Major mishaps - environmental disaster, wrongful death, hospital malpractice, etc. - are subjected to a comprehensive investigation in nearly every institution involved with public health and safety. When an airplane crashes or a train derails, the National Transportation Safety Board ("the NTSB") immediately conducts an investigation into the causes of the incident and makes recommendations to prevent further harm from occurring. Since the primary purpose of the NTSB is to protect the public safety, it will sometimes issue safety recommendations before its investigation of a crash is complete. Agencies like the NTSB are effective because they are equipped with subpoena power, great expertise, and real independence, allowing them to ask and find answers to the important and obvious questions: What went wrong? Was it systemic error or an individual's mistake? Was there any official misconduct? What can be done to correct the problem and prevent it from happening again?

Wrongful convictions of the innocent are the American criminal justice system's equivalent of a major catastrophe. The guilty are not punished, the innocent are imprisoned or sentenced to death, and the real perpetrators remain free to commit more crimes. Still, when an innocent person is exonerated by DNA