What are the leading causes of most wrongful convictions? What has been done to attempt to remedy ...

In spite of the many procedural protections afforded to the criminally accused prior to and during trial, it is clear that some defendants are wrongfully convicted of crimes they did not actually commit. Since 1989, over 280 inmates have been exonerated by DNA evidence, largely due to the efforts of the Innocence Project, the Death Penalty Information Center, and similar organizations (Innocence Project, 2015a; Zalman, Smith & Kiger, 2008). As a result of these exonerationsand media portrayals of themall 50 states have changed their laws to allow for appellate or postconviction review on the grounds of actual innocence, especially when supported by new DNA evidence (Zalman, 2006). The federal government similarly enacted the Innocence Protection Act of 2004, which expands judicial review of convictions on the basis of evidence that tends to exonerate. Using different methods, estimates of the rate of wrongful convictions range between a low of 0.5 percent and a high of 15 percent, with between 1 percent and 3 percent being the estimate with the most empirical support (Zalman, Smith, & Kiger, 2008). Most of what we know about wrongful convictions comes from exoneration cases, 95 percent of which occur in murder and rape cases (Gross & O'Brien, 2008). Since murder and rape cases account for only 2 percent of all felony convictions, exoneration cases are treated as an imperfect proxy for a subset of likely wrongful convictions (Gould & Leo, 2010, p. 826).
Causes of wrongful convictions include: eyewitness misidentification (the leading cause of wrongful convictions); improper forensic evidence; false confessions; unreliable informants; tunnel vision and misconduct by justice professionals; and inadequate defense representation.