Wrongful Conviction

Abstract

Drawing on a sample of 798 Ohio criminal justice professionals (police, prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges), the authors examine respondents' perceptions regarding the frequency of system errors (i.e., professional error and misconduct suggested by previous research to be associated with wrongful conviction), and wrongful felony conviction. Results indicate that respondents perceive system errors to occur more than infrequently but less than moderately frequent. Respondents also perceive that wrongful felony conviction occurs in their own jurisdictions in .5% to 1% of all felony cases, and in the United States in 1% to 3% of all felony cases. Respondents, however, specify an acceptable rate of wrongful conviction to be less than .5%. Findings thus indicate that criminal justice professionals perceive an unacceptable frequency of wrongful conviction and associated system errors and suggest that programs aimed at reducing system errors and improving professional conduct would be broadly accepted among criminal justice professionals.

After innocence: Perceptions of individuals who have been wrongfully convicted

“…In Canada, Doob (1997) found that nearly half of the criminal defence lawyers sampled believed that they had represented a client who had been wrongfully convicted and sentenced to at least 1 year in prison. Moreover, estimates of wrongful conviction rates range from 0.5% to 15% (or more) of all convictions, suggesting that thousands of innocent citizens are wrongfully imprisoned every year (e.g., Huff, Rattner, & Sagarin, 1996;Poveda, 2001;Ramsey & Frank, 2007;Zalman, Smith, & Kiger, 2008).…”

Wrongful convictions and forensic science

“…Wrongful conviction scholars acknowledge that the exoneration counts likely represent a fraction of all wrongful convictions, and the actual rate of such convictions "is not merely unknown but unknowable" (Gross, O'Brien, Hu, & Kennedy, 2014, p. 7230). Thus, researchers have estimated wrongful conviction rates based on analyses of death-penalty convictions (Gross et al, 2014;Gross & O'Brien, 2008;Risinger, 2007), the opinions of justice professionals (Ramsey & Frank, 2007;Zalman, Smith, & Kiger, 2008), postconviction DNA testing on archived biological evidence (Roman, Walsh, Lachman, & Yahner, 2012;Walsh, Hussemann, Flynn, Yahner, & Golian, 2017), and inmate self-report data (Loeffler, Hyatt, & Ridgeway, 2019;Poveda, 2001). For example, recent analyses have produced estimates ranging from 4.1% in death-sentenced defendants (Gross et al, 2014), 6% in inmates serving noncapital felony sentences in Pennsylvania (Loeffler et al, 2019), to more than 11% in 1970s and 1980s convictions involving sexual assault in Virginia (Walsh et al, 2017).…”

A Three-dimensional Perspective on Wrongful Convictions in Israel: Organizational-Forensic, Psychosocial and Practical

“…According to Huff, Rattner & Sagarin (1996), the number of wrongful convictions of innocent people in the USA ranges from one half to one percent of the total number of indictments. Ramsey & Frank (2007) cite a higher number, namely, from one to three percent. Risinger (2007), whose estimation is based on data from the American "Innocence Project", claims that the number of wrongful convictions among those who were convicted of the combined offences of rape and murder and were sentenced to death lies between a minimum of 3.3 percent and a maximum of 6.6 percent.…”