False Imprisonment Imagine walking down the street and being stopped by the police and then forcefully and wrongfully being arrested based on skin color, gender, race, or because you “look” like someone they’re looking for. As a result of fitting whatever criteria it takes for them to stop you and falsely arrest you, you end up falsely imprisoned. 1 False imprisonment is commonly defined as being arrested against ones will, the unlawful restraint of another, and being imprisoned without legal justification. False imprisonment is an intentional tort. An intentional tort is a wrongful act that results in the harm of another. This harm can be physical, psychological, or result in the damage of property. False arrest is closely related to false …show more content…
13 It was created to assist prisoners who could be proven innocent through the use of DNA testing. More than 300 people in the U.S. 12 have been exonerated by the use of DNA testing, to date. Twenty people who have served time on death row were exonerated. These people together have served an average of 4,606 years in prison. 14 The innocence project aims to exonerate the innocent, improve the law, reform through the courts, and support the exonerated. 15 “The Innocence Project’s groundbreaking use of DNA technology to free innocent people has provided irrefutable proof that wrongful convictions are not isolated or rare events but instead from systemic defects” (Innocence Project). 16 There have been 337 DNA exonerations in the United States. Of the exonerees, the average age at the time of their wrongful convictions was 26.5. 17 The leading causes of wrongful convictions are eyewitness misidentification testimony, invalidated or improper forensic science, false confessions and incriminating statements, and informants. 18 “Since 1989, there have been tens of thousands of cases where prime suspects were identified and pursued—until DNA testing (prior to conviction) proved that they were wrongly accused” (Innocence Project). There may be thousands of other innocent people in prison who are wrongfully
The Innocence Project, founded in 1992 by Peter Neufeld and Barry Scheck, absolves ones who were wrongly convicted through DNA testing and improves the criminal justice system to prevent future injustices. Their mission is to free the overwhelming amount of innocent people who remain incarcerated, and bring amends to the system responsible for their unjust imprisonment. The Innocence Project aims to exonerate, improve, reform, and support. In 1978, Kenneth Adams and three other men, all together known as the “Ford Heights Four”, were wrongly convicted of rape and double murder.
False imprisonment is also shown through threat to a person that forces them to stay. Court law proves that this threat can also be to that person’s liberty,
According to the Huffington Post, “in 2014, 139 people were exonerated in 2014. The number has risen most years since 2005, when 61 people were cleared of crimes they didn’t commit” (Ferner 1). Another case that pulled the heartstrings is the wrongful conviction of Adrian Thomas. His 4 month old son was brought into the ER for having severe head trauma, which he later died from in the hospital. Thomas was taken to court with the only evidence being his confession.
They say that it is better that ten guilty men go free then one innocent man be wrongly convicted. On a 60 Minute broadcast, reporter Lesley Stahl did a story regarding the wrongful imprisonment of an innocent man based off of a rape victim’s eyewitness identification. The man convicted of the crime was sentenced to life plus fifty years at the age of twenty-two for a crime he never committed. Eleven years later, his innocence was finally proven when DNA was able to exonerate and clear his name.
It is a great technological innovation that can help bring evidences and fact faster. In the article The DNA Wars Are Over, “Forensic use of DNA technology in criminal cases began in 1986… In one of the first uses of DNA in a criminal case in the United States, in November 1987.” Sadly in 1985, DNA testing was not popular in the U.S. investigation and was not available in Cole’s case. I believe the U.S. court system is improving and yes there are a lot mistrials and wrongful conviction cases, but you cannot avoid the fact that DNA testing can bring better truth than just relying on statements of both
Innocence Project Report on the Case of Curtis Jasper Moore Tommy Warrick Drake University According to the Innocence Project one of the greatest causes of wrongful conviction is due to eyewitness misidentification. They state that 72% of cases where defendants have been exonerated eyewitness misidentification played a role. Even though eyewitness testimony has been proven inaccurate numerous times, it can still be the decisive evidence in a court of law. This is because the law views the human memory as a camcorder which can record and repeat whatever it sees.
