Pros And Cons Of Miscarriages Of Justice

Clarence Harrison and David Ranta cases are similar due to the fact that it shows the main goal for our criminal justice system is to seek justice. Harrison was wrongly convicted of a crime due to a flawed eyewitness testimony and DNA blood test. His armed robbery conviction at the age of nineteen also played a major part in his case, because it allowed his face to be put into a lineup of suspects. The victim who was sexually assaulted picked out Harrison as the man who attacked and raped her at the Marta Bus station. Sophisticated DNA blood testing was not even available during the time of Harrison’s conviction. The blood test administrated could only rule that Clarence was one of the eighty-eight percent of the population who could have committed the sexual assault. Unfortunately, Harrison had no clear alibi, and eyewitness testimony the jurors found him guilty of rape where he served seventeen years before he was later exonerated.

Everyday, people are arrested for crimes they have committed. However, the justice system, in some cases, has failed to convict and arrest the right person. Innocent people have been sent to jail based upon the deliberate misidentification of suspects. Throughout U.S history, there have been several famous wrongful convictions such as the Scottsboro Boys and Ed Johnson (Grimsley). Their convictions were based on race due to the racial strife from the Jim Crow era. Base on David Love’s article, many convictions after the Jim Crow era were still being caused by misleading identification from eyewitness claims of the suspects being African Americans. Due to the advancement of forensic and DNA technology, lack of evidence from previous convictions

The justice system is just but the procedures within are somewhat flawed. Human nature is to have greed and power, that's what crumbles the system. People use the system for what it isn't intended for and get away with it whether it's good or bad. Such as the Tarina Garnet case. Trina Garnett, was a mentally disabled teenage girl who was charged with murder, after setting a fire that killed two people and was sentenced to life in prison.

After that, the trial started which was my brother and mother against the two of them. However, the state decided to take the case over and that turned my brother and mother into witnesses. For some reason they did not include myself on the witness list because I did not see the faces of the shooters, but I did see everything that was going on in the house while the shooting was going on. Anyway, the trial began and it felt like my mother and brother were on trial and not the two guys that were actually being prosecuted. Since the images that were taken from the kitchen in our house showed a half empty container of liquor, my mother and brother were called alcoholics and that they could have been drunk. They said that them being drunk would

These studies show that it is possible that 52,000 up to 113,00 human beings in America are serving a prison sentence for a crime that they never committed. Each and every one of these inmates’ wrongful convictions were caused by some flawed method or procedure. Out of the exonerees that The Innocence Project has proven innocent through the use of DNA, 240 out of the 337, or 71%, were incarcerated in part because of eyewitness misidentification. In To Kill a Mockingbird, Tom Robinson’s unjust conviction was caused in part by eyewitness misidentification. Another 19% of these wrongful convictions came from inexplicably atrocious legal advice or false confessions.

The impact of eyewitness testimony upon the members of a jury has been the subject of various research projects and has guided the policies formed by the federal government regarding its competent use in criminal matters (Wells, Malpass, Lindsay, Fisher, Turtle, & Fulero, 2000). Therefore, eyewitness studies are important to understand how

As DNA fingerprinting progressed, Barbour sought the help of the Virginia Department of Forensic Science to use the DNA extracted from the crime scene and his own DNA. Once the institute typed both DNAs, they refused to give him or the court the information from their testings. “After denying repeated Freedom of Information Act requests from the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project and the Richmond Times-Dispatch, the state finally agreed to release a partial list of the DNA exclusions to a volunteer attorney, Jonathan Sheldon. Barbour only learned that the evidence from his case still existed and that the state lab had obtained DNA results when Sheldon contacted him in early 2012.” Barbour went to the University of Virginia School of Law’s Innocence Project to seek representation from them. Through investigation, the state’s lab had gotten the evidence to exonerate him in early of June 2010, but he only got word of it in December of the following year. When the representatives of the Virginia state lab was approached about this, they claimed “...they had not been able to locate Barbour to inform him of his innocence. However, his correct address and phone number were publicly listed.”

Eyewitness identification and testimony play a huge role in the criminal justice system today, but skepticism of eyewitnesses has been growing. Forensic evidence has been used to undermine the reliability of eyewitness testimony, and the leading cause of false convictions in the United States is due to misidentifications by eyewitnesses. The role of eyewitness testimony in producing false confessions and the factors that contribute to the unreliability of these eyewitness testimonies are sending innocent people to prison, and changes are being made in order to reform these faulty identification procedures.

This appeal evolved out of a 2006 rape case that occurred in Harford county Maryland. More than two years after the incident the victim identified Glenn Joseph Raynor, hereby known as petitioner, as a possible suspect. After departing a voluntary police interview in which petitioner ultimately declined a request for his DNA to be collected for comparison. Investigators collected DNA on swabs from the armrest of his chair. DNA analysis revealed a match from samples collected at the crime scene. After further investigation petitioner was charged and convicted of first-degree rape and related offenses.

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.

If lawyers were exposed to personal danger and political and professional backlash because of their work our justice system would eventually turn into a system of guilty until proven innocent, convicting every defendant before the trial. Without a lawyer to defend unpopular people, they would be left to defend themselves. This would lead to a lack of justice, as most defendants have no experience in law or how to help themselves out of a situation, in which they might not even be guilty. Stephen Jones, the lead defense attorney for the bombing in Oklahoma City in 1995, says that, “The day when scare mongers can intimidate lawyers into not doing their jobs is a day in which liberty is threatened.” (Jones) Stephen Jones realized that without

Justice Antonin Gregory Scalia’s death on 13 February 2016 has caused yet another point of contention between Republicans and Democrats. This contention is based on the Supreme Courts current partisan split being 4-4. Whoever nominates and receives a confirmation of the needed Supreme Court Justice will effectively provide their party Supreme Court rulings in favor with their party’s political lines. Within hours of Justice Scalia’s death being reported President Obama made an official comment on the passing of the Justice. During the official comment President Obama stated that he would fulfill his Constitutional responsibility by nominating a Supreme Court Justice successor.

The issue in this paper is about choosing juries in criminal trials or in civil trials only. Concerning the effectiveness in delivery justice for the society. If I were Tim Conway, I would choose option A.

We have all heard the story of the drunk or drugged college girl that was allegedly raped at a party or elsewhere; the sad part is the story never changes no matter the year, college, or background of the victim. Yet, there is such an enormous amount of mistrust when the topic of college rape is brought up. Doubt is often in the forefront of people's minds before the full story can even be told. When we look back at the high-profile rape cases of Kobe Bryant and Derrick Rose, both men during trial wanted to bring up the victim's sexual history; victim blaming at its best. It was the officer's job, as well as the prosecutor's job to remain neutral in their handling of both of these high profile cases; their jobs do not allow for personal biases

“It’s a general problem not specific to the law of the United Kingdom a criminal justice system characterized by an emphasis on crime control rather than due process will inevitably produce miscarriage of justice.”