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GLOSSIP v. GROSS BREYER, J., dissenting

reflects a greater likelihood of an initial wrongful convic­ tion. How could that be so? In the view of researchers who have conducted these studies, it could be so because the crimes at issue in capital cases are typically horren­ dous murders, and thus accompanied by intense community pressure on police, prosecutors, and jurors to secure a conviction. This pressure creates a greater likelihood of convicting the wrong person. See Gross, Jacoby, Matheson, Montgomery, & Patil, Exonerations in the United States 1989 Through 2003, 95 J. Crim. L. & C. 523, 531– 533 (2005); Gross & O’Brien, Frequency and Predictors of False Conviction: Why We Know So Little, and New Data on Capital Cases, 5 J. Empirical L. Studies 927, 956–957 (2008) (noting that, in comparing those who were exoner­ ated from death row to other capital defendants who were not so exonerated, the initial police investigations tended to be shorter for those exonerated); see also B. Garrett, Convicting the Innocent: Where Criminal Prosecutions Go Wrong (2011) (discussing other common causes of wrong­ ful convictions generally including false confessions, mis­ taken eyewitness testimony, untruthful jailhouse inform­ ants, and ineffective defense counsel). In the case of Cameron Todd Willingham, for example, who (as noted earlier) was executed despite likely inno­ cence, the State Bar of Texas recently filed formal miscon­ duct charges against the lead prosecutor for his actions— actions that may have contributed to Willingham’s convic­ tion. Possley, Prosecutor Accused of Misconduct in Death Penalty Case, Washington Post, Mar. 19, 2015, p. A3. And in Glenn Ford’s case, the prosecutor admitted that he was partly responsible for Ford’s wrongful conviction, issuing a public apology to Ford and explaining that, at the time of Ford’s conviction, he was “not as interested in justice as [he] was in winning.” Stroud, supra. Other factors may also play a role. One is the practice of death-qualification; no one can serve on a capital jury