Talk:Miscarriage of justice/Archive 1

Archive 1

People who were unjustly acquitted?

Perhaps it would help to balance this article by providing cases of people who were acquitted of a serious crime although the facts indicate that they were guilty of it. Especially interesting would be those cases where the formal procedure of the law lead to a patent injustice. Eric 19:30, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Not sure that an acuittal of a culpable person is a miscarriage. The verdicts available are guilty and not guilty - except in Scotland of course. Not guilty is not, and never should be, synonomous with innocence. Of course it includes the innocent, but also cases where the prosecution case is simply not proven. All verdicts are a result of the formal process of the law - that's what the law is. Bizarre as it sounds wrongful acquittals may represent the process of the law working at it's best - a wrongful conviction never does.

The acquittal of a culpable person may absolutely be a miscarriage of justice in certain circumstances. For example, the mob is famous for buying off judges and jurors, resulting in wrongful acquittals. That is absolutely a miscarriage of justice. A judge might wrongly exclude inculpatory evidence. A witness might lie on the stand to exculpate the defendant. Why are those situations not also miscarriages of justice? In any event, I don't believe "miscarriage of justice" is proper for the Wikipedia. The terms "miscarriage" and "justice" have set dictionary meanings. There is no need for an encyclopedia entry.

--- You have to be careful tho, you can only include cases where provable corruption has taken place. It would not be appropriate, for example, to include the recent case of Sean Jenkins. However you feel about the evidence and his previous conviction for the murder of his step daughter, he has been ruled innocent.

Jonathan Jones link

The hyperlink from Jonathan Jones links to a triple disambiguation, none of whom seem to be the right person. I've removed the link - it can go back as and when someone creates a page for the miscarriage victim. Jon Rob 13:15, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

I have added an article for this. It is a classic of the dangers of circumstansial evidens and prosecutorial speculation! badtypist

Stephen Craven

I have removed item on Stephen Craven. I am aware of the case (it was featured on Rough Justice some 10 years ago), and it seems (in my view) to have merit as a miscarriage of justice, but unlike the other cases mentioned, his conviction has not been overturned (his appeal was dismissed in 2000 http://innocent.org.uk/cases/stephencraven/). I think to ensure NPOV then for a case to be listed here the conviction should have been overturned. This case might be acceptable (as long as it were better written) in a List of *Claimed/Alleged* Miscarriages of Justice would be acceptable. 87.113.70.192 11:23, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Oscar Slater

No article or mention of Oscar Slater Jooler 01:19, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

United Kingdom & Scotland

The UK includes Scotland, but apparently not here. Therefore I change the heading UK in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Otto 10:15, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Lucia de Berk

It is still controversial whether or not this case is a "misscarriage of justice". Personally, as a mathematical statistician who is increasingly involved in an important aspect of the case, I "believe" that she is innocent; I reached this belief after I came to "know" professionally that there is absolutely no case against her! --Gill110951 10:25, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

David Blunkett

The David Blunkett link IMHO seems out of place especially given the category states several home secretaries but only mentions one and the whole concept idea seems kind of stupid and just included some someone can include info on David Blunkett

Well, check out this link: http://www.sundayherald.com/40592 . David Blunkett is the one who, as of March 2004, was fighting for the right to charge the wrongfully convicted room and board for the time they spent in prison. This fact is mentioned in the section on the United Kingdom, but it is presented matter-of-factly, as simply a matter of government policy, which I suspect may not correspond to its actual status; since Blunkett was fighting for it in March 2004, it may have been either confirmed or overturned, and either result would of course be important to note. -- Antaeus Feldspar 15:14, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I don't see any argument in the above. The article is about concrete cases of miscarriages of justice, not about home secretaries. I delete the section. Otto 21:53, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Cardiff 3

There are two cases referred to as the "Cardiff 3", I only knew of the Lynette White case, I think someone with more knowledge should change the name of one of the other. Pennywisepeter 14:34, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

David Bain

As of this point David Bain (NZ) is still guilty of murdering his family. Until the law and his appeal says otherwise i am removing it from this page as being "controversial" or the possibility he 'might not be guilty' does not warrant its inclusion. Please adjust if a turn over of conviction comes to light. Boomshanka 22:28, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Merge Exoneration

• See rationale at Talk:Exoneration, requesting that article be farmed for useful content to be merged into this article. Please contribute to discussion at the above Talk page. Thanks Dick G 02:02, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

What does wrongly convicted mean?

