The Innocence Checklist

THE INNOCENCE CHECKLIST

Carrie Leonetti*

ABSTRACT

Because true innocence is unknowable, scholars who study wrongful convic-

tions and advocates who seek to vindicate the innocent must use proxies for inno-

cence. Court processes or off‌icial recognition of innocence are the primary proxy

for innocence in research databases of exonerees. This Article offers an innova-

tive alternative to this process-based proxy: a substantive checklist of factors

that indicates a likely wrongful conviction, derived from empirical and jurispru-

dential sources. Notably, this checklist does not rely on off‌icial recognition of

innocence for its objectivity or validity. Instead the checklist aggregates myriad

indicators of innocence: factors known to contribute to wrongful convictions;

rules of professional conduct; innocence-project intake criteria; prosecutorial

conviction-integrity standards; and jurisprudence governing when convictions

must be overturned because of fresh evidence or constitutional violations. A

checklist based on articulated, uniformly applicable criteria is preferable to the

more subjective and less regulated decisionmaking of judges and prosecutors

who determine innocence using an off‌icial exoneration methodology. Only a con-

ception of innocence independent of off‌icial exoneration can provide the neces-

sary support for reform of barriers to more fruitful postconviction review

mechanisms.

INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99

I. BACKGROUND: THE INNOCENCE MOVEMENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100

A. Known Causes of Wrongful Convictions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100

B. Reliance on DNA Evidence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102

* Associate Professor, University of Auckland School of Law. Visiting Associate Professor, Universita degli

Studi di Milano-Biccoca, 2018. Thanks to Jane Kelsey of the University of Auckland for her extensive editorial

comments on an earlier draft of this project, the Facolta di Giurisprudenza for the opportunity to visit the

University di Milano and colleague Claudia Pecorella for all of her assistance, journalists Valentino Maimone &

Benedetto Latanzi, co-founders of Errorigiudiziari.com, who graciously traveled to Milan to meet with me,

refused even to let me pay for lunch, and provided me with invaluable information and candid insights, Steve

Wax for the important work that he does with the Oregon Innocence Project and his willingness to take time

away from it to brainstorm with me, Bridget Irvine of the University of Otago Innocence Project and Jane Tudor-

Owen of the Edith Cowan University Criminal Justice Review Project in whom I found much-needed and

sympathetic support for my not-always-popular working thesis, and Dale Smith and Jianlin Chen of the

University of Melbourne, Simon Young of the University of Hong Kong, and David Williams of the University

of Auckland for their feedback on the draft of this Article, which was presented at the Public Law in Four

Jurisdictions symposium at the University of Witwatersrand Rural Facility in Limpopo Province, South Africa.

Any mistakes were almost certainly made by ignoring their advice. © 2021, Carrie Leonetti.

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C. Innocence Commissions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105

II. DEFINING WRONGFUL CONVICTIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105

A. The Meaning of “Innocence”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105

1. The Relationship Between Legally Insuff‌icient Proof &

Actual Innocence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106

2. Failures of Procedural Justice and “Innocence” . . . . . . . . 107

B. Methodologies for Def‌ining Innocence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110

1. Off‌icial Exoneration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111

2. Conclusive Proof of Factual Innocence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113

3. The High Price of Poor Proxies for Innocence . . . . . . . . . 114

4. The Problem with a Legal Innocence Standard . . . . . . . . . 119

5. Def‌ining Likely Actual Innocence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120

C. Changing Science as a Specif‌ic Context for the Meaning of

“Innocence”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120

III. CASE STUDIES IN DEFINITIONAL DISAGREEMENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123

A. The Registry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124

1. Over-Inclusion: Questionable “Exonerations” . . . . . . . . . 124

2. Under-Inclusion: Missing Innocents. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126

B. Competing Narratives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128

C. The Social Psychology of Cognitive Biases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130

1. Prosecutorial Resistance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130

2. Innocence Consciousness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132

IV. RECONCEPTUALIZING INNOCENCE: A WRONGFUL CONVICTION CHECKLIST . 133

A. Known Causes of Wrongful Convictions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134

B. Model Rules & Standards: Prosecutorial Charging, Disclosure,

& Relief . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134

C. Innocence Project Intake Criteria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135

D. Conviction-Integrity Units . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136

E. Data from Innocence Commissions, Public Inquiries, & the New

Zealand Justice Ministry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136

1. The UK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137

2. Scotland. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137

3. New Zealand . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137

4. Virginia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137

F. Fresh Evidence & Freestanding Actual Innocence Claims . . . . 138

G. Postconviction Review of Constitutional Claims . . . . . . . . . . . 140

1. Prosecution Disclosure of Favorable Evidence . . . . . . . . . 140

2. Effective Assistance of Counsel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141

3. Bad Faith Destruction of Evidence & Suborning Perjury . . 141

4. Prejudice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141

5. Lower Court Opinions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142

6. Prosecutors’ Brady Policies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143

98 AMERICAN CRIMINAL LAW REVIEW [Vol. 58:97

V. CONCEPTUALIZING INNOCENCE THROUGH A COMPREHENSIVE CHECKLIST . . 143

A. Factors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145

B. Example Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150

CONCLUSION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151

INTRODUCTION

This Article addresses a central conceptual foundation for the social-scien-

tif‌ic and legal study of wrongful convictions: how to def‌ine innocence. The

base rate of innocence in the criminal justice system is not knowable. As a

result, scholars who study wrongful convictions and advocates who seek to

vindicate the innocent must use def‌initional proxies for innocence. Currently,

databases of wrongful convictions, which form the basis of study and advo-

cacy for scholars and reform organizations, rely on court processes or off‌icial

recognition of innocence as their primary proxy for determining when a

wrongful conviction has occurred. This Article is not the f‌irst to tackle these

diff‌icult def‌initional conundrums. But it is the f‌irst to propose a substantive

rather than legal or procedural conception of likely innocence that can be

used in the context of scholarly databases, judicial review, and innocence

commissions.

1

This Article argues for a new conception of wrongful conviction: a substan-

tive—rather than procedural—conception that does not rely on off‌icial proc-

esses for its objectivity. Part I traces the background of the innocence

movement. It describes the known causes of wrongful convictions that have

emerged from that movement. It documents its historical reliance on DNA

exonerations in generating that canon of causes. It discusses the development

of innocence commissions and the role that they play in exonerating the

innocent.

Part II sets forth two typologies. The f‌irst is a typology of the meaning of

“innocent” when it is employed by legal scholars, courts, and practitioners.

The second is a typology of the current methodologies used by databases

created by scholars and reform organizations to determine when a particular

def‌inition of innocence has been fulf‌illed. Part II argues that the current def‌ini-

tions of innocence and, in particular, the methodologies employed for compil-

ing wrongful convictions in databases, are invalid because they are under- and

over-inclusive. The invalid def‌initional proxies obscure an accurate account-

ing of wrongful convictions and mask, perhaps, the single greatest cause of

wrongful convictions in the United States: formidable procedural barriers to

postconviction relief.

1. This Article uses “factual innocence,” “actual innocence,” “likely innocence,” “wrongful conviction,” and

“false conviction” interchangeably. The signif‌icance of these terms, unless context indicates otherwise, is that the

factual circumstances surrounding a defendant’s conviction give rise to an unacceptable likelihood of wrongful

conviction, as def‌ined in this Article, not caselaw.

2020] THE INNOCENCE CHECKLIST 99