Essay On Wrongful Conviction In Texas
Several events in the criminal justice system in Texas have caused people to question its integrity.
Things like “aggressive use of the death penalty, wrongful convictions, and flawed evidence procedures” have sparked doubts in people about the Texas judicial system (Champagne & Harpham, 2015, p. 445).
There have been countless instances in Texas of people wrongfully convicted and put to death through the death penalty. DNA evidence arises years later, proving the person was innocent, and that they were executed for a crime they did not commit. This happens so much in Texas that the state has become “the home of more verified wrongful convictions than any other state” (2015, p. 446). With so many innocent people being put on death row and …show more content…
Texas often uses “eyewitness identification with little or questionable forensic evidence,” basically putting more emphasis on what people say they saw, rather than concrete evidence to prove if the suspect did or did not commit a crime (2015, p. 446). Evidence that is found is often wrongly handled, or ignored until much later (typically after the suspect has been in prison or executed).
In one situation that led to many wrongful convictions was when district attorney Henry Wade was in charge. He prioritized high conviction rates over everything else, ignoring evidence to ensure his rates were where he wanted them to be.
Cases like the Willingham case and the Tulia Drug arrests have caused people to question Texas’s criminal justice system as well. Questionable evidence practices and police actions led to arrests and convictions of people that may have been innocent.
One of the ways Texas is trying to remedy past mistakes is through the new district attorney Craig Watkins. He put a Conviction Integrity Unit into place “to investigate postconviction claims of actual innocence, to identify valid claims, and to then take appropriate action” (2015, p.
Things like “aggressive use of the death penalty, wrongful convictions, and flawed evidence procedures” have sparked doubts in people about the Texas judicial system (Champagne & Harpham, 2015, p. 445).
There have been countless instances in Texas of people wrongfully convicted and put to death through the death penalty. DNA evidence arises years later, proving the person was innocent, and that they were executed for a crime they did not commit. This happens so much in Texas that the state has become “the home of more verified wrongful convictions than any other state” (2015, p. 446). With so many innocent people being put on death row and …show more content…
Texas often uses “eyewitness identification with little or questionable forensic evidence,” basically putting more emphasis on what people say they saw, rather than concrete evidence to prove if the suspect did or did not commit a crime (2015, p. 446). Evidence that is found is often wrongly handled, or ignored until much later (typically after the suspect has been in prison or executed).
In one situation that led to many wrongful convictions was when district attorney Henry Wade was in charge. He prioritized high conviction rates over everything else, ignoring evidence to ensure his rates were where he wanted them to be.
Cases like the Willingham case and the Tulia Drug arrests have caused people to question Texas’s criminal justice system as well. Questionable evidence practices and police actions led to arrests and convictions of people that may have been innocent.
One of the ways Texas is trying to remedy past mistakes is through the new district attorney Craig Watkins. He put a Conviction Integrity Unit into place “to investigate postconviction claims of actual innocence, to identify valid claims, and to then take appropriate action” (2015, p.