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Wrongly Convicted: Perspectives on Failed Justice edited by Saundra D. Westervelt and John A. Humphrey. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. 2001.
Faith in North American justice systems is predicated in large part on the basic belief that the guilty will be convicted and punished, while those who are not guilty will be proved innocent and set free. This fundamental assumption, however, fails to recognize the critical fact that justice systems wrongly convict thousands of innocent persons every year. In their book Wrongly Convicted: Perspectives on Failed Justice, editors Saundra Westervelt and John Humphrey have, for the first time, been able to address this and many of the other relevant issues surrounding wrongful conviction in North America. They have assembled a diverse group of writers to tackle wrongful conviction as it becomes increasingly more relevant to criminology and criminal justice research and increasingly more prominent in the public consciousness.
The editors have divided the book into four sections. Part 1 focuses on the causes of wrongful conviction and is divided into four chapters. Chapter 1 focuses on the broad category of "misinformation" as a cause of wrongful conviction. "Misinformation," in this context, refers to false testimony, given intentionally or unintentionally, that causes an accused to be wrongly convicted. Authors George Castelle and Elizabeth Loftus first provide general commentary on misinformation and then highlight problematic areas, such as eye-witness identification and falsified testimony, with some useful case examples. In chapter 2, author Richard Leo examines false confessions made by accused persons, what provokes them, and what can be done to prevent their occurrence. In chapter 3, Clifford Zimmerman writes about the role of informants in wrongful convictions. He argues that they are one of the main causes of wrongful conviction and provides numerous case examples that justify his position. In the final chapter of Part 1, Diane Martin studies the role of police in wrongful convictions, assessing the scope of the problem, its institutional context, and specific police practices that lead to its occurrence.
Part 2 of the book examines the social characteristics of the wrongly convicted and is divided into two chapters. Chapter 5 asks, Who are the wrongly convicted on death row? Author William Holmes provides and then analyses a detailed statistical breakdown of...