According to Steven Truscott's lawyer, James Lockyer, "The causes are as infinite as there are cases."
Now that Steven Truscott's case is in the hands of five judges, have you ever wondered how wrongful convictions can happen?
"A survey of 205 wrongful convictions in the United States prior to 1988, for instance, concluded that eyewitness misidentification was responsible for just over half of them, followed in roughly equal proportions by witness perjury, negligence on the part of criminal justice officials, "pure error" and coerced confessions.
Explicit framing or perjury by investigators made the list, but only just, and questionable or mistaken forensic science -- which has emerged in the last 20 years as a key factor in nearly all Canadian cases of wrongful convictions -- barely registered at about 1%."
It is a scary thought, in this day and age of experts, forensics and technology that any of this could happen. How many people are sitting in jail and are actually innocent? We won't know until their appeals come up.
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