Wrongful convictions in asian countries: A systematic literature review

ABSTRACT

Any wrongful conviction causes severe violations to the individual, their loved ones, the criminal justice system, and the validity of justice. While Anglo-American countries have focused on wrongful convictions since the 1930s, some Asian contexts have only considered these unjust errors within the scope of their legal approaches since the 2010s. To investigate this issue, this paper conducted a systematic literature review (SLR) of the Scopus and Google Scholar databases, collecting 36 English peer-reviewed articles from 710 publications between 2010 and 2021. Our two primary goals include: 1) reviewing the scope and response of Asian countries to wrongful convictions and 2) identifying the main factors that led to these wrongful convictions. Findings indicate that almost all publications have focused on China and Japan as representatives of Eastern Asia. Very few studies discussed other Asian areas. Alongside five similarities with Western societies, such as 1) false confessions, 2) torture, 3) misconduct, 4) eyewitness identification errors, and 5) misused forensic science, political factors and criminal justice struggles reflect the unique issues underpinning Asia’s wrongful convictions. Ultimately, our study calls for broader future research of a greater range of Asian countries.

KEYWORDS:

• Wrongful convictions
• human rights
• false confession
• torture
• eyewitness identification mistake
• political influences

Introduction

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere … Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.

Martin Luther King Jr wrote this to his fellow clergy in 1963 in the Letter from the Birmingham Jail. It described a moral responsibility to break unjust laws and take direct action rather than waiting for unlikely justice to come via the courts. However, it is also a relevant argument regarding wrongful conviction, which has become an international and national concern. Although wrongful conviction is a significant failing of the criminal justice system, there remains a lack of international consensus regarding its definition (He, 2014; N. Jiang, 2016). The scope of wrongful conviction varies, with differing academic approaches and definitions between countries. According to Black’s Law Dictionary, wrongful conviction is a person’s conviction for a crime they did not commit (School of Law, 2022). Ronald Huff, one of the leading scholars in the field of wrongful conviction, provides a broader explanation. He argues that the term wrongful conviction is used not only in the case of a person being wrongly convicted in a trial but may involve other processes, such as a person being arrested and detained but released without being charged; or a person who is detained and charged but whose charges are dropped before trial (Huff, 2002). Within the scope of this paper, we adopt this approach of wrongful conviction having a broader definition. In other words, it should address the entire criminal process rather than focusing on only one stage, such as investigation, prosecution, judgement, or punishment.

It has long been understood that the harms of wrongful conviction are a violation of human rights, a violation of the rule of law, and a threat to trust in the justice system (Huff et al., 1996; Kassin, 1984; Rattner, 1988; Seiff, 1934; Thayer, 1897). Furthermore, any innocent defendant not only loses their freedom but must confront the dangers of imprisonment (Grounds, 2005; Leo & Gould, 2009; Nobles & Schiff, 1995; Wrightsman & Kassin, 1993). Overall, the impacts of wrongful convictions are frequently complex and long-lasting, with participants reporting adverse effects on their self-identity, reputation, psychological and physical health, and relationships with others. Additionally, after their wrongful convictions, their attitudes towards the justice system, finances, and life were upended (Garrett, 2020; He, 2016a; Leo, 2017; Jiang, 2016, 2018a; Zhong & Dai, 2019).

Although wrongful conviction is not a new phenomenon in many criminal justice systems, there are few comparisons between the global North and South. Many studies have been conducted on wrongful convictions by commonwealth law nations, predominately by Anglo-Saxon scholars; there are still limits to the North’s representation in these studies. As of this writing, a quick search for “wrongful conviction” on Scopus returned 693 results. One of the first doctoral theses in law to focus on wrongful conviction at the Ohio State University, by Rattner (1983), estimated that there might be as many as 85,000 cases in the United States every year, with over half of these cases involving flawed eyewitness testimony. This cause has been re-examined, and alternative solutions were proposed to safeguard against false testimony in the first article by Greene and Loftus (1984). Nearly four decades later, 2017 marked the most significant number of wrongful conviction articles published, with 69 studies globally. Up to the present, the United States is the leading country with 398 studies, the United Kingdom has 74, and Canada and Australia have 57 and 46 studies listed on Scopus. Asia, the most populous continent with diverse political regimes, cultures, and jurisdictions, also faces the negative impacts of wrongful convictions. However, the number of papers focusing on Asia is limited, mainly from East Asia countries. While China is home to billions of people, it ranks 5^th with 25 publications; meanwhile, the rest of the Asian countries contributed only a few studies overall.

Our current study uses a systematic literature review (SLR) to assess and examine how Asian countries approach and deal with wrongful convictions. SLR is a method for making sense of large volumes of information and various database disciplines to interpret those resources to explain “what works” and “what does not work” when exploring specific research themes, social policy, or practical issues (Petticrew & Roberts, 2005). A systematic review is an objective, reproducible method of finding answers to a certain research question by collecting all available studies related to that question and reviewing and analysing their results (Gough et al., 2012; Sambunijak et al., 2019). A meta-analysis differs from a systematic review because it uses statistical methods on estimates from two or more studies to form a pooled estimate (Grant & Booth, 2009, p. 91). In our study, we only rely on the previous publications relating to wrongful convictions in Asia rather than analysing the statistical database. Therefore, we decided to use SLR instead of meta-analysis.

