Canadian Registry of Wrongful Convictions highlights failures of the criminal justice system

Kent Roach , a professor in the University of Toronto's Faculty of Law, and four alumni of the JD program -  Amanda Carling , Jessie Stirling , Joel Voss  and Sarah Harland-Logan -  have launched  the Canadian Registry of Wrongful Convictions. The registry includes 83 publicly documented cases where a criminal conviction was overturned based on new matters of significance related to guilt not considered when the accused was convicted or pled guilty. The researchers do not have access to confidential information, do not make determinations of guilt or innocence, nor do they act on behalf of the wrongfully convicted. Initiated in 2018, the registry has been developed with the dedicated support of multiple University of Toronto Law student researchers and several William Southam Journalism Fellows from University of Toronto's Massey College. Roach has been teaching a course on the subject of wrongful convictions for more than two decades. "Students are asked, what are the facts of the case? It's important that we problematize this idea that the facts are the facts," says Roach. "Wrongful convictions are largely the result of factual errors: Mistaken eyewitness identification, people lying, expert witnesses basing their testimony on their interpretation of the facts and their opinion."  Roach says the wrongful convictions recorded in the registry "are underinclusive of all miscarriages of criminal justice because of the difficulty people experience, once they have been convicted, in finding new evidence and having the courts accept it."  In the registry's first report -  Canada Has a Guilty Plea Wrongful Conviction Problem - Roach highlights some key findings about the relationship between guilty pleas and wrongful convictions.