Wrongful Convictions In Criminal Justice

Currently in the United States there are 2 million incarcerated people. America has a wrongful conviction rate of 1 percent which translates to about 20,000 innocent people being punished for crimes they didn’t do. On January 13, 1999, Adnan Syed was convicted of the murder of his ex-girlfriend Hae Min Lee in Baltimore, Maryland. Nobody is completely positive what happened that day or who killed Hae. Most of the suspected events that occurred that day come from the testimony of Jay Wilds, one of Adnan’s friends, who claims to be a witness of the crime and says Adnan is the murderer.

The original rationale of the rule of the exclusion of the wrongfulness probation has a clear constitutional scope, involves an enhanced warranty for individual rights and seeks to prevent access to process all those evidence to be obtained by the police authorities violated constitutional rights of the people. (Oaks, D. (1970)) One way it has been used in a case was during Boyd V. United States where several cases of plate glass were confiscated from the defendants by federal customs agents due to suspicion that certain documents had been falsified for the purposes of avoiding customs fees or duties. During the course of the proceedings, the defendants were ordered by the judge to produce documents showing the quantity and value of the shipments.

It is an important issue to be discussed. At this moment it may not directly affect everyone, currently a large percentage of those affected are people in poverty or men of color; but the number of incarcerations has greatly increased over the past “40 years” and may continue to increase in the long run affecting many. Stevenson is trying to raise awareness, informing his audience about the justice system today and how it favors those who are “rich and guilty [rather] than if you’re poor and innocent.” He is trying to raise awareness as to how punishment in the criminal system does not stop at a certain age, and how the death penalty “in America is defined by error.” Through his experiences and efforts he has found a need to bring public awareness as to how unjust the United States criminal system is.

From this one can conclude that people are trying to stop false witnesses. This is happening by sending them to jail. Three false witnesses in a murder case received double-digit prison sentences (O’Grady). This shows that people are taking steps to the right path of justice. A more specific example can be Austasia Kapteyn.

That shows that he didn’t really have reasoning. This also shows how someone can be arrested but their is no evidence. That would be a bad justice system. Walter Dean Myers uses sensory details to show theme. On 145 and 146 the mom asks, “Should I have got a black lawyer?”

The five factors associated with wrongful convictions are as follows, adversarial process, eyewitness identification, forensic evidence misconduct/ error, interrogation and confessions, and informants/ jailhouse snitches. The adversarial process relies on the skills and resources of the defense and prosecution. Eyewitness identification includes evidence from a witness who has seen the event and can pick out a perpetrator. Forensic evidence misconduct/ error involves forensic evidence that has been collected poorly or handled wrong down the line and tampered. Interrogation and confessions have exonerated about 20% of the wrongful convictions cases, but with this can lead to false confessions.

17 year-old charged in 1969 of the rape and murder of Gail Miller, the Saskatoon nurse. This had become one of Canada’s most wrongful convictions. Gail Miller was raped and stabbed at 6:45 a.m on January 31st, 1969. She was left in a snowbank, and two 2 hours later the police found her body. The police frantically tried to find all possible sex offenders in the area, but they all came up clean, so they found no leads.

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.

When reviewing the issues associated with the criminal justice system in the United States, wrongful convictions are becoming a serious one that society as a whole needs to be aware of. While there are a countless factors that can contribute to a wrongful conviction, there are five distinct ones that are the leading causes in wrongful convictions: the adversarial process, Eyewitness identification, misconduct and errors regarding forensic evidence, interrogations and confessions, and jailhouse snitches/informants. In relation to wrongful convictions, the adversarial system places more emphasis on the process rather than truth finding, meaning an individual can usually only appeal if there is an issue regarding the process; if someone is wrongfully

Since 1930, 90 percent of individuals executed for rape have been African Americans. This issue has faced multiple controversies due to the belief of “complete confidence” of the criminal justice system (Harmon, 2004). Wrongful convictions have historically occurred due to the races of the defendant versus the race of the victim. This is an in issue because these cases impair the integrity and reliability of the court system (Harmon, 2004). Wrong convictions are not as uncommon as believed by the public.

1.Society as a whole believes serial killer are evil because that is how the media portrays them. We subconsciously let the media control our thoughts by believing it what they tell us. The media knows the power they have over us when we listen to the news, watching a movie or even reading the newspaper. In the way they report news on serial killers , it promotes fear and anxiety to their viewers. Movies even have more effect than we realize as well .

Over the past few decades, hundreds of people have been falsely imprisoned. Many of their cases were founded on the account of one or more eyewitnesses. The criminal justice system often relies on eyewitness accounts to piece together a crime and identify the perpetrator. But studies showing the faultiness of our memories, particularly in stressful events, suggest that witnesses may not be as reliable of a source as we think. An often-cited example of when the memory of an eyewitness has failed to serve justice is the case of Ronald Cotton.

This type of confession is commonly made to with the desire to protect the criminal (Deffenbacher, 1996), due to the inability to differentiate one’s fantasy and the reality, or to satisfy the need for attention (Gudjonsson, 2003). As an illustration, high-profile cases such as Nicole Brown Simpson murders in 1994, tends to attract a larger amount of voluntary false confession cases (Corwin, 1996). Another type

Wrongful convictions are not usually thought of but there is a numerous amount of people that have been wrongly convicted throughout the years. Within the US there is about 2 million people behind bars meaning that 1% or 20,000 people are in for a crime they did not commit. But however, in 2015 only 149 people were cleared of a crime they didn’t not commit. Also, recent studies have said 1 out of 25 people on death row is likely innocent. One good website that has a list and the stories of people that were wrongly convicted is innocence project.

Despite all the progress the criminal justice system has made over the years, there will always be flaws due to humanity. Humans will never be perfect, making this the biggest downfall of any operation involving people. In any given situation, there is a decision made to later have an outcome. Depending on the decision and how the situation is viewed, the outcome may be good or bad.