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Notable "death is different" response to wrongful convictions

By Douglas A. Berman

I just discovered via SSRN this notable article by Professor Rory Little titled "Addressing the Evidentiary Sources of Wrongful Convictions: Categorical Exclusion of Evidence in Capital Statutes." Here is the abstract: After two decades of powerful "wrongful conviction" cases stimulated by new DNA science, we can now categorize the sources of error across dozens if not hundreds of exonerations. (The author, a former prosecutor, is neither a death penalty abolitionist nor a disbeliever of convictions - many convictions are "very right indeed" (n.2). Nevertheless, at least four of the known sources of wrongful conviction fall into categories we can define and, perhaps, do something about: (1) eyewitness misidentifications; (2) false confessions; (3) "jailhouse snitches" (or more broadly, criminal informants); and (4) "junk" (i...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on October 30, 2008 (boomark / email).