Is there a legal implication to the term "wrongly convicted" or is it entirely POV? -- Kendrick7^talk 09:42, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes, theres a difference between 'wrongly convicted' (implying an error in process) and illegally imprisoned :(implying faulty or absence of due process)

Lincolnshire Poacher 22:40, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

USA

I find it hard to believe that the number of miscarriages of justice in the USA is on a par with that in the UK, as the tally of cases shown in this article might lead one to believe. Are there a whole host of such cases from the US missing from this article? Jooler 09:22, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Yes, the US is unfamous for its number of wrongful convictions both relatively to its population as in absolute numbers. This is partly caused by the practice of plea bargain. The list here is just an arbitrary number of examples. Otto 07:16, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Sources and references

The request to cite references for the list of cases is illogical, since most of the names mentioned are themselves subject to wikipedia pages, which contain such source references. Therefore, to state them again at the bottom of this page is pedantic and tautological Lincolnshire Poacher 22:30, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

• I disagree. Each page should have its own references directly available to the reader.Malick78 12:09, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

NPOV

DreamGuy wrote on October 28th 2007: "NPOV examples section is extreme in its POV violations. Crimes should not be listed as miscarriages unless they are universally agreed to be. The article had several that most experts on the topic would disagree were miscarriages of justice. This is not a blog for people to add their own opinion, it needs to not take sides, and especially not minority views."

How many articles (or concepts in general, for that matter) can truly be said to be universally agreed upon? If that were a requirement, there could be no articles on evolution, psychology, war, poverty, religion, government, philosophy, et cetera, ad infinitum. For every issue, there will always be supporters and detractors, "yes men" and naysayers, no matter how clear it may seem to anyone else. I believe the Wikipedia collective would be foolish to think that it can spell out any single issue in black and white absolutism, much less a global compendium of knowledge. --Deimos1313 (talk) 18:11, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Can you list those "several articles" so that we, if necessary, can correct this article? You just give a general comment which is not concrete enough to call the whole article NPOV. I therefore propose to delete the tag. Otto (talk) 10:01, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

What do you mean "several articles" -- I never said such a thing. Have you even looked at the examples section? It's filled with people coming through just claiming a long list of "miscarriages of justice" without any sort of rhyme or reason. It just is a place for people to drop whatever POV they want and to ignore the fact that lots of sources (and in many cases the majority of them) disagree. It needs to be massively cleared out, and I think whole section needs to only contain those that are most uncontroversial and thoroughly proven. It also should be in standard paragraph form and not list form so it doesn't encourage people to come by and add more willy nilly. DreamGuy (talk) 15:03, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

You ignored my request to substantiate your NPOV-claims. Therefore I remove the tag since it appears to reflect just your POV about the article. Otto (talk) 18:54, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

My claims are self-evident from the nature of the section and the items in it. I put the tag back. You need to fix the problem before the tag is removed. I gave you the chance to do so. If you'd rather the tag not be there at all I can remove all of the examples completely. WP:NPOV is one of the core policies of this encyclopedia and must be followed. DreamGuy (talk) 19:44, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

What you call retorically "self evident" is seen different by the numerous editors who wrote the examples of what they see as miscarriages of justice. We have a dispute about the NPOV-tag. Wikipedia:Resolving_disputes step 1 says: focus on content. By not willing to substantiate your NPOV-claims you are evading a discussion about content. In the contrary you are provoking an edit war. Wikipedia is no play ground for war gaming. I value your behaviour as disruptive. The same step 1 says: if "you disagree completely with a point of view expressed in an article, think twice before simply deleting it. Rather, balance it with your side of the story.". That is not what you do if you just "remove all of the examples completely". Otto (talk) 20:12, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

