Reliance on science: An examination of the newsprint media's construction of DNA technology regarding innocence and wrongful conviction

Abstract

Wrongful convictions remain an understudied problem in Canada. With the advent of recent technological advances in the form of forensic DNA analysis, newsprint media agencies have served as a medium for questioning the fallibility of the criminal justice system while raising public awareness of erroneous convictions. The social constructionist theoretical perspective provides the foundational underpinnings of a qualitative content analysis surrounding the print-news coverage of three Canadian wrongful conviction cases: David Milgaard, Guy Paul Morin and Gregory Parsons. Findings indicate disparity in the amount, extent, nature and content of coverage amongst wrongful conviction cases and between national and local coverage. The data suggests that for an individual to conclusively establish factual innocence, DNA technology must not only exonerate the wrongfully convicted individual but must also implicate the 'real' perpetrator. These results suggest the newsprint media is perpetuating a 'hierarchy of wrongful convictions' based on an individual's ability to conclusively establish their factual innocence through the utilization of forensic DNA analysis.