Red Flags: Early Warnings of Wrongful Convictions
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Experts find recurring themes in wrongful convictions. And while some jurisdictions are now creating in-house review units to ensure convictions are righteous, commonly repeated mistakes continue to mar cases.
While the law enforcement community widely views American jurisprudence as rich with built-in safeguards, from the right to counsel to the right not to be physically abused by police officers, citizens’ protections aren’t always up to the task. People are sometimes convicted of crimes they didn’t commit.
Analyzing the errors that led to wrongful convictions, recurring themes emerge. Steven Drizin, clinical professor at Northwestern University of Law, and cofounder of its Center on Wrongful Convictions of Youth, and social psychologist Richard Leo posit that the errors are sequential. And as they stack up, says Drizin, they “develop a momentum that is very difficult to stop.” Safeguards in the system become “like speed bumps at best. They don’t do anything to really slow down that momentum towards a wrongful conviction.”
As they describe in a 2010 paper, in the initial misclassification—“both the first and the most consequential error police will make”—law enforcement decides that an innocent person is guilty. “Coercion error” builds on this as investigators carry out “a guilt-presumptive, accusatory interrogation that invariably involves lies about evidence and often the repeated use of implicit and/or explicit promises and threats …”