June 8 – Chicago Daily Law Bulletin
Professor Timothy O’Neill authored column
Two major revolutions in criminal procedure have occurred in the United States during the past 50 years. And it now seems we are beginning a third.
From roughly 1960 to 1985, we saw the Constitutional Revolution. The Warren Court used the 14th Amendment’s due process clause to extend the criminal provisions of the Bill of Rights to state defendants; the Burger Court proceeded to then limit those rights.
The second revolution from the mid-1980s to the present can be called the Innocence Revolution. During this time, we have used the development of DNA, as well as interdisciplinary work on the dangers of false confessions and faulty eyewitness identifications, to create a legal culture that is much more aware of the perils of convicting the innocent.
Read more: A New Era in the History of Plea Bargaining Begins
