The Virginia Times Dispatch is reporting that the U.S. Justice Department awarded $300,000 to the Urban Institute to study the rate of wrongful convictions. The Urban Institute studies social and economic issues to promote public policy and effective government. It is unclear what the study would reveal. They will arguably come up with statistical figures. But statistics are easy to manipulate, depending on your underlying hypothesis. It is also very hard to generalize how wrongful convictions occur. Various NGOs (Non Governmental Organizations) categorize wrongful convictions in general categories:
Eyewitness Misidentification
Unreliable or Limited Science
False Confessions
Forensic Science Fraud or Misconduct
Government Misconduct
Informants or Snitches
Bad Lawyering
(Source: Innocence Project Causes of Wrongful Convictions)
Categorizes are misleading as each case is extremely fact intensive. Even the categorize themselves blur. Depending on the intended goal - and eyewitness misidentification case - can easily be alleged to be a police misconduct case. In fact, all the cases we have seen, eyewitness misidentification was merely a pre-text to allege police misconduct. Nevertheless, we hope the study will analyze the details of the cases and not merely reach a general conclusion based on statistics. Its very easy to blame someone else for the cause of the wrongful conviction. We have seen that the Police, all to often, are the easy target to blame, given they are indemnified by municipalities in civil suits. We hope the Urban Institute contacts us to get the defense side of the issue so that the study can present a fair report. We won't hold our breath.
