Seeking Solutions

Experts address solutions to the problem of wrongful arrests of innocent people:

“I think the problem is that the system is probably sloppy. Without someone auditing the situation like a bank, you do not have proper oversight . . . [and] you begin to worry about the integrity of the system. . . . All of the work should be under the supervision of prosecutors. . . . My experience of 20 years ago with [a study of] the LAPD was that there was a great reluctance to write [detailed] reports . . . so a lot of times a detective would go on the stand and be describing evidence using notes that were 2 years old. And the California appellate courts were full of cases where detectives were contradicting themselves. . . . But with computers and clerical assistance, it is certainly possible to get this [evidence] dictated now so it can be preserved.”

--Peter Greenwood, Rand Corp.

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“The issue is: Has the system allowed itself to become so perverted, going forward with prosecutions that are clearly not warranted, that it exponentially expands the number of cases of innocent people caught up in the system and individual people’s lives being destroyed?”

--Paul Messing, lawyer and professor

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“Now and then, when errors are made, it is most common at the arrest level. Why? Because the officer has to make a spontaneous decision. . . . But by the time it reaches the trial level, I’d say 96 to 98 percent of the time, you have the right guy there [on trial]. If the guy is innocent, someone is going to catch it along the way. . . . So if [the number of wrongful prosecutions] is that low, it may just be something we have to live with. It may be like the accident rate of cars or the accident rate of airplanes. There are always going to be a certain percentage of innocent people wrongfully convicted.”

--Author and former prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi