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Innocence Checklist (Leonetti)
- Steph Turner
- Apr 19
- 10 min read
Updated: 19 hours ago
Dr. Carrie Leonetti identifies a list of 27 factors contributing to wrongly convicting the innocent. They complement the Estimated Innocence Form.
Since creating the Estimated Innocence Form in 2019, Dr. Carrie Leonetti of Aukland University (originally of the University of Oregon) independently identified a list of predictable contributors to wrongful convictions.
If you can think of anything to add to such a checklist, comment below.
You can see her full 2021 article here that publicized her innocence checklist.
Almost anyone in the innocence movement can identify the five most basic contributors.
Official misconduct.
Eyewitness misidentification, especially tainted misidentifications.
Incentivized (jail) informant.
Junk science or improperly applied forensics science.
False and often a coerced confession.
Inadequate legal defense can be added. Along with a host of other factors, like tunnel vision investigations, confirmation bias, noble cause corruption, prosecutorial misconduct like Brady violations, sunk value fallacy, political pressures, and more.
Leonetti’s list identifies no less than 27 factors correlating with wrongful convictions. She groups these factors into clusters for easier review.
Refer to the comparison chart below that illustrates which of her identified factors leading to wrongly convicting the innocent fits closely with the Estimated Innocence Form. And which items she identifies is lacking in the EIF. Along with items in the EIF missing in her checklist.
Her “innocence checklist” supports my aim to develop an empirically sound basis for more quickly identifying viable innocence claims. Unlike Professor Leonetti, I am already putting my list into action, with the downloadable EIF.
Read the list for yourself below. Click on each listed item to explore it in more detail below. Clicking the header above each paragraph below returns you to this navigable list.
If you have downloaded the EIF and find any of her factors missing an important factor, share your observations in the comments below. If you can think of anything we have both missed, you can add it to the comments below.
Keep us on our toes. You can do your part to help us improve how we all transparently identify and clear the wrongly convicted innocent.
INNOCENCE CHECKLIST
(2) False Evidence
(3) Coaching
(4) Witness Hiding
(8) Reasonable Doubt
(10) New Science
(11) Presence
(13) Recantations
(14) Impeachment
(15) Incentives
(16) Changing Science
(18) Corroboration
(24) Police Corruption
(25) Snitch Testimony
(27) Pretrial Publicity
Explore each of these in a little more detail below, as found in pages 145 through 149 in her academic article.
Failure of prosecutors to divulge favorable evidence, regardless of whether such failure meets the doctrinal test of Brady. If suppression is unintentional, it should count as a factor in favor of wrongful conviction when the withheld information is reasonably likely to relate to the accuracy of the trial. If suppression is intentional, it should count as a factor in favor of wrongful conviction irrelevant of the likelihood that the withheld information relates to the accuracy of the trial.
(2) False Evidence
Prosecutorial presentation of materially false evidence, regardless of the state of mind of the prosecutor who examined the witness.
(3) Coaching
Inappropriate preparation of prosecutorial witnesses.
(4) Witness Hiding
Intentionally securing the unavailability of defense witnesses.
Failure of defense counsel to investigate or develop potentially viable defenses, especially alibi claims, including failure to retain scientific experts to test, retest, or challenge questionable prosecution forensic-science evidence, regardless of whether such failure meets the doctrinal test of Strickland.
Intentional misconduct or gross negligence by forensic analysts or the crime laboratory that processed evidence during the time period that evidence relating to the defendant’s case was processed (e.g., “dry labbing” or undetected contamination), regardless of whether there is evidence that items specifically relating to the defendant’s case were contaminated or misprocessed, particularly if the misconduct was not discovered promptly through laboratory audit procedures.
Police misconduct or gross negligence either during investigation of the defendant’s case or a pattern of misconduct across cases that could include the defendant’s, such as lost or destroyed evidence; material record-keeping omissions; coercing or inducing confessions, even if inducements do not rise to the level of a constitutional violation (e.g., lying to a suspect about evidence); inducing false testimony; or intentionally withholding information from prosecutors.
(8) Reasonable Doubt
Discovery of evidence unknown at the time of trial (regardless of whether it could have been discovered through due diligence), the presence of which now creates a plausible theory under which the defendant could be innocent or is reasonably likely to cause a reasonable, disinterested person to harbor a reasonable doubt about guilt.
Evidence tending to inculpate a suspect other than the defendant, including a DNA match from crucial biological evidence to any individual other than the defendant from an item of material crime-scene evidence (even if such a match is not conclusively exculpatory); confessions or incriminating admissions by alternate suspects; video footage or other electronic surveillance records documenting the presence of an alternate suspect at the time of the crime; or identification by a witness of someone other than the defendant as the perpetrator.
(10) New Science
The existence of scientific evidence that either was not available or was available but not performed prior to trial, the favorable results of which are likely to exculpate the defendant.
(11) Presence
Evidence casting doubt on the defendant’s presence or ability to be present at the scene of the crime.
The presence of a serious mental illness or intellectual disability in the defendant prior to and/or during trial, including one that derived from youth, immaturity, and lack of formal education, regardless of whether such illness or disability was known to the court or defense counsel at trial or whether such illness or disability rendered the defendant incompetent to stand trial under Dusky v. United States.
(13) Recantations
Recantation or subsequent statement(s) that is (are) materially inconsistent with trial testimony by significant prosecution witnesses.
(14) Impeachment
New information discrediting a key prosecution witness’s ability to observe, recall, or recount the subject matter of their testimony accurately or truthfully, including physical or mental health issues.
(15) Incentives
Benefits given or promises or threats made to significant prosecution witnesses, including leniency in their own criminal cases.
(16) Changing Science
A significant change in the state of prosecutorial expert evidence, including a change in the consensus of experts in a field about the significance or interpretation of results. This factor should apply to any case in which the evidence, now known to be unreliable, was presented, including expert testimony that a fire was arson based on burn patterns, testimony that a hair taken from the defendant matched a hair taken from the crime scene based on microscopic comparison, testimony that bitemarks found on a victim or at a crime scene matched the defendant’s bite, hypnotically induced testimony, or testimony that a baby’s death was caused by violent shaking based on shaken-baby syndrome.
Forensic analyses that were obtained in the context of unnecessary biasing information and forensic-science testimony that was inaccurate, misleading, or oversold, regardless of the good/bad faith of the analyst.
(18) Corroboration
Material evidence significantly corroborating the defendant’s contested testimony or theory of the case.
The defendant’s consistent, explicit, personal maintenance of innocence.
Absence of physical evidence to corroborate crucial witness testimony or a defendant’s confession under circumstances in which such corroborating evidence would reasonably be expected to exist and be obtainable.
Introduction at trial of a stranger eye-witness identification of the defendant when that identification either (a) was obtained from procedures proven to be suggestive by social science evidence, regardless of whether such procedure has been deemed unnecessarily suggestive as a matter of constitutional or common law and regardless of whether evidence relating to the lack of reliability of the procedure was introduced at trial (defense expert testimony, cross-examination, or closing argument) or (b) was not significantly corroborated by other evidence, under circumstances in which such corroborating evidence would reasonably be expected to exist.
Introduction at trial of the defendant’s confession or substantial inculpatory admissions that were obtained through coercive interrogation techniques like the Reid method of interrogation; confessions obtained from highly vulnerable suspects; confessions obtained after prolonged detention, isolation, when the suspect was sleep deprived, or in response to evidence ploys and other misrepresentations; and confessions obtained without video-taping or other recording.
Use by prosecutors of a theory of the defendant’s case inconsistent with the prosecution theory in another closely related case.
(24) Police Corruption
Compelling evidence that law-enforcement agents who investigated the defendant’s case engaged in corrupt conduct during the course of another investigation (e.g., stealing or intentionally “misplacing” evidence, planting evidence, giving or accepting bribes, providing “protection” to criminal syndicates, frequenting sex workers, using illicit drugs, knowingly violating the constitutional rights of suspects, or “testilying”).
(25) Snitch Testimony
Material testimony of an incentivized informant or witness cooperating in exchange for a material benefit, regardless of whether any incentive for cooperation was disclosed to the defense prior to trial or introduced in evidence.
Prosecutorial introduction of testimony from two or more witnesses whose testimony is materially inconsistent with one another.
(27) Pretrial Publicity
Sensationalized media coverage of the case prior to trial, particularly if it involved commentary by prosecutors or police officers about the defendant’s prior criminal record, character, credibility, reputation, or inculpatory statements; physical evidence; the testimony, criminal record, character, reputation, or credibility of witnesses, including the victim; or evidence that was ruled inadmissible at trial.
References:
Medword, D. (2005). The Zeal Deal: Prosecutorial Resistance to Post-Conviction Claims of Innocence, Law, Political Science 125. DOI:10.18574/nyu/9780814796245.003.0008
ADDENDA
These additional academic articles add to the discourse of how we can identify a wrongful conviction independent of legal arguments.
These four academics apply quantitative and qualitative analysis to predict likely outcomes of erroneous convictions. Which can help to properly weight those factors with the most significant risk for a likely wrongful conviction of the innocent (of those who had no role in the reported crime). Less important yet vital factors would then be weighted less.
For example, an improved Estimated Innocence Form could assign a key correlating factor like “forensic error” with a much higher number than a lesser risk, such as a noncoerced “false confession”. See their key findings below.
