Two major publications today featured stories on innocence issues. 

The New York Times ran a first-page article about the ways in which states are re-thinking their criminal justice procedures based on lessons learned from the nation's first 200 DNA exonerations.  The article highlights Maryland's recent laws on crime lab oversight and eyewitness identification procedures.  The Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project's Executive Director, Shawn Armbrust, testified before the Maryland legislature on both of these bills.  To read the New York Times article, click here. 

The Washington Post today ran an editorial discussing the problem of false confessions.  The author, Shankar Vedantam, described a fascinating study in which non-criminal individuals were led, through mere suggestion, to admit to acts that they had not performed.  The article notes that approximately 25 percent of DNA exonerations have involved false confessions.  To read the Washington Post editorial, click here. 

Technorati Tags:

This entry was posted on Monday, October 1st, 2007 at 2:06 pm and is filed under blog, homepage, legislative developments. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.