Essay On Wrongfully Convicted Cases

Wrongfully convicted situations have gone on for many years now due to corrupt police officers and also because of people wanting to have the title of being able to solve the crimes although they are not even guilty. Many wrongfully convicted cases happen every year, for higher officials do not want the truth and instead they want someone to blame. Why? Why is the truth not as important? Why are some of the police officials as well as higher officials in general corrupt? Many analytics and researchers go into depth on why it is becoming a major problem in America. They also talk about how many of the individuals have to cope with the fact that they are having to serve time for crimes they did not commit and how they and their families are …show more content…
One example of a situation like this is the case of Terrill Swift and his friends. One night, a girl named Nina Glover was found assaulted and raped. A man named Jerry Fincher offered up names of his friends in order to help another friend that was in trouble. However, the individuals Fincher divulged were not the real murderers. Nonetheless, Terrill and his three friends were convicted of rape and murder on a false confession. Feeling intimidated by police authority and the prosecuting team, they pled guilty in order to serve a lesser sentence. Fourteen years later, three different Innocent Project groups took on the case and discovered that their DNA was never fully put into the system, proving that the semen of the men did not match that of the crime scene. Officials discovered the real culprit; however, he was already dead by that time. The police discovered that “the offender was Johnny Douglas, by then deceased, who was one of the first people that police interviewed about the Glover murder in 1994” (Center on Wrongful Convictions). The result of this case shows that if the police would have done a thorough investigation and followed procedures, then the lives of four innocent men could have been spared. The ruling of this case severely affected the men because they …show more content…
Time and time again it has been proven that race plays a part in important social events. Whether it is a case of supposed rape, police brutality, or even robbery. The most significant and remarkable cases have dealt with false accusations or decisions about African Americans. Supposedly, “African-American defendants are more likely to be wrongfully convicted of crimes punishable by death” (Stubbs 1). These type of facts prove that there is still hatred and racial inequality today. A modern example of this is the police brutality that is happening in the United States. Most of the cases that appear on the news and social medias involve an African American wrongfully killed by a police officer. These type of situations have demonstrated that “the explanations for these racial disparities range from deliberate racial stereotyping… to unconscious racism” (Stubbs 1). What was once prominent in the early colonial times with African Americans and slaves is now shown to be reemerging with a modern version of racism. Another major reason that wrongfully convicted situations are so importantly drastic would be the Death Penalty, as known as Capital punishment. Capital punishment is an option when death crimes occur, it’s like a death for a death. Some of the wrongfully convicted individuals have to receive the death penalty, for crimes they didn’t even commit. This could become a life or