Marvin Zalman

Officials' Estimates of the Incidence of “Actual Innocence” Convictions

Evidence indicates that the conviction and imprisonment of factually innocent persons occur with some regularity. Most research focuses on causes, but the incidence of wrongful convictions is an important scientific and policy issue, especially as no official body gathers data on miscarriages of justice. Two methods are available for discovering the incidence of wrongful conviction: (1) enumerating specific cases and (2) having criminal justice experts estimate its incidence. Counts or catalogues of wrongful conviction necessarily undercount its incidence and are subject to accuracy challenges. We surveyed Michigan criminal justice officials, replicating a recent Ohio survey, to obtain an expert estimate of the incidence of wrongful conviction. All groups combined estimated that wrongful convictions occurred at a rate of less than ½ percent in their own jurisdiction and at a rate of 1–3 percent in the United States. Defense lawyers estimate higher rates of wrongful conviction than judges, who estimate higher rates than police officials and prosecutors. These differences may be explained by professional socialization. An overall wrongful conviction estimate of ½ percent extrapolates to about 5,000 wrongful felony convictions and the imprisonment of more than 2,000 innocent persons in the United States every year.

Citizens' Attitudes Toward Wrongful Convictions

Perhaps no problem challenges the legitimacy of the criminal justice system more than the conviction of factually innocent individuals. Numerous highly publicized exonerations that occurred since 1989 have raised the visibility of wrongful conviction, eliciting the attention of both scholars and policy makers. Much of the research in this area focuses on the causes and incidence of the phenomenon. Despite the growing body of research, however, there has been no examination of how citizens view this problem. Using data from a statewide survey of Michigan residents, the present study aims to fill that gap in the literature by reporting on citizens’ attitudes regarding the issue of wrongful conviction. Overall, the results of this exploratory study suggest that respondents not only recognize the incidence of wrongful conviction but also believe that such errors occur with some regularity. Further results show that respondents believe wrongful convictions occur frequently enough to justify major criminal justice system reform. Attitudes varied significantly across demographic groups as well. Additional findings and policy implications are discussed.

Criminal Justice System Reform and Wrongful Conviction A Research Agenda

This article describes the nature and importance of wrongful conviction as a criminal justice policy issue, the development of an innocence movement to litigate on behalf of potential exonerees and to promote policy issues, the innocence movement’s policy and research agenda, and the very small amount of criminal justice research on the issue in comparison to legal and psychological inquiry. A research agenda for criminal justice policy scholars is proposed to explore the innocence movement and its research agenda. Research models from political science and sociology regarding the study of public policy, social movements, and interest groups offer themes and methods that would allow criminal justice researchers to expand their understanding of the criminal justice system’s capacity for reform. Network analysis and the diffusion of innovation research are suggested as approaches to examine the context and spread of innocence reforms.

How Justice System Officials View Wrongful Convictions

The wrongful conviction of factually innocent people is a growing concern within the United States. Reforms generated by this concern are predicated in part on the views of justice system participants. The authors surveyed judges, police officials, prosecutors, and defense lawyers in Michigan regarding their views of why wrongful convictions occur. The findings reveal that all groups acknowledge error and inaccuracy among justice system participants. In general, police and prosecutors believe that error levels are lowest, judges estimate higher error levels, and defense attorneys rank errors higher than other respondents. A majority of police, prosecutors, and judges believe that wrongful convictions do not occur with sufficient frequency to warrant system reforms, whereas a majority of defense attorneys believe that procedural changes are warranted. The findings reveal distinct occupational perspectives in respondents’ attitudes concerning wrongful conviction.

The Search for Criminal Justice Theory: Reflections on Kraska’s Theorizing Criminal Justice

This essay discusses the role of theory, law, and legal institutions in criminal justice teaching and research. It combines personal reflections of the author’s experiences from the early days of academic criminal justice with a review and critique of Kraska’s Theorizing Criminal Justice: Eight Essential Orientations (Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press, 2004). Kraska recapitulates a variety of theories prominent in the early days of criminal justice with others that significantly advance theoretical discourse in criminal justice. His text should stimulate the advance of criminal justice as a discipline by establishing the idea that a number of theoretical orientations are essential for understanding the norms and behaviors of criminal justice agents and agencies. Kraska’s (2004) schema, his positioning of law, and his fit of law and legal studies in criminal justice and criminal justice education are critiqued and comments are offered on the role of law and legal institutions in criminal justice education.

Physician-assisted suicide and the politics of problem definition

In the United States the issue of physician-assisted suicide (PAS) first reached the governmental agenda in the state of Michigan. This occurred because of the personal crusade of Dr Jack Kevorkian, a retired pathologist, to legalize PAS. In June 1990 Kevorkian initiated his crusade by assisting Janet Adkins, who suffered from Alzheimers disease, to commit suicide. The bizarre nature of the suicide—conducted in the back end of Kevorkians Volkswagen van, and using a suicide machine to deliver a lethal dose of a drug, created an international media sensation. The efforts of prosecutors to stop Kevorkian were frustrated because Michigan, unlike most other states, did not have a law prohibiting assisted suicide. In response to the controversy, the Michigan state legislature enacted a temporary ban on assisted suicide and created the Michigan Commission on Death and Dying, charging it with developing legislative recommendations on aid-in-dying. The Commission, comprising 22 groups, is of historical interest because it was one of the first public bodies in the United States to debate the issue of PAS. The debate that occurred on the Commission illustrates three different definitions of physician-assisted suicide deriving from beliefs rooted in political ideology, moral intuitions and religious belief. It also illustrates that the politics of PAS for some time is likely to involve conflict over different problem definitions.