Historically, SLR originated in medicine and is linked to evidence-based practice to bridge the gap between research knowledge and practice. After that, Tranfield et al. (2003) suggested that undertaking a literature review should consider the origins of the evidence-based approach in management and science. However, expanding into evidence-based practice has led to an increasing variety of review types, with at least 14 different strengths and weaknesses (Grant & Booth, 2009, p. 91). The SLR procedure normally includes eight steps: (1) formulating the research problem; (2) developing and validating the review protocol; (3) searching the literature; (4) screening for inclusion; (5) assessing quality; (6) extracting data; (7) analysing and synthesising data; and (8) reporting the findings (Xiao & Watson, 2019undefined. Although there are different approaches to conducting an SLR, it is designed to identify existing gaps in a field of research and make recommendations for closing these gaps based on the ‘database’s system for identifying and understanding credible policy, research, or practical recommendations. In other words, it identifies, selects, and critically appraises research to answer a formulated question (Gough et al., 2012; Sambunijak et al., 2019).

Based on reviewing quantitative projects and empirical studies, the main aim of the current study is to summarise common trends and patterns in wrongful conviction research and identify limitations and gaps in wrongful conviction approaches in Asia. This paper addresses two central research questions (RQs):

• RQ1: What is the scope and response of Asian ’“countries” focus on wrongful convictions? How do they convey their research on this issue?

• RQ2: What are the main factors identified as causing wrongful convictions in Asian publications?

Methods

Data collection

To gain the maximum informative, productive, and objective findings from the database, Pittway (2008, p. 217) suggested that each SLR should adhere to eight fundamental principles, including 1) transparency, 2) clarity, 3) integration, 4) focus, 5) equality, 6) accessibility, 7) coverage, and 8) synthesis. By doing this, the SLR provides a comprehensive, transparent search conducted over multiple databases and grey literature that other researchers can replicate and reproduce based on straightforward research questions and a specific search strategy. The search terms and strategies, such as database names, platforms, dates of search, and limits, must be described in the ‘review’s processes (Newman & Gough, 2020; Xiao & Watson, 2019). Therefore, following these principles, an SLR should follow a clearly defined protocol or plan where the criteria are clearly stated before the review is conducted (Gough et al., 2012). To ensure transparent and complete reporting in this study, we used PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses). It is an evidence-based minimum set of materials and publications to support researchers to inform a broad approach of systematic reviews in various fields (Moher et al., 2009).

Scopus is the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature, including scientific journals, books, and conference proceedings. The Scopus database enables users to search both forward and backward in time by giving them access to journal articles (Science, Technical, and Medical) and the references found in those publications. The database can be used for collection development as well as for research. We used Boolean operators with simple words (AND, OR) on ‘Scopus’s database to focus on wrongful convictions.

The first goal is to search for “wrongful conviction(s);” the second is to locate 51 (52) Asian countries (Table 1); and the third is the time frame, from beginning to 31 December 2021, when Scopus closes their updated system annually. The Scorpus query result consisted of 724 documents. It includes record per year by source, document by author, document by affiliation, document by country/territory, document by type, document by subject area, and document by funding sponsor. Besides that, Vietnamese authors, who are conducting the wrongful conviction project in Vietnam (funded by the University of Law, the Vietnam National University) without full access to the Scopus database (unless open-access articles), added 17 publications from the Google Scholar database (a freely accessible web search engine that indexes the full text or metadata of scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats and disciplines). These articles have high scientific value and are closely related to the issue of wrongful conviction in Asia. These peer-reviewed resources have been vetted based on the four inclusion criteria below. This methodology led to 741 publications (between Scopus and Google Scholar) entering the second screening stage.

Table 1. List of Asian countries.

Region	Country
Central (n=5)	Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan
Eastern (n=7(8))	China, Hong Kong (Special Administrative Region), Macao (Special Administrative Region), Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Japan, Mongolia, Republic of Korea, (Taiwan)
Southern (n=9)	Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Iran (the Islamic Republic), Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka
Southeast (n=11)	Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Viet Nam
Western (n=18)	Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Cyprus, Georgia, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the State of Palestine, the Syrian Arab Republic, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Yemen

The following inclusion criteria were employed to identify eligible studies at the screening stage:

1. The study must be related to wrongful conviction

2. The study must refer to one of the 51 Asian countries

3. The study must be published in English before the end of December 2021

4. The study must be a peer-reviewed journal article

Data analysis

Three hundred ninety-three studies passed the screening, and their abstracts were read. There were three main reasons to exclude 348 documents at this stage: document type, subject areas, and languages. A third stage, re-screen, looked at eligibility to collect the included records, focusing on their related contents. Only 38 full-text publications were ultimately selected to analyse, and the remaining 357 papers were excluded at the eligibility stage for different reasons. Of those remaining, two book series were also excluded, which led to the final count of 36 journal articles. To address RQ1, based on the Scopus ‘database’s classification and analyses, we interpreted all specific information into each sub-heading regarding trends and patterns in wrongful convictions in Asia. To respond to RQ2, a matrix of themes and sub-theme with their related contexts was created from the content analysis of those 36 selected articles by extracting and coding in NVivo 12 (Braun & Clarke, 2021). Only relevant content relating to the cause of wrongful convictions in Asia will be selected and presented in the following section. Figure 1 describes the process of data collection and analysis.

Figure 1. Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) for Wrongful Condition.

Findings

In this section, based on the Scopus database,¹ all findings corresponding to the two research questions identified at the outset of this study will be illustrated.

