First Steps on the Path to Wrongful Conviction: Phenomenology of Innocence, Police Stops, and Expectancies

Wrongful convictions represent a grave injustice. The innocent are punished, the guilty go free, and the postmortems that attend their occasional discovery typically reveal some shocking combination of incompetence, indifference, and malfeasance. Escaping notice, however, are myriad mundane influences that usually have negligible effects but which, like a feather falling on a balance, can sometimes tip the scale. In this chapter we highlight effects that could nudge the innocent onto paths that might ultimately lead to wrongful conviction. We begin by considering how the innocent are disadvantaged by an unwarranted sense of invulnerability. Next, we explore how police encounters and investigative stops can initially entangle the innocent in a criminal investigation. We then discuss how police may come to target an innocent suspect through the effects of expectancies, both justified and unjustified, and which may or may not operate outside awareness. We conclude by discussing future research directions.