Criminal defendants can face significant pressures to plead guilty, but wrongful conviction scholarship has largely overlooked the study of guilty pleas. This study content analyzed 139 Australian appellate court judgments in which a guilty plea conviction was overturned, investigating the types of errors involved in these convictions, and the stage of the criminal justice process at which the errors occurred. The findings revealed that errors occurred during the police investigation, pretrial preparations, and formal court procedures, with the most frequent errors involving incorrect or inappropriate charges, inadequate legal representation, and the courts erroneously accepting a guilty plea. The findings raise important implications regarding the adequacy of safeguards to ensure guilty pleas are appropriate or factually and legally accurate.
BlumeJ. H.HelmR. K. (2014). The unexonerated: Factually innocent defendants who plead guilty. Cornell Law Review, 100(1), 157–191.
4.
BowersJ. (2008). Punishing the innocent. University of Pennsylvania Law Review, 156(5), 1117–1179.
5.
CarlingA. (2017). A way to reduce indigenous overrepresentation: Prevent false guilty plea wrongful convictions. The Criminal Law Quarterly, 64(3), 415–461.
6.
ChengK. K. (2013). Pressures to plead guilty: Factors affecting plea decisions in Hong Kong’s magistrates’ courts. The British Journal of Criminology, 53(2), 257–275. https://doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azs064
7.
ColvinE. (2009). Convicting the innocent: A critique of theories of wrongful convictions. Criminal Law Forum, 20(2–3), 173–192. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10609-009-9100-6
8.
CoveyR. D. (2013). Police misconduct as a cause of wrongful convictions. Washington University Law Review, 90(4), 1133–1189.
9.
DervanL. E.EdkinsV. A. (2013). The innocent defendant’s dilemma: An innovative empirical study of plea bargaining’s innocence problem. Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology, 103(1), 1–48.
10.
Dioso-VillaR. (2015). A repository of wrongful convictions in Australia: First steps toward estimating prevalence and causal contributing factors. Flinders Law Journal, 17(2), 163–202.
11.
DoyleJ. M. (2010). Learning from error in American criminal justice. The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, 100(1), 109–148.
12.
EdkinsV. A.DervanL. E. (2018). Freedom now or a future later: Pitting the lasting implications of collateral consequences against pretrial detention in decisions to plead guilty. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 24(2), 204–215. https://doi.org/10.1037/law0000159
13.
EngelC.WeinshallK. (2020). Manna from heaven for judges: Judges’ reaction to a quasi-random reduction in caseload. Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, 17(4), 722–751.
14.
FlynnA.Fitz-GibbonK. (2011). Bargaining with defensive homicide: Examining Victoria’s secretive plea bargaining system post-law reform. Melbourne University Law Review, 35(3), 905–932.
15.
FlynnA.FreibergA. (2018). Plea negotiations: Final report to the Criminology Research Council. Criminology Research Advisory Council.
16.
GarrettB. (2011). Convicting the innocent: Where criminal prosecutions go wrong. Harvard University Press.
17.
GilliéronG. (2013). The risks of summary proceedings, plea bargains, and penal orders in producing wrongful convictions in the US and Europe. In HuffR. C.KilliasM. (Eds.), Wrongful convictions and miscarriages of justice: Causes and remedies in North American and European criminal justice systems (pp. 245–266). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203597286
18.
GrossS. R. (2017). What we know and what we think we know about false convictions. Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law, 14(2), 753–786.
19.
GrossS. R.ShafferM. (2012). Exonerations in the United States, 1989–2012. National Registry of Exonerations.
20.
HelmR. K. (2019). Constrained waiver of trial rights? Incentives to plead guilty and the right to a fair trial. Journal of Law and Society, 46(3), 423–447. https://doi.org/10.1111/jols.12169
21.
HendersonK. S.LevettL. M. (2018). Investigating predictors of true and false guilty pleas. Law and Human Behavior, 42(5), 427–441. https://doi.org/10.1037/lhb0000297
22.
Hennessy v Vojvodic (2010) QCA 345 (Austl.).
23.
HuffC. R.KilliasM. (Eds.). (2010). Wrongful conviction: International perspectives on miscarriages of justice. Temple University Press.
24.
