I was interested in attending this event for embracing intellectual growth and the academic life of the university category because of my previous involvement with the We the People program in high school. We the People is a competition that was created by the U.S. Senate in an effort to promote civic education. The competition is split amongst six units that specialize in a particular area. My unit was unit one, tasked with learning about what history and philosophy influenced the Framers. One question that we received at Nationals was on defining when habeas corpus places an unreasonable burden on the government. This idea sparked my interest in wrongful convictions due to legislation like AEDPA that can limit a detainee’s ability to file habeas petitions. The effects of such legislation have led to a number of innocent people serving sentences they did nothing to deserve, and in the most extreme cases, paying these sentences with their life. With all of this in mind, I was eager to learn more on the subject.

 

Dr. Scherr began the presentation by introducing some statistics regarding the frequency of wrongful convictions. To date, there have been 2,585 wrongful convictions in the U.S. since 1989 and those who are wrongfully convicted spend an average of 10 years in prison before exoneration. He then broke down the six biggest risk factors for being wrongfully convicted. These included: false confessions, faulty forensic science, mistaken eyewitness identification, official misconduct and prosecutor issues, inadequate legal defense, and perjury. Within each of these six topics, Dr. Scherr explained how these could affect criminal proceedings with examples of people who were wrongfully imprisoned and later acquitted because of these issues. One such example is the case of Marty Tankleff who came home to find his parents murdered. When questioned by the police, the investigators lied to him and said that Marty’s father had woken up from a coma and claimed that Marty did it. They then told him that his DNA was all over the scene which should be self-evident considering that the crime scene was his kitchen. After the investigators claimed that they knew he did it, Marty broke down and admitted to the crime, but immediately recanted his statement. It was too late for Marty as he spent 19 years in prison before DNA evidence freed him. Dr. Scherr ended the discussion by talking about what could be done to decrease the number of wrongful convictions in the U.S. He held that eyewitness identification reforms, increased access to resources for public defenders, holding prosecutors accountable for misconduct, the documentation of interrogations to ensure there is no misconduct, and the understanding that forensic science bias can sway results can all lead to less mistaken convictions within our judicial system.

 

This experience was interesting for me because it shed some light on a topic I had never gone into detail about. We hear of wrongful convictions from time to time but we hardly think that it could be as common as it is. Even when we do think of these wrongful convictions, we do not usually think of the misconduct that could have led to these convictions. It is because of this, that I think the experience was great for me. Having real stories to use as case studies really allows you to see how, when put into this situation yourself, you begin to realize that anyone could be a victim of a wrongful conviction. As someone who is interested in the study and practice of law, this discussion has reminded me of the issue and proves that some of the prescribed changes need to be made with hopes to one day have no more wrongful convictions.