Justice for Some

This book defines the differing concepts of miscarriages of justice, wrongful convictions and innocence in relation to the presumption of innocence and the rationing of justice. It compares inquisitorial systems, with examples from Europe, South America and Asia to adversarial systems. It contrasts England’s focus on miscarriages of justice and the remedial institutions of the Court of Appeal and the Criminal Cases Review Commission, with the United States and China’s narrower focus on proven factual innocence. It highlights new laws enacted in India in 2023 that increase the risk of wrongful convictions. It details how the International Criminal Court has taken steps to reduce the risk of false guilty pleas that may have been accepted by previous international criminal courts. The book examines the roles of racist prejudice and gender stereotypes in wrongful convictions including for imagined crimes that never occurred. It also examines false guilty pleas such as those in the Post Office scandal. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.

Kent Roach is Professor of Law at the University of Toronto and co-founder of the Canadian Registry of Wrongful Convictions. He was research director for both the Goudge Inquiry into forensic pathology and to Justices LaForme’s and Westmoreland-Traoré’s report A Miscarriages of Justice Commission (2021).