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Introduction
This guide is part of a series for students in Prof. Jackie McMurtrie's Innocence Project Northwest Clinic. Companion guides include:
- 50-State Law Surveys
- Citing Unusual Trial Sources
- Criminal Records
- Finding People & Public Records
- Forensics
- Miscellaneous Topics
Access to HeinOnline and LegalTrac is UW restricted. LexisNexis and Westlaw access is limited to individuals with their own IDs or passwords.
Finding Articles
Finding articles from law reviews, legal journals, and related periodicals is relatively easy. Choose a source that you are comfortable with (HeinOnline, Lexis Advance, Westlaw) and then search by words and phrases you associate with a topic.
You can also search:
Consider using one of the following subject headings:
- DNA Testing
- Evidence, Scientific
- False Imprisonment
- Innocence (Psychology)
- Post-Conviction Remedies
- Wrongful Convictions (Law)
Finding Books
The Law Library has many books on this topic. The following items are just some of the titles that are available. The list is in order by title. These items are located in the Classified Stacks unless otherwise indicated.
Links lead to Law Library catalog records, many of which include titles of chapters in the books.
Items that do not include call numbers are available on the Internet or as e-books.
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Achieving Justice: Freeing the Innocent, Convicting the Guilty by Call Number: Classified Stacks (KF9756 .A82 2006)Publication Date: 2006 -
Actual Innocence: Five Days to Execution and Other Dispatches from the Wrongly Convicted by Call Number: Good Reads (KF9756 .D89 2000)Publication Date: 2000"In the last ten years, DNA testing has uncovered stone-cold proof that sixty-five completely innocent people have been sent to prison and death row. But even in cases where there is physical evidence, the criminal justice system frees prisoners only after a torturous legal process. Incredibly, according to many trial judges, "actual innocence" is not grounds for release from prison." "In Actual Innocence, Scheck, Neufeld, and Dwyer relate the harrowing stories of ten innocent men - convicted by sloppy police work, corrupt prosecutors, jailhouse snitches, mistaken eyewitnesses, and other all-too-common flaws of the trial system - and tell of the heroic efforts to free them." -
Actual Innocence: When Justice Goes Wrong and How to Make It Right by Call Number: Good Reads (KF9756 .D98 2001)Publication Date: 2001Shines a spotlight on the myriad errors that can send the wrong person to jail-and reiterates the argument prosecutors make when labeling DNA a powerful tool of criminal justice. -
Controversies in Innocence Cases in America by Call Number: Classified Stacks (KF9756 .C66 2014)Publication Date: 2014Brings together leading experts on the investigation, litigation, and scholarly analysis of innocence cases in America, from legal, political and ethical perspectives. The contributors, many of whom work on these cases daily, investigate contemporary issues presented by innocence cases and the exoneration movement as a whole. These issues include the challenges faced by the movement, causes of wrongful convictions, problems associated with investigating, proving, and defining "innocence," and theories of reform. -
Convicting the Innocent: Where Criminal Prosecutions Go Wrong by Call Number: Classified Stacks (KF9756 .G37 2011)Publication Date: 2011On January 20, 1984, Earl Washington-defended for all of forty minutes by a lawyer who had never tried a death penalty case-was found guilty of rape and murder in the state of Virginia and sentenced to death. After nine years on death row, DNA testing cast doubt on his conviction and saved his life. However, he spent another eight years in prison before more sophisticated DNA technology proved his innocence and convicted the guilty man. DNA exonerations have shattered confidence in the criminal justice system by exposing how often we have convicted the innocent and let the guilty walk free. In this unsettling in-depth analysis, Brandon Garrett examines what went wrong in the cases of the first 250 wrongfully convicted people to be exonerated by DNA testing. -
Examining Wrongful Convictions; Stepping Back, Moving Forward by Call Number: Classified Stacks (KF9756 .E93 2014)Publication Date: 2014Expert scholars examine the underlying individual, systemic, and social or structural conditions that may help precipitate and sustain wrongful convictions. -
False Justice: Eight Myths That Convict the Innocent by Call Number: Classified Stacks (KF9756 .P47 2010)Publication Date: 2011The flaws in America's execution of justice lead to an unacceptable number of wrongful criminal convictions. -