It would seem to me that in order to resolve this, citations for the examples would clarify its POV status. There are scores of examples with no citation, in fact, there are only 8 citations given for somewhere around 80 examples. This would tend to eliminate the need to establish universal agreement on these issues, which is most likely never going to happen on anything controversial. Just throwing in an opinion. Wildhartlivie (talk) 21:25, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Every item that does not have an in-text citation links to its own article within wikipedia. You can get your citations there. Like usual, this is just merely a case of an editor inserting an npov tag because he/she doesn't like the layout of the page.Primium mobile (talk) 14:44, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

This is cobblers. A miscarriage of justice is where someone has been prosecuted and convicted of an offence and then subsequently the conviction overturned, and the reason the conviction was over turned was that there had demonstrably been a serious flaw in the original conviction. This is absolute. It doesnt need us to provide a proof - its a simply observation of what actually happened, therefore it already has a NPOV. Miscarriage of justice is a legally defined term, and not an opinion. I think its more likely this NPOV issue has been raised as a red herring by someone with a vested interest in trying to hush such miscarriages up. I will revert ANY edit that removes an incontrovertible case of a miscarriage.

Further more, removing the unreferenced examples is stupid, because most of them were heavily featured in the UK newspapers. They are well enough known not to have to hunt down a newspaper article about them. Removing them is just vandalism - some of these cases are household names because of the media coverage, you'd have had to have live don Mars for the last 20 years not to have known about them. It is not necessary to provide a reference to, for example , Colin Stagg and the Rachel Nicoll murder- just google it, you'll get about 100,000 hits. It IS safe to assume anyone reading wikipedia is capable of doing that, we don't need to hold there hand all the way. The bottom line is that every single one of these cases is true, and deleting them just reduces the usefulness of wikipedia as a source, and just panders to some sort of covert effort to hush the truth up. (talk) 13:54, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

"strong claims"

In these edits, 193.131.115.253 (talk · contribs) starts including not just cases where a documented miscarriage of justice has occurred, but where there are "strong claims" that one has taken place. First of all, whether a claim is "strong" strikes me as too POV a criterion, as opposed to the criterion that some legal authority has overturned the conviction or otherwise indicated a belief that a miscarriage of justice took place. Second, this is Miscarriage of justice, not List of miscarriages of justice, and the list of miscarriages or "strong cases" for miscarriage is, I roughly estimate, the size of all the non-list parts of the whole article put together. This strikes me as a bad case of "list creep".

I'm willing to accept that there may be cases where no legal acknowledgement was ever made that a miscarriage of justice occurred but nevertheless consensus is generally that it was an m.o.j. However, barring evidence presented to that effect (by someone other than the original nominator) I think we should remove the cases which are merely "strong" in someone's estimation. If no one else does so, and insufficient evidence for keeping these cases is presented, I will remove them. -- Antaeus Feldspar 01:30, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

I agree with this. Otto 09:53, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

well, I disagree. There is nothing wrong with providing a comprehensive list of examples,and its nothing to do with 'strong'. Theres an exact definition of miscarriage of justice, in black and white - someone who has been convicted of an offence and then acquited because of serious errors in the original process. simple as that, and every cased listed fulfils that factual category. This isnt an article about opinion, its a factual article about such cases, all legally proven to be miscarriages.

Lincolnshire Poacher (talk) 14:16, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahis

Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahis is not a miscarriage of justice because he has not yet been shown to be innocent. Having two failed appeals does not prove innocence.

When the Scottish Courts say hes innocent and wrongly convicted, it then becomes a Miscarriage of Justice and can be included.

I have therefore until that day removed the entry .

Lincolnshire Poacher (talk) 15:01, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Merge False allegation of child sexual abuse into this topic?

