In the summer of 1996, a black man named Rodney Roberts was arrested and charged with the kidnapping and rape of a teenage girl. Proposed with two negative options: a plea deal of nine years in prison and a trial that could result in life imprisonment, Roberts took a plea deal offered to him knowing fully well of his own innocence. More than nine years later, the proposed victim stated in an interview with reporters that she never knew that anyone had been sentenced for her rape and denied ever having identified Roberts as her attacker from a mugshot or lineup. Soon after, in May of 2006, the Essex County prosecutor’s office ordered investigators to look for missing evidence involved in the Roberts case and found the original rape kit still sealed. Upon testing, it was revealed that Roberts was innocent. …show more content…
However, the real question of debates lies in whether or not the criminal justice system’s primary purpose is efficiency or justice. Is time and money saved more valuable than truth and human life? Even if abolition can’t be implemented entirely, is it not worth implementing at all? For example, current US alcohol laws dictate that people must be twenty-one years or older to drink, however, young people still find ways to obtain alcohol. Even if young people can obtain alcohol, does that mean our system shouldn’t try to restrict it at all and provide it freely? Likewise with plea bargaining, even if in cases such as Alaska, prosecutors found loopholes against abolition, does that mean the US should make no attempt at restricting wrongful convictions and racial inequality? Littering, human trafficking, murder, theft, and discrimination are all aspects of human life that can’t be eliminated entirely; however, the United States still seeks to prevent them through legislation and law
In the article “Cole Case,” the author, Jena Williams writes about Timothy Cole, a falsely accused man charged with 25 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. Known as the Texas Tech Rapes, four women were raped from 1984 to 1985. As police searched for the rapist, Cole ran into an undercover cop on campus and told her his name and where he lived. Although not suspected to be the rapist, police ran his license plates and discovered Cole recently filed it as being robbed. Claiming to help him by investigating the robbery, police took Cole’s photo and placed it in a lineup of other mug shots.
This is a case study about a young man by the name of Korey Wise who was wrongly incarcerated in the Central Park Jogger case of 1989. Due to being the age of sixteen he was the only one out of the five boys wrongly accused to be sent to an adult prison. In this prison Korey was victim to many forms of abuse, physical and mental to name a few. He was found guilty despite the lack of evidence. None of the DNA samples or Semen matched up with Korey.
The Innocence Project illustrates and explains how someone can be imprisoned for many years, and then, suddenly be set free. Randolph Arledge was accused of murdering and raping 21-year-old Carolyn Armstrong on August 30, 1981. She was found on a dirt road in Navarro County, naked from the waist down with 40 stab wounds in the chest and neck area. Her car was also found a couple of miles away with a partially smoked joint and a black hair net in it.
In 1990, Michael Phillips was convicted of raping a 16-year-old girl at a motel in Dallas, Texas.. Phillips pleaded guilty because, he said later, his attorney told him that as a black man who had been accused of raping a white teenager that he should try to avoid a jury trial. He went to prison for 12 years and, after his release, spent another six months in jail after failing to register as a sex offender. Phillips’s name is being cleared.
The city council offered compensation to Brown for his false arrest. During an emergency meeting, the City Council approved a $300,000 promissory note to Dennis Brown, whose conviction for rape was overturned in 2004 after DNA evidence suggested he couldn’t have been the suspect (Thibodeaux). This information shows how Brown’s case was false, and he was therefore compensated for it. Brown also felt the need to take legal action for his case. He sued the city police officers, claiming his civil rights were violated for forcing him to confess (Thibodeaux).
White walked out of Georgia’s prison as a free man on the date of December 10th 2007 after serving twenty-two years, DNA testing provided he was innocence thanks to the Innocence Project and its team. On the morning of August 11, 1979 an intruder broke into a Manchester, Georgia, where a seventy-four-year-old woman was sleep on her couch. The intruder which was a male beat and raped the woman and demanded all her money. The attacker pulled the telephone cord out of the wall and left through the back door. The victim was taken to the hospital, however because of extent of her injuries she was not given a rape kit during the examination.
Over the past 40 years U.S. incarceration has grown at an extraordinary rate, with the United States’ prison population increasing from 320,000 inmates in 1980 to nearly 2.3 million inmates in 2013. The growth in prison population is in part due to society’s shift toward tough on crime policies including determinate sentencing, truth-in-sentencing laws, and mandatory minimums. These tough on crime policies resulted in more individuals committing less serious crimes being sentenced to serve time and longer prison sentences. The 1970s-1980s: The War on Drugs and Changes in Sentencing Policy Incarceration rates did rise above 140 persons imprisoned per 100,000 of the population until the mid 1970s.
