Wrongful Convictions Research Articles

An experimental study on the effect of prosecutorial Brady violations on confidence in exonerating individuals wrongfully convicted of murder

Abstract Objectives While several contributing factors can lead to wrongful convictions, it is unclear whether the public perceives these methods of exonerating convicted murderers differently. Methods We distributed an online survey to a nationally representative sample of 1193 individuals. After reading a prompt about the increased attention and production of digital media on wrongful convictions and exonerations, respondents were randomized into two conditions to evaluate their confidence in the exoneration of a convicted murderer across four contributing factors. The experimental condition contained the addition of prosecutorial misconduct in withholding evidence. Results Public confidence in wrongful conviction exonerations varied across the four contributing factors, with DNA evidence consistently held in the highest regard. Confidence then followed a descending order, beginning with police-induced forced confessions, false testimonies, and eyewitness statements, with all three showing increased confidence ratings when prosecutorial misconduct was involved. Conclusions The public distinguishes between contributing factors in murder exonerations. DNA is the most trusted evidence for murder exonerations regardless of misconduct, while confidence in the other contributing factors to exonerate murderers significantly increases when prosecutorial misconduct is present.

They really, really, really don’t like to admit they made mistakes: A critical discourse analysis of appraisal in wrongful convictions

<i>They really, really, really don’t like to admit they made mistakes:</i> A critical discourse analysis of appraisal in wrongful convictions

What's in a Name? The Impact of Labels on Attitudes Toward Exonerees

As exonerations have increased, so too has research into exonerees’ post-release challenges, including stigma, discrimination, mental illness, and inadequate support. In so doing, researchers and advocates have described this population in varied ways, which may elicit differing attitudes. To explore that possibility, 188 citizens read a tweet in which we varied the label ascribed to a newly released prisoner (i.e., wrongly convicted, exonerated, innocent, or control), then reported their attitudes. Contrary to expectation, different labels did not produce different judgements of the individual’s character, criminality, or deservingness of support, which were consistently significantly more favourable for exonerees (regardless of label) than other formerly incarcerated people (control). Troubling, however, was that the terms wrongly convicted, exonerated, and innocent still led to some concerns that the individual was somehow involved in—or had committed—the crime for which he was erroneously convicted, that he may have committed other crimes in the past, and that he might commit crimes in the future. Implications are discussed in terms of stigma theory, growing media attention to wrongful convictions, and the disconnect between public and government support for post-release services.

KESALAHAN PENJATUHAN HUKUMAN DALAM PROSES PENEGAKAN HUKUM (STUDI KASUS CRAIG COLEY DAN IMPLIKASI BAGI SISTEM PERADILAN)

This study discusses the problem of wrongful conviction or errors in sentencing, especially in the context of the death penalty. These errors often occur due to various factors, such as forced interrogation, errors in forensic evidence analysis, and institutional bias. The method used in this study is normative legal research that focuses on the study of literature and primary legal materials, such as laws and regulations and related legal theories. The results of the study indicate that to minimize errors in sentencing, especially in cases of the death penalty, there needs to be reform in interrogation methods, standards of proof, and access to adequate legal aid. The use of modern forensic technology, such as DNA testing, and broader review of death penalty cases have also proven to be effective steps in reducing the risk of wrongful convictions.

Online communities as arenas of "amateur expertise": examples from the social media activity for justice for Roman Zadorov.

This study examines online communities as arenas where diverse forms of expertise converge to influence discourse and public opinion. Using the case of social media activism advocating for justice in the wrongful conviction of Roman Zadorov for the murder of Tair Rada, it highlights how these communities serve as platforms for "professional amateurs" and demonstrates their similarities and differences from participants in the formal legal arena. The study employs a netnographic approach to analyze seven years of social media activity across 15 Facebook groups comprising over 300,000 members. Data collection included participant observation, interviews with 25 group administrators, and thematic content analysis of posts and interactions. This methodological triangulation provides a comprehensive understanding of the discourse and dynamics within these activist communities. Six categories of experts were identified in the online discourse: 1. Court-admissible experts, including People directly connected to the case, people who are knowledgeable about the involved parties and the surrounding area, expert witnesses who are professionals testifying based on their field-specific expertise, and circumstantial witnesses who have experienced relevant events firsthand. 2. Non-court-admissible experts, including people with deep, self-taught expertise and people relying on nonrational sources, such as supernatural insights. The findings highlight the unique character of online activism as a dialogic space where conventional and unconventional forms of expertise coexist, contributing to public narratives around justice. The study offers a novel conceptualization of online communities as platforms for expert-driven discourse. It underscores the importance of "pro-am" expertise and symbolic capital in shaping public understanding of contentious issues. While focused on a specific legal case, the study provides broader insights into the dynamics of expertise in online activism, emphasizing the duality of court-admissible and non-court-admissible expertise. Future research should explore these dynamics across varied contexts to further understand the role of online communities in social discourse and activism.

