Joanna Pozzulo receives funding from Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.
Emily Pica ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.
Carleton University apporte un financement en tant que membre adhérent de The Conversation CA.
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Blackstone’s ratio, developed by jurist William Blackstone, states that: “Better that ten guilty persons escape than one innocent suffer.”
David Milgaard, Leighton Hay and Steven Truscott have all been wrongfully convicted of serious criminal offences in Canada. Collectively, these three spent 45 years in prison for crimes they did not commit.
Romeo Phillion was the longest serving wrongfully convicted defendant in Canada, serving 31 years in prison. In 2009, the Ontario Court of Appeal overturned his murder conviction and ordered a new trial because of a missing police report that provided an alibi for Phillion. He passed away in 2015.
Not only do those wrongfully convicted lose their freedom while incarcerated, if they are exonerated, they will need to reintegrate into society. But how does society perceive the exoneree?
We conducted two studies to examine the perceptions of wrongfully convicted individuals after exoneration. Participants read a mock news story detailing the wrongful conviction and were asked to rate their perceptions of the individual.
In our first study, we asked whether an exoneree would be perceived differently when they were wrongfully convicted of sexual assault, armed robbery or murder.
We were also interested in whether the contributing factor — eyewitness misidentification, false confession, jailhouse informant testimony and faulty forensic evidence — for wrongful conviction influenced perceptions.
In our second study, we added the racial identity of the exoneree.
Our findings suggest that factors about the case can influence how people perceive exonerees. Participants perceived exonerees more negatively when the exoneree provided a false confession, which in turn influenced perceptions of whether the exoneree should receive compensation.
The type of crime also influenced perceptions, such that being wrongfully convicted of a sexual assault was more detrimental to the exoneree when compared to other types of crimes.
Race also matters. When the exoneree was described as Black, participants believed racial profiling was occurring more so than when the exoneree was white. When the individual was white and was convicted of sexual assault, participants reported wanting more social distance from him.
Intriguingly, sexual assault may be perceived to be a crime perpetrated by whites. It is estimated that approximately 60 per cent of perpetrators of sexual violence are white.
Overall, details about a case can influence how the exoneree is perceived, even though an exoneree did not commit the crime they were accused or found guilty of.
Importantly, participants were likely to believe that the exoneree was innocent, suggesting that individuals trust that errors in the justice system can happen.
Miscarriages of justice occur at rates that are difficult to estimate. However, wrongful conviction rates have been placed at approximately one in 20 defendants.
Sadly, not only does the innocent individual experience the hardship of the allegations, charges and the loss of their freedom, but post-exoneration also may pose challenges. Stigma associated with some crimes such as sexual assault can remain.
Given mistaken identification is the leading contributing factor in known wrongful conviction cases, policy reform should be directed at how identification evidence should be collected to increase accuracy.
