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Wrongful Convictions and the Accuracy of the Criminal Justice System

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Wrongful Convictions and the Accuracy of the Criminal Justice System University of Colorado Law School Colorado Law Scholarly Commons Articles Colorado Law Faculty Scholarship 2003 Wrongful Convictions and the Accuracy of the Criminal Justice System H. Patrick Furman University of Colorado Law School Follow this and additional works at: https://scholar.law.colorado.edu/articles Part of the Courts Commons, Criminal Procedure Commons, Evidence Commons, Law Enforcement and Corrections Commons, and the Legal Profession Commons Citation Information H. Patrick Furman, Wrongful Convictions and the Accuracy of the Criminal Justice System, Sept. 2003, at 11, available at http://scholar.law.colorado.edu/articles/513/. Copyright Statement Copyright protected. Use of materials from this collection beyond the exceptions provided for in the Fair Use and Educational Use clauses of the U.S. Copyright Law may violate federal law. Permission to publish or reproduce is required. This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Colorado Law Faculty Scholarship at Colorado Law Scholarly Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Articles by an authorized administrator of Colorado Law Scholarly Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. +(,121/,1( Citation: 32 Colo. Law. 11 2003 Provided by: William A. Wise Law Library Content downloaded/printed from HeinOnline Wed May 3 18:07:14 2017 -- Your use of this HeinOnline PDF indicates your acceptance of HeinOnline's Terms and Conditions of the license agreement available at http://heinonline.org/HOL/License -- The search text of this PDF is generated from uncorrected OCR text. -- To obtain permission to use this article beyond the scope of your HeinOnline license, please use: Copyright Information FEATURE Wrongful Convictions and the Accuracy Of the Criminal Justice System by H. Patrick Furman Editor's Note: In a future issue of The ColoradoLawyer, a lished the right to counsel, regardless of ability to pay;6 Thmey member of the Colorado District Attorneys Council ("CDAC") v. Ohio established the right of a defendant to a judge free of intends to provide a different perspective on the issue of wrong- personal interest in the case;7 Brady v. Maryland established ful convictions. the right of a defendant to exculpatory information in the hands of the prosecution;8 and Batson v. Kentucky barred the improp- er use of race injury selection.9 Decisions like these breathe life The wrongful conviction of an innocent person is the worst into the principle that no one shall be denied life or liberty with- nightmare to anyone who cares about justice. Eighty years ago, out due process of law and that all persons are entitled to the Judge Learned Hand said, "Our procedure has always been equal protection of the law. haunted by the ghost of the innocent man convicted. It is an Even more fundamental is the principle that no justice sys- unreal dream."' The good judge was, as events of the last decade tem can operate fairly unless it can accurately determine guilt have conclusively proved, simply wrong. Although the criminal and innocence. The accuracy of the criminal justice system has justice system has a number of safeguards designed to ensure been called into question in recent years by revelations, often that wrongful convictions are avoided, and the overwhelming generated by new DNA investigative techniques, of innocent majority of convictions are accurate determinations of fact, it is people across the country in prisons and even on death rows. clear that wrongful convictions do occur. For decades, public attention focused on the danger of a THE FREQUENCY OF guilty person going free. Some people question, for example, WRONGFUL CONVICTIONS whether the trade-off created by the exclusionary rule between the loss of probative evidence and the need to regulate police It is impossible, given the state of current knowledge, to de- conduct is appropriate.2 Others argue that the courts are too termine precisely how many innocent people have been wrong- stingy in admitting evidence of other misconduct by a criminal fully convicted. A Harris Poll of Americans taken in 2000 re- defendant. 3 Although these issues can affect the accuracy of vealed that 94 percent of those surveyed believed that innocent people are sometimes convicted of murder, and estimated that factual determinations by the criminal justice system, this ar- 10 ticle focuses on the other side of the accuracy issue: the danger this happens 13 percent of the time. Results of surveys of par- of convicting a factually innocent person.4 Recent advances in ticipants in the Ohio criminal justice system and of attorneys DNA technology and other forensic sciences, along with hard general across the United States were reported in a 1996 book work by lawyers and non-lawyers alike, have focused attention in which the authors concluded that the best estimate of wrong- 0.5 percent.1 1 In on the danger