Abstract
Concern over wrongful convictions has led to an “innocence movement” that has managed to bridge ideological divides, rouse people to action, and achieve unprecedented success in reforming the operation of the death penalty. In this short Article, written as part of the symposium “Beyond Biology: Wrongful Convictions in a Post-DNA World,” I consider the fraught terms of the debate about the content of the category of wrongful convictions. Delineating the category raises two controversial issues: who should be considered wrongly convicted, and how to characterize the governmental misconduct that leads to these miscarriages of justice. This Article considers whether it remains helpful to organize our thinking about injustice in capital cases around the notion of wrongful convictions. I suggest that though we should celebrate and learn from the successes of the wrongful convictions movement, we need to look beyond innocence and create outrage at a broader spectrum of injustice. I also explore a conundrum about framing police and prosecutorial misconduct. Although it is often essential to name and condemn bad faith behavior by police and prosecutors, it may also be counterproductive in many instances. We should explore why certain ways of framing injustice have so much power, and what the ramifications are for the shape of the reform movement and the future of capital punishment. The challenge ahead is to find ways to communicate concern for more than just the innocent, and to communicate the dangers of systemic governmental misconduct that defies traditional definitions of blameworthiness.
Recommended Citation
Bandes, Susan S.
(2008)
"Framing Wrongful Convictions,"
Utah Law Review: Vol. 2008:
No.
1, Article 2.
Available at:
https://dc.law.utah.edu/ulr/vol2008/iss1/2