Fetal alcohol spectrum disorders: where we have come from, trends, and future directions.

Fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) refers to a range of conditions caused by prenatal exposure to alcohol. First described in the 1970s as fetal alcohol syndrome, continuing progress has been made in the understanding, recognition and treatment of what is now recognized to be a range of related neurodevelopmental disorders. FASD is common, especially in countries with higher levels of alcohol consumption such as those in Europe and North America, where the prevalence is estimated to be around 3%. A number of diagnostic systems are in operation in different countries, and work is ongoing to develop an internationally agreed set of diagnostic criteria. People with FASD often have other developmental, mental and somatic conditions, and there appears to be a high rate of traumatic and other adverse experiences in this population. People with FASD are at increased risk of being involved in the criminal justice system, but they may be ill-equipped to successfully navigate it and are likely to provide false confessions, leading to wrongful convictions. Some interventions and treatments have been shown to be effective in improving functioning in children and families affected by FASD, which tend to take the form of coaching, education, advocacy and support. People with FASD have many strengths, which are often overlooked in research. They have been described as skilled musicians, artists and sportspeople with wide vocabularies who are resilient, compassionate, hard-working, and kind. Increasing attention is being paid to FASD but this is not enough. More research, diagnostic capacity, recognition, understanding, infrastructure and support are needed across the world.

Mr Bates and the post office: The implications of the UK post office scandal for the taxonomy of trauma.

To explore the psychopathology of the victims of the UK Post Office scandal and the extent to which this can be adequately described by current classification of traumatic stress symptoms. Standard clinical interviews for the purposes of preparing medico-legal reports. Face to face and virtual interviews. Victims of the Post Office Scandal, postmaster's and postmistress's wrongly accused of theft. ICD-10 diagnostic criteria. All the subjects had experienced life changing traumatic reactions which were inadequately captured by current diagnostic criteria. The current taxonomy of trauma fails to capture the diversity of symptoms experienced by the postmasters and we argue that a formulation based approach should be employed, especially in the court room. There remains inadequate research exploring the impact of wrongful conviction on the mental state of victims.

Reforming Legal Decision-Making: A Study of Hindsight Bias on Judicial Impartiality

Legal decision-making is heavily influenced by cognitive processes like memory and judgment, which are vulnerable to biases such as false autobiographical memories, hindsight bias, and pretrial publicity. These flaws can lead to wrongful convictions, biased negligence assessments, and compromised impartiality, undermining legal fairness. This study examines these cognitive vulnerabilities, analyzing their mechanisms and proposing strategies to reduce their impact. A literature review of empirical research from 2018 to 2023 integrates findings from psychology, neuroscience, and law. The study highlights how these biases affect legal outcomes and suggests practical solutions like simplified judge instructions, structured interrogation protocols, and bias awareness training. The research uses Cognitive Load Theory, aiming to enhance the integrity of legal processes and provide evidence-based recommendations to improve the fairness and accuracy of legal decisions.

Examining Wrongful Convictions in Chile: An Analysis of Supreme Court Exonerations in 2007 to 2023

Drawing on data from the Supreme Court case registry between 2007 and 2023, this study examines 63 cases of wrongful convictions in Chile. It aims to contribute to the global understanding of the factors leading to wrongful convictions while underscoring the importance of contextual differences. Our analysis reveals traditional factors such as mistaken eyewitness identification and official misconduct, alongside Chile-specific issues. Notably, identity theft, exacerbated by weak procedural safeguards, emerges as a predominant factor. We argue that Chile’s restrictive post-conviction review process needs reform, as it currently only identifies cases involving gross errors, thereby overlooking many wrongful convictions that might be recognized in other jurisdictions

Presumption of innocence and ensuring proof of guilt in criminal proceedings

The presumption of innocence is an important bastion against miscarriages of justice and abuse of power. It guarantees that individuals will not be punished without solid and legally established evidence of their guilt. It also guarantees the impartiality of the judicial system, avoiding biased determination of the outcome of a trial. In practice, the presumption of innocence means that the prosecution has the burden of proof, the accused is not obliged to prove his or her innocence, and any doubts should be in favour of the accused. The presumption of innocence is one of the fundamental principles of our judicial system. It balances the need to punish offences with the need to protect individual rights. Case law has established a number of requirements to ensure that the presumption of innocence is not distorted. These include the need to have sufficient and substantiated incriminating evidence, as well as to respect the fundamental rights of the accused during criminal proceedings. The author analyses the national case law which defines the stages of criminal proceedings and the main provisions of the presumption of innocence and ensuring proof of guilt. The court of its own internal conviction, based on a comprehensive, full and impartial examination of all the circumstances of criminal proceedings, guided by law, evaluates each evidence in terms of relevance, admissibility, reliability, and the totality of the evidence collected in terms of sufficiency and interconnection, based on the provisions of the presumption of innocence and ensuring proof of guilt, in particular, by virtue of Art. 62 of the Constitution of Ukraine and Article 17 of the CPC of Ukraine, the provisions of Article 6 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, according to which everyone charged with a criminal offence is presumed innocent until proven guilty according to law.