Paging Dr. Death: The political theater of assisted suicide in Michigan

Dr. Jack Kevorkian, a retired pathologist from Royal Oak, Michigan, created an instant sensation on June 4, 1990, when he assisted Janet Adkins in committing suicide by lethal injection. Kevorkians activities, and the ineffectual efforts of public officials to stop him, generated social conflict, issue expansion, and political theater. In this case, political theater involved acts of civil disobedience that resulted in arrests, three high-profile criminal trials, and three subsequent acquittals. As the participants in the conflict tried to generate public support for their respective positions, the debate degenerated into name-calling, hyperbole, and rights talk. This kind of public discourse limits the potential for self-governance and leads to reliance on the courts or other methods of conflict resolution.

Wrongful conviction and criminal justice reform : making justice

Introduction, Jon B. Gould PART I. PRELUDE: APPROACHES TO INNOCENCE REFORM 1. An Introduction to Innocence Reform, Julia Carrano & Marvin Zalman 2. The Public Policy Process and Innocence Reform, Marvin Zalman & Nancy Marion 3. The Role of the Media & Public Opinion on Innocence Reform: Past and Future, Rob Warden 4. An Etiology of Wrongful Convictions: Error, Safety, and Forward-Looking Accountability in Criminal Justice, James M. Doyle 5. Innocent Defendants: Divergent Case Outcomes and What They Teach Us, Jon B. Gould, Julia Carrano, Richard A. Leo, & Katie Hail-Jares PART II. INSTITUTIONS OF INNOCENCE REFORM 6. The Innocence Movement, the Innocence Network, and Policy Reform, Keith Findley & Larry Golden 7. Exoneree Initiatives and Innocence Reform: Witness to Innocence, Ronald Keine PART III. CHANGING THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM: Police Investigation and Wrongful Convictions 8. Policies, Procedures and the Police: An Assessment of Wrongful Conviction Risk in Nebraska, Rebecca K. Murray, Laurel Gegner & Justin Pelton 9. The Detective and Wrongful Conviction, Marvin Zalman Forensic Sciences Reform Agenda 10. The Innocence Crisis and Forensic Science Reform, Simon A. Cole Prosecution Reactions to Innocence 11. Conviction Integrity Units: Toward Prosecutorial Self-Regulation?, Evelyn L. Malave & Yotom Barkai Defense Counsel 12. Public Defense in an Age of Innocence: The Innocence Paradigm and the Challenges of Representing the Accused, Alissa Pollitz Worden, Andrew Lucas Blaize Davies & Elizabeth K. Brown New Models of Adjudication and Appeal 13. Investigative Procedure and Post-Conviction Review: Resetting Incentives to Separate the Innocent from the Guilty, Samuel R. Gross New Models for Establishing Innocence Post-Conviction 14. The North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission: Catching Cases that Fall Through the Cracks, Christine C. Mumma Death Penalty Directions 15. Deadly Errors and Salutary Reforms: The Kill That Cures?, James R. Acker & Rose Bellandi Exoneree Compensation 16. Exoneree Compensation: Current Policies and Future Outlook, Robert J. Norris Part IV. Summation Epilogue: The Prospects for Innocence Reform, Marvin Zalman & Julia Carrano

Wayne County Jail Inmates v. Wayne County Sheriff: The Anatomy of a Lawsuit

In January 1971, six jail inmates in Wayne County, Michigan’ filed suit against the sheriff, the jail administrator, the county’commissioners, and the State Department of Corrections, for relief from conditions that were alleged to be violations of the state and federal constitutions, as well as of local housing ordinances. During the trial that followed, the Department of Corrections was dropped as a party and the county treasurer was added. Plaintiffs prevailed on trial2 and won a resounding victory in the Michigan Supreme Court.3 Nevertheless, the original suit has not terminated but is still, more than 20 years after the filing, very much alive.

The future of criminal justice administration and its impact on civil liberties

Abstract Criminal justice agencies have the means to increase their efficiency and to bring a larger proportion of the population within their net of surveillance and control. In the next twenty or forty years this form of control over citizens will increase. Simultaneously, growing bureaucratic and legal control mechanisms will prevent such control from becoming tyrannous. Over a longer period, given the possibility of a “no-growth” economy and a decline in the social and economic system that supports traditional civil liberties, there is a threat that an efficient criminal justice system would support tyrannous government. In the future tyranny can be avoided by the conscious policy of limiting the full potential of control over citizens by the criminal justice system.