Why Are Innocent People Wrongly Convicted

There is another man that has been wrongly accused for what he knew he didn’t do but was still considered guilty. Marvin Anderson was a person with good heart and lived with his girlfriend and had a good life till he was mistaken for a criminal. First, Anderson was considered guilty for accusing a woman of another race and attacked her. Anderson was considered an assaulter and put into a testimony of a white-victim (Anonymous). Here his is being considered a criminal of a woman of another race to the trail and being a testimony of the victim that had said that he was he one that had assaulted her. However, when Anderson was in prisoned, his lawyer has been trying to see if they would do a DNA test to prove if it was him or

Steven Avery did not give up and tried to prove his innocence. He tried in 1995 with some evidence under Beersten’s fingernails. While it revealed that it matched an unknown assailant, it didn’t eliminate Avery (Weghorst & Warden). In 2002, an attorney from Wisconsin Innocence Project got a court order to analyze the pubic hair collected in the rape kit, which was submitted to be compare to FBI databases. The hair did not match Avery, but did match Gregory Allen, who also lived around the area (Davey, 2005). In an article written by Susan Smith, she described this revelation as a “Cold Hit” because neither the scientist nor the police were looking for Gregory Allen despise the fact that there were several factors that would make him a suspect (Smith, 2006). On September 11, 2003, this revelation also made a joint motion by Manitowoc District Attorney’s Office and the Wisconsin Innocence Project to dismiss all the charges against Avery. The motion was granted and Steven Avery was released (Possley).

Throughout history, various cases have not been properly executed in such a way that rightful criminals are taken to justice (hence the creation of courtrooms). The result of improper trials have led to the death of innocent lives which is unfortunately not unprecedented. A trial that epitomizes such unfair charges, leading to the execution of an innocent, was the Lindbergh Baby Kidnapping Trial. Bruno Richard Hauptmann was not guilty of the murder pertaining to the Lindbergh’s baby; he was wrongly convicted under circumstantial and biased evidence. The kidnapping of the baby had led to widespread speculations, and caused the case to spread amongst the

One of several errors in the trial was a reckless omission by a forensic scientist who testified for the prosecution. Semen was found on the victim’s body, the scientist testified, and Dominguez’s blood type matched the semen sample, meaning he could have been the perpetrator. The scientist did not tell the jury, however, that two-thirds of men in America would have matched that sample. Dominguez was convicted and sentenced to nine years in prison. He was released after serving four years and sought DNA testing at his own expense. The tests proved his innocence. His case is one of many in which limited forensic science or wrong forensic testimony has led to wrongful convictions.

DNA exonerations are very common. So much so that in the United States alone, there have been “317 post-conviction DNA exonerations” (2014). The very first DNA exoneration dated back to 1989. The Innocence Project examined these DNA exonerations and found that “8 of the 317 people exonerated through DNA served time on death row. Another 16 were charged with capital crimes but not sentenced to death” (2014). More so, the average time served was about 13.5 years, and the average age was 27 (2014). This means that before the age of

Well, in nearly 25 years since post-conviction DNA evidence has been used to demonstrate criminal innocence, even in cases that landed defendants on death row or in prison for life. Eyewitness misidentification, forensic science errors, false confessions, government misconduct and bad lawyering are many of the reasons wrongful convictions occur. Eyewitness being the most common. Sometimes it can be done by error and other times it is actually done intentionally. In seventy-seven percent of the DNA exonerations, eyewitness misidentification led to wrongful convictions (The Innocence Project- How wrongful conviction happen).

The reliability if an eyewitness testimony is questionable. The witness may be so certain that the person that thy are pointing out is one hundred per cent the suspect or they could be so certain when it comes to retelling the incident, although these people are so sure on what it is they are doing, their testimony cannot always accurate. Due to the lack of accuracy with eyewitness

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.

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.

In 1987 in Texas, a prosecutor was faced with this dilemma. Michael Morton was convicted of murdering his wife based on circumstantial evidence. Morton’s defense attorney was never told about, or given access to, the police report in which Morton’s three year old son had told police that his daddy had not killed his mommy. After serving 25 years for murdering his wife, Morton was exonerated after attorneys were finally given access to the police report and DNA testing of a bloody bandana found at the scene of the murder matched a man who was serving a sentence for the murder of another woman.

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.

There are often mistakes made that falsely determine an individual’s sentence. Sloppy police work and loss of documents are examples of careless errors. There is also some room for error with determining the results of a DNA sample that do not fall under the human error category. Many times there may not be ample DNA samples at a crime scene. Only a fraction of crimes reveal DNA. Drive-by shootings and bombings often do not provide DNA for investigation purposes. “There is a public perception that DNA is the cure-all for these kinds of mistakes. DNA is not the whole answer.” (Dieter, Richard) Eye witnesses cannot solely and accurately determine a person’s fate 100 percent of the time. There are numerous amounts of cases in which those found guilty were indeed later found innocent. Many times, these individuals have already served time in jail. Many argue that the time inmates spend in

A wrongful conviction is a terrible injustice that is magnified when an actual innocent person spends years, sometimes even decades in prison and/or death row. This has been recognized by the U.S Legal system for quite some time now and the rising number of exonerations are growing.