The Pros And Cons Of Wrongful Convictions

Superior Essays
Register to read the introduction… Often, statements from people with incentives to testify — particularly incentives that are not disclosed to the jury — are the central evidence in convicting an innocent person. The registry itself, which looks deeply into 873 specific cases of wrongful conviction, examined cases based on court documents as well as from groups that have long documented wrongful convictions. That group of wrongfully convicted spent more than 10,000 total years in prison, according to the report, with an average of 11 years …show more content…
Jon B. Gould, J.D., Ph.D., a professor and the director of the Washington Institute for Public and International Affairs Research at American University and his team of researchers conducted a three year, first of its kind, large-scale empirical study Predicting Erroneous Convictions: A Social Science Approach to Miscarriages of Justice employing social scientific methods. It was funded by NIJ, and an NIJ video features Gould discussing wrongful convictions. After identifying 460 cases employing sophisticated analytical methods matched with a qualitative review of the cases from a panel of experts, 10 statistically significant factors were identified that distinguish a wrongful conviction from a “near miss” (a case in which an innocent defendant was acquitted or had charges dismissed before trial) NIJ …show more content…
For Gould this was the most surprising result of his research because he and his team expected strong prosecutorial cases to result in wrongful convictions since the evidence was compelling for the prosecutor to seek conviction but instead the study revealed the contrary. This led the team to look at weak defense counsel, poor explanation/presentation of forensic evidence, and police practices that could trigger the course of events spiraling out of control to a wrongful conviction because the weak prosecution case in turn is not adequately challenged by the defense attorney and the prosecution for one reason or the other may fail to disclose exculpatory evidence- a Brady violation (NIJ

Related Documents

  • Decent Essays

    Peter Donelly: How Stats Fool Juries In the lecture video, “Peter Donelly: How Stats Fool Juries,” Donelly explains how statistics are misrepresented and how they have fooled juries in past court cases. In the beginning of his lecture, Donelly compares and contrasts coin toss outcomes to genetic sequence combinations. What separates genetic combinations from that of a coin toss is that there are far more factors in genetics than there are in a simple head-tail coin toss.…

    • 289 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Wrongful conviction has become a notable issue, part of the problem is caused by false confessions. A confession is an acknowledging guilt in writing or by speech. In the courtroom a confession is a powerful form of evidence. There are many cases known to be false confessions to a crime not committed by the person due to mental impairment, the threat of a harsh sentence, and because of coercion. False confessions can be caused by mental impairment an individual to believe that he commit the crime.…

    • 1006 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Richard Havens Case Study

    • 1099 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Interview Assessment XIII This interview was about Richard Havens; this case added to my understanding about wrongful convictions because it demonstrated how some might not lead to an exoneration. Richard Havens did not have a criminal record, and his background did not suggest being threatening to anyone but rather protecting his community. Mr. Havens had a career working with a variety of corporations; he even worked on the Apollo space shuttle reentry vehicles. Congress cut funding six months later, and Mr. Havens lost his job.…

    • 1099 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Wrongful Conviction On the morning of August 10, 1984, Deborah Sykes was brutally stabbed, sexually assaulted, and eventually killed in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The man convicted for her murder was Darryl Hunt, a 19 year old boy that would go on to spend 20 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. Hunt was convicted based on eye-witness testimony and informants, but was later exonerated based on DNA evidence that matched a man that was caught just a few months after the murder took place. This case is an exemplar of the strength of DNA evidence and the fragility of eyewitness testimony.…

    • 760 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    There is a lot of people that are killed just because of false trials. Life isn’t always fair. There is going to be innocents killed and young blacks killed because their black. Justice is always served in mysterious ways. There has been many trials were no fair trials for blacks just because of their color.…

    • 695 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Those who are wrongfully convicted often sue the court to obtain justice through monetary means. The largest sum of money granted to an individual was to David Milgaard who received ten-million dollars, Ivan henry was given eight-million dollars for the 27 years he spent wrongfully imprisoned. Miscarriages of Justice are serious offences, since often they deprive individuals of their rights and also undermine the proceedings of the Justice system. The mistakes made in interpreting evidence, collecting or gathering evidence, and the information used in court is essential to making sure that individuals are not wrongly convicted. The government, does have efforts within the Canadian Justice System to try and guarantee that no one is wrongfully convicted but the individual members of the Justice system, such as the Police officers, Attorney’s, and witnesses should also have more systems in place to ensure the evidence and their actions are correct and not falsified or altered which can be a huge process but would be in the best interest of the Justice system.…