The scope of wrongful conviction research in Asia (RQ1)

Time and year of publication

Figure 2 illustrates the years of publication of wrongful convictions papers in Asia from 2010 to 2021. Overall, there has been a fluctuation in the number of research papers on wrongful convictions published over the years. Over five years from 2010, we saw unstable growth in articles. In 2010, scholars began to publish papers on wrongful convictions in Asia. While Jiang et al. (2010) argued wrongful conviction is one of the five reasons to oppose the death penalty in Japan, Kim and Penrod (2010) have examined how legal decision-makers between America and Korea evaluate and interpret confession evidence and how expert testimony influences legal decisions. Although wrongful conviction in China has existed, with Teng ‘sXingshan’s as one of the 17 principal wrongful conviction cases in 1989, none of their English publications examined and published it in peer-reviewed journals (He, 2016a, pp. xxv-xxvi). It has been released in the Empirical Study of Wrongful Conviction with 100 specific cases (He, 2016b, p. 65). Then, there was an increase in the number of papers, reaching five articles in 2015 (Hui & Lo, 2015; Jiang, 2015a; Oeberst & Wu, 2015) before dropping down to only one article in 2016 and also in 2017, published He (2016b) and by a group of authors in Taiwan (Hampikian et al., 2017). After that, there was significant growth in articles, reaching the same peak as 2015 in 2019 with five papers. Finally, the number of publications decreased to two in 2020 (Soukara, 2020) and increased again with five articles in 2021 (Newman, 2021; He, 2021; Mujuzi, 2021; Sumampouw et al., 2021).

Figure 2. Timeline of publication’s Index.

National contributions

The bar chart (Figure 3) shows us the nations which contributed papers on wrongful convictions. Only ten countries published their wrongful conviction research in Asia. With 21 studies, China has the highest number of publications on wrongful convictions. Japan also showed their interest in this problem with five documents. Hong Kong and Taiwan have the same contributions, with two studies in each region ranking them third. The remaining countries in Asia, including Israel, Indonesia, Singapore, South Korea, Cyprus, and Iraq/Afghanistan, also added six articles. From this data, it is clear that the Eastern Asian region, typically China and Japan, dominates the number of studies on wrongful convictions in Asia.

Figure 3. Countries studied on WC.

Author and affiliation

The bar chart above (Figure 4) illustrates the authors and affiliations for papers on wrongful convictions in Asia. Overall, many authors and affiliations contributed documents relating to this issue. Among them, Chinese authors and organisations dominated the number of articles. Jiang Na² stood out as a prolific author, with nine articles published between 2013 and 2018. Almost of her publications were released in the International Journal of Law, Crime and Justice (Jiang, 2013b, 2014, 2015a, 2015b, 2018a, 2018b, 2018c). He Jiahong has written four papers (He & He, 2012; He, 2014, 2016b, 2021). The remaining researchers have each contributed one study on the topic.

Figure 4. Authors.

Subject area

Figure 5 demonstrates the different research areas contributing papers about the problem of wrongful conviction in Asia from 2010 to 2021. Generally, there is an uneven distribution amongst subject areas, with social science contributing the highest number of articles. The social sciences account for 59.6% of the articles related to wrongful convictions in Asia compared to other fields. Medicine, psychology, and art and humanities are the other major fields, with articles on this issue contributing 14.9%, 10.6%, and 8.5%, respectively. The same proportion also exists in environmental science, economics, and biochemistry, with each field contributing 2.1% of the papers.

Figure 5. Documents by subject area.

What are the main factors causing wrongful conviction in Asia (RQ2)

After reviewing the articles, the presented causes of wrongful conviction were classified into the following groups:

False Confession

Similar to the United States, false confession is considered one of Asia’s most common wrongful conviction causes (Liang et al., 2019). This factor has been discussed in most publications from China, Japan, Israel, and Singapore.

Beginning in China, one of ‘Asia’s economic and cultural powerhouses, false confessions have received much attention from scholars. Oeberst and Wu (2015) pointed out that a primary source of wrongful convictions in China is false confessions. It has also been noted in many other studies. For instance, Hui and Lo (2015) expressed that police officers, investigators, and prosecutors see confession as essential to a successful prosecution. Therefore, they may become obsessed with confessions, and, as a result, there were many wrongful conviction cases. In another example, Guo (2019) indicated that one of ‘China’s most severe problems is coerced confessions, which is reflected in wrongful conviction cases.

Moving to Japan, David Johnson argued that wrongful conviction in Japan is usually caused primarily by false confessions (Johnson, 2015). Furthermore, Kazuko Ito revealed that the root of wrongful convictions in Japan stems from criminal ‘justice’s focus on investigating and interrogating defendants instead of on trials. It has led to the pre-eminence of defendant statements, obsession with self-incrimination, and lengthy custodial interrogations (Ito, 2013). Chen and Chua (2010) claimed that false confession is arguably the most dangerous factor in Singapore. The impact of a false confession in Singapore is even more severe because the confession of a co-accused implicating the accused is sufficient on its own to lead to the conviction of the accused. The risks of false confession are also recognised in false pleas that raise the possibility of wrongful convictions in Israel (Newman, 2021).

Torture

One of the specific causes of false confessions in the selected studies is the use of illegal interrogation methods causing physical and mental pain, or torture, to extort the accused. It explains why an innocent person might admit to something they did not do. For example, in Japan, any suspect can be held for 23 days (or longer) before being charged (Anderson, 2012). However, bullying and using psychological tactics by police to extract confessions could account for 92% of the cases that go to trial (Anderson, 2012). Kazuko Ito reaffirms this concern, noting that if a person is arrested in Japan, they can usually be detained for twenty-three days under the control of the police authority. Such acts undermine a ‘suspect’s right to be silent, leading to misconduct, torture, and ultimately coerced and false confessions (Ito, 2013).

