Deck 14: Wrongful Convictions

Question 1

Which of the following organizations at Northwestern University collects data on wrongful convictions?

A) The Innocence Project
B) Center on Wrongful Convictions
C) People for the Unjustly Imprisoned
D) ACLU

Answer 1

B

Question 2

Which of the following is not a common cause of wrongful convictions?

A) eyewitness misidentification
B) perjury
C) false confessions
D) chain of custody violations

Answer 2

D

Question 3

Which of the following organizations at the Benjamin Cardozo School of Law provides legal assistance to people trying to prove they have been wrongfully convicted?

A) The Innocence Project
B) Center on Wrongful Convictions
C) People for the Unjustly Imprisoned
D) ACLU

Answer 3

A

Question 4

In what state did the governor give pardons to everyone on death row?

A) New York
B) California
C) Illinois
D) Florida

Question 5

Which of the following constitutional amendments would a wrongfully convicted person who received ineffective assistance of counsel claim had been violated?

A) Fourth Amendment
B) Fifth Amendment
C) Sixth Amendment
D) Seventh Amendment

Question 6

Which of the following is not a reason for the passage of compensation statutes?

A) to give wrongfully convicted persons lots of money
B) to provide funds for psychological counseling services
C) to give wrongfully convicted persons money for legal fees
D) to compensate wrongfully convicted persons for the time they have spent in prison

Question 7

Which of the following is individual legislation to provide compensation for wrongfully convicted people?

A) bills of attainder
B) fair play laws
C) just compensation laws
D) moral obligation bills

Question 8

Until 2004 a wrongfully convicted person could receive a maximum of only

A) $500
B) $5,000
C) $50,000
D) $500,000

Question 9

Which of the following are reason to disqualify a person from receiving state compensation for a wrongful conviction?

A) prior convictions
B) no pardon
C) a guilty plea
D) all of the above

Question 10

In what state did a governor three times veto a bill to provide a wrongfully convicted man compensation?

A) New York
B) California
C) Illinois
D) Florida

Question 11

This occurs when wrongfully convicted individuals have been set free after having been convicted of crimes they did not commit.

A) exonerations
B) immunity
C) tort claim
D) compensation

Question 12

Which one of the following is not a reason DNA testing could be flawed?

A) small sample
B) sample contamination
C) DNA degradation
D) bad data analysis

Question 13

Which advocacy organization is located at Benjamin N. Cardozo Law School in New York?

A) The Center on Wrongful Convictions
B) After Innocence
C) The Innocence Project
D) Rocky Mountain Innocence Center

Question 14

Approximately how many inquiries does the Center on Wrongful Convictions receive each year?

A) 1,000
B) 3,000
C) 5,000
D) 7,000

Question 15

What has the Center on Wrongful Convictions identified as an obstacles that must be overcome to reduce the number of wrongful convictions going forward?

A) require the police to electronically record interrogations
B) place limits on interrogations
C) reduce the rate of crime in neighborhoods
D) both a and b

Question 16

Which person was one of the two people that founded the Innocence Project?

A) Roberto Carrasco Flores
B) Larry Ruffin
C) Barry Scheck
D) Kevin Richardson

Question 17

The Innocence Project was founded in

A) 1990.
B) 1992.
C) 1994.
D) 1996.

Question 18

The attorneys in the 1993 Guerra case with the killing of a Houston police officer argued in their appeal that

A) Guerra had been deprived of a fair trial.
B) Witness testimony was coerced and tampered with.
C) Exculpatory evidence was withheld.
D) all of the above

Question 19

What does it mean to be a "convicted innocent"?

A) an individual who is arrested but released due to insufficient evidence
B) an individual whose trial is declared a mistrial
C) an individual who is arrested and pled or was found guilty, but is, in fact, innocent
D) an individual who is found guilty but has yet to appeal his or her conviction

Question 20

This federal statute allows civil claims for violations of constitutional rights and provides for civil damages against state governments and/or actors as well as attorney fees.

A) Section 1983
B) Section 2520
C) Section 3232
D) Section 4190

Question 21

In 2003, former Illinois Governor George Ryan commuted the death sentences of

A) 94 death row inmates.
B) 156 death row inmates.
C) 233 death row inmates.
D) 301 death row inmates.

Question 22

According to the National Registry of Exonerations, there are currently over

A) 1900 exonerations.
B) 2500 exonerations.
C) 3200 exonerations.
D) 4000 exonerations.

Question 23

Samuel Gross and his colleagues (2014) were able to estimate that __________ of defendants sentenced to death in the U.S. were later shown to be innocent.

A) 1.1 percent
B) 2.5 percent
C) 3.9 percent
D) 4.1 percent

Question 24

Short tandem repeat (STR) method could lead to mistaken identification in

A) 1 of 1,000 cases.
B) 1 of 1,000,000 cases.
C) 1 of 10 cases.
D) 1 of 100,000 cases.

Question 25

Which of the following might be the most common source of false matches in regard to flawed DNA testing?

A) bad data analysis
B) DNA degradation
C) sample mix-up
D) sample contamination

Question 26

DNA degrades if it is not kept

A) cold.
B) warm.
C) dry.
D) both a and c

Question 27

According to Samuel Gross and his colleagues, __________ of the 340 identified exonerations during a fifteen-year period served terms of ten years or more.

A) less than half
B) one-tenth
C) one-third
D) more than half

Question 28

Samuel Gross and his colleagues listed the top four states where the exonerations occurred. Which of the following was not a part of the top four states?

