Committee Chair

Basham, Sherah

Committee Member

Dierenfeldt, Rick; Denny, Andrew S.; Acuff, Christopher

Department

Dept. of Criminal Justice and Legal Assistant Studies

College

College of Arts and Sciences

Publisher

University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

Place of Publication

Chattanooga (Tenn.)

Abstract

Previous work has identified factors that influence the likelihood of wrongful conviction. However, fewer efforts have been made to examine how these factors influence the amount of time between wrongful conviction and exoneration. This is crucial to the expansion of innocence research and the contextualization of wrongful convictions within the criminal justice system. This study employs negative binomial regression to analyze data collected by the National Registry of Exonerations (NRE). Using a sample of 2,349 cases in which the most severe conviction was murder, sexual assault, child sexual abuse, or drug possession, I examine the influence of an exoneree’s age, race, and biological sex on time to exoneration while controlling for worst crime, number of crimes, and the number of causes for wrongful conviction. Findings demonstrate the effects of age, biological sex, race, number of causes, and severity of conviction on the amount of time lost due to wrongful convictions.

Degree

M. S.; A thesis submitted to the faculty of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Master of Science.

Date

5-2024

Subject

False imprisonment; Judicial error; Vindication

Keyword

wrongful convictions; time lost; exonerations

Document Type

Masters theses

DCMI Type

Text

Extent

vi, 41 leaves

Language

English

Rights

http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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