John —

In our work at the Innocence Project we often see cognitive biases — unconscious beliefs people hold and inadvertent mental tendencies they have — influence criminal investigations and contribute to wrongful convictions.

Recently, the Innocence Project’s science and research team reviewed 30 studies of cognitive biases in criminal cases to understand their role in wrongful convictions. Take a moment today to read about what we found through our research.

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In this context, “bias” doesn’t mean prejudice or favoritism. “Cognitive bias” refers to a wide variety of inadvertent mental tendencies that can impact perception, memory, reasoning, and behavior. Everyone has these biases. They’re developed because our minds naturally identify patterns based on our own experiences, environment, and the things we see, read, or hear.

A type of cognitive bias that is commonly seen in wrongful conviction cases is confirmation bias — when a person selectively seeks, recalls, weights, or interprets information in ways that support their existing beliefs, expectations, or hypotheses. Confirmation bias could encourage investigators to only focus on information that fits what they already believe about a crime and suspect.

Bladimil Arroyo’s case is a clear example of how confirmation bias can lead to wrongful conviction. In 2001, Bladimil was questioned about a murder in Brooklyn. At the time of his interrogation, police believed that the victim had been stabbed, and Bladimil ultimately provided a detailed confession in which he said he had stabbed the victim. Later, a medical examiner determined that the victim was actually shot, not stabbed.

But rather than reevaluating the case and asking why Bladimil had confessed to something demonstrably false, the State explained away the errors in his confession, arguing that he had lied to try to minimize his role in the crime, and pressed forward with their case against him.

And it’s not only confirmation bias that plays a part in wrongful conviction. There are many kinds of cognitive biases and racial biases woven throughout our criminal legal system — and we see that in the numbers.

According to the National Registry of Exonerations, Black exonerees were 60% more likely to be sentenced to life imprisonment than their white peers, and spent an average of 4.4 years longer in prison before being exonerated

If we want to create a more just system, we need to, at the bare minimum, acknowledge that these biases exist and that we’re all susceptible to them. And then we must work to find structural solutions that prevent investigators and everyday people from being guided to the wrong conclusions by their unconscious biases.

Please, take some time today to read more about our findings on how cognitive biases can lead to wrongful convictions.

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Thanks for your support,

Vanessa

Vanessa Meterko
Research Manager
Innocence Project

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Started in 1992 as a legal clinic at Cardozo School of Law, the Innocence Project is now an independent nonprofit, affiliated with Cardozo, that exonerates the wrongly convicted through DNA testing and reforms the criminal justice system to prevent future injustice.

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