Our criminal justice system is built on the foundational belief that it is better that ten guilty people go free than one innocent person is found guilty. This course examines this bedrock principle 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 major 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.
The coursework will involve both practical and theoretical teachings in the areas of criminal justice, including analyses of the failures of the criminal justice system that led to particular wrongful convictions. Students will have an opportunity to 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.
While Evidence and Criminal Procedure are not strict prerequisites, it is highly recommended that students will have either completed those courses or will be taking them concurrently with this course. Familiarity with basic criminal law concepts will be presumed, and 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 grade. 2) Class participation, worth 10% of the final grade.