I would be curious whether other countries have the same problem as the USA, where often it seems the wrongfully convicted are a byproduct of the pressure from above to “find the perp” and consequent police williness to stay singlemndedly focussed on the “usual suspects”. Conviction is more important than correct. As was mentioned above, this is often aided by less than stellar performance by an overloaded public defender. Features of wrongful convictions also seem to often include coercion by police to encourage witnesses to perjure themselves.
For what I’ve read of Canadian wrongfully convicted, we seem to have this problem too. (Case in point, Guy Paul Morin was in the middle of his third trial when DNA exonerated him. Subsequent inquiry singled out police tunnel vision, where they concentrated on the “weirdo next door”, excluding the possibilty of other suspects).
As a result, the appeals courts have to take a second and third (and fourth, etc.) hard look to ensure the conviction is not too obviously a miscarriage of justice, to the extent they are capable. The extensive appeals process is supposed(?) to weed out the most egregious errors.
I don’t know tbh. It probably depends on incentives: if police performance is measured based on how many crimes they solve, or if there is public pressure to solve a high profile case, then police are more likely to be looking for someone to convict rather than actually trying to find the guilty party. Also, according to my policemen friend, they usually know who committed crimes, it’s just hard to get enough evidence to convict them. So it’s easy to imagine the police being overly confident about who the guilty party is and interpreting the evidence according to their belief, rather than purposely ‘fitting up’ an innocent suspect.
I think a particular problem for the US is that there is a lot more serious crime per capita than in European countries (and Canada?), so the police and justice system are perpetually overwhelmed. Hence the over-reliance on plea deals. I’d tend to assume this causes shortcuts in police work, too.
And I have to say I really don’t understand the appeals process. They seem to be dependent on legal technicalities in the original trial, rather than new evidence, or expert witnesses subsequently being proved wrong.
A real lawyer can chime in here, IANAL, but the whole point of appeals is not “I want to try again”. It’s to fix the situation that a problem occurred in the trial that resulted in an incorrect verdict (or excessive sentence). This could be incorrect evidence, or violation of rights that caused an unfair trial, etc. As lawyers have said here from time to time, the original trila, where the actual witnesses are heard, is the forum to evaluate the veracity of those witnesses. The appeals court does not rehear the evidence. Best case, they say “yeha, they made a mistake with the case. Try again without that mistake” and it goes back to the lower court. Absolute amazing case is when they say “based on what we;ve seen, nobody could honestly convict this person” (Or “yes, the punishment is too harsh”).
What’s interesting is the detail abuot “conviction or sentence overturned”. How many were judged as having not committed the capital crime, vs how many were simply given life instead? (I assume “commuted” means the governor etc. intervened)
I personally believe that the loathing many people have towards the death penalty has a definite effect in the appeals process. That’s why I feel it should only be applied when there isn’t a shadow of a doubt that the individual committed the crime. For example, a school shooter who is caught in the middle of his killing spree and who has planned the deed and collected weapons qualifies as “beyond a shadow”.
I don’t think a killer with mental health issues should be freed after only two years. That’s not paying for your crimes, and how can anyone be really sure they are cured?
I’m responding to the hypothetical that someone who plans and executes a school shooting, and is caught in the middle of it, is “beyond a shadow” guilty of murder, and therefore can be executed.
The point is that there are always facts that need to be considered, and that in my opinion it is highly unlikely that there can ever be a stricter standard of proof, stricter than proof beyond a reasonable doubt, that is actually workable.
That doesn’t mean that the shooter in my counter-hypothetical goes free, but rather gets streamed into the category of detention by reason of insanity or similar provision.