Is Medico-legal Death Investigation Really Five Times Worse in Canada than in the United States? Exoneration Registries in Comparative Perspective

Exoneration registries—online archives of known cases of false conviction and exoneration—are an idea whose time has come. Starting with the creation of the first such registry in the United States in 2012, three more national/regional registries have launched in recent years, including The Canadian Registry of Wrongful Convictions, with more efforts underway. In this presentation, a Co-Editor of the U.S. registry will reflect upon what registries can and can’t do, the principles behind such registries, and methodological issues with using such registries as social science data including cross-national comparisons. The presentation will then illustrate these issues with reference to a specific topic: the contribution of medico-legal death investigation to false convictions.

This event is open to the general public and does not require registration (but please note that our seating is limited). Coffee and tea will be served in the Piano Lounge at 4:30 pm, and it will be followed by a reception in the Piano Lounge, Graham House.

Simon A Cole is Professor of Criminology, Law, and Society at the University of California, Irvine, and co-editor of the National Registry of Exonerations. His research focuses on science and technology in the criminal legal system, particularly forensic science. He is the author of Suspect Identities: A History of Fingerprinting and Criminal Identification (Harvard University Press, 2001), which was awarded the 2003 Rachel Carson Prize by the Society for Social Studies of Science, and a co-author of Truth Machine: The Contentious History of DNA Fingerprinting (University of Chicago Press, 2008, with Michael Lynch, Ruth McNally & Kathleen Jordan).