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Wrongful Conviction Examples

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Wrongful Convictions: Exonerated by DNA Since 1992, 333 people in the United States have been wrongfully convicted and exonerated by DNA testing. Of these 333 people, 20 served time under death row. (Inn Proj) Because of this, faith in the criminal justice system is at times questioned. 1. What causes wrongful conviction? 2. Something about organizations such as innocence project… 3. How does DNA prove innocence? 4. What is life like for those after exoneration and release? What Causes Wrongful Conviction? There are six major issues that may result in a wrongful conviction. The biggest contributing factor is false identifications or eye witness misidentifications. This affects more than seventy percent of convictions that later result …show more content…

Junk science is unproven data that is presented as fact. Hair analysis is one example of how forensic science can be used to falsely incriminate an individual. Hair analysis is compares the consistencies between two or more hairs. This science is able to eliminate suspects, but not positively identify them. Another example along the same lines would be blood type. A suspect with the same blood type as evidence does not make a person guilty, but if the suspect had a type O blood and the evidence was type B it clearly was not that particular suspect. These two examples are still used in cases to help persuade the guilt of a …show more content…

Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is a molecule found in all forms of life that is passed down from parents to offspring. What makes each DNA unique is the chemical makeup of the molecule sometimes referred to as the “blueprint of life.” (BIO). DNA is made up of nucleotides consisting of a sugar, a phosphate and a base pair. About six million nucleotide base pairs make up DNA in each cell. Retrieving this amount of data is both exhausting and time consuming. A short cut has been found that scientist use to analyze smaller segments of DNA. Short tandem repeats (STR) are segments of DNA sequences that are repeated. (BIO) The span of each STR differs from one person to the next. The STR length contrast is what is used to differentiate individuals. Gel electrophoresis then uses the STRs to create a DNA profile. The gel electrophoresis separates the STRs depending on their length and the pattern is then shown in fluorescent gel creating the profile. These profiles are then used by scientist to compare patterns between evidence and or suspects to determine a match or not a match. The probability of two people having the same amount of repeated sequences in STRs is one in billions of

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1114 Words | 5 Pages

According to the Huffington Post, “in 2014, 139 people were exonerated in 2014. The number has risen most years since 2005, when 61 people were cleared of crimes they didn’t commit” (Ferner 1). Another case that pulled the heartstrings is the wrongful conviction of Adrian Thomas. His 4 month old son was brought into the ER for having severe head trauma, which he later died from in the hospital. Thomas was taken to court with the only evidence being his confession.

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DNA Fingerprinting Using Agarose Gel S. Aaron Sowards Bio 122 Lab 04 Brianna Adanitsch Jakob Lester Minhenga Ngijoi 2/21/18 Dr. Chad R. Sethman Abstract DNA fingerprinting is the process of analyzing an individual’s DNA base-pair patterns. The DNA fingerprinting lab involved identifying the suspect using Agarose Gel and Polymerase Chain Reaction. It was found that suspect two s DNA matched the crime scene DNA.

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1570 Words | 7 Pages

The judge and jury in a court case are suppose to take the information presented and use it to decide if the defendant is innocent or guilty. This decision relies on conducting a proper investigation. All the evidence should be presented and used correctly, even if it might not seem significant at the time. Also, the information provided should be as correct as possible with numerous amounts of detail. All suspects should be investigated at the same level of scrutiny as the others to ensure whether are truly innocent or guilty.

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679 Words | 3 Pages

Jim Dwyer, a columnist and author, wrote an article which discusses the possible steps that can be taken to battle false confessions and witness identifications. As he argues in the article these aspects are closely connected and one leads to another. Dwyer (2005) proposes that testimonies and memories of suspects and witnesses should be treated just like any other physical evidence that is discovered in the crime scene. Also, investigators and police officers should keep in mind that testimonies are also subjected to contamination (Dwyer, 2015, para. 4). One proposal that regards eye witnesses is to present the potential evidence by an investigator who is not on the case, thus eliminating leading questions and hints on specific details

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886 Words | 4 Pages

CHAPTER 5. INFORMATION & COMMUNICATION Quantitative v. Qualitative Studies Quantitative investigations are scientific, objective, and effective in describing phenomena in terms of magnitude (Balian, 1988). Quantitative investigations use numeric values and statistics to identify patterns, to objectively quantify relationships between variables, and to make predictions. In addition, because large sample sizes are used, data can be generalized to larger populations.

