The development of DNA technology furthers the search for truth by helping police & prosecutors in the fight against violent crime. Most of the individuals whose stories are told in the report were convicted after jury trials & were sentenced to long prison terms. They successfully challenged their convictions, using DNA tests on existing evidence. They had served, on average, seven years in prison. By highlighting the importance & utility of DNA evidence, this report presents challenges to the scientific & justice communities. A task ahead is to maintain the highest standards for the collection & preservation of DNA evidence.

For centuries, most people believed the criminal justice system worked - that only guilty defendants were convicted. DNA technology shattered that belief. DNA has now freed more than three hundred innocent prisoners in the United States. This book examines the lessons learned from twenty-five years of DNA exonerations and identifies lingering challenges. By studying the dataset of DNA exonerations, we know that precise factors lead to wrongful convictions. These include eyewitness misidentifications, false confessions, dishonest informants, poor defense lawyering, weak forensic evidence, and prosecutorial misconduct. In Part I, scholars discuss the efforts of the Innocence Movement over the past quarter century to expose the phenomenon of wrongful convictions and to implement lasting reforms. In Part II, another set of researchers looks ahead and evaluates what still needs to be done to realize the ideal of a more accurate system.

The New York Times best selling true story of an unlikely friendship forged between a woman and the man she incorrectly identified as her rapist and sent to prison for 11 years. Jennifer Thompson was raped at knifepoint by a man who broke into her apartment while she slept. She was able to escape, and eventually positively identified Ronald Cotton as her attacker. Ronald insisted that she was mistaken-- but Jennifer's positive identification was the compelling evidence that put him behind bars. After eleven years, Ronald was allowed to take a DNA test that proved his innocence. He was released, after serving more than a decade in prison for a crime he never committed. Two years later, Jennifer and Ronald met face to face-- and forged an unlikely friendship that changed both of their lives. With Picking Cotton, Jennifer and Ronald tell in their own words the harrowing details of their tragedy, and challenge our ideas of memory and judgment while demonstrating the profound nature of human grace and the healing power of forgiveness.

Over the last several decades over 250 citizens convicted of major felonies were found innocent and were exonerated. Today, thanks to the work of psychologists and other criminal justice researchers, the psychological foundations that underlie conviction of the innocent are becoming clear. There is real hope that these findings can lead to positive reforms, reduce the risk of miscarriages of justice, and avoid the consequences of wrongful convictions to victims and society. In this book, Editor Brian Cutler presents a state-of-the-field review of current psychological research on conviction of the innocent. Chapter authors investigate how the roles played by suspects, investigators, eyewitnesses, and trial witnesses and how pervasive systemic issues contribute to conspire to increase the risk of conviction of the innocent. The chapters skillfully examine psychological perspectives on such topics as police interrogations, confessions, eyewitness identification, trial procedures, juries, and forensic science, as well as broader issues such as racism and tunnel vision within the justice system. This comprehensive volume represents an important milestone for research on miscarriages of justice. By bringing psychological theories and research to bear on this social problem, the authors derive compelling recommendations for future research and practical reform in police and legal procedures.

Forensic science laboratories' reputations have increasingly come under fire. Incidents of tainted evidence, false reports, allegations of negligence, scientifically flawed testimony, or - worse yet - perjury in in-court testimony, have all served to cast a shadow over the forensic sciences. Instances of each are just a few of the quality-related charges made in the last few years. Forensic Science Under Siege is the first book to integrate and explain these problematic trends in forensic science. The issues are timely, and are approached from an investigatory, yet scholarly and research-driven, perspective. Leading experts are consulted and interviewed, including directors of highly visible forensic laboratories, as well as medical examiners and coroners who are commandeering the discussions related to these issues. Interviewees include Henry Lee, Richard Saferstein, Cyril Wecht, and many others. The ultimate consequences of all these pressures, as well as the future of forensic science, has yet to be determined. This book examines these challenges, while also exploring possible solutions (such as the formation of a forensic science consortium to address specific legislative issues). It is a must-read for all forensic scientists. - Provides insight on the current state of forensic science, demands, and future direction as provided by leading experts in the field - Consolidates the current state of standards and best-practices of labs across disciplines - Discusses a controversial topic that must be addressed for political support and financial funding of forensic science to improve

On January 20, 1984, Earl Washington—defended for all of forty minutes by a lawyer who had never tried a death penalty case—was found guilty of rape and murder in the state of Virginia and sentenced to death. After nine years on death row, DNA testing cast doubt on his conviction and saved his life. However, he spent another eight years in prison before more sophisticated DNA technology proved his innocence and convicted the guilty man. DNA exonerations have shattered confidence in the criminal justice system by exposing how often we have convicted the innocent and let the guilty walk free. In this unsettling in-depth analysis, Brandon Garrett examines what went wrong in the cases of the first 250 wrongfully convicted people to be exonerated by DNA testing. Based on trial transcripts, Garrett’s investigation into the causes of wrongful convictions reveals larger patterns of incompetence, abuse, and error. Evidence corrupted by suggestive eyewitness procedures, coercive interrogations, unsound and unreliable forensics, shoddy investigative practices, cognitive bias, and poor lawyering illustrates the weaknesses built into our current criminal justice system. Garrett proposes practical reforms that rely more on documented, recorded, and audited evidence, and less on fallible human memory. Very few crimes committed in the United States involve biological evidence that can be tested using DNA. How many unjust convictions are there that we will never discover? Convicting the Innocent makes a powerful case for systemic reforms to improve the accuracy of all criminal cases.