Advances in DNA technology have raised public awareness of the problem of wrongful convictions. Although many wrongful convictions have come to light in recent years, including the exonerations of many inmates on death row facing execution, the actual scope of the problem remains unknown and largely unknowable. Estimates vary widely depending on who you ask and what their agendas are. The Innocence Project in New York City spawned a nationwide effort to investigate cases of potential wrongful convictions. The Arizona Justice Project (Links to an external site.), housed at ASU’s Sandra Day O’Conner School of Law is one such “project.”
While we still do not know the scope of the problem, we are gaining insight, and hard data, on the major causes. For example, we know that eyewitness misidentifications are the leading cause, and false confessions and bad forensic science are significant contributing factors.
https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/voices/getting-criminal-justice-right
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/the-confessions/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXwYi_338jk
For this paper, discuss the phenomenon of wrongful convictions.