Chinese scholars also focused on the issue of torture in their country. Most of their studies mentioned torture as a painful problem in Chinese criminal justice. Accordingly, Na Jiang, a scholar with the most research on wrongful convictions in China, provided insightful analyses. She argued that the Chinese public had generally accepted torture as the most common factor leading to ‘China’s wrongful convictions. Notably, in capital cases, death row inmates are often shackled or handcuffed 24 hours daily and systematically abused to break their will and force confessions (Jiang, 2013a, 2013b). In another study, she emphasised that in Chinese wrongful conviction cases, police officers often play a critical role in framing the accused by extracting false confessions with oppressive tactics such as torture (Jiang, 2015b). The investigators often use torture and other illegal means to extract confessions and other evidence to solve cases as quickly as possible (Jiang, 2015b). She also pointed out that despite this, the protection of human rights and the need to exclude tortured confession is recognised by Chinese law. However, in practice, torture still occurs. Whether human rights abuses result from excessive zeal to obtain the truth or institutional structures that encourage investigators to use torture at all costs (Jiang, 2018a). Moreover, a survey in 2014 found that 61% of the total 96 procuratorial agencies in a province merely have part-time employees who conduct recordings, which means that such employees are not on duty at all times when recordings are made (Jiang, 2018a).

This issue is also represented in other Chinese ’“scholars” papers. The authors argued that using confessions extorted by torture to decide a case is a major evidential cause, or direct cause, of wrongful convictions in China (He & He, 2012; He, 2021). Accordingly, the possibility of torture and forced confession accounted for 94% of 47 cases (He, 2014).

Xifen Lin, Cheng Chen, & Yanyan Wang also discussed how court document data showed that the defence filed applications for the exclusion of illegal evidence in 125 cases, 15 of which claimed the use of torture by the police, and 55 asserted the use of torture (Lin et al., 2019). Similarly, Zhong and Dai (2019) pointed out that extracting confessions through torture is widespread in China. They unveiled that police torture and false/forced confessions were explicitly reported in 122 cases, accounting for 86.5% of their collected cases. Accordingly, the authors cite many high-profile cases of wrongful conviction due to torture. The case of Zhao Zhai was brought as evidence of violent and coercive police interrogation techniques. Zhao was interrogated and tortured for 33 days, and he said that during this time, he was “beaten with sticks, forced to drink chilli water, had fireworks set off over his head, and deprived of sleep” (Hui & Lo, 2015, 1105). Another case is about Yang Botao, who told the media that the treatment leading to his extorted confessions was ruthless. He was forced not to sleep for over a dozen days and nights. He was also punched and kicked, was forced to defaecate and urinate, knead his testes, and pluck out the beard, armpit, and pubic hairs. In another case, Zhang Guangxiang, who was wrongly convicted in 2007 and exonerated in 2014, described his suffering over several days of torture in a Chinese Central Television interview: “only if he confessed early would he not die in the detention centre” (Jiang, 2018a, p. 25). The newly rectified wrongful conviction of Qu Long resulted from using tortured confessions as the basis for sentencing in 2012. His lawyer also confirmed that his confessions resulted from tortured confessions (Jiang, 2018a).

Since then, the question has arisen as to why torture can be so easily carried out in a criminal case. Some scholars have contributed their empirical analyses to these concerns in the Chinese context. On the one hand, the current institutional arrangements of China have given police investigators too much lenience for abusing the prohibition of torture (He, 2014, 2016b). Combined with their goal of crime control, they are unwilling to exclude the tortured confession from use in the name of truth-seeking (Jiang, 2018a). On the other hand, torture is a high-benefit, low-risk approach to obtaining a conviction, especially given the symbolic penalties applied in the rare cases where police are punished for torture (Jiang, 2015b).

Furthermore, Chinese prosecutors hardly perform their investigations and merely check police evidence (Jiang, 2015a, 2015b). In other words, they work cooperatively with the police rather than examining and monitoring them. Thus, arrest warrants are often treated as a formality completed only to maintain harmony with the investigators (He, 2014, 2016b). This support from prosecutors increases the power of police and investigators when conducting criminal investigations. The prosecutors even turn a blind eye to ’“suspects” apparent torture or mistreatment in police custody.

Contrary to their legal duties, they rely heavily on oral confessions extracted from suspects despite gaps and inconsistencies with other material and witness evidence (Hawes, 2020). Besides that, Guo (2020) indicated a compromise exists whereby suspects continue to be denied the right to remain silent during police interrogation. Yet, the psychology of the investigators always assuming the suspects are guilty can be considered a kind of torture (He, 2016b).

Overall, we can conclude that false confession is one of ‘Asia’s leading causes of wrongful conviction. It is worth noting, especially in China, that torture as a cause of false confession has been analysed in great detail. While torture has also been found in Japan, no literature suggests it is common.

Justice agency misconduct

Criminal justice ’“agencies” misconduct is one cause of wrongful convictions in Asia. Misconduct can be divided into two main categories: investigative misconduct and prosecutorial misconduct.

