Volume 3, Number 3, 2022 Innocence Project 2022 Scholarship Issue

EN:

Research has established six “canonical” factors underlying wrongful convictions including: mistaken witness identification (MWID), false confession (FC), perjury or false accusation (P/FA), false or misleading forensic evidence (F/MFE), official misconduct (OM), and inadequate legal defense (ILD). While we know these factors do not occur in isolation, researchers have yet to examine the patterns across these six factors. In the present article, we apply latent class analysis to explore how these six factors might co-occur across known exonerations. Using data from the National Registry of Exonerations, we identify four latent classes by which the incidence rates across these six factors can be categorized. Among our noteworthy findings: 1) P/FA and OM often co-occur, 2) when MWIDs are high, the incidence of other factors is relatively low, and 3) false guilty pleas had the highest prevalence in a class that was generally associated with Failures to Investigate. Further implications are discussed.

EN:

This paper presents an analysis of 88 criminal convictions that have since been quashed on the basis of error of fact (wrongful convictions) that have occurred in England and Wales since 2007, in the context of wider set of 389 wrongful convictions that have occurred in England and Wales since 1970. Based on this analysis, three key contributors of concern are identified as having been influential in leading to wrongful convictions recently - digital evidence, guilty pleas, and misleading testimony. Cases involving each of these factors are discussed, including cases from the Post Office Scandal, which make up many of the identified wrongful convictions during this period. In considering each factor, failings in the criminal justice system that leave defendants vulnerable to wrongful conviction are discussed. The paper concludes with brief initial suggestions for reform to provide greater protection against highlighted vulnerabilities.

EN:

Exonerees face numerous barriers to reintegration following their release from wrongful imprisonment. To cope with the challenges they face after exoneration, they draw support from a wide range of external and internal resources, assisting them on their path towards self-sufficiency and resilience. In a study about life after exoneration through in-depth interviews with 26 exonerees, we explored the challenges of reentry for exonerees as well as strategies for success. Although none of the exonerees in our study reported finding closure (and most felt it was not attainable), some experienced what has been described in the academic literature as post-traumatic growth, indicating that although the damage wrought by the injustice of wrongful conviction and incarceration cannot be fully healed, some individuals have transformed their experiences into positive personal accomplishments. In this paper, we highlight the transformative experiences of exonerees as they re-established their lives post-release and consider how systems can provide the resources necessary to support post-traumatic growth.

EN:

The legal system relies heavily on eyewitness evidence to identify and prosecute criminal perpetrators, but wrongful convictions resulting from eyewitness misidentification have led many to conclude that eyewitness memory is unreliable. Advances in eyewitness identification research have produced a more nuanced understanding of eyewitness reliability, however. Whereas pristinely collected eyewitness identification evidence provides diagnostic information about a suspect’s guilt or innocence, numerous contaminants of eyewitness memory can undermine the reliability of eyewitness identification evidence. One such contaminant is confirming post-identification feedback—feedback given to or inferred by an eyewitness that communicates that their identification decision was correct. Confirming feedback is inevitable in real cases involving eyewitness identification and compromises the diagnostic value of eyewitness memory to such an extent that it undermines evaluators’ abilities to differentiate between accurate and mistaken eyewitnesses (Smalarz & Wells, 2014). The current research tested whether cross-examination, a fundamental legal safeguard for preventing wrongful conviction based on eyewitness misidentification, can help remedy the contaminating effects of feedback on eyewitness testimony. Evaluators (N = 128) viewed direct examination testimony or direct- and cross-examination testimony of accurate and mistaken eyewitnesses, some of whom had received confirming feedback following their identification. Although the majority of eyewitnesses admitted during cross-examination that some or all of their recollections may have been influenced by the feedback, viewing the cross-examination did not improve evaluators’ abilities to differentiate between accurate and mistaken eyewitness testimony. Cross-examination appears to be an insufficient safeguard for preventing wrongful convictions based on contaminated eyewitness evidence.

EN:

Virtual Searches is a timely and well-written addition to the widespread debate on how surveillance technologies should be regulated and by whom. It explores police investigatory techniques carried out technologically rather than via physical intrusion, as well as how the Fourth Amendment and the regulatory landscape is dealing with many of these new police abilities. Potentially most interesting about Slobogin’s book is that it takes a different stance from some elements of the present thought surrounding topics such as predictive policing. It resists the typically prevailing abolitionist perspectives and instead putting forward, with evidence from case law and notable use case examples, the idea that there is a non-zero-sum game in which both government and the public can regulate these new technologies to gain their benefits with mitigations in place against potential drawbacks. The book concludes with a list of concrete suggestions for regulation of novel policing technologies in a way designed to harness their anti-crime power whilst protecting against many of the negative social and ethical repercussions surveillance brings with it. How effective these would be is likely to be the subject of fruitful future discussion in this area. In all, Virtual Searches is a great addition to ongoing police technology debates, likely to be of use to legal scholars from both the U.S. and abroad due to the universality of its themes and the clear way that U.S. legal concepts are explained and explored throughout.