I created False allegation of child sexual abuse earlier this month and there is talk of moving it Child sexual abuse. I prefer to move it into an article that deals with false allegations in general. Miscarriage of justice seems to focus on wrongful convictions, ignoring the damage done by false allegations. I need some opinions on whether False allegation of child sexual abuse should remain, be merged into Child sexual abuse, be merged into Miscarriage of justice, or merged into another article. Dfpc 21:23, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

It should not merge with miscarriage of justice which is about wrongful convictions not false allegations. In case of false allegations recourse to the judiciary is in principle possible in countries with a working judiciary for compensation of a wrongful act. Otto 17:16, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

In the UK you would only prove 'false allegation' by successfully suing in a civil court for libel or slander. That is not at all the same as 'wrongful conviction' and nothing to do with 'miscarriage of justice'

Lincolnshire Poacher (talk) 15:09, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

NPOV Tag

I intend to remove npov tag, since the neutrality of this article has not been sucessfully challenged. Lincolnshire Poacher (talk) 15:12, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Go ahead. The tag has been placed by an edit-warrior. See Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/DreamGuy 2. Otto (talk) 22:28, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Minor Edit

Under the New Zealand heading I found the sentence "Rex Haig, who was convicted 1995 of the murder of Mark Roderique, a crew member on Haig’s fishing boat, Antares, in.". I'm guessing that the final 'in' isn't supposed to be there so I will be deleting it. But I'm putting this in the talk page just in case its meant to be the start of a new sentence that may have been deleted.. cheers Fionaalison (talk) 00:50, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Martinsville

I don't know enough about it to actually put it in, but in Saskatchewan, a half a dozen people were falsely accused of child abuse (amid a wave of false accusations of abuse & ridiculous claims of Satanism all over the U.S. & Canada at the time), & one of the parents pleaded guilty, under pressure from prosecuters, to keep others from being convicted. It turns out the "victims" had made it all up... In the same vein, given there was a wave of hysteria around child abuse & alleged Satanism (& very likely false convictions), is there enough to mention it here? Given there was a wave of accusations of child abuse & Satanism & that period, most of which proved false, a separate section on these, or a subpage linked out from here, might be merited. TREKphiler ^{hit me ♠} 22:27 & 22:41, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

JusticeforKevin.org

I've tried several times to link to this page, and it keeps getting deleted. This is NOT SPAM. It is a legitimate site and Kevin Thornton's plight is being pursued by the California Innocence Project and other non-profit groups. In fact, many of the links ALREADY on this page link to justiceforkevin.org because of what happened to him. Now, can I PLEASE post this valid, non-spamming link without it being deleted?? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.138.56.209 (talk) 23:49, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

The site does not meet WP:EL guidelines for an encyclopedic purpose... it is a mere advocacy site. The fact that other sites linked to here link to it means there is even less of a reason to link to it here. DreamGuy 18:52, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Great attitude. No wonder this site is a joke. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.138.56.209 (talk) 19:42, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Mere advocacy is not enough to refuse a simple link. In the WP:EL guidelines it's stated that links can be given to sites which contain interview transcripts. Interviews are rarely completely objective, sometimes highly arbitrary. So if it's about objectiveness, you got no point. Please state WHY it doesn't meet WP:EL guidelines. If you're gonna be lazy about those things, you gonna start edit wars every time, not sure that's what we need. Also, if you're so concerned about the subjectivity of that site, do the work and provide us with another link, to create a balanced view. -- Brian Tjoe-Nij (talk) 00:55, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Wow, you clearly need to reread WP:EL if you made those arguments. DreamGuy (talk) 14:35, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Kevin Michael Thornton (the subject of "Justice for Kevin") has been included in the US listing of individuals who were wrongly convicted. As his conviction has not been overturned, I'm removing him. Also, very POV on my part, but I find the website's blame the victim language ("she drank straight out of the bottle" "she took every beer that was offered to her") appalling. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 165.189.169.190 (talk) 18:10, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

