Wrongful Convictions Research Paper

Unfortunately, wrongful convictions of innocent people sometimes happen in the criminal justice system. According to a new report from the University of Michigan Law School 's National Registry of Exonerations, 2015 set a record for the number of wrongly convicted Americans who received justice; 149 people who were either declared innocent or cleared of their convictions or guilty pleas. Many of them had already served long prison terms for crimes they did not commit (Mencimer, 2016.)

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.

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).

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.

This paper takes a leap into the corrupted side of the criminal justice system. After analyzing several articles regarding wrongful conviction cases in the Unites States, it is apparent that wrongful conviction cases occur more often than society believed. It has come to surface in recent years that wrongful convictions are a big problem with our criminal justice system. Researchers have discovered the causes of wrongful convictions to be bad lawyering, government misconduct, informants, false confessions, flawed forensic science and eyewitness error. Furthermore, this paper explores the affects victims face due to a wrongful conviction. As society has begun to steadily realize that miscarriage of justice is a possibility, researchers have considered reforms to the criminal justice system.

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).

In general, there are several factors that can cause wrongful conviction and later exoneration. One factor is a false confession. As authors Earl Smith and Angela J. Hattery stated in their journal that a false confession can be caused by individual

Going off prior knowledge before taking my Wrongful Convictions Class, I simply would have believed that our justice system most of the time is correct in their convictions and that when they are not they go to the utmost procedure to correct their wrong. Most of the time in cases such as the Cruz case when one is wrongfully convicted they are lasted rewarded a monetary award as a settlement for the mistake made upon the government, but one must ask themselves is that enough? Can money truly value up to time spent away from family, friends, and loved ones? What if there is a wrongful conviction in a case where one has seen the death penalty and cannot be paid monetary reward because they have fallen victim to hands of wrong justification and the government?

Mistakes are made constantly by everyone. Some mistakes can be harmless and some can ruin a person's life. Two examples of these horrible mistakes are the cases against Roy Brown and Michael Morton. These two cases had many mistakes in them that took some of their lives away. They were both charged with murder and given a significant amount of time in prison.There were mistakes about the murders, the mistakes made by the judicial system, and how their lives were changed by these mistakes.

Wrongful convictions occur when innocent defendants are found guilty in a criminal trial; When people are wrongfully convicted, they spend part of their life in prison while the criminal is free of punishment. The world has two million citizens incarcerated, about 20,000 people punished for crimes they did not commit (Ferner). Two thousand people are punished for crimes they did not commit, that is not a small number, so why do wrongful convictions occur? Wrongful convictions can occur for various reasons; the common causes are eyewitness misidentification, unvalidated or improper forensics science, false confessions, government misconduct, unprofessional lawyering, and informants or snitches.

With the number of DNA exonerations growing in the recent years, wrongful convictions reveal disturbing trends and fissures in the justice system. It shows how broken the system is, and why it needs urgent fixing. According to Huff (1996), over ten thousand people are convicted wrongfully for serious crimes each year. This study established that factors leading to wrongful convictions are false eyewitnesses, a prejudiced jury, incompetent prosecutors, and suspects’ ignorance. Where DNA evidence clears a suspect, array of reasons emerge; misconduct, mistakes, to race and class factors. It is important to make DNA data available to attorneys in order to enable them mount a strong

We hear in the news about police misconduct, use of excessive force, embezzlement, but one thing I found while researching what I should write this paper on is the Wrongful convictions of innocent men and women, that spend years in prison being innocent, and there is nothing that gets done till it’s too late. Some wrongful convictions are honest mistakes, but many times law enforcement and prosecutors lose sight of the obligation of ensuring truth and justice, and are focused on their conviction rates. As with any job, they are honest people and ones that just don’t care and are corrupt, this exists in the criminal justice system. One way to prove someone is innocent now is through DNA testing, but even at all levels of a criminal investigation there could be misconduct or mishandling of evidence, which then causes the evidence to become compromised.

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.

For such a long time, physical bullying has been the largest problem schools and parents had to face with their children, but now another form of bullying has arisen; cyber bullying. In society today, teens are drawn cell phones, laptops, and other technological advancements. Social media is a way for many teens and adolescents to interact with one another and share countless happenings of their personal lives. Cyber bullying occurs when individuals use the internet to send or comment cruel and unnecessary messages to another. In its various forms cyber bullying includes, indirect and direct harassment, posting inappropriate pictures, impersonating another being, or just being plain cruel. Although anyone can become a victim of cyber bullying, improper use of the internet can further induce harassment, due to the adolescents desire to use modern day technologies. The harassers could be classmates, online “friends’’, or anonymous users. One barrier that is difficult to overcome is determining who is responsible for the attacks online, because many bullies hide behind fake usernames or profiles to protect their real identity, which is commonly known as “hiding behind a screen”. (Bonanno 2013). The motives for a cyber-bully are never clear, some might say