Firstly, investigative misconduct in policing criminal investigations reflects various approaches to evidence collection, interrogative interviews, and other practices. In China, Ni Jiang has also acknowledged the issue in several cases. She pointed out that one of the significant problems leading to wrongful convictions is police misconduct relating to exculpatory evidence, including the failure to properly collect such evidence, conceal it, and preserve it (Jiang, 2015b). In another paper, she noted that police often edit out any evidence of abuse from recordings of the interrogations and use their discretion to exclude defence lawyers during interrogations (Jiang, 2013b). Later, Zhong and Dai (2019) claimed that police manipulation of evidence is a type of misconduct that is a significant factor in wrongful convictions. The police manipulate the evidence in four ways: neglect/suppression of exculpatory evidence, fabrication of physical evidence, concealment of evidence, and forcing the suspects/victims/witnesses to falsify evidence. Agreeing with that, Liang et al. (2019) also indicated that illegally extracted evidence, falsified evidence, and concealment by the police could cause wrongful convictions.

Chinese scholars Xifen Lin, Cheng Chen and Yanyan Wang supported these opinions. They stated that illegal police interrogation could be found in the vast majority of wrongful conviction cases in China. Specifically, their article also claimed that their analysis of 90 wrongful conviction cases highlights the critical influence police misconduct has on wrongful convictions and distorting the criminal judicial process (Lin et al., 2019). In most wrongful convictions, the police used threats, coercion, and deception. Moreover, the police often threaten to conduct interrogations of detained suspects at locations other than the detention centre, such as at the investigator’s workplace or the crime scene (Lin et al., 2019).

This problem was also found in Japan; Kazuko Ito showed that exonerated innocent people in many wrongful Japanese convictions claimed police misconduct such as verbal violence, intimidation, psychological pressure, coercion, and deceit (Ito, 2013). This reason is reinforced by David ‘Johnson’s paper, which pointed out that police are the most understudied actors in Japanese criminal justice. They gather the evidence, which informs decision-making by other criminal justice officials and is used to “make a crime” (Johnson, 2015). It is also very similar in Singapore; police misconduct is a risk factor for wrongful convictions (Chen & Chua, 2010). They emphasised in their paper that police misconduct is treated very seriously in Singapore.

The cause of police misconduct is also revealed through Chinese studies. He (2016b) expressed that some investigators may be concerned only with speed, not quality, and accept substandard work to provide timely results. Therefore, they falsify evidence. In another paper, Liang et al. (2019) pointed out that investigating bodies often use knowledge of the interpersonal relationships of the victim to search for and arrest a suspect for reasons including disputes over relationships or property. Jiahong (2021) recently expressed that other misjudged cases contained “man-made” or “fabricated” evidence. For example, in the case of Li Zhiping, investigators found bloodstains, footprints, and palm prints on the scene. However, the investigators did not make good use of the evidence and, when the palm prints were found not to be a match, went to great lengths to fabricate evidence that could incriminate Li Zhiping (He, 2021).

Secondly, misconduct can also be defined as a prosecutor’s neglect or failure to perform his duty. It can take several forms: ignoring the defendant’s request to re-test his blood type in a rape case, failing to go to the crime scene and initiating the prosecution solely based on the police files, suppressing DNA evidence that excludes the defendants, and not investigating police torture as requested by the defendants (Zhong & Dai, 2019).

Ni Jiang discussed a case where the prosecutors neither checked nor restricted the police torture and coerced confessions to prevent a wrongful conviction. They did not supervise the legality of the court work to remedy such errors in time (Jiang, 2015b). Moreover, in many cases, the local prosecutors approved the arrest and prosecution of the innocent accused despite the lack of adequate or reliable evidence (Jiang, 2015b). Within the scope of the ‘prosecution’s lens, Hawes (2020) pointed out that rather than supervising and carefully reviewing the investigative work of the police, in practice, prosecutors have tended to accept their recommendations even when the evidence has many flaws. B. Newman (2021) described similar practices in Israel, noting that even in weak evidential cases, prosecutors can secure a conviction by proposing an offer that the defendant will most certainly accept. Such misconduct allowed for false confessions illegally obtained by police investigators as evidence of guilt at trial and appeal, thus causing a wrongful conviction. Explaining this problem within China, Ni Jiang claimed that the police, the judiciary, and the prosecutors in China often fail to exercise “mutual”“restraint” over each other. Accordingly, after getting evidence from the police, the prosecutor unquestioningly gives it to the judge to declare a conviction (Jiang, 2013b). Meanwhile, in Japan, this situation also exists; Ito pointed out that the revelation of the terrible prosecutor misconduct has shocked public opinion and escalated criticism of the criminal justice and investigation systems (Ito, 2013).

From the above analysis, we can affirm that misconduct is one of the factors leading to wrongful convictions in Asia. We have seen investigative and prosecutorial connections as the nexus of misconduct. In many cases, especially in China, the misconduct of the investigators will lead to misconduct from prosecutors.

Eyewitness misidentifications

Witnesses are key to solving crimes, which all stakeholders across the criminal justice spectrum accept. However, not all ”‘witnesses’ accounts are reliable, sufficient, or complete, and when such testimony contains inaccuracies, it can contribute to wrongful convictions and miscarriages of justice (He, 2021; Sumampouw et al., 2021). Among the 36 articles included in our study, ”“eyewitnesses” false testimonies were described in several wrongful conviction cases in Asia (Chen & Chua, 2010; He & He, 2012; Liang et al., 2019; Jiang, 2015b; Soukara, 2020; Zhong & Dai, 2019).

