Wrongful Conviction

Wrongful Conviction

            The courtroom grew remarkably mute as the verdict was handed out. “we find the defendant guilty of second-degree murder,” were the next and final word that came from the foreman of the jury. People in the courtroom, mainly consisting of friends and family of the defendant, distressed as the just convicted defendant was hauled off in shackles and chains, o begin his life of confinement for a crime he says he did not commit. This situation is known as wrongful convictions, and unfortunately, it has become a widespread problem across the United States and other countries. Wrongful conviction refers to the convictions of factually innocent persons, and this definition excludes persons who committed the act and men rea but whose convictions were obtained in violation of constitutional or other procedural rights in a manner not deemed harmless error by appellate courts. A better term might be a false conviction, and the term miscarriages of justice are often used to mean factually wrong conviction but could more neutrally include so-called wrongful acquittals and impunity from prosecution as well as wrongful convictions. Although the fear of convicting innocents has always been a concern of legal systems, the issue gained heightened salience with the development of DNA profiling to convict and exclude suspects, with near-certain accuracy, after 1989. Today, some so many people have gone through and are still going through situations just like the one mentioned above. Many people occupy prisons all over the United States and different parts of the world, and it is for crimes they did not commit. And the saddest part of it all is that some of these wrongful convictions are being caused by people hired by the criminal justice system, which took an oath to serve and protect us. By that, I mean there are police officers and sometimes even lawyers who are causing these wrongful convictions because they are not thorough in their duties.

How Common False Convictions are

Figures show that 84 people were wrongly convicted of crimes between 2007 and 2017/ charges ranged from murder to rape and included people serving life sentences. A least half of those who had their convictions overturned spent time in prison, amounting collectively to more than 100 years in custody. The figures were obtained through a series of Freedom of Information (FOI) requests sent by BBC News NI. One man who had spent three years in prison as a teenager for a conviction that was overturned 30 years later, has spoken about the significant impact it had on the rest of his life. The CCRC, which investigates wrongful convictions in the UK, was set up by the government in response to the number of high-profile miscarriages of justice cases. It receives about 1400 applications a year from across the UK, including about 40 from Northern Ireland. The Northern Ireland Prison Service said it only held records for those who were found to be wrongfully convicted and spent the time I custody since 2006. They were recorded to be 84 wrongfully convicted of crimes between 2007 and 2017, and of which 30% was a sexual crime. 90% of those wrongfully convicted were men, 31 cases led to the retrial, 10 defendants were aged 16 to 20 when their conviction was quashed.

A wrongful conviction is a terrible injustice that is magnified when an innocent person spends years in prison or a death row. The U.S system has always recognized this. The rising number of pardons, however, and the growing awareness that such injustices occur every day in American courts, raises profound doubts about the accuracy and fairness of the criminal justice system. This understanding is supported by considerable recent research. This surge in awareness and building research has motivated a growing number of innocence projects, which work to exonerate wrongly convicted prisoners, also to propose justice policy reforms designed to reduce the amount of wrongful convictions or to alleviate their effects. This research paper explains why wrongful convictions had become a prominent issue, the scope of the problem, its causes, and reform proposals. The injustice of being convicted and imprisoned for a crime one did not commit intuitively apparent. Research and anecdotal evidence show that a high proportion of wrongfully convicted prisoners suffer severe psychological consequences, including posttraumatic stress disorder and anxiety disorders, which is not typical among actually guilty prisoners in the absence of life-threatening experiences in prison. This complicates the ability of exonerated prisoners to return to a normal life after release.

Causes of Wrongful Convictions

Studies reveal several factors related to miscarriages of justice, labeled objects, although they are not so in a scientific sense. More than one element is found on each wrongful conviction. Although a few wrongful convictions are caused by honest witness error, most involve some level of negligence or wrongdoing by criminal justice officers or defense lawyers. The most common cause the mistaken eyewitness identification. The human memory does not record all information like a video recorder, it drops most information out of short-term memory and stores the central, but not peripheral, elements of those events in long-term memory. This makes facial recall somewhat uncertain. Activities during a crime, such as extreme stress or focus on a weapon, decrease facial recall by victims and witnesses. Memory is also malleable and can change under the influence of suggestion. Problems with eyewitness identification are made worse by flawed police procedures. Police relied on show ups, which is showing the suspect or the suspect’s photograph alone to the witness without a lineup. Even lineups are often flawed, and police do not always pay keen attention to ensuring that the suspect does not stand out from the lineup fillers.

Another cause of wrongful convictions is forensic science error or misconduct. Some expert evidence is not based on scientific testing but on comparisons that rely ultimately on the expert’s subjective evaluations. Some of these methods, such as fingerprints, bullet, and tool mark examinations and footprint and tire impressions, are relative credible and accurate, but known errors have nevertheless occurred. Examiners have been known to make an error and even temple with evidence even when it is based on forensic science.

Finally, even the most reliable methods can produce incorrect results if the forensic laboratories are substandard as DNS testing becomes more sensitive, the risks of contamination rise unless the laboratories are in pristine condition. Testing in some inferior laboratories has even led to several people being wrongly convicted based on erroneous DNA analysis. False confessions are a reason innocent individuals find themselves in jail. Research shows that teens, mentally impaired individuals, and people with personality deficits are more likely to confess than healthy adults falsely. Ineffective defense counsel for the innocent victims whereby most of them are inadequate and rely on government-paid assigned counsel or public defenders rather than retained lawyers. There could also be misconduct in a prosecution where prosecutors have been known to destroy evidence. Other causes include racial and religious discrimination.

Case Study

An example of wrongful conviction is the case of Gerald Richardson, who was released in October after serving 19 years in prison for murder before DNA evidence proved his innocence. He was convicted in New Jersey of the 1994 murder of 19-year-old Monica Reyes based on the testimony of a forensic dentist who testified that Richardson’s teeth matched a bite mark found on the victim’s body. But new DNA testing of a swab taken from the bite wound on the victim’s body excluded Richardson as the source and pointed to another male suspect. This is an illustration of how even the most termed accurate way of evidence, DNA testing, sometimes can have errors and omissions of evidence leading to the wrongful conviction of the wrong suspect.

References

Risinger, D. M. (2006). Innocents convicted: An empirical justified factual wrongful conviction rate. J. Crim. l. & Criminology, 97, 761

Campbell, K. M., Denov, M., & Lenet, J. (2017). Wrongful Convictions. The Encyclopedia of Corrections, 1-4.

Leo, R. A. (2017). The criminology of wrongful conviction: A decade later. Journal of contemporary criminal justice, 33(1), 82-106.