This article needs to be split

This article is not supposed to be a listing of cases where the article subject has happened. That should be a separate page altogether. The article regarding races doesn't have a single listing of every race that's ever happened. It shouldn't be the same way here, that section needs to be split off.— Dædαlus ^Contribs 07:57, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

• Support. I will be bold and do it. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 08:35, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

• I don't see why we can't list all miscarriages of justice. I'm reverting the bold move not because I happen to disagree with it (I'm only one editor and what matters is how the bulk of editors think about this), but rather the fact that the list cases was moved to an article that is considered for deletion. Count Iblis (talk) 13:22, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Please see WP:NOT -- Wikipedia does not list indiscriminate information. On top of that, most of the examples are inherently POV-pushing, as calling them a miscarriage of justice is taking their side. It doesn't need to be split, it needs to go away completely and have this article be an actual encyclopedia article. DreamGuy (talk) 14:39, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

And to the editor who claimed this was an endorsement of an AFD and somehow bizarrely tried to use the claim that an AFD was needed means h could remove the tag point out that the article fails to meet WP:NPOV guidelines: the part that needs to go away is the POV examples and the indiscriminate listing. The part actually describing what a miscarriage of justice is can stay, so no AFD is warranted. I don't know if that was a reading comprehension problem or wikilawyering or what, but wow, talk about missing the point. DreamGuy (talk) 15:29, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

There is no indiscriminate listing at all. There is a effort by a few editors to list all published cases of wrongful convictions. Of course, that will take some time... Count Iblis (talk) 15:38, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

wrongfully convicted on having no tax dice

dear sir

      on 15 july 2008 ,my vehicle was observed parked on hillmoore street mansfield, and failed to display a current tax disc. although, this vehicle was parked on an unadopted road plus on sorn and not a public highway, i was convicted by nottingham magistrates court, for having no tax disc on a parked vehicle on a public highway, under operation cubit power, which states, this power can only be used on vehicles untaxed on a public highway. however, mansfield district council on this occasion, did get it wrong on going conviction on myhself. Do i have the right to take masfield distict council to court? for compensation and wrongful conviction.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.44.190.32 (talk) 17:33, 8 May 2010 (UTC) 

Disruptive edits by Bepopalula. Suspected sockpuppet.

User Bepopalula has been running a biased campaign on these pages trying to include unnecessary information about the execution of Ronald Ryan. The information has been added to the following articles...

• Capital punishment in Australia
• HM Prison Pentridge
• Wrongful execution
• Miscarriage of justice

In all cases, the information is a rambling attempt to show that Ronald Ryan was wrongly convicted and executed. It is poorly written, badly cited, largely subjective, and does not belong in any of the articles it has been repeatedly put in to.
Bepopalula has repeatedly replaced the info, and his edit summary claim that my (and others') attempts to remove this are labelled as vandalism.
While preparing this response, I noticed that the concerns had already been raised previously with regard to user 93.185.104.30, who made identical changes to the exact same four pages. Can administrators take note of my concerns and take appropriate action as needed. Thanks.--Dmol (talk) 04:08, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

First, I am no suckpuppet. The constant accusations of suspected sockpuppetry are an attempt to stop users from contributing or reverting vandalized edits. Please be aware that every Wikipedia article relating to Ronald Ryan has very often been vandalized within the last two years, mostly by User Purrum, followed a short time later by another user who vandalizes the article in exactly the same manner. All contributions based on citations and references might look similar BECAUSE the contributions have been extracted from similar citations and references. There is no bias nor campaign about the guilt of Ronald Ryan, it is the personal views of a few users. User Purrum's opinion on every 'factual' contributions, citations, references and new articles relating to Ronald Ryan do not belong anywhere. Evidence of Purrum's past history records show Purrum's persistent disruptive edits and vandalism on everything relating to Ronald Ryan. Purrum claims to know that Ronald Ryan was guilty, even though hundreds of citations, references and news articles by criminal experts say otherwise. Whether Ronald Ryan was guilty or not is irrelevant, but the public has a right to be informed of the 'facts'. Purrum's lengthy talk page is evidence of unreliable contributions resulting in Wikipedia requests for speedy deletion of many articles. User Dmol considers this as good record of edits. There is ample evidence in Purrum's lengthy history records of contributions that prove the overwhelming number of persistent disruptive edits and vandalism on everything relating to Ronald Ryan. This is not an allegation as suggested by User Dmol, but in fact the truth. As for me, I have done nothing wrong, my history records of contributions proves this. I have added original contributions relating to Ronald Ryan made by other users, which Purrum has vandalized time and time again over the past two years. I ask administrators to look at the evidence and the false allegations against me. Thanks. Bepopalula (talk) 00:34, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Romania NPOV

This discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
I've tagged the newly added section on Romania as NPOV. It's well cited, but very biased and needs some balance.--Dmol (talk) 21:05, 16 August 2011 (UTC) Look, I have never claimed that the Ceausescus were innocent. All I have claimed that the trial was a mockery of justice, and this is widely agreed inside the Western press. Since justice is not only for the innocent, but also the guilty have to be treated justly, such trial was a kangaroo court which held in high contempt the rule of law and the state of law. In our countries justice is procedural, i.e. a judge has to respect the proper procedures in order to establish guilt. If these procedures were not followed, no Solomonic judgment could replace things as due process, right to be defended, fair trial, having evidence presented and weighed, etc. In the Ceausescu trial, there was simply no time allowing for producing the amount of evidence required by the trial, so the prosecutors only listed names of the crimes committed by the Ceausescus without producing anything that looks like a proof. This is why I think that there is no NPOV of application: we do not discuss their guilt, but the legality of the trial. Tgeorgescu (talk) 18:07, 17 August 2011 (UTC) Here is an interview with Dan Voinea, one of the prosecutors of that trial. He basically admits there was no rule of law in that trial. Tgeorgescu (talk) 18:24, 17 August 2011 (UTC) Here Ion Iliescu (who signed the decree for organizing that trial) basically admits the same. Tgeorgescu (talk) 18:27, 17 August 2011 (UTC) Here is an interview from the Sunday Times with one of the executioners, who admits it was a phony trial and has remorse about shooting them. He became a lawyer, so he sees the legality of the trial as a professional. Tgeorgescu (talk) 18:35, 17 August 2011 (UTC) The president of the court has committed suicide. Tgeorgescu (talk) 18:47, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Since the section in question has been moved to Show trial, I've copied the above discussion to that article's talk page. Richwales (talk · contribs) 21:54, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Analysis

This article desperately needs quantitative, analytical, data. What are the results of scientific studies designed to estimate wrongful conviction rates for various types of crime?Paulhummerman (talk) 12:30, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

United States

The United States section is definitely in need of a rewrite/expansion.—Yutsi ^Talk/ Contributions ( 偉特 ) 02:06, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

Compensation in England and Wales

I have removed a much repeated, but much misunderstood, remark about the cost of food and lodging being deducted from compensation. The article gave the impression that, in some way, someone who was imprisoned wrongly would have to pay for their stay. That is an impression given by the media.

In fact, the rule that was established was this: where a prisoner is being compensated for loss of earnings they would have earned while in prison (assuming they would have found a job of course), a deduction may be made for the cost they would have paid for living (i.e. food and lodging etc) during that time, otherwise they would end up in a better position than they would have had they not been to prison. That is the logic. It is a rather cold logic, and one I don't like, but it is consistent with the rest of principle.

Note also that loss of earnings is not the only head of compensation, there is also supposed to be an element for compensating them for being in prison in the first place. Francis Davey 13:46, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Im afraid your wrong.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=505428&in_page_id=1770

Here is a specific example of this law in action. Despite being wrongfully convicted and then aquitted, and then winning substantial compensation for 3 years wrongful imprisonment, was forced to accept having £12,500 deducted for 'board and lodge'. The practice of charging "bed and breakfast" was challenged in 2007 by the Bridgewater Three, the men wrongly convicted of murdering newspaper boy Carl Bridgewater in 1978, but the principle was upheld by the House of Lords.

