The Modern Politics of Sexual Assault Prosecution

This chapter presents and discusses the “rape law reform” movement that emerged in the 1970s. The movement sought reforms designed to encourage victims to make official reports and facilitate the successful prosecution of rape and sexual assault. The movement achieved legislative and practice reform, but there was no discernible increase in sexual assault convictions. The rape law reform movement solidified an alliance of concern that strengthened vigorous prosecution of “stranger rapes” but had little impact on the more common type of rape, “acquaintance rape.” Rape law reform advocacy produced dramatic and rapid legislative change, change that was clearly warranted not only for victims of sexual assault, but also reform that contributed to the integrity of the US legal process.

Race and Rape Prosecution in US History

This chapter examines the current disproportion of Black defendants wrongly convicted of sexual assault through a historical lens. It notes the US history of statutorily separate sexual assault penalties based on race of the defendant and victim. Throughout US history the legal definition and societal response to rape (and rape allegations) have been influenced by considerations of race. These considerations were consistently made to the detriment of Black defendants charged with rape. The chapter reviews how race, rape law, and prosecution have been manifested in different historical eras (the period of race-based enslavement, the period of Jim Crow segregation, and the current post–civil rights period) and the mechanisms of racial bias against Black defendants in the post–civil rights era.

Prospective and Future Directions

This chapter summarizes the findings from the various chapters and examines recommendations from other authors to outline directions for reform and further research. The value of various terms and concepts—variable distribution of wrongful conviction risk, “black box” investigation, the “continuum of intentionality,” victim status paths, moral outrage, and moral correction—in preventing and correcting wrongful conviction and for prospective research is presented. Obstacles faced in preventing and reducing wrongful conviction are also discussed. The chapter focuses on identifying common concerns and obstacles to reform that have been identified in the literature. It considers how the investigation of wrongful conviction in sexual assault, presented in this volume, contributes to the literature on reducing and preventing the conviction of innocents.

Concepts, Processes, and Models in Wrongful Conviction

This chapter explores concepts and models used to describe and explain processes in wrongful criminal conviction, such as “tunnel vision,” “confirmation biases,” “misinformation effects,” and “escalation of commitment.” This chapter also considers the critique of the concept of tunnel vision that has emerged. Also, the chapter draws from several theoretical sources to introduce the notion of wrongful conviction as a consequence of “moral correction,” which results in emotional and cognitive factors that adversely affect the evaluation evidence and contribute to the risk of wrongful conviction. Moral correction is advanced as a broad framework that encompasses the more specific processes, such as tunnel vision.

Child Sexual Abuse Hysteria

This chapter reviews the phenomenon of “child sexual abuse hysteria” and the series of day care child sexual abuse prosecutions that occurred in the United States from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s. The charges often involved highly implausible accusations. Suggestive questioning of children, prosecutorial overcharging, and a prevailing social hysteria contributed to a substantial number of innocent defendants being convicted. Psychological research findings informed legal appeals that contributed to the exoneration of more than 50 defendants. The cases presented highlight common features among many child sexual abuse hysteria prosecutions. Considered together, the manufactured and sociogenic nature of the prosecution’s evidence is apparent.

Rape and Wrongful Conviction

This chapter focuses on the concentration of rape cases among confirmed wrongful convictions. How stranger rape differs from date and acquaintance rape with regard to the risk of wrongful conviction is presented. Innocence Project and National Registry of Exonerations data are examined as well as case illustrations. The chapter examines the pressures on law enforcement authorities and the role of primary evidence, secondary evidence, black box investigation methods, the continuum of intentionality, and victim status in stranger rape. In addition, a stranger rape thesis is presented to distinguish the unique challenges faced in the investigation of “stranger rape. The moral outrage associated with stranger rape produces a great demand on police for arrests and convictions yet reliable identification of the perpetrator is compromised in stranger rape.

Serial Rapists and Wrongful Conviction

This chapter describes a common pattern where innocent defendants are tried and convicted of crimes committed by serial rapists. These cases account for a significant portion not only of the wrongful convictions in sexual assaults, but also of all confirmed wrongful convictions. The chapter presents 67 defendants wrongfully convicted with this set of case facts. This chapter identifies the difficulty encountered by law enforcement in the investigation of “stranger rapes” despite the expanding literature on crime scene investigation and offender profiling. This chapter also highlights the law enforcement focus on ruling out false rape charges, while less attention is paid to the matter of unreliable identification.

Introduction and Overview

The Introduction and Overview provides an overview of the chapters and the approach in examining wrongful conviction in sexual assault. It identifies both rape and wrongful conviction as damaging and traumatic outcomes. Drawing from a public health perspective, it presents a link between rape and wrongful conviction illustrated by disaggregating wrongful conviction in stranger rape, from acquaintance rape, and intrafamilial child sexual assault, thus highlighting the concentration of wrongful convictions among stranger rapes. The Introduction and Overview also discusses the frequency of wrongful conviction and points out the significance of classifying sexual assaults together rather than relying on the prosecution approach of classifying criminal offenses by the highest charge, which obscures the relation of sexual assault to wrongful conviction.