New Article Spotlight: Cassell’s Skeptical Observations of Some Suggested Innocence Reforms

Professor Paul Cassell has posted Freeing the Guilty Without Protecting the Innocent: Some Skeptical Observations on Proposed New “Innocence” Procedures here.  The introduction gives you an idea of where his article takes you:

A recent thoughtful article by Tim Bakken discusses the plight of innocent defendants and proposes new procedures to prevent “factually” innocent defendants from being convicted at trial.1 Bakken quite rightly draws attention to the important subject of preventing the conviction of innocent persons—a fundamental goal of the criminal justice system. In proposing his prescribed solutions, however, Bakken stands on shakier ground. His untested and unprecedented proposals seem quite likely to free countless guilty defendants without doing much to aid the truly innocent. Indeed, by overwhelming the criminal justice system with frivolous claims of innocence, Bakken’s proposal seems likely to swell the size of the criminal justice haystack of purportedly innocent defendants, thus making it more difficult to identify the needle of the truly innocent defendant enmeshed in the system. To truly help the innocent, we should be looking at other, more discriminating reforms that offer better prospects of separating guilty from innocent defendants.