    • 1627 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Without full information an attorney cannot do their job in full. Evidence: Eye witness identification: Eyewitness misidentification is the single greatest cause of wrongful convictions nationwide, playing a role in nearly 75% of convictions overturned through DNA testing. While eyewitness testimony can be persuasive evidence before a judge or jury, 30 years of strong…

    • 471 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    CSI Effect Essay

    • 883 Words
    • 4 Pages

    This so called phenomenon is affecting the criminal justice system in a way that it is making it more difficult to get convictions where it might not have been previously. Jurors are becoming more aware and have more of an understanding of the criminal justice system, especially when it comes to “types and tests of forensic evidence, legal procedures, and due process” (Tapscott…

    • 883 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    In Illusory Causation in the Courtroom, published in Current Directions in Psychological Science, G. Daniel Lassiter explores illusory causation in terms of the role it plays in courtrooms. This is the possibility of the effect that camera perspective has on jurors’ judgements on the suspect’s guilt, whether it was a voluntary confession and sentence recommendations. The Death Penalty Information Center had documented cases in which death row inmates were released due to new evidence and in many cases, the cause of wrongful convictions can be traced back to the interrogation phase in which false confessions are extracted. Many experts believe that the solution to suspects being coerced into wrongful confessions are videotaping confessions.…

    • 1283 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Wrongful Convictions

    • 928 Words
    • 4 Pages

    It’s surprising how many people go to prison for being convicted of crimes that they didn’t commit. In 2013, 18 people have been imprisoned before DNA testing proved their innocence (CNN). Many people are encouraged to plead guilty to a crime that they didn’t commit to avoid trials, suffering, and money issues. Most people, about 70%, of exonerees are persons of color (CNN). So what’s causing innocent people to serve time that they don’t deserve?…

    • 928 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Just Justice Fair

    • 1288 Words
    • 6 Pages

    William Morgan EN100-27 October 9th, 2015 Dr. Bloom Just Justice: Is a fair trial really fair? According to the article, 5 Ways America's Justice System Is Designed To Screw You posted to Cracked.com on January 28, 2015, by Talia Jane there are several ways that the American justice system is set up to fail you. Ms. Jane, a professional writer, wrote this article along with an anonymous expert source, that she claims is a former public defender who wished to go unnamed. Lane says that without proper representation and sometime even with it the cards are stacked against the unfortunate person on trial.…

    • 1288 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Are people today being wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death? Today, there are 3,000 people on death row (Drehle). This means 3,000 inmates are waiting for their day to be executed or waiting for their date of execution to be set. According to a recent study, “120 of the roughly 3,000 inmates on death row in America might not be guilty, while additional scores of wrongfully convicted inmates are serving life in prison” (Drehle). People convicted of a crime and sentenced to death or life in prison may not have done the crime, but not much is being about the wrongful convictions.…

    • 680 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Confirmation Bias Essay

    • 2410 Words
    • 10 Pages

    Confirmation Bias When an investigation for a case begins, the law enforcement is trying to gather the most evidence that will help in solving the case. This could include many things such as physical evidence or eyewitness testimonies. Sometimes making the legal system unfavorable at times for many reasons such as, evidence getting lost or destroyed or the eye witnesses not being able to remeber correctly. The public and the law enforcers are constantly looking for new ways to improve the criminal justice system as times goes on and change. This paper will help to understand some changes that can happen to improve confirmation bias and how to implement these changes into the criminal justice system.…

    • 2410 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    State why it is a problem. Wrongful convictions are a problem. Innocent individuals lose their freedom, their family and friends, their careers and their entire life in general, as they know it. Many, become depressed and are susceptible to suicide. The wrongful conviction problem is the result from several other problems that caused these individuals to be convicted to begin with.…

    • 1773 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Prosecutors are supposed to charge an offender under three conditions they find that a crime has been committed, a perpetrator can be identified, and there is sufficient evidence to support a guilty verdict (Bohm and Haley, 2014.) They are not supposed to charge an offender with more criminal charge or even more serious crimes that they cannot support with evidence (Bohm and Haley, 2014.) Prosecutors can choose not to charge or prosecute an offender for nine different reasons: they believe that an offense did not cause sufficient harm and can be a practical decision when it comes from lack of resources or over worked and understaffed prosecutors, a prosecutor may feel that the statuary punishment for a crime is to sever and in an effort to be fair they impose their own sense of judgment, they feel that there is an improper motive when the complaint…

    • 483 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays