Predicting Erroneous Convictions: A Social Science Approach to Miscarriages of Justice.

摘要

The last thirty years have seen an enormous increase not only in the exonerations of innocent defendants but also academic scholarship on erroneous convictions. This literature has identified a number of common factors that appear frequently in erroneous conviction cases, including forensic error, prosecutorial misconduct, false confessions, and eyewitness misidentification. However, without a comparison or control group of cases, researchers risk labeling these factors as causes of erroneous convictions when they may be merely correlates. In fact, the only way to establish what causes an erroneous conviction is to understand which factors are exclusive to erroneous convictions as against other sets of cases.