Wrongful Conviction In The Criminal Justice System

The criminal justice system needs reform to avoid wrongful convictions and unprepared re-entry to society. Each year, thousands of people are convicted of crimes they do not commit. A few main causes of wrongful convictions are eyewitness misidentifications, government misconduct, and bad lawyering. In many cases, those exonerated of the crimes they didn’t commit and now they longer have the proper resources to re-enter society successfully.

In one case example involving eyewitness misidentification, a man named Walter served over twenty five years for a rape and robbery he did not commit. The prosecution's case against him stemmed from a seriously flawed eyewitness identification procedure that led to misidentification. A pregnant woman was
He was convicted based on the testimony of eyewitnesses who may have been involved in the crime (the stolen items were found in their home) and a supposed confession that he said police coerced him to sign. Several key pieces of evidence from the crime scene had not been subjected to DNA testing; they include multiple semen stains, blood stains and evidence collected in the rape kit during the victim's autopsy. In 2002, Pennsylvania enacted a law that allows convicted people to seek DNA testing to prove their innocence. The law applies to people convicted before 1995 or cases where DNA testing was not previously conducted, and the law says courts that are weighing requests for testing should presume that the DNA testing would be exculpatory (meaning the results would favor the defendant). However, the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office has opposed Anthony's efforts to secure DNA testing, claiming that because Anthony supposedly confessed, he cannot seek DNA testing and last year a lower court denied testing (Mid-Atlantic, n.d.). When legislators passed the state's post-conviction DNA testing law, this was exactly the kind of case they intended to cover. Advanced DNA testing was not available before Anthony was convicted, and there are several pieces of biological evidence that could only have come from the
These people claim any reform efforts to the current system will weaken it further. Although the current process allows innocent people to be convicted of crimes they did not commit, people claim reforms would make it difficult to achieve convictions of those who are guilty of committing crimes. People claim wrongful convictions are merely a result of honest mistakes and reforms could not reduce this, when in fact, officials take steps to ensure that a defendant is convicted despite weak evidence or even clear proof of innocence. People claim enforcement officers and prosecutors are honest and trustworthy, but criminal justice is a human endeavor and the possibility for corruption exists. Even if one officer of every thousand is dishonest, wrongful convictions will continue to occur. The cases of wrongful convictions uncovered by DNA testing are filled with evidence of fraud or misconduct by prosecutors or police