The Wrongful Conviction Of The United States

Every year, hundreds of people get convicted wrongly as a result of criminal proceedings that are rooted in miscarriage of justice. The defendants are convicted for crimes not committed where errors are not proven until their death or having served a lot of jail time. Wrongful convictions are fueled by false witnesses, incompetence of defense lawyers and inadequate evidence among others. However, with the emergence of forensic DNA in collection of evidence, the rate of wrongful convictions has decreased in the past few years. This paper focuses on the fallibilities that lead to miscarriage of justice and what role technology has played in correcting and mitigating the previously erroneous judicial system.

Wrongful convictions are common in the court-system. In fact, wrongful convictions are not the rare events that you see or hear on televisions shows, but are very common. They stem from some sort of systematic defect that lead to wrongful convictions such as, eyewitness misidentification testimony, unvalidated or improper forensic science, false confessions and incriminating statements, DNA lab errors, false confessions, and informants (2014). Bringing awareness to all these systematic defects, which result in wrongful, is important because it will better adjust the system to avoid making the same mistakes with future cases. However, false confession is not a systematic defect. It does not occur because files were misplaced or a lab technician put one too many drops. False confessions occur because of some of psychological attempt to protect oneself and their family. Thus, the courts responsibility should be to reduce these false confessions.

During recent studies from several researchers it has been concluded that there is a fault within our criminal justice system. Researchers discovered there is a high wrongful conviction rate within the United States judicial system. After, extensive research, it was found that wrongful convictions are caused by eyewitness error, false confessions, flawed forensic science, an informant, bad lawyering, and government misconduct. Without a doubt, this issue has shocked society, due to the fact we rely on the system for pure justice. Within my findings, it is apparent that victims of wrongful convictions suffer numerous affects when

Almost every day, we hear about justice being served upon criminals and we, as a society, feel a sense of relief that another threat to the public has been sentenced to a term in prison, where they will no longer pose a risk to the world at large. However, there are very rare occasions where the integrity of the justice system gets skewed and people who should not have been convicted are made to serve heavy prison sentences. When word of this judicial misstep reaches the public, there is social outcry, and we begin to question the judicial system for committing such a serious faux pas.

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 book Ordinary Injustice: How America Holds Court written by Amy Bach reflects upon “ordinary injustice” that members of society fall victim to by the American criminal justice system. In short, the phrase “ordinary injustice” comes from the improper acts that have become second nature to court officials but has yet to be explained and resolved by other actors in the court. It is noted in the text that “ordinary injustice results when a community of legal professionals becomes so accustomed to a pattern of lapses that they can no longer see their role in them” (Bach 2). This recurring pattern has been easy to identify by outsiders but difficult to handle by insiders of the court. Bach supports this idea by making clear that, “proving mistakes, both visible and invisible, [is] very difficult in the criminal justice system, even for those who are insiders” (258).

Since the very beginning of time our Founding Fathers and those that basically built the foundation of this country left a lot of responsibility in the hands of our government and the bases of religion. From Darryl Hunt to Arthur Allan Thomas to Richard Jewell every year there are wrongful convictions that make their way across the courts around the United States. Every year citizens are brought into the courtrooms with cases to present to the judge and jury and although our country places so much responsibility in the hands of the jury and judges across the country, there are times when they simply make mistakes. With so

The United States prides itself on having robust, deeply entrenched measures implemented across its core agencies, including the police and criminal justice system, to safeguard against wrongfully convicting people who, after further reflection, are factually found to be innocent. As citizens, we have been educated to trust, among other things, that our systems protect the notions that one is innocent until proven guilty and that prosecution must prove any charges beyond a reasonable doubt. Yet, wrongful convictions are more prevalent than we might think. In particular, the publicity of hundreds of cases over the last few decades has put a spotlight on this indisputable

Every year in the United States of America, millions of crimes are committed that violate and harm the individual rights, properties, and freedoms that are not only guaranteed to American citizens of this country, but also naturally inherent to mankind as whole. Based on the founding principles of our country, which are derived from the Constitution of these United States, justice is dealt accordingly to the perpetrators of these crimes. While this justice is usually fair, due to certain rights given to those who may be charged with crimes, sometimes an error is made. A simple mistake, a missing or broken link in the chain that