False witness testimony is also the leading cause of wrongful convictions in China. False witness testimony usually slips through because there is no effective impeachment of the witness (He & He, 2012). Zhong and Dai (2019) pointed out that witnesses in China typically submit written testimony and do not attend the court trial for cross-examination. Mistaken eyewitness testimony took three forms: eyewitness misidentification of the suspect (14 cases), lying witnesses and inconsistent witness testimony (19 cases), and erroneous identification of the corpse (3 cases). Specifically, Ni Jiang provided typical cases illustrating the problem of eyewitness misidentifications in China. In the case of Uncle and Nephew Zhang, police used false testimony from Zhang ‘sGaoping’s cellmate Yuan Lianfang. This false and coerced testimony, made under police orders in 2004, directly led to the conviction of the innocent defendants. Similarly, in the case of Li Huailiang, the accused’s inmates falsely testified against him, and he was wrongfully convicted of murder. The false evidence was discovered later and excluded from LI Huailiang’s retrial in 2013 (Jiang, 2015b).

Eyewitness misidentification is also one of the risk factors that can lead to wrongful convictions in Indonesia and Singapore. For the former, recognising the importance of eyewitness testimonies, Indonesian scientists conducted surveys and examined knowledge of eyewitness memory. As a result, they showed that Indonesian police officers and psychologists had less than optimal knowledge about aspects of eyewitness memory in general and children as eyewitnesses in particular (Sumampouw et al., 2021). For the latter, Chen and Chua (2010) stated that eyewitness identification is potentially dangerous in Singapore because of the lack of legislative guidelines regulating line-up procedures.

False forensic evidence

Forensic science is essential in the criminal justice system, especially DNA evidence. Hui and Lo (2015) pointed out that DNA evidence has become “perhaps the most powerful single tool” in legal fact-finding among the numerous types of scientific evidence. However, there are known instances when forensic science has been abused or overstated, resulting in a wrongful conviction (Adams et al., 2013). Indeed, during our review, we found some evidence that false forensic evidence is also a factor leading to wrongful convictions in some Asian countries, especially in China and Taiwan.

Zhong and Dai (2019) recorded forensic errors as a factor leading to wrongful convictions in China. For example, in the case of a university student convicted of killing his girlfriend, the only inculpatory evidence was the blood type from some traces of blood in the defendant’s clothes matching that of his girlfriend, coupled with a confession extracted through torture. In another case, a teacher served eight years of imprisonment for rape based on his Type B blood allegedly matching the semen from the crime scene. After his release, his blood was found to be type O (Zhong & Dai, 2019).

In Taiwan, the authors showed a case that demonstrates how a coincidental Y-STR DNA mixture inclusion, with match statistics favouring a prosecution hypothesis, can lead to an erroneous conviction. Specifically, the forensic evidence against the accused was his inclusion in a 17-marker Y-STR mixture isolated from semen on one victim’s clothing. The Criminal Investigation Bureau then excluded him using an extended set of Y-STR markers (23 loci), leading to his exoneration because of false forensic evidence (Hampikian et al., 2017).

Political factors

Political factors are considered a differentiating reason for wrongful convictions in Asian countries. This issue was found predominantly in the literature about China and, to a lesser extent, in the literature about Singapore.

Ni Jiang presents this issue in many of her works, as do other authors in China. In one paper, Ni Jiang claimed that the deep flaws in China’s principal justice institutions mainly relate to the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) influential factors via controlling and managing the Political-Legal Affairs Committees (Jiang, 2015b). Indeed, Zhuo (2021) mentioned in his paper that the slogan “do not let one guilty person free even if it means wrongfully killing a hundred innocents” was widely used by the CCP during and after the civil war. Although this slogan was criticised and disappeared from official propaganda and news media, this mentality continues to have an important place in ‘China’s current criminal justice ideology and practice. Agreeing with this opinion, Lin et al. (2019) also mentioned that criminal justice agencies pay more attention to fighting against crime than to the value of due process, resulting in difficulty in excluding illegally-obtained evidence.

This political effect has led to an approach in China that Ni Jiang has called the ’‘iron “triangle” of the police, procuracy, and courts. The iron triangle, capturing the close relationship between these three powers, can lead to torture, misconduct in investigation and trial processes, and result in wrongful convictions (Jiang, 2014). In the authoritarian party-state, the police, prosecutors, and courts should have distinct roles in the justice system. However, ‘they’ve turned into an “assembly line” that begins with the police at one end, the procuratorate next, and finally, the courts (Jiang, 2015b). Zhong and Dai (2019) expressed that the ‘”three-chief meeting” (the police chief, procurator general, and court president) often coordinate and seldom restrain each other. They also offered few checks and balances during the strike-hard campaigns or other critical events and even formed joint work groups to process cases.

China’s current institutional arrangements have given police investigators, prosecutors, and judges too much freedom to abuse exclusionary rules and the prohibition of torture. Chinese prosecutors pay more attention to cooperating with the police than imposing necessary restraints on the ‘police’s abuse of power during the investigation. Under their internal goals to control crime, the three authorities are unwilling to exclude tortured confessions from use in the name of truth-seeking, which is further detrimental to justice (Jiang, 2018a). Furthermore, Zhong and Dai (2019) pointed out that in some cases, court judges frankly stated that they did not prevent the wrongful conviction because they wanted to maintain a good relationship with the police and prosecutors.

