What is Wrongful Conviction and it’s causes?

By Anadi Soni

“The annals of criminal law are rife with instances of mistaken identification.”

—The Michigan Supreme Court in People v. Anderson (1973)

Introduction

Imagine you were convicted, sentenced to prison, or sentenced to death for a crime you never committed. This is the innocent experience of some people. Nowadays, there are many innocent people in prison. They say that detention in judicial administration is a rejection of justice.

Unfortunately, judicial delays for such victims are conditional, and it is necessary for the state to be held accountable for negligence and arrears. . It lasts for several years and affects mental health.

This raises questions about the protection of the rights of the individuals inscribed in India’s constitution.

In the recent case in 2019 of Madhumala Das, who was arrested and held in the detention center for three years for a crime that she had never committed. Her deaf-mute daughter wandered through the village in search of her mother, and she soon fell into trauma.

It turned out that the case was of ‘mistaken identity’ in the investigation. Madhumala lost three years of her life due to her fateful resemblance to the killer. Unlawful arrests and imprisonment not only contribute to the loss of years but victims also face social isolation and marginalization after release.

Years of separation from friends and families, the terrifying convictions do not end up with liberty. The charge of being accused persists even after the pardon in such cases.

It was in 1983 when the Supreme Court in Rudul Shah v. the State of Bihar, was first asked to award compensation to the wrongfully convicted victim whose fundamental rights were violated. The petitioner was illegally held in prison for ‘14 years’.

He filed a habeas corpus– Letter to the Supreme Court under Article 32 of the Constitution demanding compensation. The Supreme Court awarded Rs. 30K as compensation to the petitioner and held that the scope of Art.32 also includes the ‘power to grant compensation for infringements of fundamental rights only in cases where the infringement of rights is gross’.

In the landmark case of Babloo Chauhan Dabloo v. State Government of NCT of Delhi, The Court opined that: “There is at found in our united states no statutory or prison scheme for compensating people who are wrongfully incarcerated. The times of these being acquitted with the aid of using the High Court or the Supreme Court after a few years of imprisonment aren’t infrequent. They are left to their gadgets with no desire of reintegration into society or rehabilitation because the great years in their existence were spent at the back of bars, invisible at the back of the excessive jail walls. There is an urgent need for a legislative framework for supplying remedy and rehabilitation to sufferers of wrongful prosecution and incarceration.”

Hyderabad suicide bombing case 2005, In this case, the defendants were charged with conspiracy in the suicide bombing that occurred on October 12, 2005, in the police task force office that killed two officers. He stressed that the police had arrested the suspects without any specific evidence and could not prove the defendants’ conspiracy.

The innocent victims would have lost ten years of their lives due to the negligence of the authorities. This is not the first time the police have made such a mistake. These cases are often viewed as high profile cases where the police often arrest innocent people due to political pressure.

In such cases, tough measures must be taken against these authorities.

Meaning

The term wrongful conviction here is analyzed in terms of a combination of two concepts i.e. –

1. Wrongful

2. Conviction

Wrongful here means where the investigation, recording of confession, identification by the witness, and the right to counsel laws are not followed or where the conviction appears to be biased, prejudiced, or not in compliance with the constitutional guarantees.

The conviction here is as in the post-adjudication stage function where either the Trial Court or first Appellate Court has adjudicated the case wrongly.

A conviction may be classified as wrongful for two reasons:

1. The person convicted is factually innocent of the charges.
2. There were procedural errors that violated the convicted person’s rights.

According to Duhaime’s law dictionary, “a wrongful conviction is a conviction of a person accused of a crime which, in the result of the subsequent investigation, proves erroneous.” This definition includes the persons who have committed the act and planning of crimes however whose convictions were obtained in violation of constitutional or different procedural rights.

When innocent defendants are found guilty in criminal proceedings or the defendants are forced to confess to crimes they did not commit to avoid the death penalty or extremely long imprisonment, unfair penalties will result. When a truly innocent person spends years in prison or death row.

This is the first-hand recognition and conviction of a crime that someone has never committed. In some cases, the overturning of illegal sentences does not last long enough, or until the real person is sentenced to death, acquitted, or killed.

It is unjust to be convicted and imprisoned for uncommitted crimes. Research and anecdotal evidence indicate that a large proportion of illegally sentenced prisoners suffer from serious mental health problems, including post-traumatic stress disorder and anxiety disorders, which are not very common.

There are no guilty prisoners who endanger their lives in prison. This makes it difficult for reformed prisoners to return to normal life after release. More than half of the states do not legally allow financial compensation for criminal justice victims.

