Convicting the Innocent : Where Criminal Prosecutions Go Wrong / Brandon Garrett.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Garrett, Brandon, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Electronic books. -- local.

Judicial error--United States.

Judicial error.

Evidence, Criminal--United States.

Evidence, Criminal.

Post-conviction remedies--United States.

Post-conviction remedies.

Local Subjects:

Electronic books. -- local.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (376 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, [2011]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

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.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Chapter 1. Introduction

Chapter 2. Contaminated Confessions

Chapter 3. Eyewitness Misidentifications

Chapter 4. Flawed Forensics

Chapter 5. Trial by Liar

Chapter 6. Innocence on Trial

Chapter 7. Judging Innocence

Chapter 8. Exoneration

Chapter 9. Reforming the Criminal Justice System

Appendix

Notes

Acknowledgments

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 08. Jul 2019)

ISBN:

9780674060982

0674060989

OCLC:

727949876