Wrongful Convictions: Three-Stage Reform Chambers/Green: Vector The exoneration of hundreds of prisoners since 1989, and the plausible

belief that thousands of wrongful convictions occur each year, underlie the importance of wrongful conviction as a policy issue.1 This quote from Dr. Marvin Zalman illustrates just how fractured our criminal justice system is and provides a firm basis for why my partner and I are determined that substantial reform is long overdue. The criminal justice system is a rather large system encompassing a number of facets. Since this is only a debate round with time limits, we cant focus on every single flaw the system has. Instead were going to target just one component: wrongful conviction. Now before we get into just how we can reform the system for the better, lets identify exactly what the system is in the first place. You can label this our definitions section if youd like. The Office for Victims of Crime apart of the Department of Justice defines the system as,
The criminal justice system is our societys method of addressing crime and promoting

public safety. It is designed to prevent and respond to crime; identify, apprehend, and prosecute persons charged with crime; and incarcerate and supervise convicted offenders with efforts to rehabilitate them and hold them accountable for their criminal actions. The criminal justice system is a sequential process that includes at least seven
key phases: 1. Law enforcement. 2. Prosecution. 3. Judiciary and courts. 4. Probation. 5. Institutional corrections. 6. Parole. 7. Appellate courts.2

Marvin Zalman [Professor Zalman came to Wayne State University in 1980 as chair of the then new Criminal Justice Department. He previously taught at the Criminal Justice Department at Michigan State University and in the law faculty at Ahmadu Bello University in northern Nigeria. He currently serves on the editorial boards of several scholarly journals: Criminal Law Bulletin, Criminal Justice Review, Journal of Crime & Justice and Justice System Journal. Professor Zalman holds a PhD from the School of Criminal Justice at New York State University.], Criminal Justice System Reform and Wrongful Conviction: A Research Agenda, December 2006, Sage Publications, Criminal Justice Policy Review, Volume 17 Number 4 468-492
2 National Victims Assistance Academy, Office for Victims of Crime, U.S. Department of Justice,

Christine N. Edmunds [Consultant to DOJ, adjunct professor at two universities, California State University Fresno and Washburn University], Anne K. Seymour [Consultant to the National Institute of Corrections, the National Institute of Justice, the Bureau of Justice Assistance and the Office for Victims of Crime within the U.S. Department of Justice. She is currently a Senior Advisor to Justice Solutions, a Washington DCbased non-profit organization], and Mario T. Gaboury [Ph.D., JD, University of New Haven, CT] Navigating the Justice System, March 2011, https://www.ovcttac.gov/views/TrainingMaterials/NVAA/dspNVAACurriculum.cfm [Ethos]

Wed also like to define the word exoneration. Its not a word used often, but it means to be relieved of criminal charges. If you are exonerated, you are now an exoneree. Well be using this word often throughout our debate today because its interlinked with wrongful convictions. Lets now move on to our background point which basically lays out the status quo in a simple and understandable manner. Our only background point will be Wrongful Convictions. The a. point is Massive Amount. Our opening quote mentioned hundreds of wrongful convictions, but we think its important to be precise. A non-profit program called The Innocence Project, associated with the Cardozo Law School, specified that there had been 273 post-conviction exonerations from 1989 to 2010. 17 of those exonerees were on death row prior to exoneration and the average prison term for all of the exonerees was 13 years. The Project claims that those 273 individuals are only the tip of the iceberg. Our b. point is Devastating Impacts. This quote from professors of law at Michigan University, Samuel Gross & Dr. Barbara OBrien, briefly outlines some of the impacts to wrongful convictions. They said in October 2007 that, The worst effect of the invisibility of wrongful convictions is the most direct: for the most part, they
are uncorrected. We do sometimes find new convincing evidence that convicted defendants are innocent, but those who are cleared have usually spent years in prison, and their ultimate release seems to depend heavily on luck. A false conviction is a tragedy for the innocent

defendant and his family, whose lives may be destroyed. It also undermines every purpose that criminal punishment is designed to serve. Not only is it profoundly unjust, but we cant deter or incapacitate the real criminal not to mention any attempt to rehabilitate him if hes free while someone else is locked up for his crimes. 3
3

