Wrongful convictions can occur due to errors in the criminal justice system. The top causes of wrongful convictions are eyewitness misidentification, unreliable forensic evidence, false confessions, and untrustworthy informant testimony. In the 1970s and 1980s, the development of DNA testing revealed that innocent people had been wrongly convicted. This led to the formation of innocence projects and reforms to reduce errors. Exonerations have increased in recent years as more resources are devoted to investigating wrongful conviction claims.

1. Wrongful CONVICTIONS

2. Capital punishment
• The U.S. Constitution’s 8th Amendment
expressly prohibits “cruel and unusual
punishment.”
• What is cruel and unusual punishment?

3. Capital Punishment
• The Supreme Court: “ Punishments are cruel
when they involve torture or lingering death;
but the punishment of death is not cruel,
within the meaning of that word as used in
the Constitution. It implies there is something
inhuman and barbarous, something more
than the mere extinguishment of life.”
• The Supreme Court has never found the
death penalty itself unconstitutional.

4. Furman v. Georgia
• 1972 Supreme Court Case
• The Court decided that the death penalty, as it was
being carried out at the time, was unconstitutional.
• “no meaningful basis for distinguishing the few
cases in which the death penalty is imposed from
the many cases in which it is not.
• Halted executions and emptied death rows across
the country

5. Furman v. georgia
• Invalidated death penalty statutes in 39 states- most
states responded by enacting new laws aimed at
curbing discretion of judges and jurors.
• New statutes were of two varieties:
• Some provided for death penalty in cases of first-
degree murder
• Some provided for death penalty in several
offenses based on the presence of aggravating or
mitigating circumstances.
Guided discretion laws were favored by the Court

6. Wrongful Convictions

7. “error of justice”
• A term used to describe the many types of mistakes
the criminal justice system can make.
• “An error of justice occurs when an innocent person
is harassed, detained or sanctioned, or when a
culpable offender receives a sanction that is either
more or less than optimal- one that minimizes social
cost- or escapes sanctioning all together…an error
of justice is any departure from optimal out come of
justice for a criminal case.”

8. Innocence movement
• In the 1980s DNA testing entered the mainstream
• Today, DNA testing can provide as close to certain
evidence of guilt or innocence as anything
• When DNA testing first became popular, certain
tests has higher margins of error than others.
• Some tests had an error rate of 1/100, others
1/1,000,000
• Other potential causes of error:
• Sample mix up
• Sample contamination
• DNA degradation- must be kept cold and dry
• Bad data analysis

9. Innocence projects
• The Innocence Project- the original
• Innocence Network- coordinates innocence efforts
throughout the different states. A series of
organizations that provide free legal and
investigation services to individuals seeking to prove
their innocence and overturn wrongful convictions.
• Actual Innocence Awareness Database- maintained
by the University of Texas at Austin, a database that
contains a wealth of information on the subject of
wrongful convictions.

10. The Innocence Project
• In 1992, Barry Sheck (former member of
O.J. Simpson’s defense team) and Peter
Neufeld, both attorneys, formed the
Innocence Project.
• In collaboration with the Cardozo Law
School in New York, the Innocence Project’s
mission is to exonerate wrongfully convicted
persons through DNA testing.
http://www.innocenceproject.org/

11. Reforms as a result
• State-by-state innocence commissions
• Crime lab oversight committees
• Improved witness identification procedures
(to minimize the possibility of mistaken
identifications)
• Separation of crime labs from law
enforcement organizations
• Compensation for those wrongfully convicted
• Improved evidence preservation
• Recording of police interrogations
• State laws permitting post conviction access
to DNA testing

12. Prosecutors
• While prosecutors are usually in the
business of convicting criminals, many
have taken a strong position that
wrongful convictions must be avoided
at all costs.

13. Exonerations
• An exoneration occurs when a person is wrongfully
convicted and later declared not guilty.
• Exonerations occur through one of four means:
• A Governor issues a pardon based on new
evidence of the convicted’s innocence.
• Charges are dismissed by the court after new
evidence of innocence is discovered.
• There is an acquittal at a retrial
• There is a posthumous (after death)
acknowledgement of innocence.

14. Exoneration
• The number of exonerations has increased in recent
years. According to one study, there were 12 per
year in 1989, and an average of 42 per year by
2000.
• According to the National Registry of Exonerations,
1,067 individuals have been exonerated as of the
date of the writing of your text book (2015).
• Explanations: Growing ability of DNA testing
technology, the newsworthy nature of exoneration
cases, and more resources having been devoted to
the issue of wrongful convictions.

15. Leading causes of
exonerations
• Eyewitness misidentification
• Unvalidated/improper forensics
• False confessions/admissions
• Informants/snitches