Forensics under Fire: Are Bad Science and Dueling Experts Corrupting Criminal Justice? by Call Number: e-bookPublication Date: 2008Popular television dramas do not represent the way most homicide cases in the United States are actually handled. Crime scenes are not always protected from contamination; physical evidence is often packaged improperly, lost, or left unaccounted for; forensic experts are not always consulted; and mistakes and omissions on the autopsy table frequently cut investigations short or send detectives down the wrong investigative path. -
Innocent: Inside Wrongful Conviction Cases by Call Number: Classified Stacks (KF9756 .C49 2004)Publication Date: 2004documents 42 criminal cases to find evidence of shocking miscarriages of justice, especially in murder cases. Based upon interviews with more than 200 people and reviews of hundreds internal case files, court records, smoking-gun memoranda, and other documents, Scott Christianson gets inside the legal cases, revealing the mistakes, abuses, and underlying factors that led to miscarriages of justice, while also describing how determined prisoners, post-conviction attorneys, advocates, and journalists struggle against tremendous odds to try to win their exoneration. -
Lazarus and the Hurricane: The Freeing of Rubin "Hurricane" Carter by Call Number: Available via Summit.Publication Date: 2000A huge public outcry followed the publication of Carter's memoir The Sixteenth Round in 1974, culminating in a retrial, which was a virtual reenactment of the original travesty, with Carter receiving the same triple-life sentence. -
The Supreme Court on Trial: How the American Justice System Sacrifices Innocent Defendants by Call Number: Classified Stacks (KF9756 .T48 2008)Publication Date: 2008Traces the history of jury trials since the American Founding. In the mid-twentieth century, when it became evident that racism and other forms of discrimination were corrupting the system, the Warren Court established procedure as the most important element of criminal justice. As a result, police, prosecutors, and judges have become more concerned about following rules than about ensuring that the defendant is indeed guilty as charged. Recent cases of prisoners convicted of crimes they didn't commit demonstrate that such procedural justice cannot substitute for substantive justice. -
The Wrong Men: America's Epidemic of Wrongful Death Row Convictions by Call Number: Classified Stacks (HV8698 .C64 2003)Publication Date: 2003This book chronicles over one hundred cases where journalism students, grassroots organizations, families, and pro bono lawyers--armed with DNA evidence and other instruments of justice--have defeated that demon. Cohen reveals how eyewitness error, jailhouse snitch testimony, racism, junk science, prosecutorial misconduct, and incompetent counsel have often populated America's death row with the wrong men. -
Wrongful Conviction: Law, Science, and Policy by Call Number: Classified Stacks (KF9756 .A25 2011)Publication Date: 2011Includes the incidence, correlates, causes, and consequences of wrongful convictions, as well as recommended reforms. The materials are organized in the form of a casebook, comprising edited judicial decisions and complementary materials from law, psychology, criminal justice, and related disciplines. -
Prosecution Complex: America's Race to Convict and Its Impact on the Innocent by Call Number: e-bookPublication Date: 2013American prosecutors are asked to play two roles within the criminal justice system: they are supposed to be ministers of justice whose only goals are to ensure fair trials--and they are also advocates of the government whose success rates are measured by how many convictions they get. Because of this second role, sometimes prosecutors suppress evidence in order to establish a defendant's guilt and safeguard that conviction over time. Shows how prosecutors are told to lock up criminals and protect the rights of defendants. This double role creates an institutional "prosecution complex" that animates how district attorneys' offices treat potentially innocent defendants at all stages of the process--and that can cause prosecutors to aid in the conviction of the innocent. -
Wrongful Death Sentences: Rethinking Justice in Capital Cases by Call Number: Reference Area (KF9227.C2 B87 2010)Publication Date: 2010What acts truly deserve the death penalty? And how equitably do we apply this ultimate punishment? Cathleen Burnett explores wrongful capital sentencing to offer a sober yet searing critique of the criminal justice procedures and legal criteria involved.
