Miscarriages of Justice in Italy

This chapter is the result of a shared reflection of the authors. Some authors have argued that to understand how to prevent wrongful convictions an interesting thought exercise would have been to imagine a criminal justice system that combines the best aspects of both inquisitorial and adversarial systems. One of the causes of wrongful convictions among which there seems to be an almost unanimous consensus among scholars from all over the world is that of false or coerced confessions. Forensic science was one of the main reasons that the topic of wrongful convictions was brought to light during the 1990s. The possibility of a wrongful conviction is even expressly contemplated by the Italian Constitution. Revision is the main tool at the disposal of a convicted person to ascertain a judicial error. The conviction's erroneousness must be evaluated against the symptoms enunciated by the legislature to verify its possible substantial injustice.