and reality of convicting an innocent person.5 ful convictions from these respondents was January 2003, it was reported that at least 13 of the 167 in- mates on death row in Illinois (approximately 8 percent) were CONCERN ABOUT innocent. This first led to a moratorium on the death penalty, WRONGFUL CONVICTIONS Wrongful convictions are a concern of prosecutors and defense lawyers, liberals and conservatives, lawyers and non-lawyers. The issue involves the accuracy in the justice system, and ac- curacy is a goal that is shared by everyone. It concerns anyone who cares about law enforcement and public safety. For every innocent person wrongfully convicted, a guilty person roams H. PatrickFurman is a Clinical Profes- free. Indeed, because the justice system is one of the corner- sor of Law in the Legal Aid & Defender stones of democracy, it is not an overstatement to say that wrong- Programand the Directorof Clinical ful convictions concern anyone who cares about a democratic Programsat the University of Colorado society. A criminal justice system should be fair to all: wealth, race, ("CU') School of Law. The authorthanks and social status should not affect the administration ofjustice. third-yearCU law student Joshua Nel- American constitutional history is replete with cases address- Jf, son for his researchassistance. ing this promise. For example, Gideon v. Wainwright estab- The Colorado Lawyer / September 2003 / Vol. 32, No. 9 / 11 Wrongful Convictions and the Accuracy of the Criminal Justice System September next to a major study of capital punishment in Illinois, and then causes of wrongful convictions. 22 Borchard also noted that false to the commutation of all remaining death sentences to life im- confessions were a recurring cause of wrongful convictions.23 12 prisonment. Some things have not changed much since then. In a book The question of wrongful convictions in capital cases has published in 2001, the most common causes of wrongful con- been studied more than the question of wrongful convictions victions were determined to be mistaken identifications, police generally. Error rates in capital cases may be higher or lower and prosecutorial mistakes and misconduct, false confessions, than error rates in other cases, but there is no obvious reason to and the misuse of informants.24 Two major Canadian studies assume that the error rates are significantly different. A 1987 have highlighted the existence of the same types of deficiencies study of potentially capital cases-cases in which the death in Canadian procedures. 25 What has changed from Borchard's penalty was, or could have been, sought-attempted to deter- 1932 study is that ineffective assistance of defense counsel is mine the reasons for such errors. This study found 350 cases of now recognized as a significant contributing factor to many wrongful convictions in America between 1900 and 1984.13 Re- wrongful convictions.26 This may be a reflection of the increas- search into the appellate treatment of death penalty cases has ingly important role played by defense counsel in criminal cas- indicated that as many as two-thirds of the death sentences im- es during that interval (and the increasing scrutiny to which posed in American trial courts have been reversed by appellate that role has been subjected), rather than a reflection of a de- courts, although only a fraction of these reversals was based on cline in the quality of representation. 14 findings of actual innocence. Data concerning the causes of wrongful convictions are be- If the general public's estimate of a 13 percent error rate in coming both more plentiful and precise. Improvements in the murder convictions is applied to the total number of serious use of DNA as a forensic tool continue to help improve the ac- crimes (the FBI's so-called "index crimes") for which there is a curacy of the fact-finding process. Although DNA evidence is conviction, the number of wrongful convictions is more than not available to prove the innocence of a wrongfully convicted 200,000. Even if the most conservative estimate, that 99.5 per- person in most cases, the cases in which it has been used to cent of convictions are valid, 7,700 innocent people were con- help demonstrate innocence have received a great deal of press victed of serious crimes in the year 2000.15 Applying the Illinois attention and have helped spark more public attention and re- death row error rate of 8 percent yields more than 123,000 search into the causes of wrongful convictions. wrongful convictions. As discussed below, sometimes, as in the overwhelming num- Clearly, no system will ever be perfect, and a 99.5 percent ac- ber of mistaken identifications, the mistake is an "honest" one; curacy rate would be an admirable achievement. Some com- that is, there is no intentional corruption of the system. Some of mentators have argued that errors are inevitable and, even in the mistakes and misconduct of defense counsel, prosecutors, capital cases, acceptable.16 Others would argue that the wrong- or police also fit this description.
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