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Full-Text Articles in Law
The Innocence Effect, Avishalom Tor, Oren Gazal-Ayal
The Innocence Effect, Avishalom Tor, Oren Gazal-Ayal
Avishalom Tor
Nearly all felony convictions - about 95 percent - follow guilty pleas, suggesting that plea offers are very attractive to defendants compared to trials. Some scholars argue that plea bargains are too attractive and should be curtailed because they facilitate the wrongful conviction of innocents. Others contend that plea bargains only benefit innocent defendants, providing an alternative to the risk of a harsher sentence at trial. Hence, even while heatedly disputing their desirability, both camps in the debate believe that plea bargains commonly lead innocents to plead guilty. This Article shows, however, that the belief that innocents routinely plead guilty …
Rate Of False Conviction Of Criminal Defendants Who Are Sentenced To Death, Samuel Gross, Barbara O'Brien, Chen Hu, Edward Kennedy
Rate Of False Conviction Of Criminal Defendants Who Are Sentenced To Death, Samuel Gross, Barbara O'Brien, Chen Hu, Edward Kennedy
Edward H. Kennedy
The rate of erroneous conviction of innocent criminal defendants is often described as not merely unknown but unknowable. There is no systematic method to determine the accuracy of a criminal conviction; if there were, these errors would not occur in the first place. As a result, very few false convictions are ever discovered, and those that are discovered are not representative of the group as a whole. In the United States, however, a high proportion of false convictions that do come to light and produce exonerations are concentrated among the tiny minority of cases in which defendants are sentenced to …