Beginning with the premise that the principal function of a criminal trial is to find out the truth about a crime, Larry Laudan examines the rules of evidence and procedure that would be appropriate ...if the discovery of the truth were, as higher courts routinely claim, the overriding aim of the criminal justice system. Laudan mounts a systematic critique of existing rules and procedures that are obstacles to that quest. He also examines issues of error distribution by offering the first integrated analysis of the various mechanisms - the standard of proof, the benefit of the doubt, the presumption of innocence and the burden of proof - for implementing society's view about the relative importance of the errors that can occur in a trial.
Since 1996, death sentences in America have declined by more than 60 percent, reversing a generation-long trend toward greater acceptance of capital punishment. In theory, most Americans continue to ...support the death penalty. But it is no longer seen as a theoretical matter. Prosecutors, judges, and juries across the country have moved in large numbers to give much greater credence to the possibility of mistakes - mistakes that in this arena are potentially fatal. The discovery of innocence, documented in this book through painstaking analyses of media coverage and with newly developed methods, has led to historic shifts in public opinion and to a sharp decline in use of the death penalty by juries across the country. A social cascade, starting with legal clinics and innocence projects, has snowballed into a national phenomenon that may spell the end of the death penalty in America.
La legislación ecuatoriana reconoce al error judicial como aquella disposición equívoca por parte un juzgador en la emisión de una sentencia, misma que genera detrimento al sancionado por esa ...decisión judicial, y ante tal decisión, el Estado tendrá plena responsabilidad. De este modo, la presente investigación tiene como objetivo desarrollar las sanciones disciplinarias que se causan al incurrir en un error judicial, vinculando el trabajo a un caso práctico y de relevancia nacional. Para la investigación se utilizaron los métodos analítico, histórico-lógico, sistemático, descriptivo y dialéctico, el cual ayudó a determinar, que una vez analizadas las causas del error judicial, dentro del caso analizado, se puede evidenciar que existe tal error, y consecuentemente, se pueden aplicar sanciones disciplinarias.
The article presents the status quo of the law of retrial in Germany and gives an overview of the law and practice of the latter in favour of the convicted and to the disadvantage of the defendant. ...Particularly, the formal and material prerequisites for a successful petition to retry the criminal case are subject to a detailed presentation and evaluation. Because no official statistics are kept regarding successful retrial processes in Germany, the actual number of judicial errors is primarily the subject of more or less well-founded estimates by legal practitioners and journalists. However, there are a few newer empirical studies devoted to different facets of the subject. These studies will be discussed in this article in order to outline the state of empirical research on the legal reality of the retrial procedure. Against this background, the article will ultimately highlight currently discussed reforms and subject these to a critical evaluation as well. The aim of the recent reform efforts is to add a ground for retrial to the disadvantage of the defendant for cases in which new facts or evidence indicate that the acquitted person was guilty. After detailed discussion, the proposal in question is rejected, inter alia for constitutional reasons.
This book presents a comprehensive comparative analysis of the substantive and procedural aspects of compensation for wrongful convictions in European countries and the USA, as well as the standard ...derived from the case law of the European Court of Human Rights. The collection draws comparative conclusions as to the similarities and differences between selected jurisdictions and assesses the effectiveness of the national compensation schemes. This enables the designing of an optimum model of compensation, offering accessibility and effectiveness to the victims of miscarriages of justice and being acceptable to jurisdictions based on common law, and civil law traditions, as well as inquisitorial and adversarial types of criminal process. Moreover, the discussion of the minimum European standard as established in the case law of the European Court of Human Rights enables readers to identify how the Strasbourg Court can contribute to strengthening the compensation scheme. The book will be essential reading for students, academics and policymakers working in the areas of criminal law and procedure.
American prosecutors are asked to play two roles within the criminal justice system: they are supposed to be ministers of justice whose only goals are to ensure fair trials, whatever the outcomes of ...those trials might be-and they are also advocates of the government whose success rates are measured by how many convictions they get. Because of this second role, sometimes prosecutors suppress evidence in order to establish a defendant's guilt and safeguard that conviction over time.
Daniel S. Medwed, a nationally-recognized authority on wrongful convictions, has wrestled with these issues for nearly fifteen years, ever since he accepted a job as a public defender with the Legal Aid Society of New York City. Combining his hands-on experience in the courtroom and his role as a teacher and scholar in the classroom, Medwed shows how prosecutors are told to lock up criminals and protect the rights of defendants. This double role creates an institutional "prosecution complex" that animates how district attorneys' offices treat potentially innocent defendants at all stages of the process-and that can cause prosecutors to aid in the conviction of the innocent. Ultimately,Prosecution Complexis not intended to portray prosecutors as rogue officials indifferent to the conviction of the innocent, but rather to explain why, while most prosecutors aim to do justice, only some hit that target consistently.
