A miscarriage of justice is primarily the conviction and punishment of a person for a crime that they did not commit. The term can also be applied to errors in the other direction, and to civil cases, but those usages are rarer. Most criminal justice systems have some means to overturn, or "quash", a wrongful conviction, but this is often difficult to achieve. The most serious instances occur when a wrongful conviction is not overturned for several years, or until after the innocent person has been executed or died in jail.
Wrongful conviction or miscarriage of justice can also refer to a conviction reached in an unfair or disputed trial. Wrongful convictions are frequently cited by death penalty opponents as cause to eliminate death penalites to avoid executing innocent persons. In recent years DNA evidence has been used to clear many people falsely convicted.
General issues
Causes of miscarriages of justice include:
Often, whether a case is in fact a miscarriage of justice remains controversial for a long time. The criminal justice system in most countries is also predisposed against changing its mind, only overturning a wrong conviction when the evidence against the conviction is overwhelming. The result is that many wrongly-convicted people spend many years in jail before their convictions are quashed and they are released.
The risk of miscarriages of justice is one of the main arguments against the death penalty. Where condemned persons are executed promptly after conviction, the most significant effect of a miscarriage of justice is irreversible. (Wrongly-executed people are nevertheless occasionally posthumously pardoned -- which is essentially a null action -- or have their convictions quashed.) Many states that still practice the death penalty now routinely hold condemned persons for ten years or more before execution, to allow time for a miscarriage of justice to be discovered. Even then some innocent people are executed.
Even when a wrongly-convicted person is not executed, spending years in jail often has an effect on the person and his or her family that is irreversible and substantial. With current forms of criminal punishment, it is not possible to reverse the effects of punishment already endured; only the remaining portion of the sentence, including legal disabilities applying to previously-convicted but released persons, can be undone.
United Kingdom
In the United Kingdom a jailed person whose conviction is quashed is paid compensation for the time they were incarcerated; curiously, a deduction is made from this compensation for food and lodging that they received while in jail.
It is a noted problem that the parole system assumes that all convicted persons are actually guilty, and it poorly handles those who are not. In order to be paroled, a convict is required to sign a document in which, among other things, they confess to the crime for which they were convicted. Some wrongly-convicted people, such as the Birmingham Six, have therefore refused parole, and ended up spending longer in jail than a genuinely guilty person would have.
During the early 1990s there was a series of high-profile cases revealed to have been miscarriages of justice. Many resulted from police fabricating evidence, in order to convict the person they thought was guilty, or simply to convict anyone in order to get a high conviction rate. The West Midlands Serious Crime Squad became notorious for such practices, and was disbanded in 1989. In 1997 the Criminal Cases Review Commission was established specifically in order to examine possible miscarriages of justice.
See, for example:
Others include:
- The Bridgewater Four were convicted in 1979 of murdering Carl Bridgewater, a 13-year-old paper boy who was shot on his round when he disturbed robbers at a farm in Staffordshire. Patrick Molloy died in jail in 1981. The remaining three were released in 1997.
- Stephen Downing was convicted of the murder of Wendy Sewell in a Bakewell churchyard in 1973. The 17 year-old had a reading age of 11 and worked at the cemetery as a gardener. The police made him sign a confession that he was unable to read. The case gained international notoriety as the "Bakewell Tart" murder. After spending 27 years in prison, Stephen Downing was released on bail in February of 2001, pending the result of an appeal. His conviction was finally overturned in January 2002.
- Andrew Evans served more than 25 years for the murder of 14-year-old Judith Roberts. He confessed to the 1972 murder after seeing the girl's face in a dream. His conviction was overturned in 1997.
- Timothy Evans' wife and young daughter were killed in 1949, and Evans was convicted of killing of his daughter and hanged. It was later found that the real murderer was Reg Christie, another tenant in the same house, who eventually killed six women. Evans was first person in Britain to receive a posthumous free pardon.
- Peter Fell, a former hospital porter, described in the media as a "serial confessor" and a "fantasist", was sentenced to two life terms in 1984 for the murder of Ann Lee and Margaret "Peggy" Johnson, who were killed whilst they were out walking their dogs in 1982. His conviction was overturned in 2001.
- Stefan Kiszko was convicted of the sexual assault and murder of a 11-year old Lesley Molseed in 1976. He spent 16 years in prison before he was released in 1992, after a long campaign by his mother. He died of a heart attack the following year at the age of 44. His mother died six months later.
- The Maguire Seven were convicted in 1975 of offences related to the Guildford and Woolwich bombings of 1974. They served sentences ranging from 5 to 10 years. Giuseppe Conlon died in prison. Their convictions were quashed in 1991.
- In 1974 Judith Ward was convicted of murder of several people caused by a number of IRA bombings 1973. She was finally released in 1992.
Ireland
Australia
Canada
- Robert Baltovich was convicted in 1992 of the murder of Elizabeth Bain; released in 2000 to prepare an appeal based on new evidence; although he has not been officially exonerated, the Crown has not pursued the case since his release; new evidence points to Paul Bernardo, an acquaintance of Ms Bain's, as her killer
- In 1969, David Milgaard, a 16 year old, was convicted and given a life sentence for the murder of 20 year old nursing aide Gail Miller. After 23 years of imprisonment, the Supreme Court of Canada allowed for the release of Milgaard. Five years later DNA testing proved his innocence.
New Zealand
- Arthur Allan Thomas, a New Zealand farmer, was twice convicted of the murders of Jeanette and Harvey Crewe on June 17, 1970. He spent 10 years in prison but a Royal Commission in 1980 showed the prosecution cases were flawed, and that police had deliberately planted bullets in a garden to use as evidence. Thomas was given a Royal Pardon, and was released and awarded $1 million compensation for wrongful convictions.
United States of America
- Salem witch trials, malicious gossip gone awry resulted in the killing of many innocent people before the sentences were overturned.
- Dr. Sam Sheppard, American convicted in 1954 of killing his wife in their home; Sheppard maintained she had been killed by an intruder, was found guilty, appealed his case to the Supreme Court, and was finally acquitted. A television series and film (The Fugitive) were made about his story.
France
Soviet Union
See also