An opportunity for abolition: McCleskey, innocence, and the modern death penalty decline

AbstractFor more than two decades after Gregg v. Georgia (1976), use of the death penalty greatly expanded across the United States. Since 2000, however, it has declined significantly. Perhaps the most notable explanation for this decline is the contemporary focus on wrongful convictions. In this paper, we aim to contextualize the modern death penalty decline, and its connection with innocence, through the theoretical lens of social movements and collective action. We argue that dual opportunities reshaped the modern anti‐death penalty movement. First, the McCleskey v. Kemp (1987) ruling affirmed the federal courts' resistance to abolition and inspired activists to begin shifting toward state‐level political abolitionism. Activists then took advantage of the developing interest in wrongful convictions. Specifically, innocence‐related abolitionist activities in Illinois reinvigorated the anti‐death penalty movement, expanded the advocacy network, and fundamentally reframed the debate around capital punishment in the United States. We suggest that, collectively, these dual opportunities reshaped the anti‐death penalty movement into one that emphasized strategies reaching beyond constitutionality and propelled the movement into the twenty‐first century with a foundation for successful political abolitionism.

Relevansi Bukti vs Probative Value: Sebuah Dilema dalam Hukum Pembuktian

Probative value refers to the extent to which the evidence provided is able to prove the facts being disputed. Evidence may be relevant in the sense that it relates to the case at hand, but relevance alone does not guarantee that the evidence will be well received or considered to have a significant influence. This study uses a qualitative research method with a conceptual approach. The data collection method was collected using library research, then analyzed using qualitative methods and presented descriptively. The results of the study show that the process of proof in criminal law plays a central role in upholding substantive justice. Evidence not only functions as a mechanism to test the truth of claims or accusations brought in court, but also as a tool to protect the human rights of the accused by ensuring that everyone is considered innocent until proven otherwise. Failure to assess probative value can lead to serious injustice in the form of wrongful conviction or wrongful acquittal. To address this problem, it is necessary to increase technical literacy among legal practitioners, as well as the application of more careful procedures in testing the validity and reliability of evidence.

AAFS (Victorian branch) Symposium: Science and Medicine in the Courts—Learning from the wrongful conviction of Kathleen Folbigg

ABSTRACT Kathleen Folbigg spent 20 years in jail, wrongly convicted for smothering her four infant children. An unprecedented second judicial Inquiry found they died naturally. New genetic and psychiatric evidence unlocked the wrongful conviction, but it was always questionable. A Symposium held by the AAFS (Victorian Branch) detailed the timeline of the numerous events, then identified and discussed the issues. What were the failings and why were they missed? What part did expert witnesses, judges and lawyers play in this wrongful conviction? Did the prosecution appeal to misogyny? How did the first Inquiry get it so wrong? How did it fail to correctly understand the genetics? Was Ms Folbigg treated disrespectfully, and if so, what did that mean about fact finding? How did the failures of disclosure affect the original conviction and its various appeals? What explains the NSW Court of Appeal’s decision to reject an appeal based on jury misbehaviour during Ms Folbigg’s trial? Should we be more careful about the language we use in criminal trials? There was general agreement that the frailties of Kathleen Folbigg’s convictions were readily visible from the beginning. Will the criminal justice system learn the lessons that emerge from this case?

The partial abolition of the rule in Hollington v Hewthorn in Seychelles and the admissibility of criminal convictions in civil trials: Analysing s. 29 of the Evidence Act

Section 29(1) of the Seychelles Evidence Act provides that a criminal conviction is admissible in civil proceedings as evidence that the person who was convicted committed the offence in question. Thus s. 29(1) partially reverses the rule in Hollington v Hewthorn. Section 29(2) of the same Act provides that ‘[i]n a trial, other than in a civil trial for defamation, in which by virtue of this section a person…is proved to have been convicted of an offence by or before a court in the Republic, he shall be taken to have committed that offence unless the contrary is proved.’ The Supreme Court held that s. 29 ‘imported’ s. 11 of the United Kingdom Civil Evidence Act (1968) ‘into our laws’. In this article, the author demonstrates how courts have interpreted s. 29. He also suggests ways in which s. 29 could be interpreted to deal with foreign convictions. He argues that notwithstanding s. 29, the Hollington Rule is still applicable to earlier civil findings. Thus the findings of a court in earlier civil proceedings are inadmissible in subsequent civil proceedings. In Esparon v Philo, the Court of Appeal, the highest court in Seychelles, interpreted s. 29(2) in a manner that creates room for the argument that a person who challenges the admissibility of his conviction in civil matters has to prove his/her innocence. It is argued, inter alia, that the Court's decision should not be interpreted as imposing this very high threshold. It is enough if he proves that the person's trial was a miscarriage of justice.

