Blind Spot : A 1994 Rape Conviction Not Only Altered N.j

Racial prejudice against McMillian is shown when the case was moved to a predominantly white county, therefore excluding other African-Americans from participating in the trail. Another example of racial prejudice against McMillian is shown when the court determines him to be guilty, despite hundreds of alibis proving his innocence and faulty allegations (Stevenson, 2014, p. 49-52, 66). These two examples show how racism plagues the American criminal

In modern-day America the issue of racial discrimination in the criminal justice system is controversial because there is substantial evidence confirming both individual and systemic biases. While there is reason to believe that there are discriminatory elements at every step of the judicial process, this treatment will investigate and attempt to elucidate such elements in two of the most critical judicial junctures, criminal apprehension and prosecution.

In the past decade, eyewitness testimonies have cast a shadow on what is wrong with the justice system in today’s society. Before we had the advanced technology, we have today, eyewitness testimonies were solid cold-hard facts when it came to proving the defendant was guilty. However, time has changed and eyewitness testimonies have proven to be the leading causes of wrongful convictions due to misidentification. The Thompson and Cotton case is a perfect example of how eyewitness testimonies can put an innocent man behind bars.

“Wrongful convictions happen every week in every state in this country. And they happen for all the same reasons. Sloppy police work. Eyewitness identification is the most- is the worst type almost. Because it is wrong about half the time. Think about that.” (Grisham). Wrongful convictions can happen to anyone, at anytime. Grisham implies wrongful convictions happen for the same reasons, careless police work as well as eyewitness identification. An eyewitness identification is a crucial aspect in detective work because it essentially locates the person at the crime scene. This is the worst cause of wrongful convictions because it is wrong half the time.

During the era of segregation, blacks couldn’t even look at a white woman without it being deemed sexual and they were ultimately beaten or killed for it. That mindset is still present today in the form of misidentification in sexual assault cases. A black prisoner serving time for sexual assault is three and a half more likely to be innocent than a white convict (Gross, Possley, & Stephen,2017, March 7). The reason for this mishap is mistaken identification by a white victim in violent crimes involving African Americans. In present day, assault on a Caucasian woman by an African American male is very small throughout the United States ranking in at only 11%. Misidentifications are products of racial bias, which is the belief that one race

With the number of DNA exonerations growing in the recent years, wrongful convictions reveal disturbing trends and fissures in the justice system. It shows how broken the system is, and why it needs urgent fixing. According to Huff (1996), over ten thousand people are convicted wrongfully for serious crimes each year. This study established that factors leading to wrongful convictions are false eyewitnesses, a prejudiced jury, incompetent prosecutors, and suspects’ ignorance. Where DNA evidence clears a suspect, array of reasons emerge; misconduct, mistakes, to race and class factors. It is important to make DNA data available to attorneys in order to enable them mount a strong

The main purpose of this article is to look at the possible link between race and exoneration, and how race and wrongful convictions lead to the exonerations. There were three reasons that the authors chose this topic to research. The first reason was the research previously done in the field show racial biased in the criminal justice system. This paper looks at how that effects wrongful conviction and the subsequent exoneration. The second reason is because if there is an innocent person in prison that means that the real culprit is still out there, and more than likely committing more crimes. The third reason is racial composition of the dyad, victim and

Research shows that the human mind is not like a tape recorder, we neither record events exactly as we see them, nor recall them like a tape that has been rewound. Instead, witness memory is like any other evidence at a crime scene; it must be preserved carefully, or it can be contaminated. A case I would like to mention is the Calvin Willis Case. One night in 1982, three young girls were sleeping alone in a Shreveport, Louisiana home when a man in cowboy boots came into the house and raped the oldest girl, who was Ten years old. When police started to investigate the rape, the three girls all remembered the attack differently. One police report said the Ten year old victim didn’t see her attacker’s face. Another report which wasn’t introduced at trial said she identified Calvin Willis, who lived in the neighbourhood. The girl’s mother testified at trial that neighbours had mentioned Willis’s name when discussing who might have committed the crime. The victim testified that she was shown photos and told to pick the man without a full beard. She testified that she didn’t pick anyone, police said she picked Willis. Willis was convicted by a jury and sentenced to life in prison. In 2003, DNA testing proved Willis’ innocence and he was released. He had served nearly Twenty Two years in prison for a crime he didn’t

