into question the use of inquiries into miscarriages of justice, particularly when an inquiry’s recommendations can be disregarded by governments (as it was in this instance). This article provides an overview of the Eastman case and critically evaluates how it sheds light on the use of inquiries as an avenue to investigate and correct wrongful convictions more broadly in Australia.

Does Australia Need a Specific Institution to Correct Wrongful Convictions?

2007 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-198 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lynne Weathered
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Common Law ◽  
The United States ◽  
Current Situation ◽  
Wrongful Conviction ◽  
Wrongful Convictions ◽  
International Context

In recent years, hundreds of people have been exonerated overseas after demonstrating that they were wrongly convicted of crimes for which they spent many years in prison, and these are only the ones uncovered to date. Australia has its own sampling of known wrongful convictions. England, Canada and the United States have introduced different mechanisms to address in some fashion, the facilitation of exonerations. This article considers the current situation for the wrongly convicted in Australia, placing it within this international context. This comparison will demonstrate that Australia has fallen behind these other common law countries by failing to deliver new mechanisms, establish new bodies or incorporate new avenues that would enable the correction of wrongful conviction to occur. Wrongful conviction must now be recognised as an unenviable but inevitable part of any criminal justice system and a problem that should not be tolerated. Australia's criminal justice system must meet the challenge to update its provisions rather than continue to proceed under provisions other countries have identified as failing to meet the needs of the wrongly convicted.

The Anti-Drug Policies of the 1980's: Have They Increased the Likelihood for Both Wrongful Convictions and Sentencing Disparities?

1992 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 207-228
Author(s):  
James B. Halsted
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Justice System ◽  
War On Drugs ◽  
Wrongful Convictions ◽  
Controlled Substances ◽  
Drug Policies ◽  
Controlled Substance ◽  
Significant Change

New statutory schemes enacted to support the “War on Drugs” policies of the 1980s are being enforced in a manner which is increasing the likelihood of a greater number of wrongful convictions. This study examines these new anti-drug statutes by analyzing how and when the American criminal justice system may be incarcerating marginally culpable and even innocent defendants due to the easier convictability of those prosecuted under the new statutes. One new crime created by these statutes is “trafficking in controlled substances.” An accused can be convicted under this powerfully sanctioned crime whenever the prosecution proves that he or she is only in “constructive possession” of a statutorily designated amount of a controlled substance. The significant change embodied in the new crime of “trafficking” is that it has reduced the amount of proof which used to be necessary to convict an accused person of the old drug dealer's crime, “possession of drugs with the intent to distribute.” In “trafficking” statutes, the seminal element of the older crime has been omitted. This omission has facilitated convictions. Additionally, this study uncovers statutorily built-in sentencing disparities among the punishments which judges are forced to impose on those convicted of “trafficking” versus the punishments which judges have the discretion to impose for other equally serious felonies.

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