Wrongful Convictions In The Criminal Justice System

On January 20, 1984, Earl Washington—defended for all of forty minutes by a lawyer who had never tried a death penalty case—was found guilty of rape and murder in the state of Virginia and sentenced to death. After nine years on death row, DNA testing cast doubt on his conviction and saved his life. However, he spent another eight years in prison before more sophisticated DNA technology proved his innocence and convicted the guilty man. DNA exonerations have shattered confidence in the criminal justice system by exposing how often we have convicted the innocent and let the guilty walk free. In this unsettling in-depth analysis, Brandon Garrett examines what went wrong in the cases of the first 250 wrongfully convicted people to be exonerated by DNA testing. Based on trial transcripts, Garrett’s investigation into the causes of wrongful convictions reveals larger patterns of incompetence, abuse, and error. Evidence corrupted by suggestive eyewitness procedures, coercive interrogations, unsound and unreliable forensics, shoddy investigative practices, cognitive bias, and poor lawyering illustrates the weaknesses built into our current criminal justice system. Garrett proposes practical reforms that rely more on documented, recorded, and audited evidence, and less on fallible human memory. Very few crimes committed in the United States involve biological evidence that can be tested using DNA. How many unjust convictions are there that we will never discover? Convicting the Innocent makes a powerful case for systemic reforms to improve the accuracy of all criminal cases.

"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.

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 exoneration of more than two hundred and fifty people who have been wrongfully convicted makes it clear that Americas criminal justice system isnt foolproof. Its important to understand the causes of wrongful conviction in order to find solutions to this growing problem. Edited by one of the nations leading legal scholars and two of her top students, this collection of essays examines critical issues, including what American justice in the age of innocence looks like; how to implement procedural mechanisms to ensure the integrity of the judicial system while safeguarding the public; whether or not the legal system is doing a good enough job uncovering wrongful convictions. This anthology provides insightful lessons based on cutting-edge research and legal analysis. Wrongful convictions are not a foregone conclusion, but the justice system must break free from a pattern of punishing innocent people and go after the true culprits. Written for judges, lawyers and scholars alike, American Justice in the Age of Innocence educates the public and helps current prisoners who are innocent contest their wrongful convictions.

A top legal scholar explains Canada’s national tragedy of wrongful convictions, how anyone could be caught up in them, and what we can do to safeguard justice. Canada’s legal system has a serious problem: a significant but unknown number of people have been convicted for crimes they didn’t commit. There are famous cases of wrongful convictions, such as David Milgaard and Donald Marshall Jr., where the system convicted the wrong person for murder. But there are lesser-known cases: people who feel they have no option but to plead guilty, and people convicted of crimes that were imagined by experts or the police that never, in fact, happened. Kent Roach, cofounder of the Canadian Registry of Wrongful Convictions, award-winning author, and law professor, has dedicated his illustrious career to documenting flaws in our justice system. His work reveals that the burden of wrongful convictions falls disproportionately on the disadvantaged, including Indigenous and racialized people, those with cognitive issues, single mothers, and the poor. Wrongfully Convicted raises awareness about wrongful convictions at a time when DNA exonerations are less frequent and the memories of most famous wrongful convictions are fading. Roach makes a compelling case for change that governments have so far lacked the courage to make. They include better legislative regulation of police and forensic experts and the creation of a permanent and independent federal commission both to investigate wrongful convictions and their multiple causes. Roach’s research and vast knowledge point to systemic failings in our legal system. But he also outlines vital changes that can better prevent and correct wrongful convictions. Until we do, many of the wrongfully convicted are still waiting for the promise of justice. It is an issue that affects all Canadians.

Former bank manager Ronald Dalton never got to watch his three young children grow up. In 1989 he was convicted for a crime that never happened. His wife, Brenda, was later ruled to have choked to death on breakfast cereal not strangled as a pathologist had initially claimed. Dalton’s daughter, Alison, was in kindergarten when he was charged with second-degree murder in 1988. He attended her high school graduation on June 26, 2000, two days after his conviction was finally overturned. Behind the proud facade of Canada’s criminal justice system lie the shattered lives of the people unjustly caught within its web. Justice Miscarried tells the heartwrenching stories of twelve innocent Canadians, including David Milgaard, Donald Marshall, Guy Paul Morin, Clayton Johnson, William Mullins-Johnson, and Thomas Sophonow, who were wrongly convicted and the errors in the nations justice system that changed their lives forever.

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.