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发帖数: 6 | 1 大家看看这个STURY吧，
"The study also found that the most important factor leading to wrongful
conviction is eyewitness"。
10,000 INNOCENT PEOPLE CONVICTED EACH YEAR, STUDY ESTIMATES
COLUMBUS, Ohio -- About 10,000 people in the United States may be wrongfully
convicted of serious crimes each year, a new study suggests.
The results are based on a survey of 188 judges, prosecuting attorneys,
public defenders, sheriffs and police
chiefs in Ohio and 41 state attorneys general.
The study also found that the most important factor leading to wrongful
conviction is eyewitness
misidentification.
These findings are included in the new book Convicted But Innocent: Wrongful
Conviction and Public Policy (Sage Publications, 1996). The book was
written by C. Ronald Huff, director of the Criminal Justice Research Center
and the School of Public Policy and Management at Ohio State University;
Arye Rattner, professor of sociology at the University of Haifa, Israel; and
the late Edward Sagarin, who was a professor of sociology at City College
and CityUniversity of New York.
The survey asked respondents to estimate the prevalence of wrongful
conviction in the United States. About 72 percent estimated that less than 1
percent -- but more than zero -- of convictions were of innocent people.
Based on these results, Huff estimated conservatively that 0.5 percent of
the 1,993,880 convictions for index
crimes in 1990 were of innocent people. (Index crimes, which are reported by
the FBI, are murder and non-negligent
manslaughter, forcible rape, aggravated assault, robbery, burglary, larceny-
theft, motor vehicle theft and arson.)
That would result in an estimated 9,969 wrongful convictions.
Huff said he thinks that number is probably low. "Our sample was stacked in
favor of obtaining conservative estimates," Huff said. Most of those
surveyed -- including prosecutors and law enforcement officials -- "have
every reason to defend the system's accuracy and underestimate error," he
said. Only 9 percent of the respondents were public defenders, who might be
more critical of the criminal justice system.
Wrongful convictions undermine public confidence in the judicial system and
should be viewed with alarm, said Huff.
It troubles Huff that liberals seem more concerned about the issue than
conservatives. "Conservatives, too,
should be concerned because it's a public safety issue. The actual offender
remains free to victimize other citizens."
Huff cites the case of William Jackson, a Columbus man who spent five years
behind bars in the early 1980s for rapes later determined to have been
committed by a physician who was similar in appearance and had the same last
name.
"No one has ever known for sure how many women Dr. Jackson raped while the
wrong man was in prison. He had five more years to continue his serial rapes
."
What causes wrongful convictions? To find out, Huff and his co-authors
created a database of 205 wrongful convictions collected from a variety of
sources. After analyzing these cases, the researchers found that most
wrongful convictions resulted from a combination of errors. The main cause
in more than half of the cases -- 52.3 percent -- was eyewitness
misidentification.
That's understandable, Huff said. "The victims are not, at the time of the
crime, concentrating too much on the features of the assailant's face. For
example, they may be looking at the weapon. The trauma of the moment
interferes with their ability to recall details."
The next most common main cause was perjury by a witness, which contributed
to 11 percent of the convictions. Other problems included negligence by
criminal justice officials, coerced confessions, "frame ups" by guilty
parties, and general overzealousness by officers and prosecutors.
Overzealousness can lead authorities to make careless, if unintentional
errors, and cause some authorities to bend rules to get a known criminal off
the street. Failure to keep an open mind can cause errors that become
rubber-stamped by trusting colleagues as the case moves through the judicial
process, Huff says. By the time the errors are discovered, the trail to the
real offender is cold.
Public pressure to solve a case and the organizational culture of a police
or district attorney's office can affect the process. While most errors are
unintentional, the researchers say there are far too many incidences of
unethical and unprofessional behavior.
"Our research has convinced us that such unethical conduct in the United
States has not, in general, received appropriate attention, nor has it been
adequately punished," Huff said.
The authors said that can be remedied by training police, prosecutors and
judges in the causes and effects of wrongful convictions and removing
officials who knowingly manipulate evidence, commit perjury, bias witnesses,
or withhold evidence that could clear the accused. "Such persons should not
hold positions of public trust," Huff said. "The average person thinks the
prosecutor's job is to seek convictions. Under the law, the prosecutor's
actual job is to seek justice, whether or not it involves a conviction."
Huff, Rattner and Sagarin also call for:
Evaluating the performance of police officers, prosecutors and defense
attorneys involved in every case of wrongful conviction.
Prohibiting any identification procedures in the absence of the defendant's
attorney.
Properly compensating and reintegrating the wrongfully convicted. That doesn
't address situations in which innocent people have pleaded guilty to lesser
crimes to avoid jail time and huge legal and court fees. Recovery of such
fees is a pipe dream, according to the authors.
Replacing capital punishment with life sentences without parole. Since 1900,
at least 23 innocent people have been executed, Huff said, and more
innocent people have been spared, sometimes hours before their scheduled
execution.
"Surveys have shown that 85 percent of Americans favor capital punishment.
But if you change the phrasing of the question to: 'In light of the
possibility of error, would you favor execution or life in prison without
parole?' you find a dramatic drop in the number of people who favor capital
punishment.
Life imprisonment is actually a much less costly alternative and eliminates
the chance of a mistake. "If you
lock someone up for life, you take him off the streets, but you can later
release him and compensate him if you discover that you made an error. If
you kill him, you no longer have that option and you also send a message
that violent solutions -- executions -- are approved by the state."
Contact: C. Ronald Huff, (614) 292-4544; [email protected]/* */
Written by Tom Spring, (614) 292-8309
Jeff Grabmeier, Managing Editor ([email protected]/* */)
Earle Holland, Director, Science Communications ([email protected]/* */) |
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