Exonerations in the United States, 1989–2012

Gross, Samuel R.; Schaffer, Miranda R.

doi:10.2139/ssrn.2092195

Cited by 182 publications

(258 citation statements)

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“…Por ello, la mala utilización de la prisión preventiva puede acarrear efectos de gran gravedad y debiera ser utilizado de un Se ha sugerido que la principal fuente de error en estos delitos suelen ser las identificaciones erróneas. Gross et al (2005) explican de dos maneras la sobrerrepresentación de los homicidios en las causas penales de personas finalmente absueltas. Por una parte, puede que estos casos, por su gravedad, se investiguen de forma más intensiva.…”

Section: Discussionunclassified

El error judicial en el uso de la prisión preventiva: Personas en prisión que nunca llegan a ser condenadas.

Hernández¹,

Sobral²,

Seijo³

2017

Rev. iberoam. psicol. salud

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Los centros penitenciarios de España acogían a 65017 personas el 31 de diciembre de 2014 (Ministerio del Interior, 2015). El 13.22% de ellos se encontraban en situación de prisión preventiva. Una medida de carácter preventivo que consiste en el ingreso en prisión de un *Correspondencia: Nuria Sánchez Universidad de Salamanca (España) Código Postal: 37008 E-mail: nuria_sanchez@usal.es investigado durante la instrucción de su causa, sin que se haya celebrado juicio y, por lo tanto, sin que se haya dictado una sentencia condenatoria.El objetivo de esta medida es evitar que el inculpado realice comportamientos que impidan hacer justicia (Pliego, 2013 RESUMEN Las prisiones españolas acogían en 2014 a más de 8000 personas en situación de prisión preventiva. A tenor de los antecedentes, muchos de ellos serán absueltos tras la instrucción, y habrán sufrido una pena de prisión siendo inocentes. Este trabajo analiza casos en los que el Estado, en aras de la seguridad ciudadana, priva de libertad a inocentes. El propósito último de este estudio es analizar la posible presencia de sesgos o heurísticos judiciales en la toma de decisiones. Para ello, se han analizado sistemáticamente 70 sentencias indemnizatorias y 136 condenatorias tras prisión preventiva. Los resultados mostraron que no existían diferencias significativas en la edad, el sexo, la nacionalidad, o los antecedentes penales de los absueltos y los condenados. Sin embargo, sí se observaron diferencias en el tipo de delito. Los delitos graves (homicidios o agresiones sexuales), han sido significativamente más frecuentes en los inocentes finalmente indemnizados, mientras que los penados han sido condenados por delitos menos graves (robos o delitos contra la seguridad vial). Finalmente, se discute la necesidad de realizar investigaciones con suficiente validez ecológica que permitan estudiar las condenas erróneas tanto en general como en la aplicación de prisión preventiva.PALABRAS CLAVE: Error judicial, Prisión preventiva, Sentencia judicial, Toma de decisiones, Vulnerabilidad ABSTRACT Judicial error in preventive prison: People in prison who will never be convicted. Spanish correctional institutions admitted in 2014 more than 8000 people in pretrial detention. Some of them will be absolved after an inquiry and they will be found innocent having spent time in prison. The present study examines cases in which the State, in the interest of public safety, deprives innocent people of freedom. The ultimate purpose of this study is to analyze the possible presence of bias or judicial heuristics in decision-making. To this end, 70 sentences later compensated for wrongful detention and 136 convictions after pretrial detention have been systematically analyzed. The results showed that there were no significant differences in the age, the sex, the nationality, or the criminal records of the innocent and convicts. Nevertheless, differences in the type of crime have been observed. Serious crimes (murder or sexual assault) have been significantly more frequent in compensatory ju...

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Section: Discussionunclassified

El error judicial en el uso de la prisión preventiva: Personas en prisión que nunca llegan a ser condenadas.

Hernández¹,

Sobral²,

Seijo³

2017

Rev. iberoam. psicol. salud

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“…Although no country produces o cial statistics on judicial errors, there is some evidence produced by various national and international organizations. 16 Gross et al (2005) emphasize how most relevant data sets are based on exoneration cases: 17 their own data base lists 340 exonerations in the US between 1989 and 2003. But counting only the people that eventually obtain an o cial exoneration they argue may be only a glimpse of the total number of miscarriages of justice in America [that] in the last fteen years must be in the thousands, perhaps tens of thousands.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Judicial Errors and Crime Deterrence: Theory and Experimental Evidence

Rizzolli

Stanca

2012

The Journal of Law and Economics

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The standard economic theory of crime deterrence predicts that the conviction of an innocent (type-I error) is as detrimental to deterrence as the acquittal of a guilty individual (type-II error). In this paper, we qualify this result theoretically, showing that in the presence of risk aversion, loss-aversion, or di erential sensitivity to procedural fairness, type-I errors can have a larger e ect on deterrence than type-II errors. We test these predictions with an experiment where participants make a decision on whether to steal from other individuals, being subject to di erent probabilities of judicial errors. The results indicate that both types of judicial errors have a large and signi cant impact on deterrence, but these e ects are not symmetric. An increase in the probability of type-I errors has a larger negative impact on deterrence than an equivalent increase in the probability of type-II errors. This asymmetry is largely explained by risk aversion and, to a lesser extent, type-I error aversion.

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“…Observers, and prosecutors themselves, are divided over the question to which degree prosecutors live up to the normative expectation of being "litigant but impartial" (Yaroshefsky 1999 (Gross, Jacoby et al 2004;Garrett 2008). Scholars have wondered to which degree these wrongful convictions were caused by prosecutor zeal (Brink 2009).…”

Section: Legal Research Questionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The People’s Hired Guns? Experimentally Testing the Inclination of Prosecutors to Abuse the Vague Definition of Crimes

Engel

Pluta

2011

SSRN Journal

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Legal realists expect prosecutors to be selfish. If they get the defendant convicted, this helps them advance their careers. If the odds of winning on the main charge are low, prosecutors have a second option. They can exploit the ambiguity of legal doctrine and charge the defendant for vaguely defined crimes, like "conspiracy". We model the situation as a signalling game and test it experimentally. If we have participants play the naked game, at least a minority plays the game theoretic equilibrium and use the vague rule if a signal indicates that the defendant is guilty. This becomes even slightly more frequent if a misbehaving defendant imposes harm on a third participant. By contrast if we frame the situation as a court case, almost all prosecutors take the signal at face value and knowingly run the risk of loosing in court if the signal was false. Our experimental prosecutors behave like textbook legal idealists, and follow the urge of duty. JEL: C72, C91, D03, D63, K14, K42Keywords: prosecution, doctrinal ambiguity, vaguely defined crimes, duty, risk aversion, DOSPERT * Helpful comments by Sven Fischer and Kristoffel Grechenig on an earlier version are gratefully acknowledged.2

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Exonerations in the United States, 1989–2012

Cited by 182 publications

References 1 publication

El error judicial en el uso de la prisión preventiva: Personas en prisión que nunca llegan a ser condenadas.

El error judicial en el uso de la prisión preventiva: Personas en prisión que nunca llegan a ser condenadas.

Judicial Errors and Crime Deterrence: Theory and Experimental Evidence

The People’s Hired Guns? Experimentally Testing the Inclination of Prosecutors to Abuse the Vague Definition of Crimes

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