Innocence Week in DC: March 26 - 30, 2007

Next week is "Innocence Week" at American University College of Law, where a series of lectures will provide "An Examination of Wrongful Convictions in America" (PDF). Lecture topics will include Legal Obstacles to Exoneration, where WCL crim profs, including Cynthia Jones and Angela J. Davis, will "take a critical look at the criminal justice process, both pretrial and post‐conviction, and discuss some of the legal barriers that can cause wrongful convictions and effectively prevent the exoneration of the innocent." On Tuesday, Timothy O'Toole from the DC Public Defender Service, along with Detective Jim Trainum from the Metropolitan Police Department, and Shawn Armbrust from the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project will discuss the causes of wrongful conviction, including faulty eyewitness identifications and false confessions. Wednesday and Thursday's talks will feature exonerees and their stories of wrongful conviction, including that of Kirk Bloodsworth, Maryland resident who was falsely convicted of rape and later became the first death row inmate to be exonerated by DNA testing.

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Upcoming Seminar on Eyewitness ID in Seattle: May 4, 2007

At an upcoming CLE seminar (PDF) in Seattle, experts on the subject of eyewitness identification from the social sciences, law enforcement, and the criminal defense community will gather to discuss the ongoing, broad-based reform effort. Speakers include Gary Wells, who will discuss current research on eyewitness memory and what it tells us about the reliability of certain procedures, Lieutenant Ken Patenaude from Northampton, Massachusetts, who will talk about his (successful) experience with the reform protocols in his jurisdiction, and D.C. public defender Timothy O'Toole, who will discuss defense strategies for attacking unreliable identification protocols in court.

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"Off the Witness Stand": A Psych and Law Conference

"Exactly one hundred years ago, Hugo Munsterberg, William James’s hand-picked successor as the director of Harvard’s Psychology Laboratory, rattled the gates of the criminal justice system, and announced that the social sciences wanted in."

Indeed. And one hundred years later, the battle still rages.

We'll be attending the "Off the Witness Stand Conference" at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, which runs Thursday through Saturday. The conference is named for Dr. Munsterberg's collection of essays, "On the Witness Stand," which urged the courts to open their doors to a plethora of social science findings that cast serious doubt on assumptions commonly relied on in criminal proceedings.

Our hope is to provide semi-live blogs from the road, with reports on what looks like a great collection of presentations from a long list of heavy-hitting psychologists and lawyers with their fingers on the pulse of the intersection of the social sciences and the law, with significant focus on eyewitness issues. Scheduled speakers include Janet Reno, Steven Penrod, Gary Wells, James Doyle, Saul Kassin, Tim O'Toole, and many others. If you can't make the conference, check back here for updates.

The conference agenda is here (PDF).

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