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Date: April 29, 2024 Mon
Time: 9:34 pm
Time: 9:34 pm
Results for false imprisonment
8 results foundAuthor: New York State Bar Association. Task Force on Wrongful Convictions Title: Final Report Summary: This report presents the results of the Task Forces' case studies in which 53 people were wrongfully convicted. It reveals that government practices, by police or prosecutors, were possible causes of the wrongful convictions in over 50 percent of the cases. The analysis and recommendations presented in the report reflect concern for the process principles in all cases - not just those that involve a wrongful conviction. Details: Albany: New York State Bar Association, 2009. 187p. Source: Internet Resource Year: 2009 Country: United States URL: Shelf Number: 115333 Keywords: False ImprisonmentJudicial ErrorWrongful Convictions (New York State) |
Author: Innocence Project Title: Making Up for Lost Time: What the Wrongfully Convicted Endure and How to Provide Fair Compensation Summary: This report shows that of the more than 240 people exonerated through DNA testing nationwide, 40% have not received any form of assistance after their release. Among those who have been compensated under state laws, the vast majority received very small amounts of money and no social services. While exonerees are stripped of their property, jobs, freedom and reputation, only 10 states include provisions for services within their compensation laws. The report underlines how each state should immediately provide the compassionate assistance necessary for exonerees to pick up the pieces and rebuild their lives. It details the specific obstacles that exonerees face, the lack of support they currently receive and how compensation statutes in many states have not done justice to the wrongfully convicted. It also presents solutions to these shortcomings and gives examples of how exonerees have used state compensation to find housing and meet other urgent needs, nurture talents, find success and get their bearings in the free world. Details: New York: Innocence Project, Benjamin N. Cardoza School of Law, Yeshiva University, 2010. 43p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed September 3, 2010 at: http://www.innocenceproject.org/docs/Innocence_Project_Compensation_Report.pdf Year: 2010 Country: United States URL: http://www.innocenceproject.org/docs/Innocence_Project_Compensation_Report.pdf Shelf Number: 119738 Keywords: False ImprisonmentJudicial ErrorWrongful Convictions |
Author: Cribb, Chermaine Title: An Insight into the Wrongly Convicted: Going beyond the Perceptions and Beliefs of the Causes Summary: This study examined the number of wrongful convictions that were exonerated from January 1, 2004 to September 1, 2012. Four hundred forty seven exoneration cases were examined to obtain the factors that contributed to wrongful convictions, the most common offenses related to wrongful convictions, the evidence that led to a new trial, and the outcome of the exoneration based on dismissal of charges, acquittal, or pardons. Interviews were conducted to obtain exoneration case representation criteria, challenges faced in handling exonerations, and the factors found that contributed to wrongful conviction cases worked on. This study revealed that the most common offenses related to wrongful convictions were murder, sexual assault, child sex abuse, and robbery. The factors that contributed to wrongful convictions were mistaken witness identification, false confession, perjury or false accusation, false or misleading forensic evidence, official misconduct, and inadequate legal defense. The most common outcome for wrongful convictions that were exonerated from January 1, 2004 to September 1, 2012 was that the charges were dismissed and the exoneree was acquitted. Benefits of identifying the factors that have contributed to wrongful convictions can be useful in developing policies and legislation. Details: Kennesaw, GA: Kennesaw State University, 2012. 98p. Source: Internet Resource: Dissertations, Theses and Capstone Projects. Paper 532: Accessed January 30, 2013 at: http://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1532&context=etd Year: 2012 Country: United States URL: http://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1532&context=etd Shelf Number: 127454 Keywords: False ImprisonmentJudicial ErrorMiscarriage of JusticeWrongful Convictions |
Author: Irazola, Seri Title: Study of Victim Experiences of Wrongful Conviction Summary: Over the past three decades, the rate of exonerations has more than doubled, growing from an average of 24 per year from 1989 through 1999 to an average of 52 per year from 2000 through 2010 (Gross & Shaffer, 2012). While significant strides have been made to identify and assist wrongfully convicted individuals in gaining their freedom and transitioning to life after exoneration, little is known about the experiences of victims during this process. In 2010, the U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice funded ICF International to conduct an exploratory study examining victim1 experiences in cases of wrongful conviction in order to begin to fill this gap in knowledge. This report documents the methodology and findings from the study, and examines the implications for practice and policy. Details: Fairfax, VA: ICF Incorporated, 2013. 105p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed May 15, 2014 at: https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/244084.pdf Year: 2013 Country: United States URL: https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/244084.pdf Shelf Number: 132363 Keywords: False ImprisonmentJudicial Error Miscarriage of Justice Wrongful Convictions |
