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One of the biggest contributing factors to wrongful convictions is police tunnel vision. This occurs in a fairly high percentage of the cases that have been studied - post DNA exonerations.  It occurs when police narrow in on a suspect from the very beginning and then fail to consider other possibilities, suspects or scenarios. They ignore evidence that points away from their suspect and they proceed to shape or even manufacture evidence that supports their theory. There is no doubt in my mind that this happened in this case and one person - Jessica Adam shaped the investigation from the very beginning. Police never considered that what she was telling them may not be truthful, but we learned throughout the trial that she was untruthful about all of the state's key evidence.

Of the 90,427 forcible rapes reported in 2007, 40% were cleared by arrest or "exceptional means" (FBI, 2008d) with 23,307 of those being arrests (FBI, 2008b). Clearance of a report by exceptional means occurs when the known suspect dies before an arrest is made, when the victim refuses to provide the information or assistance necessary to follow an investigation through to an arrest, or when the known suspect is being held in another jurisdiction for a different crime and extradition is denied. In order to clear a case by exceptional means, the officers must have an identified suspect, know where he can be found, and have enough evidence for a legal arrest.

One of the primary concerns in the orthodox Jewish community when discussing the issue of reporting sex abuse to the authorities is that inevitably there will be false accusations that will ruin the lives of innocent people. It is very scary to think that someone can be named as an abuser and before any evidence is presented the accused can be found guilty in the court of public opinion. In a community where the main currency is reputation and communal standing false accusations can have drastic consequences. This is a good reason not to judge people before the facts are known and also a good argument against placing too much stock in reputation. Changing our approach on these issues would go a long way to making our communities safer places.