Our criminal justice system is built on the foundational dictum that it is better that ten guilty people escape than one innocent person suffer. This course examines this premise and its application in the Canadian criminal justice system. Students will critically assess the meaning of innocence in the context of wrongful convictions and how wrongful convictions are currently identified. Students will then examine the top ten causes of wrongful convictions in Canada, including police misconduct, prosecutorial misconduct, false confessions, unsavoury witnesses, faulty experts, junk science, pre-trial detention, ineffective assistance of counsel, and more.
Each week will involve a case study of a person who was exonerated by Innocence Canada, with a critical analysis of the failures of the criminal justice system that led to that wrongful conviction. Students will then assess how the justice system has responded to those failures and whether current procedures are adequate to protect against similar wrongful convictions in the future. Students will conclude the course by examining current issues in the criminal justice system that have the potential to cause wrongful convictions.
While Evidence and Criminal Procedure are not strict pre-requisites, it is highly recommended that students have either completed those courses or be taking them concurrently with this course. It will be extremely difficult to complete this course without a foundational understanding of the rules of evidence and the law governing criminal procedure. This course will not teach those foundational concepts and will assume that students are familiar with them and able to critically examine and apply them.
Method of Evaluation: 1) 30-page research paper 7000 - 7500 words worth 90% of the final mark. 2) Class participation, worth 10% of the final mark.