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The current study deconstructed 50 wrongful convictions and other criminal investigative failures in order to identify the major causal factors, their characteristics and interrelationships, and the systemic nature of the overall failure. The discussion focuses on the central role played by confirmation bias and other thinking errors.
Nov 28, 2023 · Wrongful conviction, or the conviction of a person for a crime that they did not commit, is one of the greatest travesties of the criminal justice system. As of 2023, The National Registry of Exonerations has recorded over 3,000 cases of wrongful convictions in the United States.[1] Organizations such as The Innocence Project work to free the innocent and prevent these convictions, so far ...
Jul 24, 2019 · Criminal Justice. How Confirmation Bias Sends Innocent People to Prison A new study of wrongful convictions shows the problem goes beyond misconduct by police and prosecutors.
CASE #1 CASE #2. Victim’s mother’s ex-boyfriend (Levon Brooks) Victim’s mother’s boyfriend (Kennedy Brewer) convicted and sentenced to life in prison convicted and sentenced to death. Post-conviction DNA testing eventually identified the true perpetrator who confessed to both murders and these innocent men were exonerated.
• Many of the convictions of Black murder exonerees were influenced by racial discrimination, from unconscious bias and institutional discrimination to explicit racism. • Most innocent defendants who are convicted of crimes are not exonerated. Judging from the rate of false conviction among death sentences, at least several thousand
Confirmation bias in police investigation has been studied. Po-lice officers often rate discomfirming or exonerating evidence as less reliable or credible, and prefer guilt confirming evidence that supports their initial hypotheses. 15. This is another example of sub-jectivity or uncertainty in the process allowing bias to come in.
Confirmation bias is a tendency to selectively search for and emphasize information that is consistent with a preferred hypothesis, whereas opposing information is ignored or downgraded. This thesis examines the role of confirmation bias in criminal cases, primarily focusing on the Swedish legal setting. It also examines possible debiasing ...