Ten key correlating factors
These 10 factors help explain why an innocent defendant, once indicted, ends up erroneously convicted rather than released.
the age of the defendant,
criminal history of the defendant,
the punitiveness of the state,
Brady violations,
forensic error,
a weak defense,
a weak prosecution case,
a family defense witness,
an inadvertent misidentification, and
lying by a non-eyewitness
Other correlating factors
Additional factors point to likely indictment, but the risk for an erroneous conviction gets mitigated by the occasional “near miss” of acquittal or dropped charges. For example:
false confessions,
criminal justice official error, and
and race effects.
Tunnel vision as a guiding factor
Tunnel vision plays a significant role that hinders self-correction of such factors, increasing the risk of a near miss resulting in an erroneous conviction.
Berube, R., Wilford, M. M., Redlich, A. D., & Wang, Y. (2022). Identifying Patterns Across the Six Canonical Factors Underlying Wrongful Convictions. The Wrongful Conviction Law Review, 3(3), 166–195. https://doi.org/10.29173/wclawr82.
The article addresses a gap in wrongful conviction research by investigating how canonical factors—which include mistaken witness identification, false confession, and official misconduct—do not occur in isolation but instead appear in systematic patterns.
The research used latent class analysis on data from the National Registry of Exonerations to categorize cases into distinct patterns of contributing factors. The study identified four distinct "latent classes" of how these canonical factors co-occur, revealing several noteworthy patterns:
Perjury and official misconduct often appear together. Specifically, perjury or false accusation (P/FA) and official misconduct (OM) co-occur frequently.
High rates of mistaken witness identification (MWID) correlate with low rates of other factors. This suggests that mistaken identification can sometimes be the primary cause of a conviction, overshadowing other contributing factors.
False guilty pleas are most common in cases involving investigative failures. This class of cases often features false guilty pleas, suggesting that these pleas often stem from inadequate investigations.
The findings provide a more nuanced understanding of how wrongful convictions occur, moving beyond a single-factor analysis to an observation of how a combination of factors can lead to miscarriages of justice. The study's results offer critical insights for developing more effective reforms within the criminal justice system.
Loeffler, C.E., Hyatt, J. & Ridgeway, G. (2019). Measuring Self-Reported Wrongful Convictions Among Prisoners. J Quant Criminol 35, 259–286. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10940-018-9381-1
Abstract
Objectives
Estimate the frequency of self-reported factual innocence in non-capital cases within a state population of prisoners.
Methods
We conducted a survey of a population sample of state prisoners who were asked to anonymously report their involvement in the crimes for which they were most recently convicted. To assess the validity of verifiable responses, prisoner self-report data were compared to aggregate conviction and demographic information derived from administrative records. To assess the validity of unverifiable responses, we developed a non-parametric test to estimate the probability of false innocence claims.
Results
We estimate that wrongful convictions occur in 6% of criminal convictions leading to imprisonment in an intake population of state prisoners. This estimate masks a considerable degree of conviction-specific variability ranging from a low of 2% in DUI convictions to a high of 40% in rape convictions. Implausible or false innocence claims are estimated to occur in 2% of cases.
Implausible or false innocence claims are estimated to occur in 2% of cases.
Conclusions
The present investigation demonstrates that survey methods can provide bounded estimates of factual innocence claims within a discrete and known population. The resulting estimates, the first to formally separate claims of legal and factual innocence and to incorporate a formal measure of response plausibility, suggest that prisoners themselves are very often willing to self-report the correctness of their convictions.
At the same time, a considerable minority indicate that procedural weaknesses with the administration of justice occurred in their cases. And, a distinct minority, with considerable offense variation, maintain that they are completely innocent of the charges against them.
Liebman et al. (1999) provides estimates of U.S. legal errors beyond factual innocence in capital cases.
Less to do with the list and more about the other info gathering. Why not include what year in the sentence the claimant is currently in?
The closer to the earliest outdate, and still consistently maintaining innocence, can't this increase the likelihood of actual innocence? Why would anyone still be "in denial" if they are that close to going home? Especially if risking a parole denial!
Besides, other prisoners who finally own up to what they did tend to look down on innocent claimants. As if they feel innocence claimants are claiming they are better than the guilty. Perhaps the list could include how much the innocence claimant endures the closer to the end of their sentence.
I don’t see in either this checklist or in the EIF where, after an innocent defendant is in custody for an alleged crime, someone else on the streets repeats the same crime. The prosecutor dismisses this as a copycat crime, but couldn’t this be another indicator of likely innocence?
Or the prosecutor claims they didn't catch the so-called accomplice, and that's why the offense reoccurs. Either way, it seems to point to tunnel vision (already in the list) because the authorities resist admitting to such a costly mistake, and they're already onto other matters and apparently can't be bothered by disconfirming evidence. Sometimes, it seems like the prosecutor is clutching for straws to rationalize their harmful mistakes. With absolute immunity,…