![Sample our Health and Social Care journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5938/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Health-Social-Care.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
The majority of wrongful conviction research has examined the issue through a gender-neutral lens, studying males and females as an aggregate rather than independently. Recently, a distinct body of research examining female wrongful convictions has emerged. One surprising factor that has surfaced from this research is that wrongly convicted women are most often convicted for crimes which never happened, referred to as no-crime cases by the National Registry of Exonerations. There are a number of reasons for this, most appear strongly related to gendered stereotypes about women’s behavior. This exploratory study examined one type of no-crime case for female exonerees, no-crime cases involving homicide, designated as no-crime homicide cases in this study. No-crime homicide refers to cases involving murders and manslaughters that never occurred; rather, the deaths for which these women were convicted were the result of accidents, suicides, undiagnosed medical conditions, or even self-defense. Data for this study were extrapolated from the National Registry of Exoneration from cases of females who were exonerated from no-crime homicides. When compared to other female exonerees, the main contributing factors in the cases of women wrongfully convicted for no-crime homicides were more likely to be false and misleading forensic evidence and inadequate legal defense. These wrongly convicted women experience physical and psychological consequences as a result of their wrongful conviction, including shame and guilt. Not only do these women suffer from a miscarriage of justice which uniquely positions them as murderers, the impact of this stigma also continues post-release.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).