The Wrongful Convictions Of Innocent Men And Women

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

I will also utilize Professor Natapoff who has served as a clerk for the Honorable David S. Tatel from the U.S. Court of Appeals and for Paul Friedman, U.S. District, Washington D.C. She is widely thought of as an expert on snitching in the criminal justice system. She recently served as an assistant public defender in Baltimore, Maryland. Professor Natapoff received an Open Society Institute Community Fellowship.

“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.

One thing I notice is a lot of the misconduct is by the arresting officers or detectives that are investigating the crime. The ways an office can have misconduct that could lead to false convictions, include suggestions when conducting interviews, coercing false confessions, lying to jurors about observations, failing to turn over evidence. Common forms of misconduct by a prosecutor can include, withhold evidence from defense, mishandling, mistreating or destroying evidence, allowing witnesses that they know are not truthful to testify, Pressing Witnesses of the defense to not testify, relying on fraudulent forensic experts.

With the initiative of the innocence project, many of these convictions are being overturned, allowing families to be reunited. There are many reasons why these wrongful convictions happen. The most common among them is false eyewitness identification, which has played a role in more than 75 percent of wrongful convictions overturned by the Innocence Project initiative. Once presumed to be incontrovertible, the ever growing body of evidence now tells that eyewitness identifications are unreliable (please see image A2 for the trending of exonerations year by year). In approximately, 25 percent of DNA exoneration cases, innocent people were coerced into making false confessions. Of the 292 people freed by the Innocence Project, 28 actually pled

A wrongful conviction can affect a person in many ways because it could put them in jail or ruin their lives, an example is Mr. Thomas Kennedy. It was just another day at his house and the cops showed up and arrested him. When he went on trial he realized his eleven-year-old daughter was in the stand accusing him of rape. He knew that has a lie, but no one believed him, because of a doctor’s report saying that there was damage done to her genitals. She continued on and said that he raped her in the bathroom and demonstrated how ‘he did it’ with stuffed animals. After the trial, he was sentenced to fifteen years in prison. Not until eleven years later then did his daughter come out and confess that she lied about the him raping her. She said

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).

On any given day in Canada, there are more blameless individuals in jail than liable ones. By "blameless individuals" I mean the individuals who have been blamed for a wrongdoing and are being hung on remand, anticipating a safeguard hearing or a trial. “dozens of innocent people might be languishing behind bars. Over the ensuing 30 years, more than 20 convicted murderers have been freed on the basis of serious doubts about the reliability of evidence and trial fairness in their cases.” The revealing of wrongly convicted wrongdoers has been apparently the overwhelming lawful improvement in Canada over the past half-century. In recent years, the issue of wrongful conviction has turned into an acknowledged reality in most common law jurisdiction; Prominent cases tend not just to attract our consideration regarding the deleterious impacts of a wrongful conviction on an individual but also to illustrate how parts of the criminal justice process have fizzled. An across the nation system of attorneys, columnists and legitimate associations have fought resolutely in the courts to get the freedom of offenders who had, in some cases, spent decades incarcerated. Clearly, wrongful conviction is the aspect of being in fact innocent but unfairly held accountable by a jury or other court of law for an act you did not do. Also a criminal code is a statute which implies or endeavors to set out all denied or criminal offenses, and their different disciplines. In this paper, I discuss

The purpose of this article by Clow, Leach and Riocciadelli(2012) was to investigate the consequences incurred by victims of wrongful conviction by reviewing relevant literature on the topic and examining how the research can influence legislation to improve the lives of victims of wrongful conviction following release. This topic is important to the fields of law and psychology because people are getting exonerated and released from prison having missed out on many years of their life as well as having incurred life changing events while in prison and the adjustment of the wrongfully convicted becomes of increasing concern as more people are released.

To say that one reason prosecutors engage in misconduct is because the U.S. criminal justice system favors convictions over justice is too vague of a term and it is not necessarily this way. There are other factors that needs to be taken in consideration and it is too skeptic to say it this way for all prosecutors. To encourage justice over convictions, one can participate by giving more training to prosecutors, investigate thoroughly before pressing any charges, and pursue the truth of the case instead of thinking ways to be promoted. Prosecutors are the administrators of justice at trial and they should uphold constitutional rights of everyone involved. The reactions would be overwhelmingly crazy and shocking if we started charging prosecutors

see the flaws and know that the accusations are false. A guilty verdict is rendered and a

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.

As we all may realize once a crime is committed the suspect is charged and then sentenced based off the judge’s decision. As we recall a crime is an unlawful act punishable by a state or other authority. In other words, those who commit minor or major crimes get incarcerated depending how serious is crime. Also, in some cases suspects receive supervised probation and must be watched periodically by an assigned officer. It is understandable that those who commit crimes are held accountable for their actions. Over the past decade families have been destroyed after knowing their significant other will be in jail for a long period of time based off a wrongful conviction. Over the past years victims have been incarcerated wrongfully on charges such as rape or murder. In many cases the victims were coerced to speak, confessions were manipulated to make the detective look good, or the officer yelled and smuggled their face so that the victim can forcefully say anything. A wrongful conviction known as a miscarriage of justice primarily is the conviction and punishment of a person for a crime they did not commit.