Abstract
When a person who is in fact guilty is acquitted, or one who is in fact innocent is tried and convicted.2 In both, the criminal justice system yields the wrong result, and in doing so, fails to meet its overarching goal—convicting offenders if and only if they are factually guilty of a crime.3 What really goes wrong when a person is wrongfully convicted? One way to answer this question is to look at known cases in which innocent individuals were convicted. The evidence from reported exonerations suggests that eyewitness misidentifications, perjury, and false confessions have all played an important role in securing wrongful convictions.4 The problem with this ex post approach is that the same procedural rules that led to these wrongful convictions have also produced the correct result in many other cases.5 In order to get a more complete understanding of the types of evidentiary failures that produce incorrect outcomes, it is necessary to have a testable theory that makes accurate predictions of when innocent individuals are likely to be convicted. This is a relatively difficult endeavor, given numerous obstacles to identifying wrongful convictions and, thus, of gathering data about them.
Recommended Citation
Utset, Manuel A.
(2008)
"Telling Differences: Observational
Equivalence and Wrongful Convictions,"
Utah Law Review: Vol. 2008:
No.
1, Article 4.
Available at:
https://dc.law.utah.edu/ulr/vol2008/iss1/4