Miscarriages of Justice: A Theoretical and Practical Overview

Abstract

This article deals with the following topics, among other things:

1. Defining miscarriage of justice.

2. Factors that affect the felt seriousness of miscarriages of justice. 3. Why we omit normative innocence and state of mind from the definition of miscarriage of justice, at least for the purposes of undertaking reinvestigation.

4. Framing a guilty guy and miscarriage of justice.

5. Waivers, Time bars and various kinds of post conviction relief—why waiver and time bar doctrines shouldn’t affect serious actual innocence claims, and how the system can live up to this without opening a floodgate or creating a haystack.

6. Exonerations, unsafe verdicts, and radically unsafe verdicts, and the implications of these related but distinct concepts for analyzing the problem of the convicted innocent.

Keywords: criminal law, criminal procedure, evidence, proof, exoneration, actual innocence