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Press Room
Reports and Studies
Reforming The System - TJP Policy Reviews
The Justice Project issues comprehensive policy reviews on eyewitness identification procedures and electronic recording of custodial interrogations – two areas of enormous import within the field of criminal justice policy and reform. The policy reviews, which detail recommendations for procedural improvements, the latest scientific research, pertinent case studies, costs and benefits, and model state policies, are designed to inform action by policymakers, local law enforcement agencies and others who wish to address the systemic causes of wrongful conviction.
March 15, 2007
Convicting the Innocent: Aberration or Systemic Problem?
In an upcoming article in the Wisconsin Law Review, a University of Missouri law professor argues that wrongful convictions are more prevalent in the American criminal justice system than people believe and identifies systemic failures leading to these miscarriages of justice.
November 3, 2006
Alabama Death Penalty Assessment Report
The American Bar Association's (ABA) Alabama Death Penalty Assessment Team report criticizes the state's death penalty system and makes recommendations for reform. The team compared Alabama laws, procedures and practices with standards established by the ABA's Death Penalty Moratorium Implementation Project.
June 12, 2006
US: States Negligent in Use of Lethal Injections
According to a new Human Rights Watch report, incompetence, negligence, and irresponsibility by US states put condemned prisoners at needless risk of excruciating pain during lethal injection executions. Lethal injections are used in 37 of the 38 death penalty states in the United States and by the federal government. Every execution in 2005 was by lethal injection.
April 24, 2006
Mandatory Justice: The Death Penalty Revisited
Mandatory Justice: The Death Penalty Revisited is a follow-up to the Constitution Project's previous report released in 2001 containing recommendations for ensuring fairness and accuracy in the American death penalty system. The new report includes revisions to previous recommendations, as well as new ones in response to changing laws and political climate.
February 16, 2006
American Bar Association: Georgia Death Penalty Assessment
The American Bar Association's Georgia Death Penalty Assessment Team released this report highlighting the failures and successes of Georgia's death penalty system. The team concludes "our research establishes that at this point in time, the State cannot ensure that fairness and accuracy are the hallmark of every case in which the death penalty is sought" and recommends a moratorium until these problems are adequately addressed.
January 30, 2006
Blind Justice: Juries Deciding Life and Death With Only Half the Truth
A new study by the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) illustrates that juries in capital cases are often not provided with the whole truth in order to make their life-and-death decisions. The study enumerates the sources of some of these half-truths, including prosecutors who withhold exculpatory evidence or present questionable scientific evidence as undeniable evidence of guilt and defense attorneys who are unqualified, incompetent, and underpaid, compromising the defendant's right to a thorough defense.
October 27, 2005
Model Policy and Procedure for Eyewitness Identification
After studying the problem of mistaken identifications, the Training and Standards Bureau of the Wisconsin Department of Justice, working with the University of Wisconsin Law School's Frank J. Remington Center, developed and adopted a comprehensive set of eyewitness identification guidelines for law enforcement. Those guidelines—which include conducting double-blind, sequential photo arrays, non-biased instructions to eyewitnesses, assessments of confidence immediately after identifications, and proper selection of fillers – were adopted and distributed to law enforcement throughout the state in March 2005.
September 12, 2005
Exonerations in the United States, 1989 through 2003
This study, conducted by University of Michigan law professor Samuel Gross and co-authors, includes the most comprehensive listing of exonerations in the United States to date. The study focuses on three common causes of false convictions: misidentifications, false confessions and perjury. Among its many findings, the study addresses the high concentration of false confessions among vulnerable groups such as juveniles as well as racial disparities in the juvenile justice system. According to Gross, an expert on criminal procedure and capital punishment, "[t]he most important findings of our study concern the cases that we don't see – miscarriages of justice that are not detected. The exonerations we see are just the tip of an iceberg. It is clear that there are many more false convictions that are never discovered."
May 12, 2005
A Vision for Justice: Report and Recommendations Regarding Wrongful Convictions in the Commonwealth of Virginia
The Innocence Commission for Virginia (ICVA), a joint project of the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project, the Administration Justice Program at George Mason University, and the Constitution Project, has issued a report examining eleven exonerations in Virginia and recommending reforms for preventing future wrongful convictions. The ICVA is only the second innocence commission in the United States and the one of the first groups to study a state’s exoneration cases. The report identifies common problems that led to these eleven wrongful convictions. It calls for reform and highlights measures in seven areas – eyewitness identification, interrogation, discovery, law enforcement investigation, scientific evidence, and defense practices – that would improve Virginia’s criminal justice system and offer the latest and best practices to law enforcement officers, courts, prosecutors, and defense counsel alike.
March 30, 2005
Electronic Recording of Custodial Interrogations: Everybody Wins
In his new report, Thomas Sullivan makes a persuasive argument for requiring that law enforcement officials electronically record their interrogation of suspects. Sullivan conducted numerous interviews with police departments currently recording custodial interviews, all of whom enthusiastically supported the practice. Sullivan concludes that recording interrogations is in the best interests of all parties involved in the case. For suspects, recordings can expose cases of police misconduct, where abusive tactics were used or false confessions were coerced. Recordings also keep law enforcement officials from being unfairly accused of abusive or coercive practices.
