2010). While a legally innocent defendant may also be factually innocent of the crime, this is not always true. In each case analyzed in this study, we relied on factual innocence. To establish factual innocence, each case had to possess two separate components: (1) a judicial, executive or legislative acknowledgement that the individual did not commit the crime for which he was erroneously indicted (including a statement of innocence by a prosecutor, governor, judge, state compensation board, or a juror after an acquittal), and (2) evidence that would convince a reasonable person that the individual did not commit the crime (such as post-conviction DNA testing, another individual was prosecuted and convicted of the crime, or a new diagnosis of the victim’s condition). In general, a decision not to retry a defendant after a judge overturned the prosecutor’s conviction was not, by itself, considered a sufficient statement of innocence to defendant’s include the case in our study. However, in a few rare situations where the evidence was uncontroverted and strong enough to prove beyond any doubt that the defendant was factually innocent, we did not require the case to have an official statement of innocence. These were exclusively single-defendant rape cases in which DNA tests on the semen excluded the defendant as the contributor. We considered it important to employ such a conservative definition of factual innocence for several reasons. First, other research studies on erroneous convictions have suffered from lengthy debates about the actual innocence of some of the defendants included in their study. This, in turn, detracts from a meaningful discussion about the majority of cases over which there is no debate. In addition, one of the goals of the current research was to involve criminal justice
2010). While a legally innocent defendant may also be factually innocent of the crime, this is not always true. In each case analyzed in this study, we relied on factual innocence. To establish factual innocence, each case had to possess two separate components: (1) a judicial, executive or legislative acknowledgement that the individual did not commit the crime for which he was erroneously indicted (including a statement of innocence by a prosecutor, governor, judge, state compensation board, or a juror after an acquittal), and (2) evidence that would convince a reasonable person that the individual did not commit the crime (such as post-conviction DNA testing, another individual was prosecuted and convicted of the crime, or a new diagnosis of the victim’s condition). In general, a prosecutor’s decision not to retry a defendant after a judge overturned the defendant’s conviction was not, by itself, considered a sufficient statement of innocence to include the case in our study. However, in a few rare situations where the evidence was uncontroverted and strong enough to prove beyond any doubt that the defendant was factually innocent, we did not require the case to have an official statement of innocence. These were exclusively single-defendant rape cases in which DNA tests on the semen excluded the defendant as the contributor. We considered it important to employ such a conservative definition of factual innocence for several reasons. First, other research studies on erroneous convictions have suffered from lengthy debates about the actual innocence of some of the defendants included in their study. This, in turn, detracts from a meaningful discussion about the majority of cases over which there is no debate. In addition, one of the goals of the current research was to involve criminal justice
Predicting%20Erroneous%20Convictions%20Final%20Report_Edited%20EMBARGOED.docx