NRE analyzes medicolegal death investigations and wrongful convictions
The National Registry of Exonerations (NRE) this week released the report “Medicolegal Death Investigation and Convicting the Innocent,” which is based on an analysis of 151 cases in which defendants were wrongly convicted between 1989 and 2023 in the U.S. and death investigation contributed to the false conviction.
“Not surprisingly, 140 (93%) of the 151 cases in which death investigation contributed to the false conviction were homicides,” states the report’s Executive Summary. “However, death investigators did contribute to 11 non-homicide cases, all involving abuse of vulnerable people: children or dependent adults.”
Eight of those 11 cases involved the Shaken Baby Syndrome (SBS) diagnosis, in which the top charge was child abuse. Also known as abusive head trauma, shaken impact syndrome, inflicted head injury or whiplash shaken infant syndrome, SBS is a serious brain injury resulting from forcefully shaking an infant or toddler. However, some in the medical community argue there is not enough scientific evidence to support an SBS diagnosis, and some judges and appellate justices have labeled it “junk science.”
“The study suggests that the contribution of death investigation to wrongful convictions is not merely a product of inadequate training, resources, or regulation,” says Simon Cole, director and associate editor of the NRE and a UC Irvine professor of criminology, law and society. “Board-certified forensic pathologists, the most highly qualified of death investigators, were involved in 61% of the cases. Generally praised medical examiner systems contributed to as great a proportion of cases as widely criticized coroner systems. And accredited death investigation offices also contributed to their share of wrongful convictions.”
Co-authoring the report with Cole were: NRE senior researcher Maurice Possley; NRE researcher Ken Otterbourg; NRE research scholar Jessica Weinstock Paredes; NRE editor Barbara O’Brien; NRE Foundation executive director Meghan Cousino; and NRE contributing editor and co-founder Samuel R. Gross.
- Among the interesting findings in the report:
- Women were overrepresented among the defendants for whom the death investigation contributed to their false conviction. Thirty-nine (26%) of the defendants in the 151 cases were women, more than three times the 8% of all female exonerees. Only around 5% of exonerees convicted of comparable crimes were women.
- Relatedly, cases involving child victims were particularly vulnerable to contributions by death investigation. Nearly half (47%) of the 151 cases involved child victims. That compares to only 19% of all non-death-investigation exonerations and 34% of non-death-investigation exonerations for comparable crimes.
- Although concerns have been raised about racial bias in death investigation, the exonerees in death investigation exoneration cases were whiter than exonerees in general. One third of death investigation exonerees were Black compared to 53% of all exonerees. Similarly, 8% of death investigation exonerees were Hispanic, compared to 12% of all exonerees. The higher representation of whites diminishes somewhat if women are removed from the analysis.
The 151 exonerees lost a total of 1,837 years in prison, an average of 12.2 years per exoneree. That is less than the average of 14.6 years for exonerees convicted of comparable crimes but for whom death investigation did not contribute to the false conviction.
You can download the report here: https://n2t.net/ark:/88112/x2991r
The National Registry of Exonerations is an online archive of all known wrongful conviction cases in the United States. It is a project of UCI’s Newkirk Center for Science and Society and the University of Michigan and Michigan State University law schools.
— Matt Coker