NACDL

Editor’s Note: The “Getting Scholarship Into Court Project” brings helpful law review articles and other writings to the attention of criminal defense attorneys. The project’s purpose is to identify scholarship that will be especially useful to courts and practitioners. Summarized on this page are articles the project’s advisory board recommends that practicing lawyers take the time to read.

Russell Covey
Police Misconduct as a Cause of Wrongful Convictions90 Wash. U. L. Rev. 1133 (2013)
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2349872 

This study gathers data from two mass exonerations resulting from major police scandals, one involving the Rampart division of the LAPD, and the other occurring in Tulia, Texas. Whereas eyewitness misidentification, faulty forensic evidence, jailhouse informants, and false confessions have been identified as the main contributing factors leading to many wrongful convictions, the Rampart and Tulia exonerees were wrongfully convicte