Two common causes of wrongful convictions are eyewitness misidentification and false confessions. You will
write a case analysis paper in APA format which will involve analyzing a case of an actual wrongful conviction
due to one of these two causes. This paper is designed to help you learn how to contribute to real cases and to
the law in this field.
You will first need to find a case. Summaries of cases to choose from can be found at
www.innocenceproject.org (Links to an external site.)and all of the cases can be found at this link:
https://www.innocenceproject.org/all-cases/#exonerated-by-dna (Links to an external site.). It’s advisable to
look at several cases before choosing one. Base your choice on the ability to find enough background
information on the possible causes of the wrongful conviction in that particular case. It is also helpful to find a
case with quite a bit of news coverage so you can supplement the case facts that are listed at the Innocence
Project site.
There will be three parts to your paper: a case summary, a summary of the research in the field, and
recommendation(s) for preventing similar wrongful convictions in the future. I strongly encourage you to
carefully review the Case Analysis & APA Paper Example in Course Resources. More details about each of the
three parts are described below:

1. Case Summary: In the case summary, summarize the facts of your case based on information from the
   Innocence Project website and any other reliable news source you can find. What happened in this case? Why
   was the person wrongfully convicted? What led to his/her release? This portion of your paper should be 1-2
   pages long.
2. Summary of the research: In this part of the paper, you should take each factor that contributed to the
   wrongful conviction and explain the research supporting the error. For example, if you find that a false
   confession led to the wrongful conviction, you would need to explain how researchers have studied false
   confessions and what the results of that research show. Suggested journals are Law and Human Behavior;
   Psychology, Public Policy, and Law; Behavioral Sciences and the Law. This portion of your paper should be 2-3
   pages in length.
3. Prevention: In this final part of your paper, discuss any policy recommendations based on research that
   could have prevented the wrongful conviction in your case, and could also prevent future wrongful convictions
   from occurring. For example, if your case was based on eyewitness misidentification, you may recommend the
   lineup be conducted by a blind lineup administrator. Of course, you’ll cite research supporting that particular
   recommendation. This portion of your paper should be about 1-2 pages long.