A new com­pre­hen­sive study of 200 inno­cence cas­es, all involv­ing peo­ple who were exon­er­at­ed by DNA evi­dence, found that erro­neous iden­ti­fi­ca­tion by eye­wit­ness­es, faulty foren­sic evi­dence, inac­cu­rate infor­mant tes­ti­mo­ny, and false con­fes­sions were the key prob­lems that led to these seri­ous mis­takes. The research — which includ­ed 14 death penal­ty cas­es — also found that courts per­formed mis­er­ably in iden­ti­fy­ing cas­es of inno­cence, and that those exon­er­at­ed were more like­ly to be mem­bers of minor­i­ty groups.

The study, ​“Judging Innocence,” was con­duct­ed by University of Virginia law pro­fes­sor Brandon L. Garrett and its find­ings will be pub­lished in The Columbia Law Review this January. In ​“Judging Innocence,” Garrett iden­ti­fies erro­neous iden­ti­fi­ca­tion by eye­wit­ness­es as the lead­ing cause of wrong­ful con­vic­tions, occur­ring in 79% of the 200 cas­es he exam­ined. In 25% of these cas­es, this tes­ti­mo­ny was the only direct evi­dence link­ing the defen­dant to the crime. Garrett found that faulty foren­sic evi­dence was present in 55% of the cas­es, includ­ing many cas­es in which pros­e­cu­tion experts exag­ger­at­ed, made hon­est mis­takes, or com­mit­ted out-right fraud. Inaccurate infor­mant tes­ti­mo­ny occurred in 18% of the cas­es, includ­ing three cas­es in which the infor­mants were lat­er iden­ti­fied as the per­son who actu­al­ly com­mit­ted the crime. False con­fes­sions were iden­ti­fied in 16% of the cas­es. Two-thirds of those cas­es involved defen­dants who were juve­niles, mild­ly retard­ed, or both. 

With regard to race, Garrett’s review revealed that 73% of those cleared of rape charges were black or Hispanic, despite the fact that these eth­nic groups account for only 37% of all rape con­vic­tions. In addi­tion, he dis­cov­ered that 31 of the 200 cas­es in his review had appealed for relief from the U.S. Supreme Court. The Justices refused to hear all but one of these cas­es, and in the one case they did hear, they ruled against the inmate who was lat­er proven inno­cent.

A sec­ond study of wrong­ful con­vic­tions will soon by released by Samuel R. Gross of the University of Michigan and Barbara O’Brien of Michigan State. Their find­ings mir­ror many of the Garrett’s con­clu­sions. The Michigan researchers note, ​“The main thing we can safe­ly con­clude from exon­er­a­tions is that there are many oth­er false con­vic­tions that we have not dis­cov­ered.… In addi­tion, a cou­ple of strong demo­graph­ic pat­terns appear to be reli­able: black men accused of rap­ing white women face a greater risk of false con­vic­tion than oth­er rape defen­dants; and young sus­pects, those under 18, are at greater risk of false con­fes­sion than oth­er sus­pects.”

Peter Neufeld, a co-founder of the Innocence Project at Cardozo Law School, praised the review of DNA exon­er­a­tions, but cau­tioned, ​“DNA test­ing is avail­able in few­er than 10 per­cent of vio­lent crimes.… But the same caus­es of wrong­ful con­vic­tions exist in cas­es with DNA evi­dence as in those cas­es that don’t.”
(New York Times, July 23, 2007). Read the arti­cle (may require sub­scrip­tion). See Innocence.

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