CCCJ Seminar: 'Should a Constitution Protect Innocent People from Criminal Conviction?'

The Cambridge Centre for Criminal Justice will host a Public Lecture by Tim Bakken, Professor of Law at the United States Military Academy, West Point, New York, on Thursday, 25 November, in LG17, 5-6:30 pm.

Based on his forthcoming book, The Plea of Innocence: Searching for Truth in a Justice System (New York University Press, 2022), Professor Bakken will discuss why the U.S. Supreme Court has been unwilling to conclude that the American Constitution prohibits the conviction of an innocent person. The Constitution and the adversarial system may guarantee only fair processes, not a search for truth.

The lecture will include a discussion of the high legal barriers that convicted innocent people must surmount to obtain exoneration. One important question preliminary question is whether the current percentage of innocent-person convictions, possibly, for example, about 4.1 percent of all the people convicted in death-penalty cases in America, is too high, too low, or acceptable, given that no legal system can eliminate all wrongful convictions.