Facts: On December 16, 2005, James M. Eaton, Jr., and Marguerite Eaton filed a complaint against Waldrop alleging that Waldrop had fraudulently induced James to deed certain property situated in Jefferson County ("the property") to Waldrop and Marguerite, jointly with a right of survivorship, and that Waldrop had subsequently fraudulently induced Marguerite to transfer her interest in the property to Waldrop. James and Marguerite requested that the court set aside the deed executed by James transferring the property to Marguerite and Waldrop and requested "other, further or different relief as may be just and proper"; they also demanded a trial by jury. Waldrop answered the complaint on January 26, 2006. Marguerite subsequently died, and James, as the executor of her estate, was substituted as a plaintiff.…
The article is entitled “Teen charged with bullying boyfriend via text message to kill himself”. It is a Massachusetts criminal law case that is about a 17-year-old girl named Michelle Carter essentially pressuring her boyfriend into committing suicide .These pressuring text messages with her late 18- year-old boyfriend Conrad Roy III ultimately resulted in the teen being charged with involuntary manslaughter. The article displays both the prosecution and defence for this case with defense stating that Carter initially tried discouraged Carter from committing suicide and only supported his decision after thinking that his mind was made up. The text messages they used to support their claim included a text from Carter to Roy a month before…
In 20014 Attorney General Eric Holder requested that the U.S. Sentencing Commission study the use of algorithms “Although these measures were crafted with the best intentions, I am concerned that they inadvertently undermine our efforts to ensure individualized and equal justice” he also felt that “they may exacerbate unwarranted and unjust disparities that are already far too common in our criminal justice system and in our society”.…
On November 10th York had a Fighting Wrongful Convictions: Journalists Police the Justice System panel hosted by the Journalism Department. The main point of the panel was to talk about how a journalist should properly go about writing a story on wrongful convictions and to help illustrate the point they brought in Johnny Hincapie. Hincapie was an 18 year old who was wrongfully charged with helping in the murder of Brian Watkins in the 1990s. Now at 42 years old, and after serving 25 years in prison his case has been dismissed and he is being tried fairly all thanks to the hard work, and dedication of journalist and York professor Bill Hughes who published an article in City Limits Magazine in 2010 addressing Hincapie’s wrongful conviction. At the panel they had Bill Hughes, Johnny Hincapie, Robert Dennison (the former Chairman of the New York State Board of Parole), Pete…
According to Smalarz and Wells (2014), the leading cause of wrongful convictions is eyewitness misidentification. Smalarz and Wells described a unique case where a rape victim, JT, had the opportunity to correctly identify her attacker. JT’s lawyer had received reports of her attacker bragging about getting away with the rape while he was in prison for another crime. The victim, JT, incorrectly identified the attacker, she actually choose the same person she choose in her first line up after the assault. The information JT’s lawyer presented her had essential information on the case and to convict the culprit but, the timing of the information was received too late.…
Bedau and Radelet, as described Thistlethwaite and Wooldredge (2010) spent several years categorizing instances of capital defendants convicted on the basis of mistakes gross physical facts. Bedau and Radelet conservatively concluded by the end of their study, from 1900 to 1985, three innocent people per every two years have been executed in capital cases. Specifically, one person is convicted per year, per in capital crime – African-Americans were widely over-represented in the study. The authors also recognize the American criminal justice system is not designed to correct errors once they are discovered. Exonerating convicted defendants is a relatively small number and can take years to identify and…
These wrongful convictions occur because the criminal justice system had many flaws. It was not only the system that had flaws, but also the people on the board. The…
Since 1992, almost three hundred people in the United States have been exonerated by the Innocence Project. What this means is that almost three hundred people have been acquitted for a crime that they were falsely convicted of committing and were then released back into society. Many of these false convictions were the result of a lack of technology back in the time of the trials which lead to unvalidated or improper use of forensic science. Some additional reasons that people are wrongfully convicted are misidentifications from eyewitnesses and false confessions. In this paper, I plan to write about Kenneth Ireland. His story shows how wrongful convictions and exonerations are issues in the United States.…
Falsely confessing to a guilty plea is another way in which wrongful convictions may be mete out. However, if a person is truly innocent, what would be so strong so as to compel them to plead guilty? One logical answer is that when the potential to be convicted of a crime exists and carries a mandatory sentence with it, it may be better to plead to a lesser crime, which may carry a lower sentence and allow for a conditional sentence. Stat on number of wrongful convictions. Even a single wrongful conviction is a travesty and injustice to the…
Someone can be affected by their surroundings, whether it is the community, they live in or peer pressure. In addition, someone’s genetics can have an influence on his or her behaviors. That person could suffer from a mental illness that causes irrational behaviors. There are also the individuals that just want to do it on their own free will (Schmalleger, 2011, p.…
Crime is a very fragile word that could be portrayed into many different understandings. The definition of a crime; According to "Dictionary.com" (2014), " is an action or an instance of negligence that is deemed injurious to the public welfare or morals or to the interests of the state, and that is legally prohibited" (Noun 1.) Law means having a set of rules and regulations in which communities and society as a whole abide by. Crime can be understood as acting against those laws (rules) that have a punishment in return for those actions. There are two models that are most commonly used by society to determine whether certain acts…
Criminal intent by definition means, “the intent to do something wrong or forbidden by law…intent refers to the state of mind accompanying an act…it is the outline of the mental pattern which is necessary to do the crime” (Criminal Intent). The question in this situation is whether it is or it is not possible for a child to commit a crime with criminal intent. I believe the answer to this particular question can be found in the argumentation within several of the factors that we have studied thus far in this course. These factors mentioned being biosocial, cognitive, and psychosocial growth.…
For many years now, there has been an enormous increase in the accusations of innocent defendants of wrongful convictions. Research has shown a number of common factors that appear frequently in wrongful conviction cases, including forensic error, prosecutorial misconduct, false confessions, and eyewitness…
Innocent until proven guilty is a main motto of the court systems, but what happens if you're innocent and “proven” guilty? This is where the Innocence Project comes in, and their teams fight to prove the innocence of the wrongly convicted.…
During the 20th century, the American criminal justice system greatly advanced mainly through the evaluation of the Cleveland Survey, the professionalization of the modern police, and the development of the Modern Penal Code.…