Library Guides: Liberty and (In)Justice for All: An Overview of Wrongful Convictions in the United States: Online Services

Online Resources to Peruse

As previously mentioned, this topic does not exactly lend itself to traditional techniques of legal research, due to the dearth of case law on wrongful convictions. However, relevant material can be found through searching journal articles on WestLaw or Lexis, or through the National Criminal Justice Reference Service, or sites like Google Scholar.

National Criminal Justice Reference Service

National Criminal Justice Reference Service
From the 'About Us' page:
"Established in 1972, the National Criminal Justice Reference Service (NCJRS) is a federally funded resource offering justice and drug-related information to support research, policy, and program development worldwide. NCJRS services and resources are available to anyone interested in crime, victim assistance, and public safety including policymakers, practitioners, researchers, educators, community leaders, and the general public.NCJRS offers a range of services and resources, balancing the information needs of the field with the technological means to receive and access support."
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"NCJRS hosts one of the largest criminal and juvenile justice libraries and databases in the world, the NCJRS Abstracts Database. The collection, with holdings from the early 1970s to the present, contains more than 225,000 publications, reports, articles, and audiovisual products from the United States and around the world. These resources include statistics, research findings, program descriptions, congressional hearing transcripts, and training materials.

The abstracts include the title, author, sponsoring agency, purchasing address, and journal citation, as well as a 100- to 200-word summary of the document's contents. Keyword and index term searches of the database are easy. With the search capabilities offered, you can quickly retrieve all the citations relevant to your question or area of interest."

Google Scholar

Wrongful Convictions Search on Google Scholar
Using Google Scholar can bring up a variety of databases and scholarly journal articles about whatever topic a researcher needs to find. One thing I liked about Google Scholar for searching about wrongful convictions in particular was that it brought up non-law databases that still had relevant information, like articles from the American Psychological Association. For multidisciplinary subjects such as wrongful convictions, Google Scholar is truly an invaluable tool.