STUDY: Worst Crimes Carry Highest Risk of Bad Evidence, Wrongful Convictions

Two pro­fes­sors of soci­ol­o­gy and crim­i­nol­o­gy who reviewed more than 1500 cas­es in which con­vict­ed pris­on­ers were lat­er exon­er­at­ed have found a direct rela­tion­ship between the seri­ous­ness of the crime and mis­car­riages of jus­tice: ​“the ​‘worst of the worst crimes,’” they say, ​“pro­duce the ​‘worst of the worst evi­dence.’ ” In their research — report­ed in the law review arti­cle, The Worst of the Worst: Heinous Crimes and Erroneous Evidence—University of Denver pro­fes­sors Scott Phillips (pic­tured) and Jamie Richardson found that ​“as the seri­ous­ness of a crime increas­es, so too does the chance of a wrongful conviction.” 

Prosecutions for the most seri­ous crimes tend to involve the most inac­cu­rate and unre­li­able evi­dence, they said, and the risks are great­est in cas­es pro­duc­ing mur­der con­vic­tions and death sen­tences. ​“The types of vile crimes in which the state is most apt to seek the death penal­ty are the same crimes in which the state is most apt to par­tic­i­pate in the pro­duc­tion of erro­neous evi­dence…, from false con­fes­sion to untruth­ful snitch­es, gov­ern­ment mis­con­duct, and bad science.” 

Delving into the phe­nom­e­non of false con­fes­sions, the pro­fes­sors found that “[a]s the seri­ous­ness of a par­tic­u­lar crime increas­es, or the seri­ous­ness of the gen­er­al crime prob­lem increas­es, police inter­ro­ga­tion becomes more aggres­sive. In turn, aggres­sive inter­ro­ga­tion pro­duces more true con­fes­sions and more false con­fes­sions.” They say police offi­cers are under insti­tu­tion­al pres­sures to solve high-pro­file cas­es and the ​“most heinous” and seri­ous crimes, which leads them to use more aggres­sive tac­tics to obtain a confession. 

Phillips and Richardson divid­ed cas­es with false con­fes­sions into two cat­e­gories: gen­er­al-pop­u­la­tion exonerees con­vict­ed in mur­der and oth­er cas­es; and the cas­es of death-row exonerees, exam­ined by the lev­el of heinous­ness of the mur­der. According to the National Registry of Exonerations, 234 of those 1535 exon­er­at­ed from 1989 through 2014 false­ly con­fessed, 22 of whom were sen­tenced to death. 

The soci­ol­o­gists found that 21% of those con­vict­ed of mur­der false­ly con­fessed, as com­pared with only 7% of those con­vict­ed of less seri­ous crimes. In exon­er­a­tion cas­es in which DNA evi­dence bol­stered claims of inno­cence, 41% of those wrong­ly con­vict­ed of mur­der had con­fessed, a false con­fes­sions rate that was sev­en times high­er than those con­vict­ed of crimes oth­er than murder. 

As for death-row exonerees, 39% of peo­ple who were con­vict­ed of the most heinous mur­ders con­fessed, five times the false con­fes­sion rate (7%) of those who con­vict­ed of mur­ders the researchers had deter­mined were less heinous. 

Phillips and Richardson also found that the heinous­ness of the mur­der pre­dicts ​“the gov­ern­men­t’s reliance on an untruth­ful snitch, gov­ern­ment mis­con­duct, and bad sci­ence.” Of the death-row exon­er­a­tions, the state com­mit­ted mis­con­duct in 86% per­cent of high-heinous mur­ders, com­pared to 66% per­cent of low-heinous mur­ders; the state used prison infor­mant tes­ti­mo­ny impli­cat­ing the wrong sus­pect in 42% of high-heinous mur­ders, as com­pared to 15% of low-heinous mur­ders; and bad sci­ence was pre­sent­ed in 39% of high heinous mur­ders, com­pared to 23% of low heinous murders.