Wrongful Convictions in Sweden: The Road from Application to Exoneration over Three Decades

• In Event: Sentencing, Evidence, and Alternative Courts

Abstract

As in Anglo-Saxon countries, the topic of ‘wrongful convictions’ is a recurrent theme in the Swedish media and politicians have filed several motions trying to change the criminal conviction review process. Despite this, there is little academic debate or research concerning wrongful convictions in Sweden and there are no statistics available describing how many passes through the review system and for what reasons. As a result, the knowledge about wrongful convictions is scarce. Moreover, although the post-conviction process consists of crucial steps in revealing wrongful convictions it has not yet received much attention, which holds true both from a Swedish and an international perspective. Against this background, the outline of a planned article will be presented which address this issue. The study in progress aims to describe the Swedish review process over three decades and analyze how the findings may be related to the criminal policy discourse at the time.

Author

• Sara Hellqvist, Stockholm University