Criminal Injustice
Since the late 1980s, DNA testing has exonerated more than 250 wrongly convicted people, who spent an average of 13 years in prison for crimes they didn’t commit.
How did that happen?
- 40 of them actually confessed to crimes they didn’t commit, most adding specific details that only the real culprit could have known [because] police browbeat them into false confessions.
- Eyewitnesses wrongly identified the accused in 76 percent of the 250 cases [often because] police contaminated the eyewitness identifications with suggestive methods, like indicating which suspect in a lineup should be selected, or conducting lineups where one suspect obviously stood out from the others.
- In 61 percent of the trials where an analyst testified for the prosecution, including overly confident claims of matching bite marks, shoe prints and hair samples.
- In 21 percent of the trials — informers … in exchange for lenient treatment from prosecutors, lied about hearing specific details of the crime from their cell mates.
Full NYT review of Brandon L. Garrett’s book: Convicting the Innocent: Where Criminal Prosecutions Go Wrong.
Years ago I recall talking to an attorney about whether DNA should be used to exonerate people who were (possibly) wrongfully convicted of a crime. At the time the practice was controversial and opposed by most prosecutors. The attorney’s argument was rather straightforward: the person was convicted by a jury of his or her peers and there was no legal basis to second guess the jury trial process with evidence that was not submitted at the time of the trial. Furthermore, reopening cases with new DNA evidence could cast doubts on (and undermine) the jury trial process.
I thought that was just about the stupidest argument I could fathom. Technology had become available that could shed light on a case. The cost of being wrong was having people spend their lives behind bars due to a mistake. I’m glad that in the intervening years since my conversation the legal system has shifted its view closer to my own.
Buster, I agree with you. Everyone should see The Thin Blue Line, the documentary by Erroll Morris.
Wow..I guess it’s easy for people who have never been intensely interrogated to be shocked someone innocent could’ve confessed. The psychology is evidently complicated.
I agree with above that DNA should supercede all to correct legal mistakes.