Problem Of Wrongful Convictions Research Articles

Legal and Political Rights Advocacy in Wrongful Conviction Death Penalty Cases in China: A Study of the Leping Case of Injustice

The problem of wrongful conviction has become more widely acknowledged in China today. Drawing on a study of the Leping case of injustice, in which four defendants were convicted of rape and murder and sentenced to death for a crime they had not committed, this article discusses how the efforts of correcting it meet a deadlock in China’s judicial system, and how, in this circumstance, Chinese civil society initiates and runs a network advocacy aiming at breaking the deadlock and advancing the correction.

The Growing Acknowledgement of Wrongful Conviction

The wrongful conviction of innocent people is being acknowledged in an increasing number of countries around the world. The problem of wrongful conviction is now framed as an international human rights issue. More attention is being given to whether criminal justice systems are providing sufficient measures for the effective review and rectification of wrongful convictions and whether international obligations in that regard are being met. England, Wales, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Norway, Canada and the United States have substantial new mechanisms in place to better identify and correct wrongful convictions but Australia has been slower to respond. While some Australian states have introduced reforms such as DNA innocence testing and a new appeal avenue, many issues remain as highlighted in recent debates as to whether Australia should establish a Criminal Cases Review Commission.

Actual innocence: is death different?

Supreme Court jurisprudence relies heavily on the premise that "death is different" from other criminal sanctions, and that capital cases entail commensurately demanding standards of reliability. Although invoked most frequently with respect to sentencing, both precedent and logic suggest that heightened reliability applies as well to guilt determination in capital trials. Nevertheless, recurrent and highly visible wrongful convictions in capital cases have affected public opinion, contributed to a precipitous decline in new death sentences, and led to calls for reforms designed to guard against the risk of executing innocent persons. This article examines the implications of the "death is different" doctrine for the problem of wrongful convictions in both capital and non-capital cases. It argues that innovations designed to enhance reliability in the special context of death-penalty prosecutions are important in their own right, but relevant new safeguards also should extend to criminal cases generally, where innocent people are similarly at risk and wrongful convictions are far more prevalent.

Prosecutorial Liability for Wrongful Convictions

This paper examines the problem of wrongful convictions with an aim towards developing a system for reducing the rate of wrongful convictions. Because current laws only seek to compensate exonerees for wrongful convictions, it is necessary to consider strategies for reducing the rate of wrongful convictions ex ante. Because prosecutors are the principal agents capable of reducing wrongful convictions, this paper suggests that imposing liability on prosecutors will incentivize them to take proper precautions to avoid wrongful convictions. The paper creates a simple behavioral model for the prosecutor's decision to charge an individual with a crime, and explores the potential effects of three different liability schemes: none, negligence-based, and strict-liability-based.

State Liability for Wrongful Conviction: Incentive Effects on Crime Levels

Wrongful convictions may increase the level of crime over the ideal case of their absence. The problem of wrongful conviction is most serious in areas where crime is endemic and for certain groups of citizens who are stereotyped. State liability mitigates this problem; compensating the wrongfully convicted induces some individuals not to commit crimes, thereby leading to a lower crime level. However, state liability may distort the behavior of judges if the welfare of judges is inversely related to compensation for wrongful conviction. We address policy implications that minimize such distortions.

Investigating Innocence

DNA technology has uncovered the significant problem of wrongful conviction in the United States. Australians tend to have great faith in our criminal justice system; however, innocent people have also been wrongly convicted in this country. As a society, we must never become complacent about our criminal justice system: we must continually address areas likely to be relevant to the incidence of wrongful conviction, and we need mechanisms for the proper review of claims of innocence. Following in the footsteps of Innocence Projects in the United States, Innocence Projects in Australia are emerging as a resource for the investigation of claims of wrongful conviction with the aim of freeing innocent persons from incarceration. The majority of wrongful conviction claims will not involve DNA evidence, making the investigative work of Innocence Projects more complex and time-consuming, but also a task in which student resources are particularly valuable. To enhance the effectiveness of addressing claims of wrongful conviction, adoption of legislation or procedures is required. This would include changes requiring the preservation of evidence and expanded access to the courts of appeal for persons who have exhausted their one appeal prior to investigations uncovering evidence of innocence.

Pathology of Criminal Justice. Innocent Convicted in Three Murder Cases

A comparison between American Criminology and European Criminology is extremely interesting. If we look at outstanding works of modern American criminology such as those by Hugo Muensterberg (1), John Henry Wigmore (2), Robert H. Gault (3), Nathaniel F. Cantor (4), Roscoe Pound (5), Sol Sheldon Glueck (6), Harold Ernest Burtt (7), Henry Weihofen (8), Edwin H. Sutherland (9), Francis C. Ainsworth Mitchell (10), Joseph N. Ulman (11) on the one side and at outstanding works of modern European criminology as those by Hans Gross (12), Otto Moenkemoeller (13), Erich Wulffen (14), Gustav Aschaffenburg (15), Hans v. Hentig (16), Albert Hellwig (17) (Germany); Cesare Lombroso (18), Enrico Ferri (19), Enrico Altavilla (20), Francesco Pagano (21) (Italy); Zangger (22) (Switzerland); Emile Fourquet (23) Maurice Lailler and Henri Vonoven (24) (France), on the other side, we find a striking similarity of problems and methods. The criminal and the witness are the central problem everywhere, not the judge and the jury. Everywhere there has been collected enormous, valuable material about the psychology of the criminal, the fallibility of testimony, the unreliability of evidence by expert witnesses, but the main problem, the psychology of criminal justice itself, is neglected. We are in the strange position of possessing a psychology of the criminal and the witness, but not of the judge and the jury. We find the most striking evidence of this fact in the work Psychologie und Psychopathologie der Aussage by Otto Moenkemoeller (13); only two of the four hundred twenty-five pages of this work are devoted to the psychology of the judge, while all the rest deals with the criminal and the witness. A glance at his bibliography gives further evidence for our statement. And so we have a criminology which is neglecting its main problem, that is to say, the psychology of just that person who has to make the decision and has to assume the responsibility for the life or death of the defendant. This responsibility is very heavy: the life or death of the defendant is at stake, not only when a death sentence is involved; a man of blameless conduct, who is convicted of fraud or forgery, is just as well dead. Thus arises the very serious problem of wrongful conviction. A comparison between American and European criminology shows the second striking similarity, that this problem is neglected in both of them. There are very few 1 60 E. 42nd St., New York City, (Dr. Jur).