On January 20, 1984, Earl Washington—defended for all of forty minutes by a lawyer who had never tried a death penalty case—was found guilty of rape and murder in the state of Virginia and sentenced to death. After nine years on death row, DNA testing cast doubt on his conviction and saved his life. However, he spent another eight years in prison before more sophisticated DNA technology proved his innocence and convicted the guilty man.
DNA exonerations have shattered confidence in the criminal justice system by exposing how often we have convicted the innocent and let the guilty walk free. In this unsettling in-depth analysis, Brandon Garrett examines what went wrong in the cases of the first 250 wrongfully convicted people to be exonerated by DNA testing.
Based on trial transcripts, Garrett’s investigation into the causes of wrongful convictions reveals larger patterns of incompetence, abuse, and error. Evidence corrupted by suggestive eyewitness procedures, coercive interrogations, unsound and unreliable forensics, shoddy investigative practices, cognitive bias, and poor lawyering illustrates the weaknesses built into our current criminal justice system. Garrett proposes practical reforms that rely more on documented, recorded, and audited evidence, and less on fallible human memory.
Very few crimes committed in the United States involve biological evidence that can be tested using DNA. How many unjust convictions are there that we will never discover? Convicting the Innocent makes a powerful case for systemic reforms to improve the accuracy of all criminal cases.
Every year hundreds of defendants are convicted on little more than the say-so of a fellow citizen. Although psychologists have suspected for decades that an eyewitness can be highly unreliable, new evidence leaves no doubt that juries vastly overestimate the credibility of eyewitness accounts. It is a problem that the courts have yet to solve or face squarely.
In Eyewitness Testimony, Elizabeth Loftus makes the psychological case against the eyewitness. Beginning with the basics of eyewitness fallibility, such as poor viewing conditions, brief exposure, and stress, Loftus moves to more subtle factors, such as expectations, biases, and personal stereotypes, all of which can intervene to create erroneous reports. Loftus also shows that eyewitness memory is chronically inaccurate in surprising ways. An ingenious series of experiments reveals that memory can be radically altered by the way an eyewitness is questioned after the fact. New memories can be implanted and old ones unconsciously altered under interrogation.
These results have important implications for court reform, police interrogation methods, defense strategy, and many other aspects of criminal and civil procedure. Eyewitness Testimony is a powerful book that should be required reading for trial lawyers, social psychologists, and anyone who considers the chilling prospect of confronting an eyewitness accusation in a court of law.
Sana Loue explores the concepts of legal and epidemiological causation, the use of epidemiological data based on populations to determine causation in an individual case, and the use of epidemiological evidence in litigation, including the reliance on experts and expert witnesses.
Loue provides a guide for the attorney with little or no background in epidemiological theory and for the epidemiologist contemplating a new role as an expert witness. She assumes of her readers a working knowledge of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and the Federal Rules of Evidence.
Discussing the epidemiologist as expert witness, Loue covers the nature of that testimony, the purpose of the testimony, and the qualifications necessary to be regarded as an expert witness. She examines various legal theories of causation, primarily in the context of product liability and toxic tort, and addresses epidemiological principles and methods used in the process of causal inference.
Loue also focuses on legal mechanisms used to assess causation. Her concern here is with depositions and testimony and the preparation of epidemiology experts. She concludes her study by comparing the legal and epidemiological concepts of causation, using actual legal cases as examples.
Throughout the text, Loue incorporates excerpts from depositions, interrogatories, and trial testimony to provide concrete examples. She also sets up an appendix to provide nonattorney readers with an overview of the legal system. Ultimately, her goal is to foster a greater understanding between law and epidemiology.
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