SO i suggest you reinstate the section your have wrongly convicted an restore the truth, Mr Davey.

82.21.206.85 (talk) 19:15, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

I sat through the appeal in the Court of Appeal and I am quite sure of my facts from first-hand experience. The Daily Mail summary is precisely the misunderstanding of the law (for propaganda purposes) which I explained above. The House of Lords decision makes clear the point:

23. It is in my opinion inapt and understandably offensive to the appellants to regard or treat their imprisonment as a benefit conferred on them by the state. A Prison Service Instruction (09/1999) on which they relied forbids deductions for board and lodging from the wages of prisoners working on enhanced wages schemes in prison or on pre-release schemes outside prison, accepting that prisoners cannot be required to pay for their own imprisonment and cannot consent to do so. I have no doubt that this is a salutary principle. But recognition of that principle does not in my opinion resolve the issue in this appeal. The assessor's task, in relation to the appellants' loss of earnings claim, was to assess what they had really lost. That, and that only, was the loss for which they were to be compensated. The assessment has necessarily to be hypothetical, but must be as realistic as possible. If the appellants were awarded the full sum of their notional lost earnings with no deduction save tax, they would in reality be better off than if they had earned the money as free men since as free men they would have had to spend the minimum necessary to keep themselves alive. The deduction puts the appellants in the position in which they would in reality have been had they earned the money as free men and so compensates them for their actual loss. In my opinion, the assessor and the Court of Appeal reached the correct conclusion, and I would reject this ground of appeal.

One reason for the source of much confusion in this case is that the number of issues narrowed as the case worked its way up through the higher courts. You will see in the summary Lord Justice Auld gives in the Court of Appeal judgment that quite substantial awards were made for non-pecuniary suffering. Whether these were right or not is quite another matter - non-pecuniary awards have a way of feeling highly unsatisfactory, who would accept £250,000 to spend many years in prison accused of such a serious crime? Francis Davey (talk) 22:56, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

I wonder whether legal-eagle editors here would consider updating the England & Wales section of the article to take account of the Supreme Court ruling in 2011 http://www.lawgazette.co.uk/news/supreme-court-rules-miscarriages-justice. This is now being brought to bear on other cases (notably, today, that of Barry George).Davidships (talk) 22:08, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

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Kenny Richey?

How can someone who plead guilty be considered a victim of a miscarriage of justice? Smb2a (talk) 22:50, 7 Nov 2008 (UTC)

Because of problems with the legal system. Most experts agree that he was a victim of a miscarriage of justice. The fact that he pleaded guilty to get out of jail doesn't change that fact. This wiki article should not be biased in favor of a theory that says that the US justice system is perfect. What matters is what the sources say, what the xperts say when they write about this case. Count Iblis (talk) 14:23, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

I have a friend who pleaded guilty of a crime he didn't commit because Mohave County officials put pressure on him and he was unable to afford a decent attorney, so accepted a plea deal where the punishment would be less harsh. I remember how bleak he felt when he realized that they were determined to convict simply off of their hatred toward him, and they were already determined to imprison him if they could; it's an interesting thing that this type of situation would happen these days... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 162.252.155.225 (talk) 06:10, 14 November 2019 (UTC)

Source on rates of innocents in US prisons

Under "Rate of occurences", the article currently reads "Various studies estimate that in the United States, between 2.3 and 5% of all prisoners are innocent.", with this inline source attached to it. find those numbers incredibly high, so high I need a reliable source to trust them. The source however only mentions the existence of such studies, it doesn't link to them. Additionally, the source is the webpage of a project who had an interest in convincing people that the rate of innocent prisoners is high. For me, these two facts make the source insufficiently credibly to believe the original statement. I suggest the mentioned sentence either be supported by actual studies or be removed. Sgyger (talk) 11:35, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

