Miscarriages Of Justice In Canada

Innocent people are regularly convicted of crimes they did not commit. A number of systemic factors have been found to contribute to wrongful convictions, including eyewitness misidentification, false confessions, informant testimony, official misconduct, and faulty forensic evidence. In Miscarriages of Justice in Canada, Kathryn M. Campbell offers an extensive overview of wrongful convictions, bringing together current sociological, criminological, and legal research, as well as current case-law examples. For the first time, information on all known and suspected cases of wrongful conviction in Canada is included and interspersed with discussions of how wrongful convictions happen, how existing remedies to rectify them are inadequate, and how those who have been victimized by these errors are rarely compensated. Campbell reveals that the causes of wrongful convictions are, in fact, avoidable, and that those in the criminal justice system must exercise greater vigilance and openness to the possibility of error if the problem of wrongful conviction is to be resolved.

Looks at judicial error and wrongful conviction in Canada, including the cases of David Milgaard, Donald Marshall, Guy Paul Morin, and Clayton Johnson.

In Miscarriages of Justice in Canada, Kathryn M. Campbell offers an extensive overview of wrongful convictions, bringing together current sociological, criminological, and legal research, as well as current case-law examples.

"Miscarriages of justice in wrongful conviction happen more often than the criminal court system would like to admit. Awareness of the causes can reduce the overall potential for miscarriage of justice. These causes include: Prosecutorial ?tunnel vision?, Failure to make full disclosure, Suborned or concocted evidence, Eyewitness misidentification, False confessions, Reliance on in-custody informers, Incompetent ?experts?, Flawed legal representation. Wrongful Conviction in Canadian Law is the first book to review and analyze recommendations of Commissions of Inquiry into wrongful convictions. Comparative analyses reveal which recommendations have been implemented as policy, passed into legislation, or endorsed by the courts. You?ll learn how the authorities could have made ? or could have avoided ? such major errors." --Publisher.

This volume brings together the world-class scholarship of 23 widely acclaimed and influential contributing authors from North America and Europe. The latest research is presented in 18 chapters focusing on the frequency, causes, and consequences of wrongful convictions and other miscarriages of justice and offering recommendations for both legal and public policy reforms that can help reduce the causes of these errors while protecting public safety as well.

The plight of the wrongly convicted is gaining prominence with the growing awareness of the prodigious harms to innocent persons at the hands of the criminal justice system. Most of the attention, both scholarly and legislatively, has been focused on the causes of wrongful convictions and the need to free the innocent. What needs to now be addressed more comprehensively is the issue of how to provide redress to those persons whose lives have been inexorably damaged and how to best compensate them in their efforts to rebuild a life. The available remedies in Canada to pursue compensation include civil litigation for malicious prosecution, negligent investigation, a Charter breach and the highly politicized exercise of discretion by a government to make a payment without acknowledging liability. Except for the very few, none of these remedies are very helpful. Liberal democracies like Canada are honour bound if not constitutionally mandated to provide for innocence compensation far beyond the onerous and cost prohibitive pursuit of litigation against the State and the current highly secretive and inadequate executive remedy requiring an elusive exercise of mercy. About the Author: Dr. Myles Frederick McLellan (LL.B (J.D); LL.M (Osgoode); Ph.D. (Anglia Ruskin - Law) is a Professor of Law and Justice at Algoma University in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Canada. The focus of his research, writing and teaching is criminal justice. He is the Director and Founder of the Innocence Compensation Project and is the Editor-in-Chief of the Wrongful Conviction Law Review. He is on the Policy Review Committee of the Canadian Criminal Justice Association. He has also been a Commissioner of Police and a Federal Crown Counsel.

Imperfections in the criminal justice system have long intrigued the general public and worried scholars and legal practitioners. In Wrongful Conviction, criminologists C. Ronald Huff and Martin Killias present an important collection of essays that analyzes cases of injustice across an array of legal systems, with contributors from North America, Europe and Israel. This collection includes a number of well-developed public-policy recommendations intended to reduce the instances of courts punishing innocents. It also offers suggestions for compensating more fairly those who are wrongfully convicted.

"The book is a collection of essays and contributions from prominent Canadians on the 150th anniversary of Confederation, and the 35th anniversary of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Contributors include former prime ministers, politicians, judges, lawyers and wrongfully convicted. The perspectives are broad, thoughtful and inspiring."--