Famous American cereal killer, John Wayne Gacy, had murdered and raped 33 adolescents, many of whom were teenagers, the justice system made sure this man could never do this again. The public is turning a blind eye to the many contributions the justice system makes, we should look at not only how we can reform, but how it contributes to society The justice system creates many contributions to society, such as the safety it provides for children and their chances of exploitation, the many instances where they convict dangerous individuals therefore creating a safer environment for the present and future of society, and the fact it provides all citizens of the public and private sectors, to have the right to a fair, speedy, and public trial,
Introduction Crime, its punishment, and the legislation that decides the way in which they interact has long been a public policy concern that reaches everyone within a given society. It is the function of the judicial system to distribute punishment equitably and following the law. The four traditional goals of punishment, as defined by Connecticut General Assembly (2001), are: “deterrence, incapacitation, retribution, and rehabilitation.” However, how legislature achieves and balances these goals has changed due to the implementation of responses to changing societal influences. Mandatory minimum sentences exemplify this shift.
In 1972, former President Richard Nixon made his infamous statements regarding crime and drug abuse. In this speech, he declared a war on crime and drugs and intended to decrease the number of people using drugs and the amount of crimes that were committed. Since this declaration, incarceration rates in the U.S. have gone up by 500%, even though the amount of crime happening has gone down. One of the reasons why I feel our rates have risen, is because sometimes, we put people in jail when they don’t need to be there in the first place.
The case in which I picked for my Case Report was Robert Clark was convicted in 1982 of rape, abduction, and armed robbery. He has vehemently maintained his innocence for 24 years, contending that an incorrect eyewitness identification led to his conviction. Postconviction DNA testing revealed in November 2005 that Clark was not the criminal. In light of this fresh information, Clark was freed from prison on December 8th, 2005, and his conviction was overturned. Moreover, The victim was kidnapped from a parking lot in East Atlanta, Georgia, on July 30, 1981.
Although many may argue that the accusations presented by the plaintiffs seemed quite plausible, further investigation proved many such claims to be false. For example, although Price and Bates accused the young African-American men of raping them on the freight train, “the Scottsboro doctor who examined the girls less than two hours after the alleged rapes […] was able to show on cross examination that the girls were both calm, composed, and free of bleeding and vaginal damage” (Linder). The fact that a certified doctor was able to prove that the young women were virtually unhurt after the supposed rapes shows that the girls were lying to the court. Although their claims made sense to the prejudiced judicial system, Price and Bates were simply using their positions in society as young white women to gain unwarranted sympathy from the all-white jury. Because scientific evidence was able to contradict the prosecution’s allegations, it was evident that false accusations were being made by the plaintiffs.
Mitochondrial DNA testing showed that none of the 15 hairs matched Courtney” (Innocence Project). If the Tulsa Department approved of the Innocence Project instead of rejecting there offer in 2001, Courtney would’ve been innocent long time ago. After Innocence Project help out Sedrick Courtney’s case and proved him innocent, he decides to settle a lawsuit with the city of Tulsa but he also received a state compensation of $175,000. “On July 19, 2012, a Tulsa County District judge granted the Innocence Project’s motion to exonerate Courtney” (Innocence Project).
The United States has a larger percent of its population incarcerated than any other country. America is responsible for a quarter of the world’s inmates, and its incarceration rate is growing exponentially. The expense generated by these overcrowded prisons cost the country a substantial amount of money every year. While people are incarcerated for several reasons, the country’s prisons are focused on punishment rather than reform, and the result is a misguided system that fails to rehabilitate criminals or discourage crime. This literature review will discuss the ineffectiveness of the United States’ criminal justice system and how mass incarceration of non-violent offenders, racial profiling, and a high rate of recidivism has become a problem.
In the criminal justice system, the corrections component is also responsible for the rehabilitation of the convicted individual. It is their duty to attempt to make the defendant a productive member of society once again. Based on the individual’s behavior while incarcerated, the court and corrections officials may decide to place them on parole, which ensures that the individual will comply with the rules of society once they are fully released from the system. The criminal justice system is an essential role in the organizational structure of not only the United States but also in countries around the world. If there were no criminal justice system to administer punishment, the world would be unstructured, disorganized, unjustified, cruel, and not to mention a chaotic place for it citizens.