Conviction Integrity Units

• Citation: Vol. 19 No. 1
• Publication year: 2019
• Author: By James P. Cooper IV
• topic: Civil Rights,Criminal procedure,Criminal Law,Public Sector Law

CONVICTION INTEGRITY UNITS

By James P. Cooper IV^*

I. Introduction

Within the State of California, each county's District Attorneys' Office provides mission statements that are readily available on their respective websites. A sample of these statements provides the general sentiment within District Attorneys offices across the country: (1) protect the rights of the victims and their families¹, (2) ensure public safety², and (3) seek justice through ethical prosecution.³

These goals have generally been successful in convicting defendants who were accused of crimes. However, over the last forty years, there has been a discouraging presence of wrongful convictions. From 1989 to 2014, there have been 325 DNA exonerations in the United States.⁴ These stories of wrongful convictions, and how they occurred, can have a grave impact on a community's trust in its law enforcement officials, essentially corroding the confidence citizens once had in their criminal justice system as a whole.⁵

In attempts to regain public confidence, and in maintaining the pursuit of ethical prosecution, many District Attorneys' Offices have created conviction integrity units. As of 2016, eighteen of the top twenty most populous counties in the country have conviction integrity units. Essentially, conviction integrity units operate in counties that serve nearly 17% of the national population.⁶ These units are established with the purpose to review any colorable claim of innocence or questionable conviction⁷, and if an accused is found to have been wrongfully convicted, the District Attorney will seek to exonerate the individual and move to vacate his or her conviction.

The goal of my research is to determine whether the creation of these conviction integrity units (or "conviction review units"; hereafter "CIU") have been successful in reversing wrongful convictions, and also if they are a benefit for the future of the criminal justice system. There is no outstanding metric that could determine the efficacy (or success) of CIUs in reducing wrongful convictions because by the time a CIU investigates a claim, the wrongful conviction has already happened. A metric is also hard to determine because CIUs operate differently depending on which jurisdiction they are located; for example, some jurisdictions allow for the investigation of plea convictions, other do not. These conviction integrity units are a considerably new development in criminal justice, thus whether these units prevent wrongful convictions per se remains undetermined. However, CIUs have found success in overturning wrongful convictions and exonerating the innocent individuals who suffered through incarceration or were swiftly convicted through plea bargaining. Conviction integrity units also have the potential to spur a change in policy regarding pre-indictment procedures within prosecutorial offices across the country.

This paper will begin by generally discussing the history of the criminal justice system prior to CIUs. Then it delves into causes of wrongful convictions resulting from official misconduct, misidentification, ineffective assistance, and plea bargaining. Essentially, it will show how the rising presence of wrongful convictions inspired the necessity of CIUs. Next, it will examine how the respective CIUs in Dallas County, Harris County, and the Brooklyn District Attorneys' offices have been able to set an example for CIUs across the nation, both administratively and operatively. Afterward, case examples will be provided to show how various CIUs in different jurisdictions reacted to accusations of innocence claims. Finally, this paper will offer some suggestions on ways to implement CIUs and how to maintain their presence going forward.

II. A History Before Conviction Integrity

A. A "Perfect System"?

Since conviction integrity units are a recent development in the criminal justice system,⁸ their history starts prior to their creation. Long before the assertion of wrongful convictions being a reality, criminal jurisprudence rested on Judge Learned Hand's axiom: "[o]ur procedure has been always haunted by the ghost of the innocent man convicted. It is an unreal dream."⁹ Judge Hand was stating as fact that innocent people are never convicted. Although that statement has been debunked, it was nonetheless still postulated when the late Justice Antonin Scalia supported the Supreme Court opinion showing the criminal justice system has "an error rate [of] .027 percent—or to put it another way, a success rate of 99.973 percent."¹⁰ Justice Scalia's interpretation of the exoneration rate should be considered mistaken and based on faulty logic.¹¹ This kind of thought-process, whether it is like Judge Hand's full denial or Justice Scalia's nitpicking, respectively, cannot be taken lightly as a contribution to wrongful convictions. It misleads the public to believe there is nothing wrong with how justice is administered, when numerous studies, statistics, and scientific literature exhibit the contrary. In fact, many of these reports show there are various ways an accused can be wrongfully convicted.

