The National Institute of Justice released a report today which explores the feasibility of using a learning-from-error model in criminal justice. The report, Mending Justice: Sentinel Events Reviews, draws on lessons from the medical and aviation fields and offers perspectives on using…
California Assembly Bill 885, which authorizes courts to inform a jury when a prosecutor has intentionally concealed evidence of innocence, recently passed off the Assembly floor and is headed to Governor Brown’s desk to be signed. AB 885, authored by…
We had some VIPs in the NCIP class yesterday! As part of our module on eyewitness misidentification, NCIP law students served as jurists in a mock trial that demonstrated how compelling an eyewitness can be to a jury—even if there…
Han Tak Lee, 79, was released Friday after spending 24 years behind bars in a Pennsylvania prison for a wrongful arson-murder conviction. A federal judge ruled this month that the conviction was based on faulty fire science and ultimately overturned…
It was a dreary morning on Treasure Island on Thursday, August 14th, 2014, as a group of curious public defenders, detectives, and prosecutors came together for arson investigator Paul Bieber’s showcase event: a live burn of two furnished mockups, one…
California Senate Bill 1058, which would help exonerate innocent men and women who have been wrongfully convicted of crimes, is headed to Governor Jerry Brown’s desk. Authored by Senator Mark Leno, the legislation would allow a judge to overturn a wrongful…
The Marshall Project, a newly formed nonprofit criminal justice journalism group, wrote a story published in the Washington Post today revealing new evidence of misconduct by a Texas prosecutor that may have led to the wrongful execution of Cameron Todd…
This month, the Department of Justice ordered the continuation of a massive reinvestigation of thousands of criminal cases from the 1980s and 1990s that most likely include flawed forensic testimony from an FBI unit. The FBI post-conviction review started in…
After years of proclaiming his innocence of a rape in Texas for which he was convicted, Michael Phillips, 57, had done his time and resigned himself to a lifetime of registering as a sex offender. But he was exonerated by…
Kevin Martin spent 26 years behind bars for a wrongful murder conviction until a Washington D.C. Superior Court judge exonerated him on Monday, citing new DNA evidence that ultimately proved Martin’s innocence. In 1982, 19-year-old Ursula C. Brown was abducted,…