Home invasion; for example, I am home alone with my ten years old son, and two men with guns break in and tied us up. They search through my possessions, and fill a duffle bag full of electronic, money, and jewelry and offer no good explanation for why they are there. The circumstances may convince a prosecutor that the person entered in order to commit a crime; thus finding the defendant guilty and sentenced to a term of imprisonment in excess of ten years (Reinhart, 2014, 3). Strangulation; for example, I was sitting at my desk, a man walk behind me an start applying pressure to my throat blocking my air flow, causing me to struggle for breath. If the prosecutor fined that his actions result in serious physical injury, then he will be
Destiny Johnson LSTD 502 Criminal Law January 10, 2016 A. Research Paper Topic: Wrongful Convictions B. Law abiding citizens should not be wrongfully convicted of a crime that they did not commit. Deoxyribonucleic Acid (DNA) was first used to aid a criminal investigation by Professor Jeffreys in 1986 for rapes/murders that occurred in the United Kingdom. The first DNA exoneration took place in 1989. Prior to DNA testing there were hundreds of wrongful convictions.
Since the founding of our judicial system there have always been individuals claiming innocence to a crime that they have been found guilty of, traditionally, after their sentencing no matter how innocent they may or may not be would have to serve, live and possibly die by the decision of their peers. The Innocence Project, founded in 1992 by Barry C. Scheck alongside Peter J. Neufeld faces this issue by challenging the sentencing of convicted individuals who claim their innocence and have factual ground to stand upon. The Innocence Project uses the recent advances in deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) testing to prove their client’s innocence by using methods that were not available, too primitive or not provided to their clients during their investigation,
However, there is no way to gather the exact percent of individuals that have been wrongfully convicted. DNA evidence has certainly decreased the number of wrongfully convicted, unfortunately, there
Final Essay America, the home of the free, but how free are we really? Incarceration rates over the past 30 years have soared, and currently 25% of all inmates in the world lie behind the bars of American prisons. (Approximately 716 per 100,000 peoples). Whether justified or not, our country locks up more people per year than any other country. Cases such as that of Tamir Rice, and Steven Avery exemplify both spectrums of the exploitation of our judiciary system.
Convicting the Innocent: Where Criminal Prosecutions Go Wrong In Brandon L. Garrett 's book, Convicting the Innocent: Where Criminal Prosecutions Go Wrong, he makes it very clear how wrongful convictions occur and how these people have spent many years in prison for crimes they never committed. Garrett presents 250 cases of innocent people who were convicted wrongfully because the prosecutors opposed testing the DNA of those convicted. Garrett provided simple statistics such as graphs, percentages, and charts to help the reader understand just how great of an impact this was.
With millions of criminal convictions a year, more than two million people may end up behind bars(Gross). According to Samuel Gross reporter for The Washington Post, writes that also “even one percent amounts to tens of thousands of tragic [wrongful conviction] errors”(Gross). Citizens who are wrongfully convicted are incarcerated for a crime he or she did not commit. Many police officers, prosecutors, and judges are responsible for the verdict that puts innocents into prison. To be able to get exonerated many wait over a decade just to get there case looked at, not many are able to have the opportunity of getting out.
Luckily, it is known what causes wrongful convictions and how to fix them. Many wrongful convictions are due to mistaken eyewitnesses, jailhouse snitches, or false evidence. I think many of the wrongful convictions could be solved with harder evidence, more information. A case should not rely on a single eye witness but multiple.
Roy Brown Through the Innocence Project The Innocence Project frees people from jail that were wrongly convicted of a crime. That is what happened to Roy Brown. Through the help of the Innocence Project, he was released from jail. Brown was convicted of a horrific crime that included murder, even though the evidence that was provided was analyzed and presented wrongly.