The contribution of facial recognition technology to wrongful arrests and trauma.

When a crime is captured on video, law enforcement agencies increasingly have used facial recognition technology (FRT) to generate suspects to investigate. However, there are increasing examples of people who have been wrongfully arrested based because of the inaccurate results returned from these artificial intelligence-assisted searches of facial databases, despite very low error rates in the accuracy of these systems. We discuss the reliability of the evidence provided by a match returned by FRT, propose a framework for identifying potential problems with the use of FRT in criminal investigations, and review the research on the general trauma that comes from justice system involvement, trauma that is compounded by wrongful arrest and conviction. We also provide an analysis of how database size affects the evidentiary value of the matches returned by FRT. Variables like facial database size, race of the culprit, and quality of the probe photo can increase the likelihood that FRT systems will return false positive matches. The use of FRT for developing suspects in criminal investigations is likely to exacerbate the already profound racial disparities in the outcomes produced by the criminal legal system and increase trauma experienced by those who are wrongfully arrested or convicted. We recommend extreme caution surrounding its use. In addition, we call for more research on the trauma associated with wrongful arrest, which is likely to occur with the current use of FRT. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Warnings from the West: Identification and Expert Evidence as Causes of Wrongful Convictions and the Implications for South Africa (Part 2)

In Part 1 of this study, the existing literature on eyewitness misidentification evidence as a cause of wrongful convictions, as well as adversarial safeguards upon which criminal justice systems rely to identify errors in fact-finding, are reviewed. In Part 2, a similar investigation is conducted of improperly applied and faulty forensic expert evidence in criminal trials in the comparator countries, and how such evidence contributes to legal and root causes of injustice. Parallels are drawn to the adversarial system as it functions in South Africa and predictions are offered regarding the possibility that in South Africa too, the reliance on questionable expert evidence and the sometimes over-reliance on valid expert evidence may lead to wrongful convictions. Worldwide, much effort has been invested in developing admissibility criteria for expert forensic evidence. In the United States of America, for example, more than 100 years of admissibility jurisprudence has been dedicated to developing admissibility standards that would filter out unreliable evidence. Yet our investigation reveals admissibility criteria have had less success than expected. We also investigate the abilities and inabilities of cross-examination and acquired defence expertise to reveal errors in forensic evidence. The article concludes with critical commentary on the way forward for the South African criminal justice system.

Mistakes in Personal Identification Attempts

The following study is meant to present the most frequent mistakes (dangers) of identity parades (line-up, recognition) and their possible consequences, such as for instance the worst outcome: justizmord, (miscarriage of justice). The author analyses sources of criminal tactical and criminal technical major errors through real international and Hungarian homicide cases and suggests legislative changes “de lege ferenda” as well as preventive methods and tactics for law enforcers and criminalists as well.

Examining Wrongful Convictions Based on Fingerprint Evidence

Fingerprint evidence has long been seen as a cornerstone of forensic science, valued for its unique traits and reliability. However, some wrongful conviction cases reveal significant flaws in how fingerprint evidence is collected, interpreted, and relied upon, highlighting its limitations. This article reviews key cases like those of Brandon Mayfield, Stephen Cowans, and Shirley McKie, where mistaken interpretations led to serious injustices. Contributing factors to these erroneous convictions include unclear or incomplete prints, personal biases, laboratory errors, and systemic issues within fingerprint databases. Moreover, cognitive biases can influence analysts' judgments, especially in high-stress scenarios. To improve accuracy and ensure justice, the forensic field must refine evidence collection techniques, enhance examiner training, establish reliable databases, include independent witnesses in searches and seizures, record processes with video documentation from scene of crime to the forensic laboratory, and support fingerprint evidence with additional methods along with improved protocols, blind testing, and independent verification to mitigate risks and preserve the reliability of fingerprint evidence in the justice system. While fingerprints remain vital in forensic investigations, it’s crucial to reevaluate their use to prevent future wrongful convictions.

An ecological understanding of wrongful convictions in the U.S. criminal justice system

An ecological understanding of wrongful convictions in the U.S. criminal justice system

An end to finality? Options for overturning wrongful convictions

An end to finality? Options for overturning wrongful convictions