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Kirk Bloodsworth's Five Eyewitness Testimony

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In 1984, Kirk Bloodsworth was accused of raping and murdering nine-year-old Dawn Hamilton. Two young boys were fishing in a small pond behind the apartment that Dawn had lived at and witnessed her walk into the wood with a man described as 6-foot five, with a bushy mustache and blonde hair. Hours later, Dawn was found face down in the woods by a Baltimore detective. At the time Bloodsworth did not live in the area. He was a 6 feet, redhead who wore glasses. Detectives should’ve taken that as intimations that Bloodsworth was the wrong man. Whether he was guilty or innocent depended on five eyewitness testimonies. The two young boys and three other eyewitnesses stated that he was the man that they saw take Dawn into the woods. After he spent …show more content…

In 2015, Smalarz found that a misidentification testimony by very confident eyewitnesses has happened in about seventy-two percent of cases where innocent people have been accused and were later found innocent by DNA testing. Someone can tell you a story with details, confidence, and passion yet it doesn’t necessarily mean that it is true. In correspondence with Smalarz, in 1977, Randall Adams was sentenced to death for the murder of a police officer in Dallas, Texas. An alleged eyewitness, who in fact was the actual killer, framed Mr. Adams; he received immunity from prosecution in exchange for his testimony. Mr. Adams was in fact not involved in the crime. Errol Morris took interest in the film and produced the famous documentary: The Thin Blue Line. In total, it took detectives twelve years and four months for them to figure out that Mr. Adams was the wrong suspect (Martin, 2011). Therefore, proving that Smalarz’s theory was correct; the actual killer appeared confident and passionate that Mr. Adams was the killer and got away with the crime. Martin shows bias in his article by stating that eyewitness testimonies are not reliable; he favors the idea that eyewitness testimonies should not be used in court cases and doesn’t not provide different perceptions in the

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During the summer of 1985, a nine-year-old girl named Dawn Hamilton was brutally raped and murdered. Her body was found in the woods near her home in Rosedale, Maryland. Several months later, Kirk Bloodsworth was wrongfully charged with the murder, sexual assault, and rape of Dawn Hamilton. He was eventually convicted of first-degree murder, sexual assault, and rape. Bloodsworth was sentenced to death.

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1139 Words | 5 Pages

Eyewitness accounts play a huge role in general in trials and verdicts, but may be unreliable many times, with certain views placed on evidence provided by children. Unreliability may arise from not being able to recount the identity of the accused, the actions and speech occurring during that time, the relationship of individuals towards the person in question, and many

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After a twelve-hour interrogation, Brenton Butler confessed to the murder of Mary Ann Stephens. A key claim made by the defense attorneys in this case was that this was a false confession, and after reaching a verdict of not guilty, the jury clearly agreed. The factors that led the false confession were laid out in a scene during the documentary. Instead of using the interview to discover the truth, the interrogators specifically sought out a confession from the suspect. They began the interrogation with the presumption that Brenton Butler was guilty.

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Leonard Peltier’s Innocence Leonard Peltier was a Native American man arrested for supposedly killing two FBI agents on Pine Ridge Reservation of South Dakota. There have been many debates about the integrity of the court cases and the lawfulness of Peltier’s arrest. Many FBI supporters would claim that there were eyewitness accounts and various other pieces of material evidence that show that Peltier was the culprit. However, Peltier supporters would rebut the evidence, saying that the eyewitness accounts aren’t legitimate and the court decision was politically influenced. I will consider both sides of the argument, and show that Peltier’s innocence is evident because the evidence provided against Peltier was falsified and the FBI used disingenuous methods in charging Peltier for murder.

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1188 Words | 5 Pages

However, these two men would not have suffered what they never deserved to if there were enough strong evidence their innocence. According to a survey of Ohio State University, there are about 10,000 people in the United States might be wrongfully convicted of serious crimes each year; also, this survey points out that there are more than half of those wrongfully convicted cases (52.3%) were built on eyewitness misidentification (Tom Spring). Unfortunately, Ronald Cotton was one of victims of those wrongfully convicted cases. The book tells us that after spending 5 minutes of studying mug shot photos, Jennifer, who was a victim of rape, picked Ronald Cotton who was one of the pictured; second, during the lineup, she picked him again without

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215 Words | 1 Pages

The Thin Blue Line" is a 1988 documentary film directed by Errol Morris, which investigates the case of Randall Dale Adams, a man who was sentenced to death for the murder of a police officer in Dallas, Texas. The film presents evidence that suggests Adams was wrongfully convicted and that another man, David Harris, was actually responsible for the crime. The thesis of "The Thin Blue Line" is that the criminal justice system can make mistakes and that the power of the law can sometimes be abused by those who are supposed to uphold it. Morris argues that the investigation and trial of Adams were flawed and biased, and that Harris, who had a history of violence and had been stopped by the police on the night of the murder, was the real perpetrator.