Samuel R. Gross [Thomas and Mabel Long Professor of Law, graduated from Columbia College in 1968 and earned a J.D. from the University of California at Berkeley in 1973. He was a criminal defense attorney in San Francisco for several years, and worked as an attorney with the United Farm Workers Union in California and the Wounded Knee Legal Defense Committee in Nebraska and South Dakota. He was a cooperating attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Inc. in New York and the National Jury Project in Oakland, California. He was a visiting lecturer at Yale Law School and came to the University of Michigan from the Stanford Law School faculty.] & Barbara OBrien [PhD from University of Michigan; Law clerk to the Honorable Harold A. Baker and the Honorable Michael P. McCuskey of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of Illinois; assistant defender for the Illinois Office of the State Appellate Defender and an adjunct professor of law for the Thomas M. Cooley School

We can outline these impacts as such: 1. Destroyed lives. When an innocent person is put into prison for over a decade he loses everything. During his time in prison he may be exposed to psychological and physical trauma and by the time he comes out, that is if he comes out, he will have an exceedingly hard time adjusting to life and may even turn to committing actual crime. 2. Loose criminals. Obviously if we have incarcerated the wrong individual, the guilty individual is still out there able to commit more crime be it theft, rape, or murder. 3. Unnecessary costs. If we spend time and money prosecuting and incarcerating the wrong person then weve wasted our time and money. 4. Justice lost. Convicting innocent people is profoundly unjust and serves to delegitimize the system as a whole. So there you have it: wrongful conviction is not just a small problem; its recurring and infecting our entire system and the effects of such are disastrous. That is the status quo. Wed like now to show how we can improve our system. There are three stages of wrongful convictions: before an innocent is convicted, after they are convicted, and after theyve been exonerated. Were going to show how not only can we make ONE good change, we can make three good changes one for each stage.

Stage One: Pre-Conviction

Our first reform will be to require that all interrogations of a suspected criminal be electronically recorded and any statements made outside of a recording will be inadmissible in court. Specifically our mandate will be to have Congress pass and the President sign the Electronic Recording of Custodial Interrogations Act. A copy of the act, which includes all the legal details, is available upon request.
of Law; graduated Order of the Coif from the University of Colorado School of Law where she wrote and was associate editor of the University of Colorado Law Review. Professor of Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure at the Law College of Michigan University.], FREQUENCY AND PREDICTORS OF FALSE CONVICTION: WHY WE KNOW SO LITTLE, AND NEW DATA ON CAPITAL CASES, October 2007, University of Michigan Law School, PUBLIC LAW AND LEGAL THEORY WORKING PAPER SERIES, WORKING PAPER NO. 93

Our justification for this reform is Interrogations Critical. a. False Confessions Rampant. The aforementioned Innocence Project confirmed this when they said, For many reasons including mental health issues and aggressive law enforcement tactics innocent people sometimes confess to crimes they did not commit.
While it can be hard to understand why someone would falsely confess to a crime, psychological research has provided some answers and DNA exonerations have proven that the problem is more widespread than many people think. In approximately 25% of the wrongful convictions overturned with DNA evidence, defendants made false confessions, admissions or

statements to law enforcement officials.

The electronic recording of interrogations, from the reading of Miranda rights onward, is the single best reform available to stem the tide of false confessions.4 Next we have b. Recording Betters System. The Justice Project, funded by the Pew Charity Trust, wrote in 2007 that, By preventing wrongful convictions, electronic recording of custodial interrogations benefits the criminal justice system as a whole by increasing reliability and efficiency. Fewer wrongful convictions helps increase public confidence in the system. Recording also leads to greater efficiency, in that an objective record
of the interrogation would reduce the need for and duration of pre-trial hearings on suppression of confessions, as there would be a clear and comprehensive record for the judge or jury to review. This saves attorney, judge, and court personnel time and expense. 5

Stage Two: Post-Conviction

The second reform we propose will be dealing with evidence preservation after a conviction has occurred.
4

The Innocence Project [Originally a branch of the Benjamin Cardozo Law School and created by Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld, the Project is now a non-profit organization centralized in New York City, but remains affiliated with Cardozo Law], False Confessions & Mandatory Recording of Interrogations, Updated 2011, http://www.innocenceproject.org/fix/False-Confessions.php
5

