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Arguments for and against wrongful convictions
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But in Adnan Syed case this was not done. If the DNA test was
Again, if this crime was committed when we knew more about DNA, the defendant would probably have been found
In the article “2 Men Awarded $750,000 for Wrongful Convictions in 1983 Murder” was about two half brothers who were wrongly convicted for a crime they didn’t commit. The men have been awarded with $50,000 a year, up to $750,000 for each of the men. Even though it may seem like a lot at first after attorney’s fees, the cost of living, and family members it’s not a lot. After 31 years in prison, their compensation would be more than double that amount, if they had not been in prison. The men had been convicted for the rape and murder of an 11 year old in 1983, even though there was physical evidence that either of them had been involved.
In the article, “Family of Man Cleared by DNA Still Seeks Justice,” Wade Goodwyn writes about the rape of Michele Mallin and the confession that sets free a wrongly convicted man. Timothy Cole, a student in Lubbock was arrested and convicted as the Texas Tech rapist based on the eyewitness account of one victim. On Sunday night, March 24th, 1985, Michele Mallin, a college sophomore at the time, needed to move her vehicle to a legal parking spot after forgetting to earlier that day. At around 10pm, after finishing moving her car, a man appeared asking her for jumper cables to fix his broke down car. Mallin recalls him pushing her back into her own car, threatening to kill her with a knife and chain-smoking the entire time during the attack.
What if the DNA was tampered with or contaminated? DNA testing is not always reliable and this issue is evident in a large number of investigations. One well known incident of this occurring is the Josiah Sutton rape case- "In 2004, Josiah Sutton was exonerated after serving four and a half years of a 25-year sentence for a rape he did not commit. Sutton's conviction was the result of a mistaken identification and faulty scientific testing performed by the Houston police laboratory.
We know that DNA testing is giving hope to the hopeless in prison. Margret Berger (2006) comments, “Even though the number of inmates released as a consequence of DNA testing is minuscule in contrast to the two million persons incarcerated in the United States, the DNA exonerations have had an enormous impact on the fundamental assumptions about the American criminal justice system and how it operates.” Changes like the desirability of the death penalty, the growing concerns on how forensic laboratories operate alongside the increasing interest in forensic science overall. For instance, as the number of exonerations continues to rise, the number of people being placed on death row is decreasing thanks to Supreme Court rulings that juveniles under the age of 18 and the mentally ill cannot be sentenced to death. The death penalty is overall losing its appeal to society, not just because of the DNA testing, but people become aware of the wrongful convictions of other crimes as well.
The state started to build a case against the defendant due to the sexual act that occurred between him and the victim, which lead the criminologist to take samples of the semen and ultimately test for results (Police chief magazine). When time approach for an item to be tested the result came back inclusive due to the technology at that time being used was not qualified to conduct a proper reading on the DNA test. The packet was only able to show if a victim was raped or not (Police chief magazine). After realizing that the technology needed to be updated to better enhance the police investigations (Police chief magazine). The Criminologist worked years to come up with several different ways to test one items by DNA, fingerprints, and/or Hair samples, which resulted in the test be 99.9% reliable when convicting a criminal (Police chief magazine).
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.
Avery fought several times for an appeal, but each time was denied. Fortunately for Avery, a petition for DNA testing was granted in 1995 and showed that scrapings taken of Beernsten’s fingernails contained the DNA of an unknown person. The tests were unable to eliminate Avery, however, and a movement for a new trial was denied. In April of 2002, attorneys for the Wisconsin Innocence Project obtained a court order for DNA testing of 13 hairs recovered from Beernsten at the time of the crime. The state crime laboratory reported that, using the FBI DNA database, it had linked a hair to Gregory Allen, a convicted felon who bore a striking resemblance to Avery.
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.
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.
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,
After careful review of the assigned material The Untouchables: America’s Misbehaving Prosecutors, And The System That Protects Them, an article by Radley Balko published in the Huffington Post August 2013 argues Brady violations which are the failure to disclose, as a matter of law, exculpatory evidence, as required under Federal case law. Balko addresses prosecutor misconduct and lists the tens of thousands of prosecutorial misconduct cases that have been studied by ProPublica, the Center for Public Integrity, USA Today, the Innocence Project , and Yale Law. Senate Bill s. 353 was introduced in Senate on 3 February 2015 titled Justice Safety Valve Act of 2015. This bill authorizes a federal court to impose a sentence in a criminal proceeding
However, there is no way to gather the exact percent of individuals that have been wrongfully convicted. DNA evidence has certainly decreased the number of wrongfully convicted, unfortunately, there
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.
