Wrongful Convictions In Criminal Justice

The Innocence Project is a non-profit legal organization that exonerates innocent individuals through the use of DNA testing. Moreover, they work to reform the criminal justice system in order to prevent further injustices that will occur. The United States criminal justice system is centuries years old and does not live up to the same standards as it once did. The American people are not equal. Minorities and the lower classes are not treated equally in our justice system. There have been far too many advancements in our world today to still be wrongly accused for crimes and paying the ultimate price for them.The system is starving for reform to ensure that every single American citizen is equal and treated accordingly to his or her inalienable
rights.
Even though number of potentially innocent people is not crystal clear, one is too many.
“A wrongful conviction is when a subsequent investigation finds that an individual who has been tried and found guilty of a crime is, in fact, innocent of that crime” (Bako). A wrongful conviction is not just a simple mistake, lives and families are devastated. This happens more often than people think it does. Even though this person very well may be innocent, it takes years to even appeal their case if they can even get that far. The key issues with wrongful convictions are that prosecutors rely on unreliable evidence such as eyewitness identification of a person that does not really know what he or she saw on that specific date and much, much more. The Innocence project strives to exonerate those whose rights have been unconstitutionally taken away from them through the use of DNA evidence. “The development of DNA testing has allowed the Innocence Project to help exonerate 344 innocent Americans - 20 of whom were on death row (Bako).” These 344 exonerees represent how the American criminal justice system can fail the people she was designed to protect. The innocence project works to raise awareness to the issue our justice system faces when it comes to minorities in particular. Continued research and advocacy, as well as improving the effectiveness of the criminal justice process itself, are all necessary steps to ensuring the innocence of those wrongly accused of a crime. Over 75% of
those exonerees are minorities (Hyden).
Because of the technological advances in the field of DNA, many previous cases have reopened for further investigation into the holes in those particular cases. “DNA testing has exposed some gaping flaws in the system, calling into question traditional assumptions on the value of eyewitness testimony, forensic evidence , confessions, and the appeals process” (Bako).
Our superiors in the law field will just not accept the fact the system is flawed and that there are innocent people awaiting their death in jail. “Supreme court justice Antonin Scala began by dismissing the idea that an innocent person may have been executed in America, explaining that if such tragedy had occurred, “we would not have to hunt for it; the innocent’s name would be shouted from the rooftops by the abolition lobby” (Shapiro). DNA is fairly new in law and the majority of the cases that the innocence projects works on deals with people that have been convicted of a crime before DNA evidence was developed. This goes to show just how little evidence is used to convict certain people. And by certain people, we are addressing poverty-stricken, uneducated people, mostly minorities. This also highlights the kind of denial that people are in. The superior people in our justice system with supreme roles will not admit that there is a problem. Because of their pride, they will not own up to the facts that severe mistakes have been made. And as they go home every night to their warm and comfy beds, innocent people will sleep in a cold cell behind bars, secluded from their former livelihoods. When our superiors can finally identify that yes, there is a problem, then we can work towards reform. However, if they treat this issue as if it does not exist as they have countless times before, we cannot gravitate towards any type of resolution.
Error and bias is fairly common in forensic investigations and trial. For some experts, merely knowing the details of a crime or discussing it with police or prosecutors beforehand can introduce significant bias to a lab technician’s analysis. If they know some of the facts of the case that the prosecution tells them, this can cause them to turn for their initial findings. They will try, along with the prosecution to provide "evidence" as to why the defendant is guilty. How is this able to be heard by the jury? The vast majority of wrongfully convicted people had court-appointed attorneys. An extreme amount of these attorneys do not delve into these cases as deep as they need to be. In other words, they are unprepared and unconcerned. How do we fix this? We need reform. The justice system is not fair for all. The only way to fix this problem is to address this problem, and that is what the innocence project stands for, but they cannot singlehandedly solve this issue. It would be nice to believe that scientists will always get at the truth no matter whom they report to, but studies have consistently shown that even they can be affected by bias. They are blind to what consequences their inaccurate studies or testimonies will bring. In order to begin the difficult but necessary process of reform, we must get rid of the death penalty. There is nothing moral or just about the death penalty—certainly not the way it is implemented in America, and anyone who says otherwise is either deluding themselves or trying to get elected by appearing tough on crime. “ Take Troy Davis, for example, a 43-year-old black man from Georgia who has spent the past 20 years of his life on death row for allegedly shooting and killing a white off-duty police officer—a crime he very well may not have committed (Rigonati).” The United States has been extremely slow in regard to reforming its justice system. It seems as if America is the last major democracy that has yet to abolish the death penalty.
As it now stands, America's Western allies have abolished the death penalty, which leaves America as one of only three industrialized democracies still carrying out capital punishment. Internationally, the U.S. ranks fifth in terms of the number of prisoners put to death, putting America in such ill-esteemed company as the regimes of China, Iran, North Korea, and Yemen.
The death penalty has overwhelming evidence against it. There are way too many errors and flaws to risk a person’s life upon. In a Columbia University study on 5,760 capital cases, the report found an overall rate of error of 68 percent. In other words, courts found serious reversible errors in nearly 7 out of 10 capital cases (Shapiro). The most common errors included egregiously incompetent defense lawyers, prosecutorial suppression of evidence and other misconduct, misinstruction of juries, and biased judges and juries. Even though 14 US States have done away from the death penalty, that is a far cry from the 50 states that we have. There is nothing moral about the death penalty and there is clear evidence that our justice system is flawed, yet people are sentenced to death based on little to no evidence that this person committed a crime. There is a high rate of error in wrongful convictions and our superiors are sentencing innocent people to death. It is as if we are going back into the past with these policies. Racial disparities exist, especially in death row inmates. “African-Americans make up 43% of death row inmates despite the fact that they make up only 12% of the Unites States population. Moreover, African-Americans are 40% more likely to be sentenced to death than a White defendant who committed the same crime” (Hayden). Abolishing the death penalty would save an extreme amount of money in our states that could be used to give back to the citizens, such as public work programs or reducing taxes to give taxpayers a little break.
These inconsistencies in our justice system are finally being seen.
People are beginning the process of caring and acknowledging the injustices that plague these people’s lives. However, that is not enough, our superiors need to swallow their pride for this system and admit that there are in fact faults that happen. We as citizens can all chip in to make sure that the ones that do not deserve to be incarcerated, are not. We have to address the general public that is probably not aware of the extent of injustice that happens behind those wooden courtroom doors. We all need to listen instead of rushing to judge a person in a case. If we bring awareness and if we bring leadership, reform will
follow.