The American Justice System By Nicole Flatow Summary

Flatow, Nicole. “10 Most Appalling Failures of the American Justice System This Year.” Alternet, 25 Dec. 2013. In this article, Nicole Flatow, an author for Alternate, gives us with ten different cases where the American justice system failed. Flatow explains a case involving a sixteen-year-old who spent three years in prison without a trial. Flatow also lists cases involving murder, drugs, fight, and rape that were not correctly solved. This source is great at explaining the different stories that prove the injustice in America but it would have been better if it went more in depth about these cases, to give readers more knowledge. This source is also not very biased because it gives different examples for the failure of the justice system

Justice was taken away from an eighteen-year-old Thomas Haynesworth when he was in prison for twenty seven years for a crime he did not commit. The Washington Post continues explaining that, although he pleaded not guilty to all the charges, he was sentenced to seventy years in prison. Haynesworth did not even get a fighting chance to prove himself innocent before twenty seven years of his life were taken away from him. This source is a good and informative source but it would have even better if additional information about the case was provided. This source is biased because it is written a way that will make readers emotional.

Mayer, Theodoric and Thompson, Christie. “Criminal Injustice: the Best Reporting on Wrongful Convictions (MuckReads).” ProPublica, 26 Mar. 2013. Theodoric Meyer and Christie Thompson, writers for ProPublica explain that in 1991, an unemployed man named David Ranta was convicted of killing someone and was sentenced to prison. After twenty two years in a maximum security prison, Ranta was released after almost all of the evidence used to convict him fell away. This source also has many different stories of wrong convictions. Although this article provides different stories, they are very brief. It would have been better if they were throughly explained. This source is also not biased because it provides many examples with different stories.

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In his interview with Ana Swanson, a writer for the Washington Post, Adam Benforado, a law professor at Drexel University describes a case he studied that was a wrong verdict. Benforado explains that there was a rape case in 1979 and the victim was brought in to identify her attacker out of five men. The victim had previously been given pictures of these five men to identify and she could not. In the lineup, she picked John Jerome White as her attacker and he was immediately sentenced to prison for decades. Swanson continues writing that the DNA from the case was tested a couple of years later and White was not the rapist. The attacker was actually standing next to White and the victim picked out the wrong person. This is an amazing source, it is well explained, includes different stories, and not