Wrongful Convictions: Reasons, Remedies, and Case Studies

Previous literature has indicated that wrongful conviction is estimated to occur in about 1 to 5 percent of all convictions in the United States. Wrongful conviction is defined as the conviction of a factually innocent person. In order for the charges, as well as possible prison time served, to disappear, a defendant must seek exoneration, which has been shown only to be granted in a small proportion of wrongful conviction cases. This error can occur due to culpability or procedural issues within the criminal justice system. Common causes of wrongful conviction include eyewitness error, police misconduct, false confessions, forensic error, prosecutorial misconduct, ineffective assistance of counsel, racial disparity, and system issues. Wrongful conviction has been shown to have an incredible amount of human costs, both physical and monetary. Specific remedies to the error include increased access to postconviction DNA testing, improvement in evidence preservation methods, eyewitness identification reforms, forensic science oversight, recording of interrogations, and increased use of innocence commissions.