Author: Gross, Samuel R. Title: Race and Wrongful Convictions in the United States Summary: African Americans are only 13% of the American population but a majority of innocent defendants wrongfully convicted of crimes and later exonerated. They constitute 47% of the 1,900 exonerations listed in the National Registry of Exonerations (as of October 2016), and the great majority of more than 1,800 additional innocent defendants who were framed and convicted of crimes in 15 large-scale police scandals and later cleared in "group exonerations." We see this racial disparity for all major crime categories, but we examine it in this report in the context of the three types of crime that produce the largest numbers of exonerations in the Registry: murder, sexual assault, and drug crimes. I. Murder • Judging from exonerations, innocent black people are about seven times more likely to be convicted of murder than innocent white people. A major cause of the high number of black murder exonerations is the high homicide rate in the black community—a tragedy that kills many African Americans and sends many others to prison. Innocent defendants who are falsely convicted and exonerated do not contribute to this high homicide rate. They— like the families of victims who are killed—are deeply harmed by murders committed by others. • African-American prisoners who are convicted of murder are about 50% more likely to be innocent than other convicted murderers. Part of that disparity is tied to the race of the victim. African Americans imprisoned for murder are more likely to be innocent if they were convicted of killing white victims. Only about 15% of murders by African Americans have white victims, but 31% of innocent African-American murder exonerees were convicted of killing white people. • The convictions that led to murder exonerations with black defendants were 22% more likely to include misconduct by police officers than those with white defendants. In addition, on average black murder exonerees spent three years longer in prison before release than white murder exonerees, and those sentenced to death spent four years longer. • Many of the convictions of African-American murder exonerees were affected by a wide range of types of racial discrimination, from unconscious bias and institutional discrimination to explicit racism. • Most wrongful convictions are never discovered. We have no direct measure of the number of all convictions of innocent murder defendants, but our best estimate suggests that they outnumber those we know about many times over. Judging from exonerations, half of those innocent murder defendants are African Americans. II. Sexual Assault • Judging from exonerations, a black prisoner serving time for sexual assault is threeand-a-half times more likely to be innocent than a white sexual assault convict. The major cause for this huge racial disparity appears to be the high danger of mistaken eyewitness identification by white victims in violent crimes with black assailants. • Assaults on white women by African-American men are a small minority of all sexual assaults in the United States, but they constitute half of sexual assaults with eyewitness misidentifications that led to exoneration. (The unreliability of cross-racial eyewitness identification also appears to have contributed to racial disparities in false convictions for other crimes, but to a lesser extent.) • Eyewitness misidentifications do not completely explain the racial disparity in sexual assault exonerations. Some misidentifications themselves are in part the products of racial bias, and other convictions that led to sexual assault exonerations were marred by implicit biases, racially tainted official misconduct and, in some cases, explicit racism. • African-American sexual assault exonerees received much longer prison sentences than white sexual assault exonerees, and they spent on average almost four-and-a-half years longer in prison before exoneration. It appears that innocent black sexual assault defendants receive harsher sentences than whites if they are convicted, and then face greater resistance to exoneration even in cases in which they are ultimately released. III. Drug Crimes • The best national evidence on drug use shows that African Americans and whites use illegal drugs at about the same rate. Nonetheless, African Americans are about five times as likely to go to prison for drug possession as whites—and judging from exonerations, innocent black people are about 12 times more likely to be convicted of drug crimes than innocent white people. • In general, very few ordinary, low-level drug convictions result in exoneration, regardless of innocence, because the stakes are too low. In Harris County, Texas, however, there have been 133 exonerations in ordinary drug possession cases in the last few years. These are cases in which defendants pled guilty, and were exonerated after routine lab tests showed they were not carrying illegal drugs. Sixty-two percent of the Harris County drugcrime guilty plea exonerees were African American in a county with 20% black residents. • The main reason for this racial disproportion in convictions of innocent drug defendants is that police enforce drug laws more vigorously against African Americans than against members of the white majority, despite