Miscarriages of Justice: Their Causes and Curses

Authors

Steven Wisotsky, Nova Southeastern University Law Center

First Page

547

Document Type

Article

Abstract

Judge Hand was wrong. There is now abundant evidence that innocent men have been convicted and imprisoned. Probably a few innocents have been executed. This article explores what is largely uncharted territory: the law pertaining to correcting miscarriages of justice. The twin premises are that significant numbers of innocent prisoners are wrongly convicted each year, and that present legal remedies are inadequate to correct these miscarriages of justice. How many miscarriages of justice have there been historically, and how common are they today? Because guilt or innocence is a judgment and not a purely objective fact, it is impossible to provide empirical verification of the frequency of such miscarriages. Nonetheless, there is an impressive body of evidence that miscarriages have occurred and continue to occur.

Recommended Citation

Steven Wisotsky, Miscarriages of Justice: Their Causes and Curses, 9 St. Thomas L. Rev. 547 (1997).
Available at: https://scholarship.stu.edu/stlr/vol9/iss3/7