Investigating a murder themselves and perhaps even getting a wrongfully convicted person released—Project Reasonable Doubt has students rolling up their sleeves.
The project, led by Prof. Peter van Koppen, is very labour-intensive and offers students the ultimate way to get involved in real criminal cases and learn how the criminal justice system works. In this project, they look at complex evidence and learn to systematically unravel the meaning of the evidence in a criminal case. The students examine two types of cases: cold cases and alleged miscarriages of justice.
During proceedings, a judge can never be completely sure that the conviction is justified, as evidence can sometimes be inconclusive or even misleading. Project Reasonable Doubt is committed to having a legal system in which the number of wrongful convictions is limited as much as possible.
Thrilling publications such as ‘The Creative Carpenter’, published in English, and 'The PlayStation-Murders' and 'The Dancing Offender', published in Dutch, are just a few that have emerged from the research at Project Reasonable Doubt.
A criminal case can be submitted by a convicted person, his or her lawyer, or any other person involved. Additional submission criteria are used to ensure that only cases that are potentially miscarriages of justice are investigated.
The research is carried out by selected Master's students. Though many of them study Criminology, Law or Psychology, students from any faculty and university are allowed to apply. Their research is supervised by university staff from the Department of Criminal Law and Criminology at VU Amsterdam.