strong evidence that both groups use drugs at equivalent rates. African Americans are more frequently stopped, searched, arrested, and convicted—including in cases in which they are innocent. The extreme form of this practice is systematic racial profiling in drug-law enforcement. • Since 1989, more than 1,800 defendants have been cleared in “group exonerations” that followed 15 large-scale police scandals in which officers systematically framed innocent defendants. The great majority were African-American defendants who were framed for drug crimes that never occurred. There are almost certainly many more such cases that remain hidden. • Why do police officers who conduct these outrageous programs of framing innocent drug defendants concentrate on African Americans? The simple answer: Because that's what they do in all aspects of drug-law enforcement. Guilty or innocent, they always focus disproportionately on African Americans. Of the many costs that the War on Drugs inflicts on the black community, the practice of deliberately charging innocent defendants with fabricated crimes may be the most shameful. Details: Irvine, CA: National Registry of Exonerations, Newkirk Center for Science and Society, University of California Irvine, 2017. 37p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed March 7, 2017 at: https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Documents/Race_and_Wrongful_Convictions.pdf Year: 2017 Country: United States URL: https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Documents/Race_and_Wrongful_Convictions.pdf Shelf Number: 146414 Keywords: ExonerationsFalse ImprisonmentJudicial ErrorMiscarriage of JusticeRacial DisparitiesWrongful Conviction |
Author: Cousino, Meghan Title: Exonerations in the United States Before 1989 Summary: The National Registry of Exonerations searches for, investigates, and reports every exoneration in the United States that we can find that occurred after the beginning of 1989. This year we have added stories and data about 369 earlier exonerations, from 1820 through 1988. We will continue to add such cases, but will not attempt to locate every possible exoneration from before 1989. Our pre-1989 database is different from the Registry itself in two important respects: (i) The list of cases is less complete and less representative of all exonerations in its time period than our list of 2,180 exonerations since 1989, and (ii) We have less information on exonerations before 1989. Both differences reflect the difficulty of studying cases that are more than 30 years old. Almost all the pre-1989 exonerations occurred in the twentieth century, most of them since 1950. Some of them are historically important cases that had substantial impacts on criminal justice policy, including the "Scottsboro Boys" exonerations (starting in 1937), and the exonerations of Clarence Gideon in 1963 and George Whitmore, Jr. in 1973. In many respects, the pre-1989 exonerations are similar to those that happened later. There are, however, several differences, including: - The pre-1989 exonerees we list were cleared more quickly than those who were exonerated later, 5.9 years after conviction on average, compared to 10.5 years. - More exonerations before 1989 were homicide cases-60% compared to 40% for those since 1989-mostly because of a large difference for homicides that resulted in death sentences, 21% to 6%. - Many fewer of the pre-1989 exonerations were for sexual assaults (8% vs. 26%), probably because DNA technology was not available to identify the true criminals, and more of the pre-1989 exonerations were for robberies (18% to 5%). - We know of no drug crime exonerations before 1989 and very few exonerations for child sex abuse, possibly because there were far fewer prosecutions for those crimes; on the other hand, there were more exonerations for forgery and counterfeiting. - Fewer exonerations before 1989 were for convictions known to be tainted by official misconduct, 34% compared to 52% for exonerations since 1989. Details: Irvine, CA: National Registry of Exonerations, University of California, Irvine, 2018. 21p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed March 16, 2018 at: https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Documents/ExonerationsBefore1989.pdf Year: 2018 Country: United States URL: https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Documents/ExonerationsBefore1989.pdf Shelf Number: 149493 Keywords: ExonerationsFalse ImprisonmentJudicial ErrorMiscarriage of JusticeWrongful Convictions |
Author: National Registry of Exonerations Title: Exonerations in 2017 Summary: The National Registry of Exonerations has recorded 139 exonerations in 2017. In total, the National Registry of Exonerations has recorded 2,161 exonerations in the United States from 1989 through the end of 2017. - Ninety-eight of the exonerations in 2017 involved Violent Felonies, including 51 homicides, 16 child sex abuse convictions, and 13 sexual assaults of adults. Four of the homicide exonerees had been sentenced to death; - Sixteen exonerations in 2017 involved Drug Crimes; - Seventeen 2017 exonerations were based in whole or in part on DNA evidence; - Sixty-six exonerations were cases in which No Crime was actually committed; - Eighty-four cases included Misconduct by Government Officials; - Thirty-six exonerations were for convictions based on Guilty Pleas; - Thirty-seven cases involved Mistaken Eyewitness Identification; - Twenty-nine cases involved a False Confession; - Eighty-seven cases included Perjury or a False Accusation; and - Eighty exonerations in 2017 were the result of work by prosecutorial Conviction Integrity Units or Innocence Organizations, or both. In addition, in 2017, there were at least 96 individuals whose convictions were vacated and charges dismissed as part of group exonerations in Chicago, and 80 or more in Baltimore. Details: Irvine, CA: National Registry of Exonerations, University of California, Irvine, 2018. 