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" CONVICTING THE INNOCENT: LESSONS LEARNT CONVICTING THE INNOCENT: LESSONS LEARNT By Michelle Shahid (Bertha Justice Fellow at the Foundation for Fundamental Rights) The strength of our criminal justice system depends on its accuracy - its ability to convict the guilty and exonerate the innocent. In Pakistan, a failure of justice is no longer an exception to the norm: thousands of people have been wrongfully convicted in a system defined by official indifference to innocence and error. While miscarriages of justice occur daily through the negligence of one or more actors of the criminal justice system, these instances largely go unnoticed and consequently, unaccounted for. A recent report by the Foundation for Fundamental Rights and Reprieve, The Pakistan Capital Punishment Study, reveals a harsh reality: in the 9 years from 2010 to 2018, the Supreme Court overruled decisions made by lower courts in 78% of capital cases, of which 39% were acquittals. Thus, nearly two in every five prisoners sentenced to death were determined to have been wrongfully convicted and may in fact be innocent of the crime for which they had been convicted, if their cases reached the apex Court at all. These statistics reveal systemic flaws in Pakistan's criminal justice system, resulting in grave, often irreversible, miscarriages of justice. Behind these miscarriages of justice, there are serious evidential and prosecutorial failings at the trial and the High Court levels, and unquestionably, human lives at stake. As FFR's study reveals, the Supreme Court of Pakistan has effectively been forced to 'correct' evidential errors made by the lower courts in capital cases. However, lack of accountability of the police, prosecutors, judges and jail officials inevitably paves way for a justice system…