Although the number of states with compensation laws has increased in recent years, prisoners who have recovered have not received the benefits that prisoners on parole can get. There is no automatic basis for prosecuting and collecting money from the police or prosecutors.

Some of these cases have been successful in recent years, but they are rare, and can only succeed if specific wrongdoing by criminal justice agencies can be proven and immunity defenses overcome.

Innocence project

Today, there are more innocent people living in our prisons and prisons than ever before. Due to the unreliable criminal justice system, the tax exemption rate continues to rise. The innocence project saves statistics on cases where the convicted defendant has been rehabilitated and usually moves forward.

In many cases, even after innocent people have been executed, released, or died, illegal sentences have not been overturned for decades. The actual incidence of legal errors is difficult to measure because many sentences have never been overturned.

The project used the latest DNA tests to help overturn 375 convictions against American prisoners. However, DNA testing only occurs in 5-10%. In all criminal cases, the acquittal of the acquittal plan is limited to murder and rape cases, which increases the possibility that there will be more illegal convictions without evidence that the defendant will be acquitted.

Guess it is between 2.3% and 5% of all prisoners in the United States who are innocent.

Exonerations

Exonerations tell us a lot about what causes wrongful convictions. Exoneration refers to the acquittal of a person who is formally convicted of a crime based on new innocence evidence. This can occur through:

• A pardon based on actual innocence.
• An acquittal at retrial.
• A conviction being vacated and the indictment dismissed.

DNA Exoneration

The convicted person is officially acquitted based on the DNA evidence after the conviction (that is, the DNA test result is the determinant of actual innocence and is essential for overturning the conviction and/or exempting the conviction).

Innocence’s work focuses on cases where DNA evidence (such as blood or other bodily fluids) is critical to the case, usually focusing on assault, sexual assault, or DNA murder grounds, accounting for only a portion of them, about 15%. All exceptions in the United States.

Causes of Wrongful Convictions

These are common causes of wrongful convictions:

• Eyewitness Mis-identification – Eyewitness Mis-identification is the main reason leading to illegal judgments nationwide. Studies have shown that the human mind is not like a tape recorder. We will not record events as accurately as we see, nor will we record them as rewinds. On the contrary, the memory of the witness is like any other evidence at the crime scene. It must be stored carefully and removed in an orderly manner, otherwise, it may be contaminated.
• Junk Science-Many forensic methods are used with little or no scientific reviews, and there is an insufficient assessment of their value or reliability. As a result, forensic analysts sometimes provide evidence when there is sufficient scientific basis to conclude. In some cases, forensic analysts misbehave. Wrong forensic investigations can also lead to wrong judgments. Many forensic methods have not been scientifically proven. These junk scientific methods include:

1. Hair microscopy
2. Bite mark comparisons
3. Firearm tool mark analysis
4. Shoe print comparisons

• False Confessions – In many cases, innocent defendants make untrue statements, deliver outright confessions, or plead guilty. Regardless of the age, capacity, or state of the confessor, at some point during the interrogation process they decide that confessing will be more beneficial to them than continuing to maintain their innocence.
• Government Misconduct – In some cases, government officials take steps to ensure that a defendant is convicted despite weak evidence or even clear proof of innocence.
• Bad Lawyer– The failure of overworked lawyers to investigate, call witnesses, or prepare for trial has led to the conviction of innocent people.

Wrongful Conviction in India

India is a democratic union administered by the rule of law and bound by the Constitution of India, which the citizens of that nation adopted for themselves. The regulation of the law shows that the law is absolute and the rule of law is protected when there are sanctions, is always available, and reacts to the needs and difficulties of peoples in a reasonable and non-judgmental way.

The expansion of the growth of the Nation is calculated according to the system of financial assets and justice, which must follow the practice of speed and justice.

Our constitution guaranteed its citizens several fundamental rights, which are necessary human rights.

Judges in India follow the principle which says “A hundred guilty may be left but an innocent should not be punished”

Criminal procedural law has an instrumental value as it is responsible for making the ideals and goals of criminal justice a reality. The aim of the Code of Criminal Procedure is always to ensure that victims of crime are brought to justice in good time.

Effective when the real perpetrator is arrested and charged with the crime they have committed. This can be ensured by forcing the police, investigative bodies, prosecutors, and judges to efficiently discharge their responsibilities and duties under the law without willful error.

To strengthen the trust of the people of a country in the legal institutions, the correctness and ethics of the criminal justice system must be preserved. This effort can only be made if the guilty are convicted and the innocent are exempted from punishment.

