Summary Of A Smoldering Ember On The Barbeque Of Justice

A Smoldering Ember on the Barbeque of Justice

“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself” - Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Fear plays a major factor in the lives of almost every human on the planet, and fear restrains people doing many things - good and bad. Although FDR is right in many instances, fear needs to be instilled in other places such as the justice system. Without fear stuck into hearts of defendants in the face of America’s courts, there would be little order. Although modern technology is available, even the innocent must fear the justice system because of false judgement, the use of racial bias and the use of deception. Some may argue that modern technology allows for perfection in court decision, and therefore, the innocent

The ability to discover so much with so little seems to make accurate court verdicts much easier. However, modern technology has not proved to be effective in reaching the correct decision as forensic science has had little impact on court error. According to a national geographic article, “I thought that improvements in DNA technology might have lowered our error rate, but the researchers don’t think it makes much of a dent. Just 18 of the 142 exonerations since 1973 were thanks to DNA testing.” (Hughes). In other words, most cases in which a defendant was vindicated from receiving the death row punishment were due to the use old fashioned physical evidence. The numbers are incredible as well as as the error rate itself. During a study by Samuel Gross, numbers involving cases in which a defendant was wrongly convicted were

Lying under the sworn testimony is illegal, and it can bring major charges upon the culprit, but it often happens and goes unnoticed. Often times, a witness is either bribed, or lies for the betterment of themselves or others because he thinks that lying is not a big deal. Lying under oath, otherwise known as perjury, is a serious issue as it can be hard to distinguish the truth from lies. One of the most documented cases in history was the O.J. Simpson murder case, and the result was almost affected by the false testimony of a witness. Simpson was ruled not guilty for the murder of Nicole Brown and Ronald Goldman. Although he was not guilty, someone else in the courtroom was, and it could have put a (then) innocent man in prison for life. Mark Fuhrman, former LAPD officer, denied that he had said the N-word in the past ten years. His statement was blatantly contradicted by a set of tapes in which he “...not only used it, but described committing various acts of police brutality.” (Jung). If it were not for the discovery of the tapes, one might not be able to discover that Mark Fuhrman was a racist, and his hostility toward O.J. could be due to hate. Immediately after the trial, Fuhrman was tried for perjury in which he was found guilty. Unfortunately, people are untrustworthy, and deception can occur in even the largest cases. The innocent cannot trust that