B. Enter the Innocence Movement

The Innocence Movement is an informal label for groups of innocence advocacy (the composition of these groups form the Innocence Network) and it has altered the discourse of the United States purporting to have a model criminal justice system. The respective organizations within the Innocence Network have repeatedly been able to demonstrate that wrongful convictions happen more frequently than commonly thought: especially through the use of DNA evidence. Since the first DNA exoneration in 1989, there have been over 325 exonerations nationally by the end of 2014.¹² Innocence advocates also focus on reversing convictions that were the result of governmental misconduct¹³ and ineffective assistance of counsel.¹⁴

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The Innocence Movement works to clear convictions of defendants who are factually innocent.¹⁵ The introduction of DNA evidence has become an enormous tool to help exonerate defendants who have been convicted of heinous crimes such as sexual assault or homicide.¹⁶ Once previously used exclusively by defense attorneys to prove the innocence of their clients, law enforcement officials have come to embrace DNA testing to both help with their investigations and build a case against a defendant.¹⁷

DNA testing is so commonplace in the justice system that the Department of Justice (DOJ) recommends local police and prosecutorial bodies should be trained in analyzing DNA evidence because it serves the best interests of justice.¹⁸ The DOJ also has the position that DNA testing by local authorities will help and benefit those wrongly accused.¹⁹ This is one example of how the Innocence Movement has influenced the debate on justice, since it is now standard practice for large metropolitan law enforcement bodies to analyze DNA during investigations. The Innocent Movement has also raised the consciousness of the legal community about the very real possibility of wrongful convictions to the extent that the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) created a $5-million grant program to help states alleviate the costs of DNA testing for post-conviction purposes.²⁰

Unfortunately, DNA testing is not a "one size fits all" remedy to eliminate all chances of wrongful convictions. Humans created the criminal justice system, ergo the system is apt to human error; and at its worst, hubris amongst its key players.²¹ Conviction integrity units perform a key role in that, while investigating a claim of factual innocence, these units can expose problems that cause wrongful convictions. Their work can also potentially lessen the burden on innocence advocacy groups to exonerate incarcerated individuals found guilty through plea negotiations or when DNA is not available. To better understand the creation and subsequent necessity of CIUs, it is best to explain common causes for wrongful convictions that CIUs routinely investigate.

C. Witness Misidentification

Witness misidentification is perhaps the most common cause leading to wrongful convictions. In fact, 2014 served as a record year for exonerations resulting from misidentification as 125 individuals were released.²² In a study conducted by the Innocence Project, it was discovered that misidentification contributes to nearly 72% of the 325 DNA exonerations between 1989 and 2014.²³ Although misidentifications can occur for any crime, they are prevalent in sexual assault crimes at nearly 83%, and in 86% of sexual assault cases it is the victim who misidentified the perpetrator.

It may sound odd how a victim of sexual assault could so easily mistake the identity of her assailant or rapist; unfortunately it occurs more often than believed. Misidentifications can occur through two variables: estimator and system. Estimator variables are characteristics of the witness, perpetrator or the event itself, while system variables are controlled factors of the justice system like how police conduct line-ups of suspects for identification.²⁴ The two types of variables conjoin when victims and key players cooperate in an attempt to properly identify the suspect. Lamentably, properly identifying the actual suspect is a more difficult task than presumed. Nearly 41% of the recorded sexual assault cases involved having to make cross-racial identifications, and research has shown that the reliability of identifications has been problematic. For example, even though African-Americans make up only 13% of the total U.S. population, 62% of sexual assault exonerations involved cases where the defendant was black and victim was white.²⁵

There are certainly historical undertones in the disparity of cross-racial convictions, however the central problem resides in determining which set of variables are more to blame for a wrongful conviction. The problem in the sexual assault cases is that strangers (meaning the suspect and victim did not know each other) have been...