Defense Newsroom

Evidence That The American Criminal Justice System Sometimes Produces Demonstrably Wrong Results

The Special Litigation Division’s focus on systemic issues in the District of Columbia justice system leads it to litigate those issues before every court in the District of Columbia – the Superior Court and Court of Appeals in the local system, and the District Court, the Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court in the federal system. These are some of the highlights of our litigation:

Conviction of the innocent: With the advent of DNA testing, we now have evidence that the American criminal justice system sometimes produces demonstrably wrong results – innocent people are convicted and the real culprit goes free. DNA testing is a powerful tool for catching these mistakes, but its scope is limited to the few cases in which biological evidence is available, can be tested, and is connected to the crime. Even in those cases, the biological evidence is often reported lost or destroyed, or is too degraded to get a conclusive result. For every DNA exoneration, there are countless cases where testing cannot help because no DNA was left at the scene, or the evidence that was once there has been lost or destroyed.

In order to effectively address the recurring, institutional problems that contribute to the conviction of the innocent, PDS's Special Litigation Division has focused on two major problems revealed by the DNA exonerations: common misperceptions about the reliability of eyewitness identification evidence, as described above, and juror misunderstanding of the demonstrated phenomenon of “false confessions” – situations in which someone who did not commit the crime admits to it anyway. Working with trial lawyers in individual cases, as well as through litigation of our own cases under the District's Innocence Protection Act, PDS's Special Litigation Division has marshaled a variety of resources on these subjects, including social science research, testifying experts, surveys of potential jurors to determine the reason for their failures to properly understand these subjects, and information about the causes of wrongful convictions around the country, in order to help courts begin to address these problems systematically. The focus of these projects is to allow the defense to point out potential flaws in the reliability of seeming solid evidence, so that the adversarial system will work more efficiently and not continue to produce wrongful convictions at such an alarming rate.

Unfair delay in release from jail: Another recurring problem in the District of Columbia’s criminal justice system is its failure to release people who have been found not guilty after trial or whose charges have been dismissed. While local corrections officials have asserted some need to “check” – often for several days – to ensure that the right person is being released and that the case really was dismissed, other systems around the country have managed to do this before the charges are dismissed so that people can be released directly from the courtroom. Los Angeles, for example, has developed a model procedure that ensures that people with no pending charges are not held in jail unnecessarily.

The Special Litigation Division has contacted local corrections officials and attempted to educate them on the extreme unfairness and likely illegality of the current system, and has prepared model pleadings for lawyers at PDS to use to attempt to secure speedy release for clients who are no longer facing criminal charges. Because local officials have proven unreceptive, however, PDS also has been cooperating with the lawyers litigating a class action lawsuit against the District to address this issue.

Special education services for youth at the D.C. Jail: The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act was enacted to ensure “that all children with disabilities have available a free appropriate public education that emphasizes special and related services designed to meet their unique needs.” The youth housed at the D.C. jail are clearly entitled to these services – and need them most desperately – but are not receiving anything close to what the law requires because the District’s public school system and the D.C. Department of Corrections do not have any comprehensive system in place for identifying those youth who are entitled to special education services at the jail, and for providing those services to them. PDS's Special Litigation Division is currently seeking to compel the District’s school system and Department of Corrections to provide these important services.