Every time an innocent person is exonerated based on DNA testing, law enforcement agencies look at what caused the wrongful convictions. There are many issues that contribute to putting guiltless lives behind bars including: eyewitness misidentification, false confessions, imperfect forensic science, and more (Gould and Leo 18). When a witness is taken into a police station to identify a suspect, it is easy for their memories to be blurred and their judgment influenced. This can lead the witness to identify a suspect who is actually innocent. Flawed forensic science practice also contributes to wrongful imprisonments. In the past, analysts have been inaccurate due to carelessness, testified in court presenting evidence that was not based

Miscarriages of justices occur due to many variables including faulty or wrong confessions, faulty identifications, wrongful DNA evidence, and the police’s overreach of power. On February 9, 1978, a student from the College of William and Mary, located in Williamsburg, Virginia was sexually assaulted at gunpoint. When the police arrived at the scene, she described her assailant as an African-American male about 5’6 in height and weighing around 145. Having gathered this information, the victim agreed to identify her assailant through photo arrays at the police station. Bennett Barbour was identified arrested and in the span of about two months was charged with rape on April 14, 1978. Despite having an alibi, not matching the victim’s description, and having brittle bone disease Barbour was declared guilty by a jury. Barbour’s case is representative of the many cases in which wrongful eyewitness testimony produces miscarriages of justice. Bennett Barbour served 5 years in prison and 29 years of parole until he was cleared of his charges due to DNA evidence when the Virginia Supreme Court cleared his charges.

Using Meissner and Kassin’s (2002) terminology, the current study expects that white mock jurors will demonstrate higher rates of false alarms, or false positives, when evaluating confessions of African American suspects. Also, similar to the same-race leniency effect found by Sommers and Ellsworth (2000), it is expected that African American mock jurors will demonstrate attributing more false confessions to same-race confessors than other-race confessors.

After a very quick Google of eye witness testimonies, I instantly came across something that intrigued me. The tittle was eye witness misidentification. It was an article about an African American who was wrongfully convicted by an eye witness. The story originated on July 18 1982, when a man named Marvin Anderson was brought into his supervisor’s office to be asked a few questions. The questions were on a rape case that just occurred and they wanted to know if he had heard anything about the topic. What Marvin didn’t know, was that the only evidence that the police had was that the perpetrator was a black man with a white girl friend and they were there to also get a picture of him. Only conflict here was that Marvin was the only color photo

Many of the consequences of how race affects the larger criminal justice system can be seen in innocence-related efforts. “An analysis of the 297 DNA exonerations reveals minorities make up approximately 70% of those proven innocent through DNA testing. Similarly, African-Americans represent the vast majority of these exonerations – 63% of those exonerated by DNA testing.”(Edwin Grimsley, Innocence Project Case Analyst) As this quote

The studies concerning the correlation between race and crime in the United States is a common source for social debate for more than a hundred years. Since a few decades ago, the major focuses of controversy are the causes of high percentages of minorities at various stages of the justice system, such as arrests, prosecutions and incarcerations. For example, prosecutors tend to push for mandatory minimum sentences for Black and Hispanic defendants as twice as much than other races, which leads to more racial data disparities in incarceration rates for these races (Rehavi and Starr, p.11) on the other hand, in the midst of controversy, people disregard the merits of these studies. Likewise, the fine line between racial statistics and racial profiling is often blurred. Thus, a media-inflated event, such as the recent Ferguson Incident, blinds people from seeing the importance of these statistics in their everyday lives. Therefore, most people argue against the use of racial statistics in forensic science. However, even if the argument is that these

On the website, www.innocenceproject.org/causes/eyewitness-misidentification/ examines the accuracy of eyewitness identification. In today’s society, people say if you see something, say something. Now, more and more people are speaking up and giving needed eyewitness statements to the authorities. The Innocence Project points out areas where eyewitness identification can render inaccurate results. For instance, the police may give non-verbal hints that causes the witness to doubts the details of the incident resulting in a wrongful conviction. To prevent misidentification, the Innocence Project is partnering with law enforcement to come up with list of policies to follow.