A) Illinois
B) Georgia
C) California
D) New York

Question 29

The principal cause of wrongful convictions in murder cases is

A) perjury.
B) lack of evidence.
C) invalid science.
D) inadequate defense.

Question 30

Which of the following can reduce coercion and incentivization of witnesses?

A) place limits on the length of interrogations
B) reform police lineups
C) require police to electronically record interrogations
D) improve accountability

Question 31

Which of the following can reduce erroneous identifications by victims and eyewitnesses?

A) reform pretrial discovery
B) reform police lineups
C) improve accountability
D) require police to electronically record interrogations

Question 32

How many full-time staff attorneys are employed by the Innocence Project?

A) one
B) two
C) three
D) four

Question 33

Since 2016, there have been over __________ DNA exonerations recorded by the Innocence Project.

A) 340
B) 512
C) 977
D) 1251

Question 34

Since 2016, __________ of actual perpetrators have been identified.

A) 140
B) 230
C) 480
D) 810

Question 35

Ricardo Aldape Guerra was finally released in

A) 1991.
B) 1994.
C) 1997.
D) 2000.

Question 36

Who was posthumously exonerated through the efforts of the Innocence Project?

A) Gray Davis
B) Gerald Parker
C) Peter Neufeld
D) Larry Ruffin

Question 37

Who published Convicting the Innocent?

A) Edwin Borchard
B) Hugh Carey
C) Edward Honaker
D) Gerald Parker

Question 38

Being one of the earliest statutes found, Wisconsin passed its statute on indemnification for unjust conviction and imprisonment in

A) 1913.
B) 1915.
C) 1917.
D) 1919.

Question 39

Although he died when he was awarded the money, Isadore Zimmerman successfully recovered __________ from the State of New York on a wrongful conviction.

A) $500,000
B) $1,000,000
C) $1,500,000
D) $2,000,000

Question 40

Keven Lee Green was wrongfully convicted on what charge?

A) rape
B) assault
C) larceny
D) murder

Question 41

____ Wrongful convictions are easy to overturn.

Question 42

____ DNA can always be used to prove the innocence of a person wrongfully convicted.

Question 43

____ Eyewitness testimony can lead to wrongful convictions.

Question 44

____ A former governor of Texas pardoned everyone on death row.

Question 45

____ The Innocence Project provides legal assistance and DNA tests to people who may be wrongfully convicted.

Question 46

____ Competent legal assistance is protected by the Fifth Amendment.

Question 47

____ Compensation for people wrongfully convicted is usually adequate.

Question 48

____ Wrongful convictions can be considered civil rights violations that can lead to lawsuits against the federal government.

Question 49

____ Prosecutors and police often have immunity from wrongful conviction lawsuits.

Question 50

____ All states now have compensation statutes for wrongfully convicted people.

Question 51

____ Flawed evidence is one issue that leads to wrongful convictions.

Question 52

____ In 2003, the state of Illinois commuted the death sentences of 156 death row inmates.

Question 53

____ Wrongful convictions rarely occur in our criminal justice system.

Question 54

____ An exoneration occurs when wrongfully convicted individuals have been set free after having been convicted of crimes they did not commit.

Question 55

____ One study by Samuel Gross and colleagues (2014) found that, statistically, one in twenty-five death row inmates are innocent.

Question 56

____ All DNA evidence tests have an accuracy rate of 100 percent.

Question 57

____ DNA degrades if it is kept cold or dry.

Question 58

____ In rape cases, the main cause for wrongful convictions is eyewitness misidentification.

Question 59

____ In murder cases, the main cause for wrongful convictions is perjury.

Question 60

____ The Center on Wrongful Convictions is located in Dallas, Texas.

Question 61

____ The Innocence Project is located in New York.

Question 62

____ The Innocence Project was founded by Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld.

Question 63

____ In the 1982 Guerra case, Ricardo Aldape Guerra was framed by the Houston Police Department for shooting a police officer.

Question 64

____ Convicted innocents are individuals who have been found not guilty but who are in fact guilty to the charge brought against them.

Question 65

____ Those who are wrongfully convicted can seek compensation for their state's wrongdoing.

Question 66

____ Section 3891 is a federal statute that allows civil claims for violations of constitutional rights.

Question 67

____ All states require police to tape interrogations.

Question 68

____ A tort claim law is legislation that waives sovereign immunity.

Question 69

____ Most of the civil claims based on Brady violations are successful.

Question 70

____ The standard for proving ineffective assistance of counsel was established by the Supreme Court in Strickland v. Washington (1984).

Question 71

____ The two prongs of Strickland v. Washington established that legal counsel's performance was deficient and caused actual prejudice to the defendant.

Question 72

____ Police officers, prosecutors, and judges are among the few who can receive immunity.

Question 73

____ A person who is misidentified by a victim or a witness can recover damages from both.

Question 74

____ Police can be protected from mistakes through the "good faith" defense.

Question 75

____ Prosecutors enjoy absolute immunity that protects them from any civil litigation.

Question 76

List and explain the reasons why DNA testing could be flawed.

Question 77

What are some key reasons why exonerations are needed?

Question 78

What are the problems listed by the Center on Wrongful Convictions that must be overcome to reduce the number of wrongful convictions?

Question 79

What is Section 1983?

Question 80

Explain the different types of immunity for misidentified victims, police officers, and prosecutors.