Wrong-Person Error in Capital Cases
Document Type
Book Chapter
Publication Date
9-2024
DOI
https://doi.org/10.4337/9781803929156.00021
Abstract
A death verdict may be erroneous as a matter of substance (the defendant did not satisfy the conditions for conviction of murder or for the death penalty) or procedure (the process the state used to determine what the defendant did violates legal rules designed to assure factually correct verdicts). Substantive error can infect many elements of the guilt determination, of which “wrong-person” error is one. Erroneous death verdicts may be discovered before or after the individual is executed, or not at all. Focusing on capital, substantive, wrong-person errors, this chapter assesses how frequently they occur and are discovered, their implications for our capital justice system, why they occur, and what can be done to avoid them.
Disciplines
Criminal Law | Criminal Procedure | Law | Law and Society
Recommended Citation
James S. Liebman,
Wrong-Person Error in Capital Cases,
The Elgar Companion to Capital Punishment and Society, Benjamin Fleury-Steiner & Austin D. Sarat (Eds.). Edward Elgar Publishing
(2024).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/faculty_scholarship/4542