This course is designed to answer the question: “how does it happen
that a person can be convicted of a crime and sent to prison for a
crime that he did not commit?”  In short, we will discuss the
principal problems associated with our criminal justice system that
lead to the conviction of the innocent.  Recent scientific advances,
most notably in DNA testing, have allowed for claims of actual
innocence to be revisited.  While DNA evidence may ultimately
exonerate an individual, it does nothing to explain how the wrong
person came to be convicted in the first place.  By examining the
cases of those individuals exonerated by DNA evidence, however, a
pattern that helps to explain why wrongful convictions occur is
beginning to emerge.  The pattern includes such issues as mistaken
identifications, police and prosecutorial misconduct, false
confessions, informants/snitches, bad lawyering, and of course junk
science; these are the issues that we will cover in class.

Class Meeting:	1:30 - 4:30, D, SY 210

Instructor:  Professor Marla Sandys, criminal justice department