Forensic Problems And Wrongful Convictions Essay

The innocence project and forensic science are two forms that can help determine who the actual preparatory was and can help people who have been wrongly convicted in a crime he/she did not commit. In many cases the forensic such as DNA, blood sample, or semen and other evidence that have been lost or even wrongly tested can end up becoming a big mistake that can send someone to jail that did not commit the crime. In the article, Forensic Problems and Wrongfully Convictions (2009) states that, the most wrongful convictions involve more than one contributing cases, for example, if an eyewitness may have wrongly identified an innocent person, and in the same case a forensic analyst may have testified that hairs from the crime scene match the defendant’s hair. In the jury’s eyes, the eyewitness testimony is strengthened by the forensic evidence (Forensic Problems and Wrongfully Convictions, 2009). Not always the eye witnesses are right with what they say so having the right forensic evidence can help with determine who is actually the perpetrator. Such as this case were the eyewitness was not so good and also a lot of the evidence was miss communicated. From the Innocence Project article of Timothy Cole stated, that on September 17,1986, a 26 year-old student from Texas Tech and an who was army veteran was convicted of aggravated sex assault and was sentenced to 25 years in jail.
A Texas prisoner named Jerry Wayne Johnson wrote to the police, the detectives and the prosecutors in Lubbock County that he was the one who committed the rape, were Cole was convicted on. Johnson who was already serving a 99-year sentence after convictions for two sexual assaults similar to Cole's. Johnsons letter was unfortunately not acknowledge. Timothy Cole then died in 1999 without knowing that Johnson was trying to confess to the crime (Timothy Cole,