Wrongful Convictions · False Allegations · Memory & the Courts
25 stories
On Wrongful Conviction Day, the head of the Innocence Project of Florida urges the Legislature to adopt evidence-based eyewitness identification rules and guardrails on facial recognition, citing the eight years Dustin Duty spent wrongly imprisoned.
1 October 2026
Seven Cornell students named as gang rapists in a civil suit, with no charges brought. Glenn Greenwald on due process, the accuser's own 2024 statement, and mob justice.
30 September 2026
New rape courtrooms in England and Wales and pre-recorded evidence in NSW are sold as easing delays and stress for complainants. What about a fair trial for the accused?
25 September 2026
Matt Foot on the Court of Appeal's refusal to reckon with its own failures: Andrew Malkinson, Oliver Campbell, Justin Plummer and Peter Sullivan all had earlier appeals rejected before their convictions were finally quashed.
24 September 2026
A Montana lawyer from a family of prosecutors argues that mistaken eyewitness testimony and pressure on doubting jurors send innocent people to prison — and that those who doubt deserve respect.
22 September 2026
A retired civil rights attorney contrasts Michigan's compensation law for the wrongly convicted, which lets exonerees also sue, with Indiana's, which pays only if they give up the right to sue forever.
21 September 2026
Research on who becomes an abusive officer is real but partial, argues Jordan DeVylder — and the US rate of police killings cannot be explained by recruitment screening alone.
19 September 2026
Healthcare researcher Neal K. Shah argues that America's psychiatric system, not Lindsay Clancy alone, bears responsibility for her children's deaths — and asks why no prescriber faces a courtroom.
13 September 2026
Michael Pfleger's lawyer says the Archdiocese of Chicago removed the priest five days before it interviewed his accuser, whose account it found not credible.
10 September 2026
Wendy McElroy on International Falsely Accused Day, marked each 9 September on Simon Warr's birthday, and why the safeguards of Western jurisprudence exist precisely because accusers sometimes lie.
5 September 2026
Northern Territory incarceration has hit a record 2,800 people in custody. Jesuit Social Services on why investing in people, not prisons, makes us all safer.
1 September 2026
New Haven will pay two wrongly convicted men $15.25 million each — yet Connecticut's estate tax can still reclaim 12% of compensation the state itself paid.
21 August 2026
A Malaysian doctor argues that after police referred a Sabah hospital sexual harassment complaint to prosecutors and the case was classified No Further Action, the accused's presumption of innocence still counts for nothing in public.
20 August 2026
Harvard psychologist Richard McNally and social psychologist Carol Tavris on why the discredited idea of “repressed memories” is back — in Amy Griffin's memoir and Bessel van der Kolk's bestsellers — and what the research on fragmented trauma memories actually found.
19 August 2026
The possibility of executing the innocent has gone a long way to change the national conversation about the death penalty.
14 August 2026
Editorial: A review ordered by Vera Baird should help the body tasked with identifying miscarriages of justice to rebuild itself.
17 July 2026
Matt Foot on the unprecedented contempt of court prosecution of Rajiv Menon KC, brought over a closing speech that cited Bushell's Case — the 1670 ruling, commemorated on a tablet at the Old Bailey, that established a jury's right to give its verdict according to its convictions.
15 July 2026
An Easter essay on Australian theologian Barbara Thiering's Dead Sea Scrolls scholarship and her naturalistic reconstruction of the crucifixion.
2 April 2026
Brendan O'Neill argues the Epstein scandal has morphed into a moral panic, cancelling men for the flimsiest of connections.
6 February 2026
Mary Wakefield on the 'Believe Her' movement and the case of German MP Stefan Gelbhaar, whose career was ruined by allegations that collapsed.
29 January 2025
A Fairfax County jury found for Johnny Depp against Amber Heard — a significant defeat for the #MeToo witch-hunt and a victory for the presumption of innocence and due process.
3 June 2022
The Australian government may fall because of unproven and extremely dodgy 30-year-old rape allegations against a cabinet minister – the unchecked power of the #MeToo movement and its woke media allies is destroying our society.
9 March 2021
Woke America read as a Russian novel, where denunciation and public confession replace due process and forgiveness.
21 July 2020
One of Australia's most respected former detectives, Colin McLaren, breaks rank to explain why he no longer trusts the judicial system — and why Australia still has no criminal cases review commission.
13 June 2020
Weinstein’s conviction has established the “breakthrough” principle that a criminal conviction can be secured without reliable and verifiable evidence. The working class and poor will suffer the consequences.
26 February 2020