Student attitudes toward wrongful conviction.

• Author: Ricciardelli, Rosemary
• Position: Canada

Introduction

A criminal justice education is designed to teach critical thinking and ethical behaviour and to prepare students for work in a variety of fields in the criminal justice system (Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences 2005). As many students majoring in criminal justice are planning on entering the fields of policing, law, or corrections (Krimmel and Tartaro 1999), these career choices suggest that many criminal justice students will be exposed to the factors that contribute to wrongful conviction or come into direct contact with cases of wrongful conviction. In addition, criminal justice agencies are currently recruiting more individuals with a college and/or university education (Krimmel and Tartaro 1999; Roberg and Bonn 2004). The attitudes these students develop in the course of their education have the potential to carry over to the criminal justice workforce. Therefore, the attitudes of these students toward wrongful conviction--and the question of whether or not these attitudes differ from those of other students--is a topic worthy of investigation.

Previous research has investigated the attitudes of criminal justice majors in a variety of domains (Farnsworth, Longmire, and West 1998; Mackey and Courtright 2000; Tsoudis 2000). For example, Mackey and Courtright (2000) found that criminal justice students were more punitive than other students, but that all students displayed less punitive attitudes as their education progressed. Nonetheless, criminal justice students graduated with more punitive attitudes than did other graduating students. In a study about attitudes toward gun control, Payne and Riedel (2002) found that criminal justice students (as well as whites, people who owned guns, people who had had experience with guns, and people who lived in rural communities) were more likely to oppose gun control. These results suggest that criminal justice students may have more conservative attitudes than other university students--an idea that is further supported by findings that criminal justice students have more negative attitudes toward gay men and lesbian women (Cannon 2005). The focus of this study is to discern whether criminal justice students differ in their attitudes toward wrongful conviction as well.

The reality of wrongful conviction

Although the exact number of wrongful convictions is not known and new cases continue to be identified, by 2007, over 200 individuals in the United States had been exonerated through DNA testing (Innocence Project 2009). In addition to actual exonerations, researchers rely upon speculative frequency estimates to determine the extent of wrongful conviction. Estimates of the frequency of wrongful conviction range from 0.5% to 15.4% of all convictions (Huff, Rattner, and Sagarin 1996; Poveda 2001). This wide range of estimates may be due, in part, to the roles of the estimators themselves, as Huff et al. (1996) surveyed criminal justice professionals (0.5%) and Poveda (2001) surveyed inmates (15.4%). In addition, Ramsey and Frank (2007) and Zalman, Smith, and Kiger (2008) report that prosecutors and law enforcement personnel believe that wrongful convictions occur more rarely than defence lawyers believe they do. In a survey of Canadian criminal defence lawyers, Doob (1997) found that 46.3% of his sample believed that they had represented a client who had been wrongly convicted and sentenced to at least one year in prison.

As Blackstone (1765: 358) pointed out in his eighteenth-century commentary on the laws of England, it is "better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer." The ratio of 10:1 has become known as the Blackstone ratio, a ratio that has been salient in legal history (Laufer 1995:421 n. 17). Yet, although the ratio is an often-cited maxim that gives the criminally accused the benefit of the doubt and should reduce wrongful conviction (Risinger 2007), Blackstone's view is, in reality, a perspective shared by few (Huff et al. 1996).

Nevertheless, when members of the public learn that an innocent person has been convicted of a crime he or she did not commit, they may lose confidence in the criminal justice system (Huff et al. 1996). The consequences of this may be a reduction in crimes being reported by the public, decreasing cooperation from witnesses, and demands for change in the administration of justice (Roberts 2004).

Attitudes toward wrongful conviction

In terms of attitudes toward wrongful conviction in particular, we are aware of only two studies (Angus Reid 1995; Bell and Clow 2007). The Angus Reid Group (1995) included two questions about wrongful conviction in a survey of public attitudes. In a forced choice paradigm with only two answer options, Canadians were asked if the government should increase its efforts to deal with wrongful conviction or if wrongful convictions were so rare that no government changes were necessary. Sixty-five percent of participants responded that the Canadian government needed to increase its efforts in the area of wrongful conviction. The second question asked if the government should or should not be responsible for compensating individuals who had been wrongly convicted. Approximately 90% of respondents did feel that it was the government's responsibility to compensate the wrongly convicted financially.

Bell and Clow (2007) investigated student attitudes toward the post-conviction review process in Canada. Their findings revealed that students did believe that wrongful convictions were a problem in Canada. In addition, students were concerned that the government might not be able to review cases of possible wrongful conviction in an unbiased manner. They also tended to support the idea of an independent review board handling applications of wrongful conviction instead. Students also felt that the government wanted to avoid taking responsibility for the occurrence of wrongful convictions. These findings seem to differ from other criminal-justice attitude research that has found that criminal justice students have more conservative and punitive attitudes (e.g., Mackey and Courtright 2000; Payne and Riedel 2002). Furthermore, these attitudes did not seem to generalize to the realm of wrongful conviction.

Factors that contribute to wrongful conviction

In comparison to the minimal literature on attitudes toward wrongful conviction, there is a wealth of literature on the contributing factors. Researchers in the United States have identified a variety of factors that can contribute to wrongful conviction, including eyewitness misidentification, prosecutorial misconduct, false confessions, in-custody informants, faulty forensic science, ineffective defence counsel, police tunnel vision, perjury, and police misconduct (Bedau and Radelet 1987; Huff et al. 1996; Scheck, Neufeld, and Dwyer 2000). Public inquiries into Canadian cases of wrongful conviction have identified many of these same factors (Roach...