The Wrongful Conviction Law Review is seeking papers for its second volume (2021). WCLR is a peer-reviewed journal dedicated to research and scholarship on issues related to wrongful convictions and related issues. You can learn more about the journal, see previous issues, and submit your paper on their website here.
The Innocence Network Scholarship Committee is seeking submissions for a virtual presentation during the spring of 2021 and publication in the Wrongful Conviction Law Review. Proposals are due by the end of January. See the Call for Papers below for more information!
Issue 3 of the Wrongful Convictions Law Review is now available. It is open-access, free for anyone interested. The included articles are listed below and you can find links to the full issue by clicking here. Issues 1 and 2 are available under Table of Contents > Archives.
“Addressing Official Misconduct: Increasing Accountability in Reducing Wrongful Convictions” (by Clayton B. Drummond and Mai Naito Mills)
“The Right to Silence and the Pendulum Swing: Variations in Canadian and Scottish Criminal Law” (by Kathryn M. Campbell)
“Unintelligent Decision-Making? The Impact of Discovery on Defendant Plea Decisions” (by Samantha Luna and Allison D. Redlich)
“Dead Wrong: Capital Punishment, Wrongful Convictions, and Serious Mental Illness” (Student Paper Gold Prize Winner, by Alexis E. Carl)
“Book Review: Smoke but No Fire by Jessica Henry” (by Christopher Sherrin)
Issue 2 of the newly-launched Wrongful Convictions Law Review, featuring papers from the 2020 Innocence Network Conference, is now available! You can see the full list of articles below and get full access to all of the articles by clicking here.
Wrongful Convictions Law Review – Volume 1, Issue 2
Smoke but No Fire: Convicting the Innocent of Crimes that Never Happened, by Jessica S. Henry, is now available. The book explores no-crime wrongful convictions, which account for about a third of all known exonerations. You can learn more about the author and the book (and order it from a local bookseller!) here.
The inaugural issue of the Wrongful Convictions Law Review, a peer-reviewed law review dedicated to innocence scholarship, case commentaries, and book reviews, is now available for free online.
The table of contents for Issue 1 is below. You can access the full text of the issue here or access individual articles by clicking on the titles below.
Foreword – The Right Honourable Beverly McLachlin (Former Chief Justice, Supreme Court of Canada)
Articles
Thirty Years of Innocence: Wrongful Convictions and Exonerations in the United States, 1989-2018 (R. J. Norris, J. R. Acker, C. L. Bonventre, & A. D. Redlich)
Dealing with DNA Evidence in the Courtroom: A Plain English Review of Current Issues with Identification, Mixture and Activity Level Evidence (L. Weathered, K. Wright, & J. Chaseling)
Prosecutorial Involvement in Exoneration: An Exploratory Analysis of Individual, Organizational, and Environmental Factors (R. A. Bowman & J. B. Gould)
Unveiling Wrongful Convictions Between the U. S. and Italy: Cross-Learning from Each Other’s Mistakes(L. Luparia & C. Greco)
Edwin Borchard’s Innocence Project: The Origin and Legacy of His Innocence Conviction Scholarship (M. Zalman)
Book Review
Miscarriages of Justice in Canada: Causes, Responses, Remedies, by Kathryn M. Campbell (J. Freedman)
In a new article published in the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, Elizabeth Webster examines the role of prosecutors in exonerations. The citation and abstract are posted below, and you can check out the article here.
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Webster, Elizabeth. “The Prosecutor as a Final Safeguard Against False Convictions: How Prosecutors Assist with Exoneration.” Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 110, no. 2 (2020): 245-305.
Prosecutors have helped secure an unprecedented number of recent exonerations. This development, combined with the rapid emergence of district attorney-initiated conviction integrity units (CIUs) raises several questions. How do prosecutors’ offices review postconviction innocence claims? How do they make decisions about the merits of those claims? How do CIU processes differ from non-CIU processes? This study examines the circumstances surrounding prosecutor-assisted exoneration cases through semi-structured interviews with 20 prosecutors and 19 defense attorneys. It draws from a sample of both CIU and non-CIU prosecutors, thereby enabling comparisons. Respondents were asked about their experiences and decision-making structures in specific, post-2005 exoneration cases as well as their impressions of postconviction practices more broadly. Their responses revealed the salience of office hierarchies and appellate principles for prosecutors’ postconviction discretion. Unlike earlier stages—such as charging and plea bargaining—few decisions appear to be delegated to the line prosecutor in the postconviction stage. Therefore, I incorporate organizational accident theory to understand key decisions, such as which prosecutor should be tasked with reviewing innocence claims, how to screen claims, and how to decide the outcome of an innocence claim. I find that prosecutors work within a system that emphasizes procedural errors over factual ones and that allows for a narrow and belated discovery of false convictions. Thus, prosecutors’ postconviction efforts do not appear likely to create a new pathway to exoneration for pro se defendants, or to identify false convictions that have not already been discovered by trusted defense attorneys, innocence organizations, and/or journalists. Although most prosecutors described processes that could reliably facilitate unbiased case review and reinvestigation, these processes were reserved for only the most extraordinary of innocence claims. The significance of this research for policy (in the crafting of legislation and court rules) and practice (in the processing of innocence claims through prosecutors’ offices) is discussed.
We have added a new topic area to the site: Public opinion and official perceptions re: wrongful conviction. Like much of the site, the bibliography is not exhaustive, but it should get you started if this area is of interest. You can check out the list here.
The American Psychology-Law Society has solicited a scientific review paper on eyewitness misidentification, to be published in the February issue of Law and Human Behavior. The report updates the previous white paper, which is now more than twenty years old.
A summary of the updated review paper can be found here.
A new article by Jennifer N. Weintraub has been published in Crime & Delinquency. It explores the relationship between prosecutorial misconduct and the identification of true perpetrators in cases of wrongful conviction. You can find the title and abstract below. For more information, check out the journal’s website here.
Title: Obstructing Justice: The Association Between Prosecutorial Misconduct and the Identification of True Perpetrators
Author: Jennifer N. Weintraub
Abstract: Prosecutorial misconduct is a potential barrier to identifying true perpetrators of crimes in wrongful conviction cases. Previous theories posit that pressures on prosecutors to carry out their role as ministers of justice in an adversarial system can incentivize misconduct and disincentivize postconviction cooperation, especially regarding alleged misconduct at trial. This study empirically tests how prosecutorial misconduct at trial can affect postconviction proceedings by analyzing the relation between prosecutorial misconduct alleged at trial and the identification of a true perpetrator postconviction in DNA exoneration cases. Results demonstrate that, as predicted, prosecutorial misconduct is associated with a decrease in the odds of true perpetrator identification. This work further underscores the need for the implementation of functional policy to deter prosecutorial misconduct.
