This is a list of miscarriage of justice cases. This list includes cases where a convicted individual was later cleared of the crime and either has received an official exoneration, or a consensus exists that the individual was unjustly punished or where a conviction has been quashed and no retrial has taken place, so that the accused is legally assumed innocent. This list is not exhaustive. Crime descriptions with an asterisk indicate that the events were later determined not to be criminal acts.
List of cases
Argentina
Armenia
Australia
Brazil
Canada
China
Finland
France
Germany
Greece
Iceland
Iran
Ireland
Israel
Italy
Japan
Mexico
Netherlands
New Zealand
Nicaragua
Norway
Poland
Romania
South Africa
South Korea
Spain
Sweden
Switzerland
Taiwan
Uganda
United Kingdom
United States
Due to the high number of documented notable wrongful conviction entries for the United States, the list can be viewed via the main article.
Vietnam
See also
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Prosecutorial misconduct
In jurisprudence, prosecutorial misconduct or prosecutorial overreach is "an illegal act or failing to act, on the part of a prosecutor, especially an attempt to sway the jury to wrongly convict a defendant or to impose a harsher than appropri ...
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Exculpatory evidence
Exculpatory evidence is evidence favorable to the defendant in a criminal trial that exonerates or tends to exonerate the defendant of guilt. It is the opposite of inculpatory evidence, which tends to present guilt.
In many countries, including ...
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Innocence Project
Innocence Project, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit legal organization that is committed to exonerating individuals who have been wrongly convicted, through the use of DNA testing and working to reform the criminal justice system to prevent futur ...
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Race in the United States criminal justice system
Race in the United States criminal justice system refers to the unique experiences and disparities in the United States in regard to the policing and prosecuting of various races. There have been different outcomes for different racial groups i ...
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Capital punishment in the United States
In the United States, capital punishment is a legal penalty throughout the country at the federal level, in 27 states, and in American Samoa. It is also a legal penalty for some military offenses. Capital punishment has been abolished in 23 s ...
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Innocent prisoner's dilemma
The innocent prisoner's dilemma, or parole deal, is a detrimental effect of a legal system in which admission of guilt can result in reduced sentences or early parole. When an innocent person is wrongly convicted of a crime, legal systems which n ...
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Miscarriage of justice
A miscarriage of justice occurs when a grossly unfair outcome occurs in a criminal procedure, criminal or civil procedure, civil proceeding, such as the conviction and punishment of a person for a crime they actual innocence, did not commit. Mis ...
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False confession
A false confession is an admission of guilt for a crime which the individual did not commit. Although such confessions seem counterintuitive, they can be made voluntarily, perhaps to protect a third party, or induced through coercive interrogat ...
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Overturned convictions in the United States
This is a list of notable overturned convictions in the United States.
Alabama
Blount County
* Bill Wilson was convicted of the 1912 murder of his wife and child and sentenced to life in prison. He was exonerated in 1918 when they were both ...
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Capital punishment debate in the United States The debate over capital punishment in the United States existed as early as the colonial period. As of April 2022, it remains a legal penalty within 27 states, the federal government, and military criminal justice systems. The states of Colorado, ...
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List of exonerated death row inmates
This list contains names of people who were found guilty of capital crimes and placed on death row but later found to be wrongly convicted. Many of these exonerees' sentences were overturned by acquittal or pardon, but some of those listed were ...
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Wrongful execution
Wrongful execution is a miscarriage of justice occurring when an innocent person is put to death by capital punishment. Cases of wrongful execution are cited as an argument by opponents of capital punishment, while proponents say that the argum ...
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Maurice Hastings
References
Notes
Further reading
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Jed S. Rakoff
Jed Saul Rakoff (born August 1, 1943) is a Senior United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Education
Rakoff was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on August 1, 1943. He grew up in ...
, "Jailed by Bad Science", ''
The New York Review of Books
''The New York Review of Books'' (or ''NYREV'' or ''NYRB'') is a semi-monthly magazine with articles on literature, culture, economics, science and current affairs. Published in New York City, it is inspired by the idea that the discussion of i ...
'', vol. LXVI, no. 20 (December 19, 2019), pp. 79–80, 85. According to Judge Rakoff (p. 85), "forensic techniques that in their origin were simply viewed as aids to police investigations have taken on an importance in the criminal justice system that they frequently cannot support. Their results are portrayed... as possessing a degree of validity and reliability that they simply do not have." Rakoff commends (p. 85) the U.S.
National Academy of Sciences
The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nati ...
recommendation to "creat
an independent National Institute of Forensic Science to do the basic testing and promulgate the basic standards that would make forensic science much more genuinely scientific".
{{DEFAULTSORT:List Of Miscarriage Of Justice Cases
People wrongfully convicted of murder
People wrongfully convicted of rape