HuffR.RattnerA.SagarinE.MacNamaraD. E. J. (1986). Guilty until proved innocent: Wrongful conviction and public policy. Crime & Delinquency, 32(4), 518–544. https://doi.org/10.1177/0011128786032004007
25.
HughesE. (2011). Innocence unmodified. North Carolina Law Review, 89(4), 1083–1124.
26.
KelloughG.WortleyS. (2002). Remand for plea: Bail decisions and plea bargaining as commensurate decisions. The British Journal of Criminology, 42(1), 186–210. https://doi.org/10.1093/bjc/42.1.186
27.
LeoR. A. (2005). Rethinking the study of miscarriages of justice: Developing a criminology of wrongful conviction. Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice, 21(3), 201–223. https://doi.org/10.1177/1043986205277477
28.
LunaE. (2005). System failure. American Criminal Law Review, 42(4), 1201–1218.
29.
Lysaght v Youlden (2018) WASC 38 (Austl.).
30.
MalloyL. C.ShulmanE. P.CauffmanE. (2014). Interrogations, confessions, and guilty pleas among serious adolescent offenders. Law and Human Behavior, 38(2), 181–193. https://doi.org/10.1037/lhb0000065
ParkesD.CunliffeE. (2015). Women and wrongful convictions: Concepts and challenges. International Journal of Law in Context, 11(3), 219–244. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1744552315000129
RaymondM. (2001). The problem with innocence. Cleveland State Law Review, 49(3), 449–464.
42.
RedlichA. D. (2010). False confessions, false guilty pleas: Similarities and differences. In LassiterD. G.MeissnerC. A. (Eds.), Police interrogations and false confessions: Current research, practice, and policy recommendations (pp. 49–66). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/12085-003
43.
RedlichA. D.BibasS.EdkinsV. A.MadonS. (2017). The psychology of defendant plea decision making. American Psychologist, 72(4), 339–352. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0040436
44.
RedlichA. D.ShteynbergR. V. (2016). To plead or not to plead: A comparison of juvenile and adult true and false plea decisions. Law and Human Behavior, 40(6), 611–625. https://doi.org/10.1037/lhb0000205
45.
RedlichA. D.SummersA.HooverS. (2010). Self-reported false confessions and false guilty pleas among offenders with mental illness. Law and Human Behavior, 34(1), 79–90. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10979-009-9194-8
46.
RoachK. (2011). Wrongful convictions in Canada. University of Cincinnati Law Review, 80(4), 1465–1526.
47.
RoachK. (2015). The wrongful conviction of Indigenous people in Australia and Canada. Flinders Law Journal, 17(2), 203–262.
48.
Roach AnleuS.MackK. (2009). Intersections between in-court procedures and the production of guilty pleas. Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology, 42(1), 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1375/acri.42.1.1
49.
RobertsS.WeatheredL. (2009). Assisting the factually innocent: The contradictions and compatibility of Innocence Projects and the Criminal Cases Review Commission. Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, 29(1), 43–70. https://doi.org/10.1093/ojls/gqn022
50.
SherrinC. (2011). Guilty pleas from the innocent. Windsor Review of Legal and Social Issues, 30(1), 1–35.
WalkerC.McCartneyC. (2008). Criminal justice and miscarriages of justice in England and Wales. In HuffR. C.KilliasM. (Eds.), Wrongful conviction: International perspectives on miscarriages of justice (pp. 183–212). Temple University Press.
54.
WeatheredL. (2013). The growing acknowledgement of wrongful conviction: The Australian response within an international context. Victoria University Law and Justice Journal, 3(1), 79–92.
55.
YangK. (2013). Public accountability of public prosecutions. Murdoch University Law Review, 20(1), 28–75.
56.
ZhangY.WildemuthB. M. (2017). Qualitative analysis of content. In WildemuthB. M. (Ed.), Applications of social research methods to questions in information and library science (pp. 318–329). Libraries Unlimited.
57.
ZottoliT. M.Daftary-KapurT.WintersG. M.HoganC. (2016). Plea discounts, time pressures, and false-guilty pleas in youth and adults who pleaded guilty to felonies in New York City. Psychology Public Policy and Law, 22(3), 250–259. https://doi.org/10.1037/law0000095
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
