Should Innocent People Be Convicted With Only Circumstantial Evidence?

The real problem is that 95% of felony cases only use eyewitness evidence. (1) These are the more serious cases as well; they are the ones where people can be sent to death row. Should someone be sentences to death on only eyewitness evidence? As said before, eyewitnesses can be used for key events, but they do not remember accurate details. Relying only on eyewitness evidence can cause serious problems. In 1991, 247 murder cases were thrown out because of false or tainted witness statements. Some of the accused murders were even behind bars at the time of the murders. (1) Furthermore, 75% of DNA evidence has been shown in cases where the witnesses were wrong. (5) This goes to show how scientific evidence is much more accurate than witnesses. However, witness evidence can be critical in sexual assault cases for children. Children do not understand sexual assault, so they usually give truthful and clear evidence. Adults tend to fill in the evidence with their own “fuzzy logic”. (1) There are certain cases that witness evidence can be very helpful, but scientific evidence is overall more reliable and

Being the victim of being accused and convicted for a crime, that you did not commit, can potentially ruin your chances or cause many issues to live the life that you want. By definition wrongful conviction is, “a conviction of a person accused of a crime which, in the result of subsequent investigation, proves erroneous,” (Duhaime). Within the topic of wrongful convictions, there are many subtopics that explain why they happen and why they occur so often. DNA evidence, lack of evidence, witness misidentification, and jury biases are all factors relating to the cases of wrongfully convicted persons. DNA evidence helps match the

Another reason why people are wrongly convicted for a crime they did not commit is false confession from the victim of anyone that say they say what went on during the crime, and so bad lawyering. Sometimes the lawyer over looks many things during the case or most often they are more than likely not prepared for the case at all.

Still sometimes, prosecutors might be persuaded that they have the correct respondent and a totally precise charge with respect to what crime(s) he or she carried out, but secure a conviction might be flawed. This obviously is valuable for the two sides to mastermind a determination of the issue without either side taking the risk that the body of evidence may conflict with them if it somehow managed to go to trial.

“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.

Innocent until proven guilty is a phrase that applies to our judicial system in modern times; however, when the play Doubt by John Patrick Stanley was written this phrase did not always apply. The play is a parable that makes you think about how gossip and rumors can cause havoc and potentially ruin someone’s career. In the play the rumors that are flying are rumors about whether or not Father Flynn is innocent or guilty to the crime of molesting a young boy named Donald Muller. Critics still argue whether he was innocent or guilty to the crime today, and no answer is known. However, based on the evidence in Patrick Shanley’s play Doubt: A Parable, one could conclude that Father Flynn is innocent due to the fact that he had reasonable evidence

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

Wrongful convictions occur when innocent defendants are found guilty in criminal trials or when defendants feel obligated to take a plea agreement in order to avoid extremely long sentences or the death penalty. The term wrongful conviction can also refer to cases in which a jury finds a person with a good defense guilty or where the conviction is reversed in violation of the defendants constitutional rights. The term actual or factual innocence is used to refer to persons who did not commit the crime. Miscarriage of justice is also used to describe wrongful convictions.

The medias explanation for the acquittal was due tot the CSI Effect because one juror on the case stated that there was not enough physical evidence to find her

The Innocence Project was established in the wake of a landmark study by the United States Department of Justice and the United States Senate with help from the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law (Schneider, 2013). This study found that there were numerous reasons why people are wrongfully convicted including, but not limited to eye witness identification, perjured testimony, improper forensic science techniques, and government misconduct (Roberts & Weathered, 2009) The original Innocence Project was founded twenty two (22) years ago as a part of the Cardoza School of Law of Yeshiva University in New York City, New York (Davis, 2012). The Innocence Projects primary goal is to exonerate those whom have been convicted of a crime when there is DNA evidence available to be tested or re-tested (Mitchell, 2011). DNA testing has been possible in five (5) percent to ten (10) percent of cases since 1992 (Risinger, 2007). On the other side, other members of the Innocence Project help to exonerate those have been convicted of a crime where there is no DNA evidence to test. A goal of the Innocence Project is to conduct research on the reasons for wrongful convictions, how to fix the criminal justice system, as well as advocate for those who have been wrongfully convicted (Steiker & Steiker, 2005). The members of this organization strive to teach the world about the dangers of wrongful convictions. To date, this non-profit legal organization, has freed three hundred eighteen (318)

Therefore, assuming the guilt of an unproven "criminal" is nothing new, as the short story "The Curse of the Poisoned Pretzel" by Paul Haven clearly displays; the author develops a case against his subject without ever stating that it is actually true. Haven writes about the suspicious death of a man by

This usually occurs when an innocent person believed to be convicted of a crime gets executed, due to the fact that the evidence provided in court usually contains some flaws to erroneously indicate that he/she is responsible for the crime. In the short story “Two Fishermen”, the narrator states ‘In the morning, young Thomas Delaney, who had grown in the town, was being hanged: he had killed Mathew Rhinehart whom he had caught molesting his wife when she had been berry picking in the hills behind the town. Thomas Delaney had taken a bad beating before he had killed Rhinehart.’ This demonstrates that Thomas was innocent because he tried to save his wife from Rhinehart’s approach. But when Rhinehart starts beating Thomas very badly, Thomas had to react quickly and was forced to kill him in order to defend himself from the bad beating. Hence penalties on innocent can be avoided, only if the right to defence is protected and capital punishment is banned from the

There are many innocent people on death row. Someone can easily set another person up and make it look like that person has committed a heinous crime worthy of the death penalty. The criminal (or innocent person) can be held in a special high security location until the evidence is solidified. Although the innocent people would still have some of their lives stolen from them it wouldn’t be their entire lives taken. Not to mention that the number of cases later proven to have had an incorrect conviction is alarmingly high. Therefore, the case should have to have hard evidence in order for the human to be put to

Could crimes be unfairly decided depending on evidence and how it is presented to the court? In fact, this happens regularly. This results in many people being falsely convicted of a crime which they never committed. However, the evidence and how it is presented to a jury can change the final decision. There are several significant similarities and differences between A Lesson Before Dying and Murder on a Sunday Morning. These include the way the men were treated while on trial, what type of crime they were accused of, as well as the final decision of the court.

The purpose of this article by Garrett (2011) was investigated the problems with invalid and/or unreliable forensic evidence that lead to wrongful convictions by investigating exoneration case, in which faulty forensic evidence was presented. This is important to the fields of law and psychology because forensic evidence is still used in many cases, despite not being the most reliable evidence.