As I see it, a preferable approach would be to find additional sources (including any updated material from the Innocence Project to replace that archived link) as opposed to deleting sources or content. Arllaw (talk) 18:06, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

Help please

Any experienced editor here able to help save the much-needed Presumption of guilt article from possible deletion? Crawiki (talk) 22:16, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

I have no objection to the inclusion of a presumption of guilt article in this project, but the article under discussion would benefit from a top-to-bottom revision, and from expansion with relevant content. Arllaw (talk) 02:18, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

Avoiding duplicated effort

Given that there is a page that attempts to list cases of miscarriage of justice by nation, List of miscarriage of justice cases, it does not seem to make sense to also include and maintain a less comprehensive list in this article. Rather than describing individual cases here, or trying to maintain a list of links to other articles of individual cases, I suggest directing readers to that list. Arllaw (talk) 15:42, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

As there has been no objection so far, let me make a specific proposal: Retitle the "Cases in specific countries" section to "Legal rights and protections", remove individual cases (while making sure that they appear on other pages devoted to documenting such cases) while leaving the legal information, removing the individual case links from "see also", and adding the "list of miscarriage of justice" pages to "see also". Along with that, it appears that the lead needs to be revised such that it introduces the material discussed in the article, with some of the material in the current lead moved into the article itself. Arllaw (talk) 20:09, 15 April 2020 (UTC)

"Unsafe"

This page is redirected from the "Unsafe" article page without any explanation for the term, either on this page or the one from which it is redirected. Nor in either's talk page. Should be a sentence or two about the reference. It is a apparently a term of British usage, and still extant. — Preceding unsigned comment added by JohndanR (talk • contribs) 20:59, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

Contributing factors section

The section started out as a list with a few wikilinks. It needs to be expanded so that the reader gets a clear understanding of causal factors without having to leave the page. I am in the process of adding relevant research, but if anyone else wants to help, that would be appreciated. CriminologyStudent (talk) 22:01, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

Wrongful convictions page

Hi everyone, I saw in this page's history that there used to be a separate wrongful convictions page, but the two have since been merged. I think there are enough distinctions between the two that wrongful convictions could have its separate page. Specifically, I think wrongful convictions could be added to the "General issues" section of this page as a cause of miscarriage of justice. Other related and overlapping causes such as misidentification and perjured evidence have their own pages, and I think it makes sense to have a page dedicated to wrongful convictions, as well. I would love to hear feedback regarding this idea. What do you think? PinkElixir (talk) 03:07, 16 April 2020 (UTC)

Wrongful convictions are a form of miscarriage of justice, and the extent to which that topic is addressed within this article does not at this time suggest to me that a stand-alone article is needed. For now the topic could be developed on this page, and we can see where that leads. Arllaw (talk) 15:31, 16 April 2020 (UTC)

Rather than being a form of miscarriages, wrongful convictions are miscarriages. The two terms are fundamentally interchangeable. CriminologyStudent (talk) 22:03, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 23 August 2021 and 10 December 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Cbaranoski.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 04:16, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Figure far too low in US case

In the text it says 1 percent wrongful convictions citing an innocence project page which says a very conservative 1% based on one way f estimating. Other studies show between 2.5% and 10% whith most around 4 or 5 percent. And I'd worry about those even given the rate is established as about 10% for death rows and I'd have thought it would be higher where there is little checking like all the plea bargains to avoid being charged with worse offences which occurs in 95% of convictions. NadVolum (talk) 14:51, 21 December 2022 (UTC)

"A series of wrongful convictions uncovered in the 2010s has undermined public trust in the Chinese justice system."

We could literally say this about any country where there have been wrongful convictions. This entry should be deleted unless and until something more substantial can be added. 216.208.210.50 (talk) 04:04, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

Salem Witch trials

Didn't take place in the United States. It had yet to exist.

someone pinched our page

hey guys

http://wiki.lawguru.com/index.php/Miscarriage_of_justice

appears to have pinched our page wholesale. The fact all the hyperlinks are broken indicates this, and they havent even bothered to credit us

(