March 1, 2005
Gideon's Broken Promise: America's Continuing Quest for Equal Justice
The increasing number of exonerations occurring in recent years has brought to light the shocking truth that innocent people are wrongfully convicted in our criminal justice system. The primary safeguard against this injustice is effective defense representation, which is also one of our constitutional rights, as established in 1963 by the US Supreme Court in Gideon v. Wainwright. This comprehensive report, issued by the American Bar Association's Standing Committee on Legal Aid and Indigent Defendants, concludes that, forty years after Gideon, the promise of equal justice for the poor remains unfulfilled in this country. The report also offers recommendations that can serve as important first steps in fulfilling Gideon’s promise of equal justice for all, including those who cannot afford an attorney.
February 11, 2005
New Study Finds that Juvenile Offenders on Death Row Were Often Raised in Abusive Households
A new study, "Ethics Questions Raised by the Neuropsychiatric, Neuropsychological, Educational, Developmental, and Family Characteristics of 18 Juveniles Awaiting Execution in Texas," by Yale University Professor Dr. Dorothy Otnow Lewis and colleagues, found that all but one of the juvenile offenders on death row in Texas came from extremely violent and/or abusive families. The study suggests that most of the juvenile offenders on America's death rows suffer from serious conditions which "substantially exacerbate the already existing vulnerabilities of youth."
December 21, 2004
The Forgotten Population: A Look at Death Row in the United States Through the Experiences of Women
Published by the ACLU Capital Punishment Project, The Forgotten Population details the experiences of 56 women living on Death Row and reviews the case files of 10 women who have been executed since 1976. The Forgotten Population finds that women’s experiences on Death Row mirror many of the problems faced by men condemned to death, however these problems are exacerbated by some unique factors. The report, which marks the first time anyone has surveyed women about their experiences on Death Row, makes 13 recommendations to improve conditions for women on Death Row and to ensure that women receive adequate defense counsel when charged with capital offenses.
November 29, 2004
Police Experiences with Recording Custodial Interrogations
This study, published by Northwestern University’s Center on Wrongful Convictions, highlights the experiences of law enforcement agencies nationwide in their recording of custodial interrogations. The author of the study, Thomas Sullivan, is a former US attorney and was a member of Governor George Ryan’s Commission on Capital Punishment. After speaking with 238 law enforcement agencies in 38 states that have adopted the practice, researchers found that agencies that record custodial interrogations (audio or video) find it to be very effective, specifically in trial proceedings, where recordings dramatically reduce uncertainty about what happened during interrogations. Sullivan found that, "Recordings benefit suspects, law enforcement, prosecutors, juries, trial and reviewing court judges, and the search for truth in our justice system."
June 29, 2004
Lawsuit Filed on Behalf of Children and Those Who Cannot Afford Legal Representation in Massachusetts
On June 28, 2004, a petition was filed in the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court calling upon the Court to appoint a Special Master to evaluate the current state of the system, retain experts and take testimony about the nature and extent of the crisis and asking the Court to take action to ensure the delivery of meaningful and effective legal representation to children and poor people in the Commonwealth. Crippled by hourly rates that rank below all but three states, the Commonwealth's program for assigning lawyers has witnessed a significant drop in attorneys who are able to represent children and poor people, resulting in the denial of competent counsel to thousands of people across the state. As detailed in the petition, the present system for appointing counsel is in crisis and is causing serious, often irreparable harm to the state's most vulnerable citizens.
June 28, 2004
The Problem of False Confessions in the Post-DNA World
A new study, "The Problem of False Confessions in the Post-DNA World," by University of California/Irvine professor Richard Leo and Northwestern University law professor Steve Drizin, is the largest group of proven false confessions involving serious felonies ever collected and analyzed. Among its findings are that certain groups, particularly juveniles, seem to be more vulnerable to interrogation-induced false confessions. Juveniles make up one third of the false confessions in the study. Drizin and Leo's article appears in the March 2004 issue of the North Carolina Law Review, Volume 82, page 891.
April 1, 2004
Deadly Speculation: Misleading Texas Capital Juries with False Predictions of Future Dangerousness
A new study that examined 155 capital cases where expert witnesses predicted that the defendant would be a future danger found they were wrong 95% of the time. Texas is one of only two states that allows "future dangerousness" to play the critical role in whether an individual receives a death sentence, despite the fact that the practice is rejected by the psychiatric expert community as unreliable. The study, Deadly Speculation: Misleading Texas Capital Juries with False Predictions of Future Dangerousness, was prepared by Texas Defender Service, a non-profit law firm involved in capital litigation, attorney training and research, in collaboration with Dr. John Edens, a psychologist and professor at Sam Houston State University.
March 31, 2004
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