Studies show that eyewitness identifications can be notoriously unreliable unless conducted using known best practices such as blind administration and sequential presentation. However, the Los Angeles Police Department is still reluctant to enact reforms that have been sweeping the nation…
Congressional lawmakers have proposed legislation that would create federal grants to establish forensic science standards in an effort to reduce wrongful convictions. The Forensic Science and Standards Act is sponsored by Sen. Jay Rockefeller and Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson. The…
An Alameda County Grand Jury has found serious problems with the Oakland Police Department’s (OPD) crime lab. The report details a huge backlog of evidence waiting to be tested, inadequate facilities, and a severe staffing shortage. In 2011, the Forensics…
Along with the known causes of wrongful conviction of mistaken eyewitness identification, jailhouse informants, and faulty scientific evidence, Florida’s Innocence Commission has added a new leading cause: lack of adequate funding. In its 171-page final report, the 23-member commission said…
In an editorial in the Albany Times Union, the editorial board calls for the New York legislature to finally pass bills aimed at protecting defendants from wrongful conviction. “For all the law-and-order bills that move through legislatures like New York’s…
The U.S. Supreme Court once again weighed whether lab technicians must testify as to the results of DNA tests they perform. However, the answer was anything but clear. In the past few years, the Supreme Court twice ruled that DNA…
The Midwest Innocence Project can prove Ricky Kidd is innocent of the murder that put him behind bars for life. Now if only the court will let them. Ricky Kidd has served 16 years of a life sentence for a…
Investigative reporters at USA Today have discovered an unusual problem with the North Carolina criminal justice system. Based on court records and interviews with government officials, the investigation revealed more than 60 men who went to prison for violating federal…
Five different independent groups have called on Michigan to reform its system for paying lawyers to represent poor defendants. Each time the state has done nothing. Finally, that may be changing due to a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties…
A new empirical study conducted by Lucian Dervan, Assistant Professor of Law at Southern Illinois University, and Vanessa Edkins, Assistant Professor of Psychology at the Florida Institute of Technology, reveals that students are likely to take plea bargains and confess…
