No abstract

Despite growing recognition that misdiagnoses of child abuse can lead to wrongful convictions, little empirical work has examined how the medical community may contribute to these errors. Previous research has documented the existence and content of stereotypes that associate race with child abuse. The current study examines whether emergency medical professionals rely on this stereotype to fill in gaps in ambiguous cases involving Black children, thereby increasing the potential for misdiagnoses of child abuse. Specifically, we tested whether the race-abuse stereotype led participants to attend to more abuse-related details than infection-related details when an infant patient was Black versus White. We also tested whether this heuristic decision-making would be affected by contextual case facts; specifically, we examined whether race bias would be exacerbated or mitigated by a family’s involvement with child protective services (CPS). Results showed that participants did exhibit some biased information processing in response to the experimental manipulations. Even so, the race-abuse stereotype and heuristic decision-making did not cause participants to diagnose a Black infant patient with abuse more often than a White infant patient, regardless of his family’s involvement with CPS. These findings help illuminate how race may lead to different outcomes in cases of potential child abuse, while also demonstrating potential pathways through which racial disparities in misdiagnosis of abuse and subsequent wrongful convictions can be prevented.

Lacking adequate knowledge about one's rights could inhibit the likelihood of exercising one's rights or lead one to unwittingly violate laws that place legitimate limits on these rights. Thus, the present research examines First Amendment knowledge as well as competence to apply this knowledge in relevant circumstances. Results revealed that one‐quarter of participants failed a test of objective knowledge on First Amendment rights. Furthermore, participants' belief in their ability varied depending on their level of knowledge, in line with the Dunning–Kruger effect. Participants also failed to transfer their limited objective knowledge to “real‐world” situations, exhibiting impaired First Amendment competence. These findings suggest that US residents' levels of knowledge and competence related to First Amendment rights and protections could be improved to promote a safe, knowledgeable, and democratic society.

No abstract

True perpetrators—those who commit crimes that others were wrongfully convicted of—are a danger to society. Left unapprehended, these individuals often continue to commit crimes that could have otherwise been avoided. Despite the risk they pose, only about half of true perpetrators in DNA exoneration cases have been identified. Further, only 50% of those who have been identified have been charged with the wrongful conviction crime(s) they committed. Previous research on wrongful convictions, prosecutorial discretion in charging decisions, and prosecutors’ treatment of post-conviction innocence claims provide a starting point for investigating what factors underlie the identification and charging of true perpetrators. To explore these factors, we analyze 367 DNA exoneration cases and the resulting 161 identified true perpetrators. Results revealed that prosecutorial misconduct as a contributor to the wrongful conviction decreased the odds that a true perpetrator would be identified, but the odds increased if the victim was White and the exoneree was Black compared to if both were White. Odds of identification also decreased when, compared to murder, the most severe wrongful conviction crime type was child sex abuse or sexual assault. These factors were not significantly associated with the odds of an identified true perpetrator being charged with a wrongful conviction crime. A qualitative study revealed both definitively prohibitive and potentially influential factors that could influence a prosecutor’s decision not to charge an identified true perpetrator with these crimes. These findings indicate policy solutions that could hold true perpetrators of wrongful convictions crimes responsible for their actions.