A minimum of 9,900 innocent people are wrongfully convicted each year, according to a study by Ohio State University. The study used information from almost 200 judges, prosecuting attorneys, public defenders, police, plus the state attorneys general of 41 states.
Reasons for wrongful convictions include perjury, negligence by prosecution, coerced confessions, “frame ups’ and overzealousness. One of the biggest factors for wrongful convictions are mistaken eyewitness identification, said the report published in Forensic Magazine and included in a new book. Susan Myster, Ph.D., and Michael Cromett, Ph.D. authored the magazine article.
“Our research has convinced us that unethical conduct in the United States has not, in general, received appropriate attention, nor has it been adequately punished,” said author C. Ronald Huff.
These findings are included in Huff’s new book, Convicted But Innocent: Wrongful Conviction and Public Policy (Sage Publications, 1996). Huff is director of the Criminal Justice Research Center and the School of Public Policy and Management at Ohio State University.
A number of organizations, usually called Innocence Projects, are working to free wrongfully convicted inmates. There are so many wrongfully convicted persons in the United States, most organizations working on exoneration of those wrongful convictions, only work on DNA based cases. In other words, easily proved cases. Very few innocence projects entertain non-DNA based cases. However, the very same methods used to convict are now being used to exonerate.
Eyewitness identification has traditionally been thought of as the gold standard of criminal prosecution, according to the report. Despite that, mistaken eyewitness identification has played a role in 81 percent of the wrongful convictions. Four-fifths of that most-relied-upon factor in convictions has been proven wrong, the report’s authors say.
The authors conclude that convicted inmates still find it very difficult to get court approval for DNA testing despite mounting evidence that trial courts often do not make a correct finding.
DNA testing was introduced in the early 1980s, and by the 1990s, DNA analysis had altered the wrongful conviction debate forever. By providing positive proof that innocent people have been convicted, courts can no longer say their determinations are always correct, the report says. It concludes that exonerations to date are only the tip of the iceberg. Some believe for each case where the wrongful conviction can be proven by use of DNA analysis, there are many more wrongful convictions that are more difficult to prove, according to the study.
Forensic Magazine said books have been published for nearly a hundred years, questioning whether innocent persons were being convicted in the United States. Conventional methods of investigation occasionally resulted in overturning someone’s wrongful conviction. Still, there was little evidence that actually innocent people had been convicted.
With the advent of DNA testing, it became possible to prove someone innocent beyond a reasonable doubt. As reported in Forensic Magazine, the Innocence Project has documented that from 1989 through the end of 2013, there have been 162 exonerations of people who were on Death Row.
The National Registry of Exonerations has recorded 1,265 exonerations as of the end of 2013. The registry is a joint project of the University of Michigan Law School and Northwestern University School of Law. A number of law schools and innocence projects are working to free wrongfully convicted persons. Estimates of the total number of exonerations vary; The Week Magazine says more than 2,000 have been exonerated since 1989.
The Innocence Project says at least 416 people were exonerated of wrongful homicide convictions by the end of 2013; also, 129 convictions were overturned for crimes that did not even happen.
The Ohio State report, which includes findings of the FBI, extrapolated figures of almost two-million criminal cases. Huff said the report favored conservative estimates, so the figures are probably low.
“Wrongful convictions have rarely been investigated beyond a specific case study,” said Jon Gould, J.D., Ph.D., professor and director of the Washington Institute for Public and International Affairs Research at American University. “This is especially troubling since our criminal legal system is predicated on finding defendants guilty beyond a reasonable doubt before imprisoning them.”
Gould’s team identified factors involved in wrongful conviction tendencies. One factor involves tunnel vision of prosecutors, where when faced with a weak case, they double down on prosecution of the accused, rather than looking at alternative suspects. Other factors include lying witnesses and prior convictions of a suspect. A suspect with prior convictions is easy to convict again, he says. Weak defense counsel and failure of prosecution to disclose exculpatory evidence are other factors.
The researchers point out that wrongful convictions cost millions of dollars in prison costs, plus leave guilty people on the streets.
