Wrongful convictions and exonerations in the United States topic of September 16 lecture at College of Law
September 9, 2014
Samuel Gross, Professor of Law at the University of Michigan and Editor of the National Registry of Exonerations, will discuss wrongful convictions and exonerations in the United States on Tuesday, September 16, at noon, in the McQuade Law Auditorium at the College of Law.
The free, public lecture, titled “Wrongful Convictions in the U.S.: Lessons from the National Registry of Exonerations,” is part of the College’s Distinguished Speaker Series. In the lecture, Professor Gross will speak to surprising findings that have been discovered through examining wrongful convictions, including the effect of eyewitness misidentification on false convictions, and the roles of DNA, prosecutors, and police in exonerations.
Professor Gross is the editor of the National Registry of Exonerations, exonerationregistry.org, a joint project of the University of Michigan Law School and the Center on Wrongful convictions at the Northwestern University School of Law. Launched in May 2012, the Registry is the most comprehensive collection of exonerations in the United States ever assembled and maintains a detailed online database of all known exonerations in the United States since 1989.
“Samuel Gross is one of the nation’s leading experts on wrongful convictions and exonerations. We are delighted to have him speak on how to address these most fundamental failures of our justice system,” said Dean Daniel J. Steinbock.
Professor Gross teaches evidence, criminal procedure, and courses on wrongful criminal convictions at the University of Michigan Law School. His published work includes articles and books on evidence law, the death penalty, false convictions, racial profiling, eyewitness identification, and the relationship between pretrial bargaining and trial verdicts. As a cooperating attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Inc. in New York and the National Jury Project in California, Professor Gross previously litigated a series of test cases on jury selection in capital trials and worked on the issue of racial discrimination and the death penalty.