See more: An illustrated version of this article will be published within the next two weeks on our CultureLab books and arts blog
EVERY day, innocent people are wrongly convicted of crimes they did not commit, while real offenders are falsely acquitted. The error rate in the US has been estimated at 3 to 4 per cent, but it could be much higher. Sometimes mistakes are only revealed years later, when technologies such as DNA fingerprinting are employed. These, while not infallible, have so far exonerated hundreds of falsely convicted people.
In In Doubt, Dan Simon, a professor of…