One can understand that the victim of wrongful conviction suffers two ways in the criminal justice system-

Firstly, it is personal, because it is the victim of wrongful conviction who suffered jail time.

Secondly, the victim of wrongful conviction is condemned for the rest of his life with societal demise and hate, due to the failure of the criminal justice system.

These people are punished in such a way that, even if wrongly convicted and then exonerated, even after they have entered society they are publicly hated, convicted of public disgust, and hatred of a particular crime or story. The person who took revenge for the failure of the criminal justice system has the right to be executed to give him room to remain in a dignified state once he is discharged.

So far the criminal justice system has been missing and has not provided for this. This support in the form of compensation and recognition as a free man. Even after nearly 70 years as an independent nation, the criminal justice system has not stopped certain evils that are subject to unjustified conviction:

1. Illegal detention by the police.

2. Torture.

3. Malicious methods of investigation.

4. Harassment of family members.

5. Continuing surveillance even after exoneration.

General issues of wrongful conviction

• The major causes for the failure of the Criminal Justice System can be enlisted below: Lack of sincerity and efficiency has been followed and practiced which leads to doubts leading to loopholes in investigation and framing of charge sheets.
• Damaging and misappropriation of evidence by the person involved in the case or a few cases the investigation officer are found guilty of tampering with the evidence.
• Misleading the story and fake identities makes the investigation more prone to failure.
• Caste biases against the people which are also the defendants wrongfully arrested.
• The inability of the witness concerning identifying the person who is responsible for the crime.
• Mistake of not giving enough consideration by the police department for the person having an expert opinion in a case.
• False Evidence or contaminated evidence
• Mala fide and Doctored Forensic evidence
• Wrong or fake confession taken under duress and pressure by the police investigation officer.
• Corruption and political interference is also another prominent malpractice that leads to wrongful conviction.

Reforms: Reducing the Number of Wrongful Convictions

Research and systematic thinking on the direct causes of illegal convictions have led to many feasible reform measures that can reduce legal errors. The recommended alignment reforms are based on laboratory research showing that they reduce the number of incorrect IDs without significantly reducing the number of exact IDs.

Witnesses on all lineups (live and photo) should be instructed that the perpetrator may not be present to reduce the trend. All lineups should be selected the based on victim’s verbal description and not based on resemblance to the suspect.

All crime laboratories should be accredited and their examiners certified and required to undergo periodic proficiency testing. Defense attorneys, as well as prosecutors and judges, should be educated in forensic testing techniques, and funding should be sufficient to have challenged forensic evidence retested.

The most widely recommended interrogation reform is to videotape entire interrogations, from initiation and before Miranda warnings (the Miranda warning is a type of notification customarily given by police to criminal suspects in police custody advising them of their right to silence; that is, their right to refuse to answer questions or provide information to law enforcement or other officials) to the conclusion and not just the confessions.

Videotaping allows pretrial judges to determine whether interrogation was coercive or likely to produce a false confession. Police benefit from videotaped interrogations because confessions by guilty suspects provide powerful prosecution evidence.

Interrogations should be time-limited, especially for vulnerable suspects, such as teenagers, to 2 hours, because many false confessions are the product of protracted interrogation

Additional funding for prosecutors and their investigators, by reducing caseloads, will create a better understanding of cases and may reduce wrongful convictions. Prosecutors should advise police and forensic laboratories to include exculpatory evidence in their reports.

Prosecutors should promote laws and regulations to improve lineups and interrogations by best practices established by psychological research and should not resist reasonable post-conviction requests for reinvestigation of evidence.

Police investigators also need greater resources to make work pressures more manageable. Standards should be rewritten and training revised to educate investigators in wrongful conviction matters, to become aware of the effects of tunnel vision, and to include exculpatory evidence in their reports.

This may be very hard to achieve because it calls for a change in police culture away from pro-prosecution partisanship and more toward a neutral and scientific attitude toward cases.

There are different ways of achieving this objective but perhaps the easier way may be for the victim to pursue compensation within the criminal process or what we describe as the adhesion procedure.

The framework of the law in India on this matter should find its place in the provisions of the constitution, the code of criminal procedure 1973.

Case laws:

The plight of undertrials was highlighted in the case of Hussainara Khatoon and Others v. the State of Bihar, in 1979. The Supreme Court took note of various articles published in Indian Express regarding the terrible conditions in the prisons of Bihar.

The articles in the newspaper disclosed that several prisoners, including women and children, have been detained in the prisons as under-trials for at least 2-5 years. Out of them, most of the under-trials have been arrested for minor charges, the punishment of which would not be more than a few months, however, these detainees have been in the prison for 3 to 10 years.

A writ petition of habeas corpus was filed in the Supreme Court which revealed a disturbing picture of undertrials in the state of Bihar and challenged the administration of justice in the state. The Supreme Court admitted the petitions and ordered the Government of Bihar to submit an extensive report on the prisoners and the under-trials.

The Apex Court pronounced a landmark judgment in his case and held that the right to a speedy trial is an essential part of the administration of justice in any state.

Further, this right is a constitutional right and the state must ensure the protection of it.

In Motiram v Madhya Pradesh state, the Supreme Court faced the challenge of resolving some of the most critical questions regarding bail given to those unable to pay bail. In 1978, the Apex Court first had to decide whether the 1973 Code of Criminal Procedure would authorize a person to obtain a bond based on a personal bond.

Second, what should be the criteria for reimbursement of the amount specified for the bond and how should it be calculated? Third, if an individual lives or resides in another district or state, or owns property in different districts or state, theirs if their request for a bond can be denied for the same reasons.

The Apex Court held that the Criminal Procedure Act has several shortcomings and loopholes in terms of representing the poor sector of society; several ambiguous laws and complexities need to be clarified by making some changes.

As mentioned in Article 14 of the Constitution of India, it is necessary to introduce into the legislation the “balance of procedural law” for different sectors of society about some specific issues that have been raised in this case. “The right to equality before the law” is put into practice in all criminal proceedings

Law Commission of India

The LCI in its 277th report titled Wrongful Prosecution (Miscarriage of Justice): Legal Remedies headed by Hon’ble Justice Dr. B.S Chauhan has recommended certain amendments to the Criminal Procedure Code, 1973 (CrPC).

While it is beyond the reach of this article to objectively examine all the recommendations made by LCI in the aforementioned report, it will briefly analyze the recommendations made concerning the Compensation Legislative Framework only.

The Commission recommends setting up ‘Special Courts’ in each district for delivery of expedient and speedy justice to victims. These Courts shall solely entertain the Compensation Pleas filed by wrongfully accused victims and their family members.

The jurisdiction of these Courts has been classified based on:

• The place in which the wrongful prosecution took place;
• District in which the victim resides.
• The nature of proceedings to be followed by Special Courts shall be Summary Procedures as prescribed under Order XXXVII of the Civil Procedure Code, 1908. The burden of proof shall lie on the petitioner to prove misconduct on the part of the defendant which led to Wrongful prosecution.
• The most important part of the recommendation is the Compensation legislative framework set out by LCI in its report. The LCI observed that it might not be feasible to set out a fixed amount of compensation for these victims; they recommended the inclusion of ‘Guiding Principles’ to be followed by the Courts while deciding the quantum of compensation. The guiding principles shall be included in the amendments prescribed by LCI. These principles include the “seriousness of the offense, severity of punishment, length of detention, damage to health, harm to reputation, and loss of opportunities.

The LCI also prescribes grants of interim compensation by the State to the victims. The compensation shall be of ‘Pecuniary’ and ‘Non-Pecuniary nature’; Pecuniary being the amount of the compensation decided by Courts based on Guiding principles; the non-pecuniary compensation shall mean measures taken by the State for the reintegration of the victim into society, in particular employment opportunities, the removal of social stigma associated with the crime that the victim has never committed.

References

1. criminal-justice.iresearchnet.com
2. law.umich.edu
3. eji.org/issues
4. law.umich.edu/
5. Lawtimesjournal.in

Articles

• scholar.law.colorado.edu

Case laws

1. Anurag Bhaskar, Jailed For Years: Why India Needs A Right To Compensation For Wrongful Arrests And Detention, THE PRINT (Jul. 09, 2019, 10:13 AM), theprint.in
2. 1983 AIR 1086, 1983 SCR (3) 508
3. 247 (2018) DLT 31, (India)
4. Srinivasa Rao Apparasu, 10 Suspects in Hyderabad Suicide Bombing Case Acquitted, HINDUSTAN TIMES (Aug. 10, 2017, 6:21 PM), hindustantimes.com
5. Hussainara Khatoon V. State Of Bihar, 1979 Scr (3) 532, 9th March 197
6. Motiram V. State Of Madhya Pradesh, 1978(Sc) 1594, 24th August 1978
7. Law Commission of India, ‘Wrongful Prosecution (Miscarriage of Justice): Legal Remedies’, Report No.277, (Aug. 30, 2018) http://lawcommissionofindia.nic.in/reports/Report277.pdf

GRAPHS

1. source-innocenceproject.org
2. source-import.io