22p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed March 16, 2018 at: http://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Documents/ExonerationsIn2017.pdf Year: 2018 Country: United States URL: http://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Documents/ExonerationsIn2017.pdf Shelf Number: 149494 Keywords: ExonerationsFalse ImprisonmentJudicial ErrorMiscarriage of JusticeWrongful Convictions |
Author: Center for Death Penalty Litigation Title: On Trial for Their Lives: The Hidden Costs of Wrongful Capital Prosecutions in North Carolina Summary: Prosecutors and lawmakers insist that the death penalty is necessary to punish "the worst of the worst," in cases where evidence of the defendant's guilt is overwhelming and the circumstances of the crime are more heinous than most. Yet, the reality is that the death penalty in North Carolina is used indiscriminately and with little regard for the strength of the evidence. While police and prosecutors may not intend to convict the innocent, they often face enormous pressure to solve and prosecute crimes. In that environment, they rely on the threat of the death penalty to solicit information and confessions from suspects, or to pressure suspects to accept plea bargains. The frequency with which state officials use the death penalty in this manner makes it inevitable that innocent people get caught up in the capital punishment system. For the first time in North Carolina, the Center for Death Penalty Litigation (CDPL) has conducted a study of cases in which people were accused of capital murder but never convicted, which we refer to in this report as wrongful capital prosecutions. We wanted to explore why people were prosecuted capitally when the state did not have enough evidence to convict, as well as determine the harm caused by such cases. This group of people has been largely ignored, even as North Carolina has seen several high-profile exonerations of death row inmates. There is no registry that tracks the cases of those wrongly charged with capital murder, and no group that advocates for them. We know of no other study in the United States that has asked these questions or tracked this group. We pored over case files, court records and news reports, contacted attorneys, and interviewed the accused to find cases during the period from 1989 to 2015 in which a person was charged with capital murder and was eventually acquitted or had all charges related to the crimes dismissed. We identified 56 cases in which the state abused its power in seeking a death sentence, because prosecutors did not have enough evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant was guilty. This means that over the past 26 years, an average of two people each year have been targeted for the death penalty even though there was very little evidence of guilt, let alone evidence that they were worthy of the state's harshest punishment. The database of cases presented in this report is reliable but not comprehensive, because there is no centralized tracking of such cases. Doubtless, there are cases we did not find. Our research uncovered the same types of errors and misconduct in these cases that have been uncovered in cases where innocents were convicted and sent to death row. We found cases in which state actors hid exculpatory evidence, relied on junk science, and pressured witnesses to implicate suspects. In several cases, there was no physical evidence and charges were based solely on the testimony of highly unreliable witnesses, such as jail inmates, co-defendants who were given lighter sentences in return for cooperation, and paid informants. Reliance on such witnesses was a factor in more than 60 percent of the cases we studied. The state incarcerated these people, who were never convicted of any crime, for an average of two years each. All told, the 56 defendants spent a total of more than 112 years in jail. Gregory Chapman in Duplin County served the longest jail term: nearly seven years. Those who are indicted on capital charges and later cleared are not eligible for compensation, even though many of them spend years in jail, lose their jobs, and are bankrupted by legal expenses. In addition to leaving many in financial ruin, the state does not even do these exonorees the favor of clearing their criminal histories. They must request a court order to expunge their criminal records, an expensive and lengthy process. Those who were already living at the margins of society often struggled to find jobs, and some fell into homelessness after they were released from jail. Details: Durham, NC: he Center for Death Penalty Litigation, 2015. 56p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed July 16, 2018 at: http://www.cdpl.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/INTERACTIVE-CDPL-REPORT.pdf Year: 2015 Country: United States URL: http://www.cdpl.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/INTERACTIVE-CDPL-REPORT.pdf Shelf Number: 150893 Keywords: Capital PunishmentDeath PenaltyExonerationsFalse ImprisonmentJudicial ErrorMiscarriage of JusticeWrongful Convictions |