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Criminal Law

University of Michigan Law School

Justice

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Full-Text Articles in Law and Race

Race And Wrongful Convictions In The United States, Samuel R. Gross, Maurice Possley, Klara Stephens Mar 2017

Race And Wrongful Convictions In The United States, Samuel R. Gross, Maurice Possley, Klara Stephens

Other Publications

African Americans are only 13% of the American population but a majority of innocent defendants wrongfully convicted of crimes and later exonerated. They constitute 47% of the 1,900 exonerations listed in the National Registry of Exonerations (as of October 2016), and the great majority of more than 1,800 additional innocent defendants who were framed and convicted of crimes in 15 large-scale police scandals and later cleared in “group exonerations.” We see this racial disparity for all major crime categories, but we examine it in this report in the context of the three types of crime that produce the largest numbers …


On Justitia, Race, Gender, And Blindness, I. Bennett Capers Jan 2006

On Justitia, Race, Gender, And Blindness, I. Bennett Capers

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Essay focuses on Justitia's more problematic attributes. Like Justitia's blindfold, which has been described as "the most enigmatic" of her traits. Is the blindfold merely emblematic of Justitia's purported impartiality, her claim to algorithmic justice? As law professor Costas Douzinas and art historian Lynda Nead have asked, does the blindfold enable Justitia "to avoid the temptation to see the face that comes to the law and put the unique characteristics of the concrete person before the abstract logic of the institution"? Or does the blindfold signify something more, a second sight of sorts? Maybe that Justitia, unable to see, …