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Convicting the Innocent: Where Criminal Prosecutions Go Wrong In Brandon L. Garrett 's book, Convicting the Innocent: Where Criminal Prosecutions Go Wrong, he makes it very clear how wrongful convictions occur and how these people have spent many years in prison for crimes they never committed. Garrett presents 250 cases of innocent people who were convicted wrongfully because the prosecutors opposed testing the DNA of those convicted. Garrett provided simple statistics such as graphs, percentages, and charts to help the reader understand just how great of an impact this was.

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If a witness has an emotional or personal interest in a trial's outcome, their credibility can be challenged for bias. A witness's credibility is important because it can make or break a case and influence the jury's decision. In a real case, a witness’s testimony made an influence to the jury’s decision, but the credibility of the witness is questioned. This case had been present in “Serial”, which is told by Sarah Koenig.

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The Thin Blue Line brought up many questions concerning eye witnesses and memory. As the reenactments portrayed the memories of the eye witnesses, the audience could not help but be confused from all the inconsistencies that arose from story to story. And if the public is uncertain on who killed Officer Wood, then how was it so easy for the justice system to convict Randall Adams of the crime? The only evidence to prove this conviction were some extremely questionable testimonies that the eyewitnesses had, not to mention, some testimonies were changed during the

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1447 Words | 6 Pages

She urges jurors to remain skeptical of eyewitness identifications of defendants, and demonstrates how mistakes have been made. This book is built around descriptions of cases in which Loftus has been involved as an expert witness for the defense. The book begins with a brief description

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1475 Words | 6 Pages

When one is victim of or witness to a crime, it is expected that said person is brought into the police department to be questioned by the police. During this line of questioning it is possible that the victim or witness take part in suspect identification procedures. Such procedures include the use of lineups, showups, photo arrays and others. These procedures are referred to as system variables. These system variables are factors under the control of the investigators that have a demonstrated effect on the accuracy and reliability of eyewitness testimony.

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1227 Words | 5 Pages

Since the founding of our judicial system there have always been individuals claiming innocence to a crime that they have been found guilty of, traditionally, after their sentencing no matter how innocent they may or may not be would have to serve, live and possibly die by the decision of their peers. The Innocence Project, founded in 1992 by Barry C. Scheck alongside Peter J. Neufeld faces this issue by challenging the sentencing of convicted individuals who claim their innocence and have factual ground to stand upon. The Innocence Project uses the recent advances in deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) testing to prove their client’s innocence by using methods that were not available, too primitive or not provided to their clients during their investigation,

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1859 Words | 8 Pages

A story that seems highly improbably or impossible is likely to be so. The bigger the embellishments the more likely it is that the testimony is false, the same could be said of minimizing a story. A testimony that casts a witness in a near perfect light lends to their lack of credibility. In R. v. McKay, there were special scrutiny both as a result of judicial experience and as a matter of law. Accomplice evidence is recognized to be potentially dangerous because an accomplice may be motivated to shift blame away from him or herself to otherwise distort evidence to gain advantage.

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777 Words | 4 Pages

Eyewitness misinterpretation is the highest contributing factor to wrongful convictions. The majority of the wrongful convictions have been corrected by DNA. Exoneration cases that have involved convictions are based on mistaken identification and/or mistaken or overlooked evidence. While there had been evidence in the book “The Picking Cotton,” of police misconduct/ biased based on race. While prosecutors and law enforcement officials are expected, to be honest, uphold the law, have the best intentions to protect society and act with integrity but the pressure to get the right perpetrator my lead police to act inappropriate, unfair or in an unlawful manner, government misconduct can include withholding or fabricating evidence, suggestive ways

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732 Words | 3 Pages

In the novel To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee the term mockingbird symbolizes innocence in a person. In the novel it focuses on the fact that innocence, represented by the mockingbird, can be wrongfully harmed. There are two characters: Tom Robinson and Arthur “Boo” Radley that are supposed to represent the mockingbird. In the novel, Tom Robinson is the best example of a mockingbird because he is prosecuted for a crime he did not commit. Also, he was judged unfairly based on the color of his skin in his trial.

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