Wrongfully Convicted and in Lock-Up

Understanding Innocence and the Development of Legal Consciousness behind Prison Walls

Bibliographic Data

ID12176263
AuthorsReyna I Hernandez (0000-0002-4572-4980, University of Chicago, corresponding author)
Year2023
Volume49
Issue1
Pages394-422
Publication date2023-01-06
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueLaw & Social Inquiry (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0897-6546 • E-ISSN: 1747-4469
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/lsi.2022.76
OpenAlexW4313640855
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited34

Scholars studying wrongful convictions have long examined their causes and the ways in which to prevent them and are increasingly interested in exonerees’ post-prison reentry processes. However, research on the experience of incarceration as a result of wrongful conviction is scarce. This article draws on in-depth interviews with eleven exonerees across three states (Illinois, Texas, and New York) to theorize how multiple facets of innocence (personal, relational, and institutional) shape the ways in which former prisoners have navigated their wrongful incarceration: learning to prove their innocence. For many wrongfully convicted inmates, acquiring legal knowledge and mobilizing post-conviction law—specifically, actual innocence jurisprudence—plays a central role in their daily lives given the onerous legal work it takes to prove their factual innocence. I advance what Kathryne M. Young has termed second-order legal consciousness, which prioritizes the social processes that create legal consciousness, as a framework to illuminate how wrongfully convicted inmates constructed legality when pursuing legal exoneration in prison. This article offers new insights into the relational nature of law to show how marginalized groups like prisoners mobilize law when pursuing their rights and allows us to theorize innocence in contexts where the state and society writ large have ascribed a person’s legal guilt

Conviction · Criminology · Habeas corpus · Innocence · Jurisprudence · Political science · Prison · Sociology · State (computer science · Supreme court · Writ · Crime Patterns and Interventions · Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis · Law · Psychopathy, Forensic Psychiatry, Sexual Offending

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