Promoting the Study of Wrongful Convictions in Criminal Justice Curricula

Abstract

Criminal justice education promotes interdisciplinary learning, critical thinking skills, and ethical decision making. A course on wrongful convictions falls squarely within that paradigm, as it draws upon criminology, criminal justice, law, psychology, and forensic science to examine basic assumptions about the criminal justice system and the actors within it. In a wrongful convictions course, students learn to think critically about the criminal justice system, and what happens when it fails to function as it should. Students identify practice and policy reforms that improve the accuracy and reliability of the system. This article first considers the broad objectives of criminal justice education. It next situates the subject of wrongful convictions squarely within criminal justice education curricula. Finally, this article provides a comprehensive overview of an effective undergraduate course in wrongful convictions. It sets out clear goals, learning units, and potential resources for members of the academy who might be interested in developing such a course.

Notes

¹ Innocence data from the Innocence Project are skewed toward murder and rape cases because these cases often involve DNA evidence. This, in turn, may pose limitations about the information that can be extrapolated more broadly to wrongful convictions.

² Todd Cameron Willingham, for instance, was convicted, sentenced to die and ultimately executed, for the arson-murder of his three children in Texas. It was later revealed that the forensic evidence used to label the fire as arson was severely flawed. Cameron never wavered from his plea of innocence (Gross & Shaffer, 2012, p. 72).

³ For an excellent overview of the psychological literature about identification, the variables that impact eyewitness memory and recommended reforms to police identification procedures, see New Jersey v. Henderson, 208 NJ 208, 27 A.3d 872 (NJ 2011). The memoir, Picking Cotton: Our Memoir of Injustice and Redemption, by Jennifer Thompson-Cannino and Ronald Cotton (2009), offers a compelling personal narrative about the process and impact of misidentification.

⁴ Another film that captures the phenomenon of false confessions is The Interrogation of Michael Crowe (2002), which depicts the persuaded false confession of a young teenager in the killing of his sister.

⁵ Two years later, in Skinner v. Switzer (2011), the Supreme Court recognized that federal courts have jurisdiction to consider, under civil rights law, claims by a defendant incarcerated in state prison facility that his state’s procedures for testing of biological evidence are flawed, which may permit defendants in extremely narrow circumstances to challenge the denial of access to DNA.