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Wrongful Convictions

688 Words3 Pages

Near Misses and Wrongful Convictions Erroneous convictions are a terrible injustice to those convicted and have the potential to deteriorate the public’s trust in the criminal justice system. An in-depth study was conducted by the National Institute of Justice and discussed by Dr. Jon Gould and John R. Firman during the presentation, “Wrongful Convictions: The Latest Scientific Research and Implications for Law Enforcement”. This study attempts to discover why some cases arrive into the system are near misses—this is an innocent person cleared or acquitted of all charges based on factual evidence—and other cases arrive into the system a different way become wrongful convictions, which these people are also factually innocent, it was just …show more content…

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 …show more content…

The study recommended the following actions to prevent wrongful convictions: checklists to conduct investigations; ensure forensic testing completed early in an investigation; embed a prosecutor in a police department; assign senior prosecutors for intake and charging; ensure files are open for discovery; establish a threshold for line-ups; post-error review; and providing immunity to those who self-identify errors in their report (National Institute of Justice, 2013). Law enforcement agencies must evaluate what needs to be done to incorporate these actions into their operations and develop policy to reinforce these

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In the United States 1,625 cases has been wrongfully convicted, for crimes they haven’t done nor have any connections to it. Sedrick Courtney’s is a prime example of wrongfully convicted people. The Case of Sedrick Courtney is form to show how our criminal justice system is corrupt. Sedrick Courtney was wrongfully convicted for the robbery on Shemita Greer in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

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1667 Words | 7 Pages

Introduction The book that I selected is called “Getting Life” by Michael Morton, who is a man that was wrongfully convicted of killing his wife in Texas in 1986. This book takes us from a happy young couple to the day of the murder, through the investigation into his wife’s murder, Michael’s trial and conviction, 25 years in prison, appeals, release from prison, and reintegration into society. One unique fact about this case is that is the first case where the prosecutor in a wrongful conviction case was subsequently convicted of prosecutorial misconduct, stripped of their law license and sentenced to serve time in jail.

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Throughout the whole investigation of the Gail Miller rape and murder case there were many wrongs committed leading up to the false conviction of David Milgaard. The authorities were pressured by the public and other groups to convict someone of this heinous crime and in doing so this action of theirs put an innocent man behind bars for twenty-three years. Right from the start of the investigation there were faults and incorrect procedures perpetrated by the police. The events that took place leading up to the conviction of Mr. Milgaard demonstrate just how sloppy the investigation took a turn when the police became lax in their investigational procedures.

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I am 21 and for as long as I can remember I have heard many stories about innocent people being accused of and being punished for crimes they did not commit. On Monday, March 20th of this year, I met Anthony Ray Hinton and learned about his story. Arrested on suspicion of two capital murders at age 29. He was convicted and sentenced to death despite having a reliable alibi and passing a polygraph test. It was only after repeated efforts by the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) team that the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously overturned his conviction based on his attorney’s deficient representation and he was eventually exonerated after 30 years in solitary confinement on Friday, April 3rd, 2015.

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802 Words | 4 Pages

¨In matters of truth or justice, there is no difference between large and small problems, for issues concerning the treatment of people are all the same¨-Albert Einstein. The justice system, however, is imbibed with many problems. We can, however, try to lessen these problems with achieving justice as we identified some faults of in achieving justice of all and the justice system. One problem with achieving justice is people are sometimes guilty until proven innocent like when Charlie was immediately thought of as guilty without a chance to prove his innocence. Another problem imbibed in our justice system is innocent people as sometimes convicted like Michael Morton.

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184 Words | 1 Pages

The original rationale of the rule of the exclusion of the wrongfulness probation has a clear constitutional scope, involves an enhanced warranty for individual rights and seeks to prevent access to process all those evidence to be obtained by the police authorities violated constitutional rights of the people. (Oaks, D. (1970)) One way it has been used in a case was during Boyd V. United States where several cases of plate glass were confiscated from the defendants by federal customs agents due to suspicion that certain documents had been falsified for the purposes of avoiding customs fees or duties. During the course of the proceedings, the defendants were ordered by the judge to produce documents showing the quantity and value of the shipments.

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When one thinks about the court systems and the way justice is served they see a system that is fair and just. A system that correctly provides punishment to the guilty party, and one that can discover the truth within the innocent party. On the surface level this appears to be true. Hundreds of thousands of people are incarcerated each year in the United States, which in reality provides a false sense of safety to citizens. While a large percentage of incarcerations are of guilty parties, according to a study in C. Ronald Huff’s book, Convicted But Innocent: Wrongful Conviction and Public Policy, approximately 100,000 innocent people are convicted every year.

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949 Words | 4 Pages

With millions of criminal convictions a year, more than two million people may end up behind bars(Gross). According to Samuel Gross reporter for The Washington Post, writes that also “even one percent amounts to tens of thousands of tragic [wrongful conviction] errors”(Gross). Citizens who are wrongfully convicted are incarcerated for a crime he or she did not commit. Many police officers, prosecutors, and judges are responsible for the verdict that puts innocents into prison. To be able to get exonerated many wait over a decade just to get there case looked at, not many are able to have the opportunity of getting out.

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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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Therefore, this is an outdated claim, due to our justice system changing and adapting to public beliefs. There may be a few wrongful convictions in the criminal justice system, however that does not make it cause more harm than good. In any system there are flaws, we cannot disregard all the good the justice system does. Although this system has flaws like all others, it is what safeguards our society's

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539 Words | 3 Pages

Luckily, it is known what causes wrongful convictions and how to fix them. Many wrongful convictions are due to mistaken eyewitnesses, jailhouse snitches, or false evidence. I think many of the wrongful convictions could be solved with harder evidence, more information. A case should not rely on a single eye witness but multiple.

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1397 Words | 6 Pages

Countless times the wrong person has been sentence to death or convicted because of an error made by the law. The percentage for convicting the wrong is 4.1%; the wrong person could serve a life sentence (Gross). Along with decision errors, government officials can be biased. For example, Brock Turner, a Stanford star swimmer was convicted of rape, but he only served six months. Apparently, his judge, Aaron Pesky, was biased against women and did not take sexual assault cases seriously.

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724 Words | 3 Pages

Thesis: Police interrogations can occasionally lead to false confessions due to misclassification, coercion, and contamination. I. The phrase “Innocent until proven guilty” is a popular statement among law enforcement and government employees, but this statement is not always upheld, as various errors, such as misclassification, are a major cause of false confessions. A. Misclassification errors are caused by “investigator bias,” where the investigator goes into the interrogation believing the suspect is guilty. (Keene)

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Predicting how people think, feel, and behave, based on whether they are superstitious, or if they prompt to think about the supernatural is possible. Superstition is the belief in supernatural causality that one event causes another without any natural process linking the two events, such as astrology, religion, omens, witchcraft, and prophecies, that contradicts natural science. Research into paranormal conviction may give more prominent knowledge into the way of paranormal marvels, and also into the sort of individual who has confidence in and/or encounters paranormal occasions. For instance, paranormal conviction was found to identify with recurrence of irritating dreams, dream review and dream translation, religiosity, neuroticism, inventiveness,

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