The Justice Project [A peer-reviewed, non-profit organization funded in affiliation with the Pew Charitable Trusts aimed at research towards wrongful imprisonment], Electronic Recording of Custodial Interrogations: A Policy Review 2007, www.williams.edu/Psychology/Faculty/.../Justice%20Project(07).pdf

Our mandate will be to have Congress pass and the President sign the Preservation of Biological Evidence Act, which can be provided upon request. Like the last act, the full text includes all legal details, but essentially makes it so that evidence in a criminal investigation must be fully preserved even after each criminal case has been through trial. Our justification will be Evidence Provides Hope. a. Evidence Mishandled. Often times after a conviction, evidence is placed on a lower priority level and can be destroyed or lost. The Innocence Project writes that, Despite laws enabling inmates to seek DNA testing in many states, performing a test is often impossible years after a conviction because the evidence has been lost, destroyed or contaminated due to improper storage.6 Clearly we must have standards for preserving our evidence in light of wrongful convictions, so the next point is b. Possible Exoneration. The Project goes on to say,
The Innocence Project recommends that all physical evidence in all criminal cases

[should] be properly maintained as long as the defendant is incarcerated, under supervision or in civil litigation. Laws and policies on proper evidence preservation help police and prosecutors solve cold cases, and they give inmates a chance often the only real chance to prove their innocence.7

Stage Three: Post-Exoneration

After weve exonerated someone, or, in other words, released them from prison upon proving them innocent, the state often compensates the individual for the wrongful imprisonment. Compensation amounts vary depending on each case, but can range from the tens of thousands to several million. But the problem is that the IRS still claims taxes on their compensation!

The Innocence Project [Originally a branch of the Benjamin Cardozo Law School and created by Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld, the Project is now a non-profit organization centralized in New York City, but remains affiliated with Cardozo Law], Evidence Preservation, Updated 2011, http://www.innocenceproject.org/fix/Evidence-Handling.php
7

Ibid

Our final mandate is to have Congress pass and the President sign the Wrongful Convictions Tax Relief Act, which is available upon request. The act essentially provides tax benefits to exonerees. The justification for this reform is Strings-Attached Restoration. The a. point is Inappropriate Tax. Prominent tax lawyer, Robert Wood, wrote in 2008 that, Society has recognized that victims of false imprisonment and wrongful conviction deserve compensation. It is difficult to think of a decent argument for taxing these recoveries. By declaring its prior rulings on related subjects obsolete, the IRS has inappropriately suggested these recoveries are taxable, adding one more gotcha to the odyssey of exonerated prisoners.8 b. Congress Must Act. Mr. Wood writes later in 2010 that, Congress has tried to ameliorate this disparity, most recently in the Wrongful Convictions Tax Relief Act of 2010, H.R. 4743. Yet like previous legislative efforts to provide relief to exonerees, it failed to become law. See, e.g., the Wrongful Convictions Tax Relief Act of 2007, S. 2421, introduced by Senators Schumer and Brownback. Its time for the IRS or Congress to fix this. Justice demands it.9 Clearly our criminal justice system is flawed. We offer you three particular reforms to tackle one of the largest, most appalling fractures in the system: wrongful convictions. Each reform by itself is a reason alone for why we must reform our justice system. You cant have a justice system without justice.

Robert W. Wood [B.A. Humboldt State University, J.D. University of Chicago; Fellow of the American College of Tax Counsel; Ranked in the Top Ten tax lawyers in the country by United States Lawyer Rankings, 2007 and 2008; Listed in Best Lawyers in America by Woodward & White, 2006, 2007 and 2008 Edition; Judson Klein Award from California State Bar for "keen and imaginative intellect" in 2006.], A Get Out of Jail Card Thats Far From Free, LOS ANGELES DAILY JOURNAL6 FRIDAY, AUGUST 22nd 20086, PAGE 6
9

Robert W. Wood [B.A. Humboldt State University, J.D. University of Chicago; Fellow of the American College of Tax Counsel; Ranked in the Top Ten tax lawyers in the country by United States Lawyer Rankings, 2007 and 2008; Listed in Best Lawyers in America by Woodward & White, 2006, 2007 and 2008 Edition; Judson Klein Award from California State Bar for "keen and imaginative intellect" in 2006.], Tax on Wrongful Imprisonment Needs Reform, October 28 th 2010, Forbes, http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertwood/2010/10/28/tax-on-wrongful-imprisonment-needs-reform/