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WRONGFUL CONVICTIONS: THE AMERICAN EXPERIENCE
C. Ronald Huff
School of Social Ecology, University of California
Irvine, CA
The increasing number of high-profile cases of wrongful conviction, often brought to light by DNA exonerations, and the publicity associated with those errors have increased the salience of this issue on the public policy agendas of a number of U.S. states, as well as in Canada. Scholarly research on this subject has also increased over the past two decades. This article discusses the extent to which these erors may occur; the major factors contributing to false convictions; recent and current developments regarding legislation in the United States; innocence projects and innocence commissions in the United States, Britain, and Canada; and the significance of wrongful conviction as a factor in the current challenges to the death penalty in the United States. It is important that we develop a better understanding of wrongful conviction and its causes so that we can both better protect the rights of the innocent and better protect citizens from being victimized by offenders who remain free while the wrongly convicted are sent to prison.
SHOWING REMORSE: REFLECTIONS ON THE GAP BETWEEN EXPRESSION AND ATTRIBUTION IN CASES OF WRONGFUL CONVICTION
Richard Weisman
Law and Society Program, Division of Social Science, York University
Toronto, Ontario
This paper seeks first to show that persons who are convicted of crimes can be perceived as either remorseful or as lacking in remorse. This division establishes a moral hierarchy that has profound implications for the characterization and disposition of persons who are so designated. Second, using both Canadian and American cases, it looks at how inclusion in the category of the unremorseful affects the characterization and disposition of those who have been wrongfully convicted. Finally, it suggests that remorse is a major site of conflict between persons who are wrongfully convicted and officials within the criminal justice system, conflict that involves the use of institutional pressure to encourage the expression of remorse, on the one hand, and the mobilization of individual resources to resist those expressions, on the other.
THE BURDEN OF INNOCENCE: COPING WITH A WRONGFUL IMPRISONMENT
Kathryn Campbell and Myriam Denov
Department of Criminology, University of Ottawa
Ottawa, Ontario
There has been a recent surge of interest in the topic of wrongful conviction in Canada. Most of the research, however, has focused on the many factors that contribute to the problem. Those most affected by these miscarriages of justice - the wrongly convicted themselves - have been largely ignored. This study sought to reveal, through in-depth interviews, the voices and experiences of five wrongly convicted Canadians, as they spoke about wrongful arrest, imprisonment, and release. The respondents reported that during arrest they were victims of tunnel vision and institutional misconduct. They made use of several highly adaptive coping strategies while wrongly imprisoned, including cooperation, withdrawal, preoccupation with exoneration, and rejection of the label criminal. Maintaining innocence while incarcerated entailed notable consequences, which included being perceived by the prison administration to be at high risk of recidivism. Furthermore, given their continual affirmation of their innocence, respondents suffered uncertainty over their release date.
Finally, they reported problems following their release, including intolerance of injustice and a desire for compensation. These findings point to the importance of including the experiences of the wrongly convicted in future criminal justice policy and practice consideration.
PSYCHOLOGICAL CONSEQUENCES OF WRONGFUL CONVICTION AND IMPRISONMENT
Adrian Grounds
Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge
Cambridge, U.K.
There is minimal research on the psychological effects of wrongful conviction and imprisonment. This is a descriptive study of a sample of 18 men referred for systematic psychiatric assessment after their convictions were quashed on appeal and they were released from long-term imprisonment. Sixteen were U.K. cases; two were from other jurisdictions. The assessments revealed evidence of substantial psychiatric morbidity. Fourteen men met ICD-10 diagnostic criteria for "enduring personality change following catastrophic experience" (F62.0), 12 met the criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder, and most reported additional mood and anxiety disorders. There were major problems of psychological and social adjustment, particularly within families. The difficulties were similar to those described in the clinical literature on war veterans. Possible explanations for these effects are discussed: specific traumatic features of miscarriage of justice and long-term imprisonment both appear to contribute to the post-release psychological problems.