Similar to China, the same crime control model exists in Singapore. Chen and Chua (2010) discussed how government policy shifts the focus from protecting the innocent from conviction to maintaining public order and safety through efficient crime control. The authors also argue that criminal law and criminal procedure provide investigative agencies in Singapore with too many advantages for abusing their power, which leads to wrongful convictions. For instance, in Section 17 of the Misuse of Drugs Act, the onus is on the accused to show no intention to traffic drugs once found with an amount exceeding the statutory limit. This rule removes obstacles to the conviction that would be preferred by the due process model and opens the way for prosecution. Another example is related to the ultimate powers of the Home Affairs Department in the Internal Security Act, which allows the Minister of Home Affairs to order detention without trial to prevent a person from acting “prejudicial to the security of Singapore” (Chen & Chua, 2010).

Due to cultural and institutional features, it is undeniable that political factors affect wrongful convictions in Asia. In particular, this factor describes crime control model characteristics found explicitly in China and Singapore. However, this is also a relatively sensitive issue with cultural and political consequences, so the number of in-depth articles is limited.

Discussion

There are many similarities in the common causes of wrongful convictions among Asian countries. Indeed, almost all common factors in Western societies, such as false confession, misconduct, eyewitness misidentifications, and false forensic evidence (Huff et al., 1996; Grounds, 2005; Leo & Gould, 2009; Nobles & Schiff, 1995; Huff & Killias, 2008; Rattner, 1988; Wrightsman & Kassin, 1993) were found in wrongful conviction studies in Asia. However, contrary to the United States and Europe, where articles about the factors leading to wrongful convictions are often diverse, the articles in Asia focus primarily on two main elements: false confession (B. Newman, 2021; Chen & Chua, 2010; Hui & Lo, 2015; Ito, 2013; Johnson, 2015; Liang et al., 2019; Oeberst & Wu, 2015) and torture (Anderson, 2012; Guo, 2019; Hawes, 2020; Lin et al., 2019; Jiang, 2013a, 2015b, 2018b).

In their early research, Ronald Huff and his colleagues claimed that eyewitness misidentification is the single most crucial factor leading to wrongful conviction in the United States and the United Kingdom (Huff et al., 1996; Huff & Killias, 2008). For example, the latest data from the Innocent Project showed that mistaken eyewitness identifications contributed to approximately 69% of more than 375 wrongful convictions in the United States.³ However, a group of Chinese scholars (Liang et al., 2019) stated that although eyewitnesses’ false testimonies (misidentification) are considered one of China’s most significant reasons, the issue has not received much academic attention. Instead, they only list eyewitness misidentifications as one of the eight contributing factors that can lead to a wrongful conviction (Zhong & Dai, 2019). Accordingly, Chinese scholars attempt to explore the issues of false confession and torture in their country instead of expanding to discuss other factors (Guo, 2019; Jiang, 2015a, 2018c).

Regarding trends and patterns in research, Johnson (2015) claimed that the United States had been the subject of more wrongful conviction research than any other country. Indeed, we must admit that published research on wrongful convictions in Asia is still lacking compared to other regions. Almost all studies in Asia come from East Asian countries, predominantly China (21) and Japan (5), while the rest of the Asian region contributed very few studies (Lu & Liang, 2022). In the special issue of the Asian Journal of Criminology – Wrongful Convictions and Exonerations in Asia, only a few studies focus on this concern in four countries (Lu & Liang, 2022). No Central Asia countries (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan) published research about their wrongful convictions. Besides that, while only two countries in Southeast Asian countries (Indonesia and Singapore) have one article to review and analyse their wrongful convictions, Vietnam, with a population of nearly 100 million and many wrongful convictions, has not yet published in the Scopus journal’s system about this topic (Luong, 2021). Although wrongful convictions were discovered and publicised in some recent publications in Vietnamese, there is still a lack of peer-reviewed articles for international and regional audiences (Le et al., 2022). As discussed at the beginning of this paper, a wrongful conviction is not only a severe violation of human rights, which all countries continue their attempts to codify legally and prevent (Leo & Gould, 2009). In practice, it also significantly reduces people’s trust in criminal justice.

Furthermore, “the number of wrongful convictions revealed in any country depends not only on how many have been produced but also on how effectively they are found” (Johnson, 2015, p. 4). These realities raise questions about the cause of some research on wrongful convictions in Asia. Is it too difficult to find domestic sources on this issue? Johnson (2015), who spent over 30 years researching Japan’s punishment and criminal justice system, has highlighted that a “culture of denial” makes it challenging for criminal justice agencies to recognise their failings. These blurred points are similar to China’s “three-chief meeting” (police, prosecutor, and judge). These systems lead to challenges for the media and other external agents of accountability that make it difficult to conduct investigations into wrongful conviction cases (He, 2016b; Jiang, 2018a; Zhong & Dai, 2019).

One of the key points of research into wrongful conviction in Asia is the crucial role of political factors. This factor is one of the differences between the criminal justice system of Asian countries and that of the United States. As we have shown above, this factor is similar to the crime control model,⁴ explicitly in China and somewhat in Singapore. However, we do not fully assume that the crime control model leads to wrongful convictions. Based on the data, political factors retain characteristics of the crime control model, leading to wrongful convictions (He, 2021; Johnson, 2015; Jiang, 2018a; Zhong & Dai, 2019). In China, for crime control and punishment, police investigators, prosecutors, and judges form a combined mechanism with undue advantages and authority, leading to torture, misconduct in investigation and trial processes, and resulting wrongful convictions (Zhong & Dai, 2019). Unfortunately, knowledge is scarce on this subject. One of the reasons is the sensitivity of this topic (He, 2021; Johnson, 2015; Jiang, 2018a; Zhong & Dai, 2019). This sensitivity may be political or due to fear of reprisal, so authors avoid it instead of directly confronting it. Accordingly, “the political factors are sensitive information for the authorities and are most likely underreported in our cases” (Zhong & Dai, 2019, p. 272). Zhong and Dai (2019) further unveiled that some information was only disclosed to the reporter by criminal justice officials after leaving their current system or retiring. Yet, it can be explained by the distinct cultural and political characteristics of Asian countries without external investigations by Anglocentric scholars. However, the number of papers on this factor of wrongful convictions is relatively small, with most research by non-mainland China scholars (Zhong & Dai, 2019). Therefore this factor should be further explored not only by Asian scholars but also by other regional scholars.

