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Chicago-Kent College of Law

2007

Innocence projects

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The Myth Of Factual Innocence, Morris B. Hoffman Apr 2007

The Myth Of Factual Innocence, Morris B. Hoffman

Chicago-Kent Law Review

The movie 12 Angry Men is part of a larger American myth about the frequency of wrongful criminal convictions. This essay examines the broader contours of that myth, including its most recent incarnation in the form of innocence projects, suggests more realistic upper and lower bounds for the real wrongful conviction rate, and argues that exaggerations about the frequency of wrongful convictions threaten to become self-fulfilling.