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Jon-Adrian “JJ” Velazquez is a New York man who crime He failed to commit, recently suing New York City and its police for $100 million for wrongful murder. Velázquez is probably best known to movie buffs for his role in the Oscar-nominated film “New Song.”
If Velázquez can prove his innocence, he can typically recover millions of dollars in damages through: DNA evidence at the crime scene. Unfortunately, such evidence is often not available.
Since 1989, the United States has paid nearly $4 billion in damages and settlements to 901 acquitted people. This history of wrongful convictions is a twisted form of American exceptionalism, which I document in my new book Justice for some: A comparative study of wrongful convictions and wrongful convictions.
proven innocent
Proven innocence is a powerful, populist idea. It is easier to understand and more widely accepted than concepts such as miscarriage of justice, conviction security or miscarriage of justice, which are used to address wrongful convictions in many other countries, including the UK, Canada and continental European countries.
These more generous approaches used outside the United States better respect the fundamental principle of giving people the benefit of a reasonable doubt of their guilt.
Proving factual innocence is very difficult. In 2016, a New York court found Velasquez had failed to prove his innocence despite numerous flaws in the case that led to his conviction for the 2000 murder.
By 2016, two witnesses had identified Velasquez as the murderer of a retired New York police officer. Some witnesses initially identified the perpetrator as a black man with long braids; Velasquez is Hispanic and has short hair. Some said the assailant shot the victim with his right hand; others said the assailant shot the victim with his right hand. Velasquez is left-handed.
Velasquez was released in 2021, rather than by the government, in line with the common plea for innocence. court But it was brought up by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, and President Joe Biden apologized to him the following year. They are responding to investigative reports and new DNA testing that exclude Velazquez from betting slips the killer had access to.
The fact that politicians who might be seeking re-election went ahead with U.S. courts to exonerate Velasquez speaks volumes about the decline of the rule of law in the United States.
DNA innocent
Prominent American lawyers Peter Neufeld and Barry Scheck, founders of the Innocence Project, noted 26 years ago that DNA exoneration depends largely on luck. They predicted in a 2000 book that DNA exonerations would eventually dry up, as police use DNA testing only in a tiny minority of crimes in which perpetrators leave biological evidence at crime scenes.
In their book, Scheck and Neufeld may be overly optimistic about the capabilities of U.S. police and prosecutors. Following convictions, DNA-based acquittals, like Velasquez’s, continue to this day.
DNA is a double-edged sword: It provides compelling evidence of innocence while raising the bar for overturning a wrongful conviction. In the United States, wrongfully convicted people are often expected to use DNA to prove their innocence, even though many crimes leave no biological evidence and existing samples are often mishandled or unavailable. Simply put, DNA only works for a small percentage of wrongfully convicted people.
Mass incarceration in China and the United States
The country most similar to the United States in its insistence on factual innocence is the People’s Republic of China.
Like the United States, China often corrects miscarriages of justice only after multiple court proceedings. Politician intervention also plays a key role in bringing justice to those wrongfully convicted, as it did in the Velázquez case. China has also begun offering more generous compensation to those who can prove their innocence.
In both countries, generous compensation for the few who can prove their innocence risks legitimizing unjust systems that harshly punish many, including those wrongfully convicted without a meaningful path to justice.
About the author
Kent Roach is Professor of Law at the University of Toronto. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. read Original article.
American legal reformers have proposed adding the right to claim factual innocence to international law. I’m arguing justice for someoneHowever, this demonstration of factual innocence would have regressive effects in many other parts of the world, correcting miscarriages of justice without such burdensome evidence. In short, factual innocence will bring justice to fewer people.
De facto innocence spreads to Britain
With the exception of the United States and China, other countries are not immune to populist demands for “clean slates.”
Since 2014, England has required proof of innocence to receive compensation. This significantly reduces the compensation award. It has even led to people like Velasquez, exonerated by DNA, being denied compensation.
Victor Nealon was jailed for 17 years for attempted rape. His lawyer eventually found DNA from an unidentified person on clothing that investigators had not disclosed, and his conviction was thrown out.
Nierlen filed a claim for compensation with the European Court of Human Rights. In a divided ruling, it ruled that states can require proof of innocence without violating the presumption of innocence. Essentially, this allows people who have been wrongly accused to be denied compensation without regard to the basic legal principle that people are presumed innocent until proven guilty. The requirement of factual innocence can extend from compensation to appeals against convictions.
Those who can prove their innocence deserve justice—but justice should not be limited to them. The justice conferred by proven innocence is too narrow.
This may be the best that mass incarceration societies like the United States and China have to offer. But despite the popularity and ease of understanding of factual innocence, widespread application of this standard in liberal democracies could have regressive effects.