You can search for other books and materials in library catalogs using one or more of the following subject headings:
- DNA fingerprinting
- Evidence, Criminal
- Evidence, Expert
- Judicial error
- Post-conviction remedies
- Prosecutorial misconduct
Finding Government Reports
Reports from federal and state government agencies often provide policy and legal arguments on the topic of wrongful convictions.
In addition to the works cited below, consider searching the following websites:
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Congressional Research Service ReportsCRS, a division of the Library of Congress, provides high-quality research and analysis for members of Congress. The reports created by CRS staff are succinct and well-researched.
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Monthly Catalog of U.S. Government Publications, 1895-1976Comprehensive index to historical information published by the U.S. federal government, 1895-1976.
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National Criminal Justice Reference Service [U.S. Dep't of Justice]Describes more than 220,000 government reports and articles.
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ProQuest CongressionalIndexes Congressional hearings and reports. Relevant subject headings include:
* Capital Punishment
* DNA
* Forensic Medicine
* Habeas Corpus
Examples of government reports include:
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DNA for the Defense Bar by Publication Date: 2012Designed specifically for criminal defense attorneys. Covers the science of DNA, DNA evidence, laboratory issues, pretrial preparation, trial issues, cold case hits, and proactive use of DNA. -
DNA Testing in Criminal Justice: Background, Current Law, Grants, and Issues byCall Number: Available on HeinOnlinePublication Date: 2012A 45-page report covering DNA profiles, collection of DNA from arrestees and offenders, preservation of biological evidence, and federal laws.
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Post-Conviction DNA Testing and Wrongful Conviction by Publication Date: 2012 -
Predicting Erroneous Convictions: A Social Science Approach to Miscarriages of Justice by Publication Date: 2012
Bibliographies
Using bibliographies is a way to fast-track your research. Identify useful items then search the library catalog to find out if the items are available at your local library.
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DNA Shall Prevail: Postconviction DNA Evidence: An Annotated BibliographyPublished in vol. 25, Legal Reference Services Quarterly, pages 39-58 (2006).
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DNA Evidence: Brave New World, Same Old Problems [LLRX]An annotated bibliography of books, chapters in books, and articles covering "the law and science of genetic evidence at the pre-conviction stage. Thus, it focuses on the role of DNA in identification, investigation and prosecution of crime, social and privacy issues, and to some degree exculpation or evidence of third party culpability."
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Post-Conviction Representation, Pro Se Practice and Access to the Courts [LLRX]Identifies important federal and state court opinions, books and book chapters, scholarly articles, American Law Reports annotations, and selected other resources.
Websites
The following websites provide useful information on this topic. Other websites relevant to discrete topics covered elsewhere in this guide are highlighted with similar sources.
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Criminal Law Resources: DNA Post-Conviction Resources [LLRX]Published in Sept. 2008, this site describes articles, bibliographies, laws, reports, secondary sources, standards, and other resources.
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Innocence and the Death Penalty [Death Penalty Information Center]Contains statistics and other information about exonerated death row inmates from 1973 to the present.
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The Innocence ProjectFounded in 1992 by attorneys Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld. Describes exoneration cases won by the Project and interviews with the exonerees.
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National Association of Criminal Defense LawyersOffers a wealth of information, including:
* a long list of Criminal Defense topics, such as Crime Labs/Forensics Reform, DNA and Post-Conviction Tests, and Post-Conviction Projects
* the Post-Conviction Innocence Claims Toolbox
* the Proportionality Litigation Project with state constitutional and statutory limits on long terms of imprisonment -
National Registry of Exonerations [Univ. of Michigan Law School]Provides detailed information about "every known exoneration in the United States since 1989."