Law Commons^™

An Exclusionary Rule For Police Lies, Melanie D. Wilson

Scholarly Articles

Our legal system treats the police as if they are impartial fact gatherers, trained and motivated to gather facts both for and against guilt, rather than biased advocates attempting to disprove innocence, which is the reality. Because of its partiality in favor of officers, the criminal justice system lacks the appropriate structure to expose and effectively deter police lies, which distort the truth about criminal or unconstitutional conduct.

This Article, presented in three parts, argues that the current system should be changed to provide the structure necessary to promote honest police work. Specifically, it urges a modification to the exclusionary …

Innocence Commissions And The Future Of Post-Conviction Review, David Wolitz

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In the fall of 2006, North Carolina became the first state to establish an innocence commission – a state institution with the power to review and investigate individual post-conviction claims of actual innocence. And on February 17, 2010, after spending seventeen years in prison for a murder he did not commit, Greg Taylor became the first person exonerated through the innocence commission process. This article argues that the innocence commission model pioneered by North Carolina has proven itself to be a major institutional improvement over conventional post-conviction review. The article explains why existing court-based procedures are inadequate to address collateral …