·"A fascinating ethical, legal, and psychological perspective… Gripping accounts… Simply must be read by all." - Brandon Garrett, Roy L. and Rosamund Woodruff Morgan Professor of Law, University of Virginia
·"Absorbing, sobering, and informative… This is a must read!" - Charles J. Ogletree, Founding and Executive Director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice
·"Shows us how to fix the problems." - John Grisham, New York Times best-selling author ofThe Litigators
·"Challenges us all to work towards changes." - Scott Renshaw,City Weekly
·"This book should be required reading by all prosecutors and by all law students." - Maurice Possley,Los Angeles Daily Journal
·"Illuminating." -Appeal and Habeasblog
·"Enlightening… tackles an issue many tend to shy away from." - Shelby Scoffield,Desert News
·"A scholarly conversation." -Boston Review
·"Highly recommended." -CHOICE
·"Even-handed, clear-headed." -Rutgers
"Appeals to both academics and anyone interested in gaining knowledge." -Criminal Justice Review
This innovative work builds on Huff and Killias' earlier publication (2008), but is broader and more thoroughly comparative in a number of important ways: (1) while focusing heavily on wrongful ...convictions, it places the subject of wrongful convictions in the broader contextual framework of miscarriages of justice and provides discussions of different types of miscarriages of justice that have not previously received much scholarly attention by criminologists; (2) it addresses, in much greater detail, the questions of how, and how often, wrongful convictions occur; (3) it provides more in-depth consideration of the role of forensic science in helping produce wrongful convictions and in helping free those who have been wrongfully convicted; (4) it offers new insights into the origins and current progress of the innocence movement, as well as the challenges that await the exonerated when they return to "free" society; (5) it assesses the impact of the use of alternatives to trials (especially plea bargains in the U.S. and summary proceedings and penal orders in Europe) in producing wrongful convictions; (6) it considers how the U.S. and Canada have responded to 9/11 and the increased threat of terrorism by enacting legislation and adopting policies that may exacerbate the problem of wrongful conviction; and (7) it provides in-depth considerations of two topics related to wrongful conviction: voluntary false confessions and convictions which, although technically not wrongful since they are based on law violations, represent another type of miscarriage of justice since they are due solely to unjust laws resulting from political repression.
The present paper aims to examine the „positive" conditions of the procedure of the right to damage repair in case of miscarriage of justice, i.e. those provided only in paragraph (1) of Article 538 ...of the Criminal Procedure Code. The paper begins with the delimitation of the area of analysis, after which it examines the conceptual reason of the analyzed procedure. Then, the conditions and subconditions found in paragraph (1) of Article 538 of the Criminal Procedure Code are treated by turns. Finally, after analyzing the concept of miscarriage of justice, we take a look at countries with similar legislation: the Republic of Moldova and Switzerland. At the same time, through this material, I am trying to demonstrate, by identifying the problems of interpretation of this paragraph, the fact that the action for damage repair provided in Chapter VI of the Criminal Procedure Code must comply, at least in the light of paragraph (1) of Article 538 far too restrictive conditions. The conditions which this paragraph involves turn the procedure of repair of the material damage or of the moral damage in case of miscarriage of justice into a non-feasible procedure with conditions which presuppose an insignificant stake, as compared to the reparation of the damage in case of the principal's liability for the deed of his agent, a liability much easier to prove by the damaged person.
This study investigates how judgments of guilt are influenced by factual errors in confessions that either amplify or downplay the severity of the crime. Participants read a confession statement and ...police report in which either the confession was consistent with the police report, the suspect admitted to a worse crime or the suspect admitted to a lesser crime. Mediation analyses showed that, compared to consistent confessions, both types of directional errors reduced judgments of guilt. Inconsistencies that made the suspect look better - but not those that made the suspect look worse -also increased judgments of guilt via a direct effect. Confessions that contain errors that appear to exaggerate the severity of the crime prompt no higher judgments of suspect guilt; however, errors in confessions that are perceived to downplay the severity of the crime can prompt an increased perception of suspect guilt compared to a consistent confession.
The fascinating story behind the innocence movement's quest for justice.Documentaries likeMaking a Murderer, the first season ofSerial, and the cause célèbre that was the West Memphis Three captured ...the attention of millions and focused the national discussion on wrongful convictions. This interest is warranted: more than 1,800 people have been set free in recent decades after being convicted of crimes they did not commit.In response to these exonerations, federal and state governments have passed laws to prevent such injustices; lawyers and police have changed their practices; and advocacy organizations have multiplied across the country. Together, these activities are often referred to as the "innocence movement."Exoneratedprovides the first in-depth look at the history of this movement through interviews with key leaders such as Barry Scheck and Rob Warden as well as archival and field research into the major cases that brought awareness to wrongful convictions in the United States.Robert Norris also examines how and why the innocence movement took hold. He argues that while the innocence movement did not begin as an organized campaign, scientific, legal, and cultural developments led to a widespread understanding that new technology and renewed investigative diligence could both catch the guilty and free the innocent.Exoneratedreveals the rich background story to this complex movement.
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