Chapter 34 — Self-Check Quiz

26 questions: multiple choice and short answer. Try them closed-book. This chapter synthesizes the whole book, so several questions reach back to earlier chapters. The answer key is in the collapsed block at the bottom.

Multiple choice

1. The single most common contributing factor across the early DNA exonerations is: - A. Flawed or misapplied forensic science - B. Mistaken eyewitness identification - C. False confession - D. Incentivized informants

2. Flawed or misapplied forensic science appears in roughly: - A. Every DNA exoneration - B. About half of the DNA exonerations - C. Fewer than one in twenty DNA exonerations - D. None of them

3. The phrase contributing factors (rather than causes) is used deliberately because: - A. The factors are unknowable - B. A wrongful conviction is almost always a combination of several reinforcing factors, not one cause acting alone - C. The law forbids the word "cause" - D. Only one factor is ever present at a time

4. What property of DNA testing allowed it to audit the system's past convictions when a century of appeals could not? - A. It is cheap - B. It can be applied retroactively to stored biological evidence, and a non-match excludes the convicted person close to conclusively - C. It identifies the true perpetrator automatically - D. It is admissible without a hearing

5. In the wrongful-conviction cascade of §34.2, the typical original error is: - A. The forensic examiner's overstatement - B. The jailhouse informant's testimony - C. A mistaken eyewitness identification - D. The judge's instruction

6. "Tunnel vision" in the cascade refers to: - A. A vision defect in witnesses - B. The detective, having settled on a suspect, searching to confirm rather than to test, so disconfirming leads fade - C. A camera artifact in CCTV - D. The jury ignoring the defense

7. A false confession can come to contain "details only the killer would know" because: - A. The suspect is always guilty - B. The suspect learned those details from the interrogators during the interrogation - C. Psychics supplied them - D. The details were invented by the defense

8. Bad forensic evidence is uniquely dangerous in the cascade — even though eyewitness error is more common — because: - A. It is always fabricated - B. It arrives clothed in the prestige of science, which (via the CSI effect) makes a jury stop questioning - C. It is never challenged on cross - D. It is the only evidence juries see

9. The "first sin" of forensic failure is: - A. A valid method overstated in testimony - B. A method that was never valid for the claim it makes (e.g., bite-mark comparison) - C. A laboratory accreditation lapse - D. A chain-of-custody break

10. The "second sin" of forensic failure is: - A. A junk method admitted into evidence - B. A valid method pushed past what it can bear, or reported in language the evidence does not support - C. Failing to collect evidence - D. Losing the evidence after conviction

11. Cameron Todd Willingham is the book's emblem of: - A. The second sin (overstated valid method) - B. The first sin (folklore presented as science — discredited arson "indicators") - C. A successful exoneration - D. Eyewitness misidentification

12. Brandon Mayfield is the book's emblem of: - A. The first sin (a junk method) - B. The second sin (a foundationally valid method — latent prints — plus bias plus overstatement) - C. A false confession - D. An informant

13. The correct fix for the first sin (junk methods) is: - A. Better-trained examiners and standardized reports - B. Exclusion — a method without foundational validity should not be in the courtroom at all - C. A longer sentence - D. A second junk-method examiner to verify

14. The correct fix for the second sin (overstated valid methods) is: - A. Banning the method - B. Calibrated language and measured error rates — report what validation supports, and state the error rate - C. Removing the jury - D. Nothing; overstatement is harmless

15. Ordinary criminal appeals are largely not designed to catch a wrongful conviction because they review: - A. The factual innocence of the defendant - B. The fairness of the process — a fair procedure applied to mistaken evidence yields a "valid" conviction of the wrong person - C. The competence of the forensic lab - D. The credibility of the eyewitness

16. In District Attorney's Office v. Osborne (2009), the U.S. Supreme Court held that: - A. Every prisoner has a federal constitutional right to post-conviction DNA testing - B. There is no freestanding federal constitutional right to post-conviction DNA testing, leaving it to state statutes - C. DNA evidence is inadmissible after conviction - D. Prosecutors must pay for all testing

17. A conviction integrity unit (CIU) is: - A. A defense-side innocence nonprofit - B. A division within a prosecutor's office dedicated to identifying and remedying its own wrongful convictions - C. A federal court - D. A crime-lab accreditation body

18. The single most important question to ask about a given CIU is: - A. How large its budget is - B. Whether it has genuine independence and will — what it has actually done, and whether it could overturn a conviction its own office is proud of - C. How many press releases it issues - D. Whether it has a logo

19. The DNA exonerations are a biased sample of wrongful convictions because: - A. They were selected by the defense - B. They describe only the slice of cases that happened to leave testable biological evidence - C. They exclude violent crimes - D. They overstate eyewitness error

20. The "second cost" of a wrongful conviction — the one most often forgotten — is that: - A. The trial was expensive - B. The actual perpetrator remains free and, in documented cases, has gone on to commit further crimes - C. The jury felt bad - D. The appeal took years

21. Why is "everyone involved acted in good faith" compatible with a wrongful conviction? - A. It isn't; someone must have lied - B. Because the cascade is a bias mechanism — each actor experiences a contaminated judgment as an independent one — so no dishonesty is required - C. Because juries are always wrong - D. Because forensic science is fraudulent

22. The single forensic reform that would do the most to prevent the §34.3 failures, and is also the most resisted, is: - A. Buying newer instruments - B. Blind, context-managed analysis — withholding domain-irrelevant information until the comparison is fixed (Chapter 31) - C. Longer reports - D. More expert witnesses per side

23. "Corroboration is only as strong as the independence of the things corroborating" means: - A. More witnesses always means more proof - B. When every pillar traces to the same origin, "they all agree" is one error repeated, not independent confirmation - C. Forensic evidence never corroborates - D. Confessions are always independent

24. A clean post-conviction DNA exclusion does not guarantee release because courts may: - A. Automatically free the prisoner - B. Call it "harmless," cite finality, or demand the prisoner prove who actually did it - C. Order a new trial within a week - D. Award compensation immediately

Short answer

25. In one or two sentences, explain how a single mistaken eyewitness identification can produce a case that appears to rest on four independent pillars of evidence.

26. Write one sentence an honest examiner could say on the stand about an ambiguous latent print, and one sentence that overstates it in the way the §34.3 "second sin" describes.