Not Guilty: Are the Acquitted Innocent? - Hardcover

Givelber, Daniel; Farrell, Amy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0814732178 ISBN 13: 9780814732175

Publisher: NYU Press, 2012

Synopsis

As scores of death row inmates are exonerated by DNA evidence and innocence commissions are set up across the country, conviction of the innocent has become a well-recognized problem. But our justice system makes both kinds of errors—we acquit the guilty and convict the innocent—and exploring the reasons why people are acquitted can help us to evaluate the efficiency and fairness of our criminal justice system. Not Guilty provides a sustained examination and analysis of the factors that lead juries to find defendants “not guilty,” as well as the connection between those factors and the possibility of factual innocence, examining why some criminal trials result in not guilty verdicts and what those verdicts suggest about the accuracy of our criminal process.

About this title

Review

"Givelber and Farrell make a persuasive case that most jury acquittals are based on evidence not emotion, and that acquittals should be taken to mean what they say: that the defendant is Not Guilty." --Samuel Gross, co-author of A Modern Approach to Evidence

"A brilliant book that masterfully debunks the conventional wisdom that those who are charged with crimes in our criminal justice system, even when they are acquitted at trial, are almost certainly guilty. It is a data-driven tour de force." --Richard A. Leo, author of Police Interrogation and American Justice

About the Author

Daniel Givelber is Professor of Law and former Dean at Northeastern Law School of Law. A founding member of the New England Innocence Project, he has also been involved in death penalty litigation both through directing Northeastern's Certiorari Clinic and by the successful decade long representation of a death row inmate.

About this edition

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0814732178
• ISBN 13: 9780814732175
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 228