Week 1 - Introduction to the Unit

Question 1

What are the group of lawyers and volunteers to seek to prove wrongful convictions innocent?

Answer 1

The innocence project

Question 2

How many exonerations have the innocence project made?

Answer 2

367

Question 3

What are the exonerated cases of the innocence projects mostly based on?

Answer 3

DNA evidence

Question 4

What percentage of perpetrators have been caught by the innocence project?

Answer 4

Around 50% of cases

Question 5

What percentage of exonerations were black or hispanic with the innocence project?

Answer 5

Approx. 70%

Question 6

What was the average time spent in prison for those exonerated by the innocence project?

Answer 6

Average of 14 years

Question 7

How many people were released from death row by the innocence project?

Answer 7

21

Question 8

What becomes apparent when looking at the innocence project?

Answer 8

Innocent people are being sent to jail and bad guys are not being caught.

Question 9

What’s an issue with waiting a lengthy amount of time before realising there has been a wrongful conviction?

Answer 9

Most of the time it leaves it too late to catch the bad guys.

Question 10

When you read literature about the innocent project, we often talk about BIG numbers. What do we need to bear in mind?

Answer 10

Big numbers don’t tell the whole story. Each one is an individual who lost a proportion of their life due to a miscarriage of justice. Huge social issue.

Question 11

Is DNA a safe guard?

Answer 11

Not really.

Question 12

Why is DNA not a safeguard? “objective science vs. interpretative art”. (5)

Answer 12

• nature of cases (DNA not available for most cases)
• doesn’t tell us as much as we think
• comparing a bunch of samples to a number of suspects (false positives)
• degraded, contaminated evidence
• accepted more often by jurors

Question 13

Why do DNA errors, what are the key contributing factors?

Answer 13

• Eyewitness misidentification
• false admissions/confessions
• problems with forensic science
• poor legal representation

Question 14

What percentage of cases use eyewitness identification’s roughly?

Answer 14

65-70% of exonerations have been due to this

Question 15

Why are false identifications so problematic?

Answer 15

They are very persuasive evidence

Question 16

What are some problems with scientific techniques in imprisonment? (4)

Answer 16

• Validity issues
• problems communicating and interpreting evidence
• poor/unethical conduct (rare)
• genuine error/cognitive biases (maybe less rare)

Question 17

What is problems communicating and interpreting evidence often called?

Answer 17

white coat syndrome (deafness to authority), accept evidence in good faith.

Question 18

What are some factors in poor legal representation which contribute to false imprisonment? (4)

Answer 18

• failed to contact experts for opinion
• failed to investigate alibi
• did not attend hearings
• falling asleep in court

Question 19

Describe the case of Jimmy Ray Bromgard (6)

Answer 19

• convicted of rape
• sentenced to 40 years
• exonerated 14 and a half years later
• evidence of matching hair (testified that there was less than 1/10,000 chance this was not his, completely false claim)
• eyewitness ID (but victim not sure)
• terrible defence counsel (didn’t file any appeals, etc)

Question 20

Ultimately, what do cases boil down to?

Answer 20

human decision making, memory, human error

Question 21

Why study psychology and law? (2)

Answer 21

• to understand causes of wrongful imprisonment

- to improve procedures in the legal system

Question 22

This course is NOT:

Answer 22

1. clinically focused

2. legally focused

Question 23

This course is:

Answer 23

focused on scientific psychological research.