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The media tends to focus on the mistakes of the criminal justice system. Many reports have highlighted the cases of wrongfully imprisoned people. While these cases are indeed wrong, many of the people imprisoned have committed a crime. For example, DNA evidence is now a useful determinant of guilt or innocence with regard to rape cases. Gwendolyn Carrol wrote an article for the Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology.

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735 Words | 3 Pages

Several things contribute to the wrongful convictions of innocent individuals. When addressing false convictions, there should be a focus on the need for better reforms and results for injustices. These mistakes not only cause harm to these individuals but also discredit public trust. This essay addresses the reasons behind these miscarriages, the repetitiveness, and compensations for the wrongfully accused and arrested individuals. Furthermore, it is to find out about people responsible for providing compensation or atonement for the time unjustly spent in prison.

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1235 Words | 5 Pages

Wrongful convictions have plagued the world throughout history. When crimes are committed the public feels ascertain a way about the situation. Depending on the severity of the issues, the last thing the public wants is for the criminals to get away. The pressure intensifies to catch some one for the crime.

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Acquiring information on the entire population or using probability sampling would obviously not be appropriate for this extremely specific study, so a nonprobability purposive sample was selected for analysis. There were 200 near misses and 260 erroneous conviction cases located for analysis in this study (National Institute of Justice, 2013). Additionally, the defendants had to be 1) convicted or indicted by a state; 2) of a violent felony against a person; 3) in the system after 1980; and 4) factually innocent (National Institute of Justice, 2013). As identified by Dr. Gould, there was a chance of underreporting, however, ensuring the data group was factually innocent was essential to construct variables and explanations to explicate why some cases are near misses versus wrongful

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282 Words | 2 Pages

When convict individuals for criminal acts and making sure the right person is captured it may be best for law officials to use DNA evidence that would exonerate wrongfully-convictions. In recent years there has been great advancements in technology that would allow investigators to use when trying to prove evidence on individuals who are sitting on death row. Citizens have also, made great efforts ensuring innocent people are not convicted for crimes they did not commit. According, to the Equal Justice in 1973, there were at least 156 people released from the criminal justice system for being wrongfully convicted. When innocent people are wrongfully convicted it not only take away many years of their lives, and causing hurt to the victim’s

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When reviewing the issues associated with the criminal justice system in the United States, wrongful convictions are becoming a serious one that society as a whole needs to be aware of. While there are a countless factors that can contribute to a wrongful conviction, there are five distinct ones that are the leading causes in wrongful convictions: the adversarial process, Eyewitness identification, misconduct and errors regarding forensic evidence, interrogations and confessions, and jailhouse snitches/informants. In relation to wrongful convictions, the adversarial system places more emphasis on the process rather than truth finding, meaning an individual can usually only appeal if there is an issue regarding the process; if someone is wrongfully

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862 Words | 4 Pages

With crucial factors determining the success and/or failures of the death penalty, we certainly take note to the exonerations of convicted persons, especially those who were exonerated after being executed. There are currently 2,147 people who were sentenced to death that have been exonerated, totaling more than 18,750 years lost. It is hard to understand how an innocent person stood so close to being murdered, nevertheless it’s even harder to understand how an innocent person, in fact, was murdered. Cathleen Burnett an associate professor of criminal justice and criminology at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, having seen the death penalty process unfold along with the increasing number of exonerated individuals examined the language

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970 Words | 4 Pages

In every system there are flaws. The criminal justice system is no exception. A major flaw that occurs is the problem of wrongful convictions. Around the world, innocent people are incarcerated and sometimes even executed for crimes that they didn’t commit. The United States of America is known for its high number of overturned cases due to actual innocence.

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British Jurist, William Blackstone, famously stated, “It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer” (Norris, Bonventre, Redlich, & Acker, 2010). The number of innocent people getting their convictions overturned is steadily increasing in the United States. The recent surge in overturned convictions is a product of The Innocence Project. The Innocence Project is an organization that was founded in 1992 by Peter Neufeld and Barry Scheck at Cardozo School of Law. The purpose of their organization is to exonerate individuals have been wrongly convicted through DNA testing.

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395 Words | 2 Pages

Evidence based on scientific explanations is a good evidence that can be used in the criminal justice system. In addition, these evidences based on forensic science can be very useful and critical where these evidences can free innocently convicted accused. Criminal cases such as Duke lacrosse, David Millggard, Clayton Johnson, and Talao are examples of case that forensic science helped to prove their innocence. However, there is potential possibility that these evidences of forensic science can lead to wrongful convictions when the criminal justice system subjectively look into the scientific evidences. Michel Shirley in 1987 was arrested in 1987 for the murder and rape of Linda Cooke.

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