Conclusion

The results show that wrongful convictions are a global issue and often cause adverse effects. Firstly, wrongfully convicted persons lose their freedom and are incarcerated for crimes they did not commit. Secondly, real criminals may go free while criminal justice agencies pursue wrongful convictions instead. Thirdly, wrongful convictions waste tremendous human, material, and social resources. It also weakens the public’s satisfaction with and trusts in the criminal justice system. There is still a significant gap in interest in wrongful convictions in Asia (proven by the start year and the number of studies) compared with Europe or the United States. The research on wrongful convictions in Asia is concentrated in the Eastern Asian region, with several Chinese and Japanese scholars’ articles, while the rest of the Asian countries remain lacking (Le et al., 2022; Lu & Liang, 2022). Most studies pointed out false confessions due to torture as the main factor leading to wrongful conviction. Other factors such as misconduct, eyewitness misidentifications, and faulty forensic evidence have been described in other papers, but still predominantly in China and Japan’s contexts. This issue remains an obvious gap for all Asian scholars to research in the future to compare with Anglocentric societies. To some extent, our article provides an overview of wrongful convictions in Asia and becomes another reference for scholars on this issue.

Acknowledgement

We also thank for specific recommendations from two anonymous reviewers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lan Chi Le

Dr Lan Chi LE is currently teaching criminal procedure and correction law as the chair of the Criminal Justice Division at the School of Law, Vietnam National University – Hanoi. She has twenty years of teaching and research experience in the criminal justice field in Vietnam. Her publications are on human rights in criminal justice, the history, culture and organization of Vietnam’s judiciary, and the country’s legal practitioners.

Yen Hai Hoang

Yen Hai HOANG is a lecturer at Hanoi Procuratorate University, Hanoi. Vietnam. She received her BA in 2010 and MA in 2013 at Hanoi Law University. In 2021, she earned an LLM degree at Pázmány Péter Catholic University, Hungary. She is a recent PhD student at Hanoi Law University. She has 12 years of experience teaching and researching criminal and criminal procedure law. Her research interests are punishments, combatting corruption, money laundering and cybercrimes.

Hang Thanh Bui

Hang Thanh BUI is currently working as a main checker at the Department of public prosecutions and supervising the investigation of economic crimes - The Supreme People's Procuracy of Vietnam. Her task and publication mainly focus on wrongful convictions, analyzing and dealing with criminal cases. She holds a Master's in Conflict Management and Resolution from James Cook University, Australia.

Duc Quang Nguyen

Duc Quang NGUYEN is a law lecturer at the University of Law, Vietnam National University, Hanoi. In 2021, he received a PhD in law from the VNU School of Law with the topic ”Property regime in the Constitutions of Vietnam”. He held an LLB in 2014. He has published several articles on constitutional, administrative, and human rights.

Son Thanh Mai

Son Thanh MAI is a law lecturer at the University of Law, Vietnam National University, Hanoi. He is received a BA in 2019 at the School of Law, Vietnam National University, Hanoi before graduating LLM in Criminal Procedure Law at Belgorod State National Research University in Russia. His publications are mainly on criminal proceedings in Russia.

Hai Thanh Luong

Hai Thanh LUONG is currently conducting his Research Fellow in Cyber Criminology at the School of Social Science and collaborating with UQ Cyber Centre. Additionally, he is a member of the Global Initiative Network's Expert against Transnational Organized Crime (GI TOC) and also a senior researcher and chair of the Asian Drug Crime Research Committee at the Institute for Asian Crime and Security (IACS). He focuses on transnational organized crime in Asia, wrongful convictions and dealth penalty. His latest book 'Transnational Drug Trafficking across the Vietnam and Laos Border' was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2019.

Notes

1. Excluding three selected articles (out of the 17 articles) added from Google Scholar, which we cannot merge consistently in the Scopus’s database, namely Siyuan, Chen and Chua (2010), Wrongful Convictions in Singapore: A General Survey of Risk Factors; Na Jiang (2014) Iron triangle of the gong Jian fa: Lessons from wrongful convictions in capital cases; and David Johnson (2015), Wrongful Convictions and the Culture of Denial in Japanese Criminal Justice.

2. Jiang Na is an Associate Professor of the Beijing Normal University, China. She is one of the leading scholars in the field of wrongful conviction in the region. She is also the author of Wrongful Conviction in China: Comparative and Empirical Perspectives.

3. See more detail at https://innocenceproject.org/eyewitness-identification-reform/.

4. When it comes to the crime control model, we can’t help but mention Herbert Packer, who presented the theory of two typical models of the criminal justice system, i.e., the crime control model and the due process model. In this article, we utilise the term “crime control model” which is consistent with Packer’s theory.