Exonerations in cases like that of Michael Morton of Texas — who was freed in 2011 after DNA testing on evidence previously hidden by the prosecution identified another man as the killer of Morton’s wife — have demonstrated discovery’s crucial role in wrongful convictions. Despite some reforms to the discovery process in a few states, though, laws in most of America remain a tangled mess, according to The Crime Report. For every successful reform, Kate Pastor reports here, bills in other states die aborning.
Blog Editor
Mark Godsey
Daniel P. & Judith L. Carmichael Professor of Law, University of Cincinnati College of Law; Director, Center for the Global Study of Wrongful Conviction; Director, Rosenthal Institute for Justice/Ohio Innocence Project
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Contributing Editors
Justin Brooks
Professor, California Western School of Law; Director, California Innocence ProjectOrder his book Wrongful Convictions Cases & Materials 2d ed. here
Cheah Wui Ling
Assistant Professor, Faculty of Law, National University of Singapore
Daniel Ehighalua
Nigerian Barrister
Jessica S. Henry
Associate Professor of Justice Studies, Montclair University
Carey D. Hoffman
Director of Digital Communications, Ohio Innocence Project@OIPCommunicati1
Shiyuan Huang
Associate Professor, Shandong University Law School; Visiting Scholar, University of Cincinnati College of Law
C Ronald Huff
Professor of Criminology, Law & Society and Sociology, University of California-Irvine
Phil Locke
Science and Technology Advisor, Ohio Innocence Project and Duke Law Wrongful Convictions Clinic
Dr. Carole McCartney
Reader in Law, Faculty of Business and Law, Northumbria University
Nancy Petro
Author and Advocate Order her book False Justice here
Kana Sasakura
Professor, Faculty of Law, Konan University Innocence Project Japan
Dr. Robert Schehr
Professor, Department of Criminology & Criminal Justice, Northern Arizona University; Executive Director, Arizona Innocence Project
Ulf Stridbeck
Professor of Law, Faculty of Law, University of Oslo, Norway
Martin Yant
Author and Private Investigator Order his book Presumed Guilty here-
Well, what happens if you get discovery and find out the whole case is fabricated? There’s no summary judgment motion, and no defense that a prosecution is not brought in good faith, the latter being as far as I can tell conclusively presumed.
Once you open up the door to discovery in criminal cases, you’re going to have to open the door to dismissals on the merits prior to trial – that is, summary judgment – and SCOTUS doesn’t want to go there, right?
Very interesting article.
The article points out that North Carolina seems to be setting the standard for discovery “rules.”
I have worked on post conviction relief cases in 6 states, and I personally would say that the legal post conviction relief process and infrastructure in North Carolina makes the most sense of all the ones I’ve been exposed to. If we could just propagate that!