Wrongful Conviction

Imagine a completely innocent individual being convicted for a crime he or she had no involvement in but being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The individual lives out his or her jail sentence in an orderly fashion only to be found not guilty after more than a decade with the discovery of vital evidence produced by advanced technology. This is just one of countless cases of wrongful conviction of innocent people by the justice system. Since 1989, countless of cases were found wrongfully convicted after the case had been closed, but were reopened thanks to the advancement in the justice system such as the usage of DNA testing. Problem is, if this is the state of our justice system at the moment, where there is such a large chance of someone being wrongfully accused and having to serve in prison for so many years and only to be released after the damage has already been done, one would always fear that type of justice system. The innocent should fear the justice system no matter how
They claim that there have been so many new advances in the judicial system in a variety of aspects, that there is virtually no chance that the innocent would be wrongly convicted. For example, in an article entitled “Policing and Wrongful Convictions” by Anthony W. Batts, Maddy deLone and Darrel W. Stephens, the authors assert that a newly developed strategy called heuristics is being implemented to prevent wrongful convictions within the judicial system. Specifically, this method helps jurors analyze information presented as evidence in order to ensure a fair verdict (Batts). However, even if there are newly developed processes to aid in making a just conviction, these strategies are not infallible. While they may increase the chances of correctly delivering an accurate verdict, there is still a chance that an innocent person would be wrongly