Researchers Marvin Zalman, Brad Smith, and Angie Kiger of Wayne State University’s Criminal Justice Department recent­ly pub­lished a study in the Justice Quarterly on the fre­quen­cy of wrong­ful con­vic­tions. After a com­pre­hen­sive review of the lit­er­a­ture con­cern­ing inno­cence, they report­ed the results of their sur­vey of Michigan police offi­cers, pros­e­cu­tors, defense lawyers and judges regard­ing their ​“esti­mates of the fre­quen­cy of wrong­ful con­vic­tion.” Respondents were asked about the per­cent­age of inno­cence cas­es among con­vic­tions in their own juris­dic­tions and in oth­er juris­dic­tions. They com­pared their find­ings to a sim­i­lar study con­duct­ed with Ohio crim­i­nal jus­tice offi­cials and dis­cussed the pol­i­cy impli­ca­tions of their findings.


(M. Zalman, et al., ​“Officials’ Estimates of the Incidence of ​‘Actual Innocence’ Convictions,”25 Justice Quarterly 72 (March 2008)). See Innocence and Studies.

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