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The American criminal justice system contains numerous safeguards to prevent the conviction of innocent persons. The Bill of Rights provides nineteen separate rights for the alleged criminal offender, including the right to effective legal representation and the right to be judged without regard to race or creed. Despite these safeguards, wrongful convictions persist, and the issue has reverberated in the national debate over capital punishment.The essays in this volume are written from a cross-disciplinary perspective by some of the most eminent lawyers, criminologists, and social scientists in the field today. The articles are divided into four sections: the causes of wrongful convictions, the social characteristics of the wrongly convicted, case studies and personal histories, and suggestions for changes in the criminal justice system to prevent wrongful convictions. Contributors examine a broad range of issues, including the fallibility of eyewitness testimony, particularly in cross-racial identifications; the disadvantages faced by racial and ethnic minorities in the criminal justice system; and the impact of new technologies, especially DNA evidence, in freeing the innocent and bringing the guilty to justice. The book also asks such questions as: What legal characteristics do wrongful convictions share? What are the mechanisms that defendants and their attorneys use to overturn wrongful convictions? The book also provides case studies that offer specific examples of what can and does go wrong in the criminal justice system.The contributors argue that the most important single characteristic among wrongful conviction cases is the chronic denial by politicians and prosecutorsof the existence of a problem and their failure to act decisively when evidence of a possible wrongful conviction comes to light.
List of contents
Contents
Foreword ix
Acknowledgements xiii
Introduction 1
Part I: Causes of Wrongful Conditions
1 Misinformation and Wrongful Convictions 17
2 False Confessions 36
3 From the Jailhouse to the Courthouse 55
4 The Police Role in Wrongful Convictions 77
Part II: The Social Characteristics of the Wrongly Convicted
5 Who Are the Wrongly Convicted on Death Row? 99
6 Racial Bias and the Conviction of the Innocent
Part III: The Faces of the Wrongly Convicted
7 More Than a Reasonable Doubt 135
8 No Appeal from the Grave 154
9 Whodunit? An Examination of the Production of Wrongful Convictions 174
Part IV: Visions for Change in the Twenty-first Century
10 Back from the Courthouse 199
11 Effective Assistance of Counsel 220
12 DNA and Innocence Scholarship 241
13 The Adversary System and Historical Accuracy 253
14 Erroneous Convictions and the Death Penalty 269
About the editors and contributors 281
Index 289
About the author
Westervelt, Saundra D
Summary
Written from a cross-disciplinary perspective, the essays in this collection are divided into four sections: the causes of wrongful convictions; the social characteristics of the wrongfully convicted; case studies and personal histories; and suggestions for change in the criminal justice system.
