The criminal costs of wrongful convictions

• Date: 01 May 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9133.12463
• Author: Jennifer N. Weintraub,Robert J. Norris,Catherine L. Bonventre,Allison D. Redlich,James R. Acker
• Published date: 01 May 2020

DOI: 10.1111/1745-9133.12463

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

LAW AND THE COURTS

The criminal costs of wrongful convictions

Can we reduce crime by protecting the innocent?

Robert J . Norris 1Jennifer N. Weintraub2James R. Acker2

Allison D. Redlich1Catherine L. Bonventre3

1George Mason University

2University at Albany

3Guilford College

Correspondence

Robert J. Norris, Depar tment of Criminology,

Law,and Society,George Mason University,

4400University Drive, 4F4, Enterprise Hall,

Room354, Fairfax, VA 22030.

Email:r norris4@gmu.edu

Research Summary: In this article, we examine crimi-

nal offending by true perpetrators after innocent people are

arrested and convicted for their crimes. After investigating

a set of cases in which DNA wasused to exonerate the inno-

cent and to identify the guilty party, we identified 109 true

perpetrators, 102 of whom committed additional crimes.

We found a total of 337 additional offenses committed by

the true perpetrators, including 43 homicide-related and 94

sex offenses. By extrapolating from our findings, we esti-

mate that the wrong-person wrongful convictions that occur

annually may lead to more than 41,000 additional crimes.

Policy Implications: Our findings indicate that one

consequence of wrongful convictions, allowing the true

perpetrators of crimes to remain at liberty and commit

new crimes that imperil prospective victims, represents an

important threat to public safety and thereby dramatically

compounds the harms caused to innocents. We stress

the importance of framing wrongful conviction issues

to capture these important crime control concerns and,

thus, to help galvanize public opinion and promote policy

reforms that will mutually benefit adherents of both crime

control and due process perspectives.

KEYWORDS

crime control, due process, exoneration, framing, innocence, miscarriage

of justice, true perpetrator, wrongful conviction, wrongful liberty

Criminology & Public Policy. 2020;19:367–388. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/capp © 2019 American Society of Criminology 367

368 NORRIS ET AL.

Wrongful convictions represent failures of the justice system. Since 1989, 2,364 people are known to

have been exonerated throughout the United States (National Registry of Exonerations, n.d.).1Most

exonerations (1,502 or 63.6%) concern “wrong-person” cases, in which innocent individuals were con-

victed of crimes committed by someone else. Such miscarriages of justice stand in contrast to “no-

crime” cases, in which an innocent person was convicted although a crime was never committed.2

Regardless of case specifics, wrongful convictions generate a widespread “circle of harm” (Thomp-

son & Baumgartner, 2018). The harms suffered by the innocents and their loved ones are profound

(e.g., Westervelt & Cook, 2012), yet they extend as well to the communities to which they return,

to legal actors involved in the wrongful convictions, to the original crime victims and their social

networks,3and potentially to diminished public confidence in the administration of justice. And

even more of consequence is at stake because “wrong-person” wrongful convictions leave the true

offenders free to commit additional crimes and claim new victims. Preventing and correcting wrongful

convictions thus entails “a double imperative – a justice imperative and a public safety imperative”

(Findley, 2002, p. 337).

That wrongful convictions threaten public safety by allowing actual offenders to remain at liberty

is self-evident and has been recognized for decades (e.g., Givelber, 1997; Huff, Rattner, & Sagarin,

1986; Penzell, 2007; West & Meterko, 2016). A scant amount of research, however, has been devoted

to uncovering the breadth and nature of crimes committed by the true perpetrators who remain at large

while innocent persons have erroneously been convicted in their stead. Suchinformation is essential to

gain a fuller understanding of the dangers associated with wrongful convictions and the social harms

they inflict. Also, a more complete and nuanced discussion among scholars, practitioners, and policy

makers will be possible about the urgency of guarding against wrongful convictionsby enacting justice

system reforms (Acker, 2013; Baumgartner, Grigg, Ramirez, & Lucy, 2018).

In this study, we examine the number and types of crimes committed by the true perpetrators after

the arrest and wrongful conviction of another individual. With a set of cases from the Innocence Project

in which DNA testing was used not only to exonerate the innocent but also to identify the guilty party,

we seek to understand the extent to which wrongful convictions contribute to criminal activity and

threaten public safety. We additionally identify the factors that contributed to the erroneous convic-

tions in the cases, which ultimately enabled the true perpetrators to evade justice and commit addi-

tional offenses. We conclude with a discussion of implications, including why wrongful convictions

represent a threat to public safety and trigger more than due process concerns. We thus consider the

importance of framing in helping shape public attitudes, how public opinion influences policymaking,

and why evidence-based practices designed to mitigate wrongful convictions should also be construed

as bolstering efforts to reduce crime.

1CRIMES OF “WRONGFUL LIBERTY”

Although their public safety implications are clear, “wrongful convictionshave rarely been conceptual-

ized as a factor contributing to violent crimes in America” (Forst & Huff, 2018, p. 438). Concrete data

about the crimes committed by true perpetrators in wrongful conviction cases are lacking, but Forst

and Huff (2018) in their thought experiment suggested that the criminal consequences of justice system

errors are significant. Based on their review of 2014 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Bureau

of Justice Statistics (BJS) data concerning arrests for violent crimes and felony conviction rates, they

estimated that more than 339,000 convictions for violent crimes occurred that year. After assuming a

wrongful conviction rate of 1% to 3%, which is in line with many empirical estimates (e.g., Loeffler,

Hyatt, & Ridgeway, 2018; Ramsey & Frank, 2007; Zalman, Smith, & Kiger, 2008), and that each true