Since 1923, when Judge Learned Hand said that the American judicial system “has always been haunted by the ghost of the innocent man convicted,” the issue of wrongful conviction has been acknowledged to man (Halstead, 1992; Huff, Rattner, Sagarin, & MacNamara, 1986). After the judge made his innocuous statements, serious study of this phenomenon began. Contrary to the statement the judge made, time and technology have revealed that an unquantifiable number of wrongfully convicted persons have served prison terms and even been executed for crimes they did not commit and some that did not even occur. Research into wrongful conviction was virtually nonexistent until Professor Edward Brochard of Yale University published his book Convicting the Innocent in 1932. This book documented 65 such cases, addressed the legal causes of miscarriage, and offered suggestions to reform. Subsequently, numerous other researchers began conducting case studies and publishing findings that affirmed that wrongful conviction represents a systematic problem within the American judicial process (Huff, 2002).

Introduction: Each year, many people that are innocent are dished out short or long term prison term for crimes that they did not commit. These innocent people have been “wrongfully convicted”. Sometimes these wrongfully convicted charges are unbeknownst to the judge and or jury; other times, they are just wrongfully convicted due to corrupt law enforcement officers. This corrupt issue is very wrong and should be done away with immediately, which is my reason my choosing this topic. In this research paper, I plan to find reasons for wrongful convictions, the actual number, statistics, of individuals that have been wrongful convicted, and those individuals who have stepped up to make a difference in this dilemma.

Most people in America believe that our criminal justice system is fair and true. The idea that any free citizen could be unjustly sentenced to prison or executed by the state is thought of as false. Unfortunately now a days the judicial process has been infiltrated with false confessions, eyewitness misidentification, improper forensic science, perjury, ineffective defense counsels, messy police investigations and prosecutorial misconduct. Our criminal justice system is based on the concept that every wrong has a cause and effect, thus forcing us to punish any and all offenders, but with all the faults in our system how do we know who’s guilty of committing the crime? Most of the time this is when wrongful convictions occurs. A simple definition of wrongful conviction is when innocent defendants are found guilty in criminal trials. Frequently these innocent defendants are forced to go as far as to plead guilty to avoid death penalties or long prison sentences. “The Number of wrongly convicted persons cannot be known with certainty, because no federal or state agency keeps track of exonerations, let alone wrongful convictions. Many news stories, reports and books fairly describe wrongful convictions in detail, although not all of these wrongful convictions resulted in formal exonerations. In some of these cases, prosecutors insisted that the original verdict was accurate despite strong new evidence of factual innocence, further clouding an understanding of wrongful

Have you ever been grounded or punished by your parent’s for something you honestly didn’t do? Maybe your sibling or friend stole something or hurt someone and the blame and the “horrible” consequences were put on you. No phone, no TV, no friends over, confined to your room. Straight tortures and a feeling of betrayal and dishonesty from everyone around you. Now, imagine being an adult wrongfully accused of a major crime such as an armed robbery or murder, which they didn’t commit, except it isn’t being grounded or their parents they 're worried about, its sitting behind bars, no longer a free citizen, fighting for their freedom with most likely one of the following things happened such as an eyewitness identified the wrong individual, false confessions, Perjury, maybe even forensic science error. Imagine as a child how you felt being grounded in the comfort of our own home. Just picture how an individual would feel wrongfully convicted in a cold, 10x10 box with a cold cot to sleep on! The injustice of being convicted and imprisoned for a crime one did not commit is intuitively apparent. I would take being grounded over a jail cell any day.

Following such protocol could help in cases where classifying a person’s guilt is based on fact finding by way of fair and honest legal procedures instead of presenting facts alone. Because the rights listed in the Constitution are not simple, accountability and liability must be present for criminal justice officials and authorities. Equality and uniformity should have a place in the justice process.