AFRICAN AMERICANS WRONGLY CONVICTED 3
Why Are African Americans More Likely to Be Wrongly Convicted in the United States?
Introduction
Imagine, you are just minding your business walking down a street and an officer stop you to bring you to the station to question you. The next thing you know you are being charged for a crime you didn’t commit. Another scenario is that you could have just been at the wrong place at the wrong time and now you are facing a charge you have never done. There are countless situations that are vary from these but lead to the same ending which is an innocent person being convicted of a crime they didn’t do. A number of factors such as eyewitness misidentification, racial bias, and stereotypes play …show more content…
“Under the Manson test, if an identification was unnecessarily suggestive, a court must weigh certain reliability factors against the corrupting influence of the suggestive procedures to determine whether the identification is reliable and therefore admissible (Couch,
AFRICAN AMERICANS WRONGLY CONVICTED 7
2013, p. 1536). Eyewitness testimonies are still used to this day even though the reliability of this source of evidence is not as good as the Supreme Court believed. It’s a wonder why this is still being used as much seeing as how it is the number one cause of false …show more content…
Multiple factors influence the decision to imprison an individual. These include but are not limited to faulty eyewitness, stereotypes, gender, and racial bias. What was found was that people often tend to categorize other individuals from different races in categories and also align the stereotypes for that race to that individual. In this case, white people or white eyewitnesses would group the black defendants in category that is considered criminal which influences their judgment in selecting the offender. Eyewitnesses are not the only ones who do that but people in the court like the judge or juries tend to do the same thing. With all the bias and stereotypes in the judicial system it’s not difficult to see all the obstacle African American have against them when they are on trial wanting to prove their innocence. Wrongful convictions have been on the rise in the United States and with the injustice in the court, it would not
Why Are African Americans More Likely to Be Wrongly Convicted in the United States?
Introduction
Imagine, you are just minding your business walking down a street and an officer stop you to bring you to the station to question you. The next thing you know you are being charged for a crime you didn’t commit. Another scenario is that you could have just been at the wrong place at the wrong time and now you are facing a charge you have never done. There are countless situations that are vary from these but lead to the same ending which is an innocent person being convicted of a crime they didn’t do. A number of factors such as eyewitness misidentification, racial bias, and stereotypes play …show more content…
“Under the Manson test, if an identification was unnecessarily suggestive, a court must weigh certain reliability factors against the corrupting influence of the suggestive procedures to determine whether the identification is reliable and therefore admissible (Couch,
AFRICAN AMERICANS WRONGLY CONVICTED 7
2013, p. 1536). Eyewitness testimonies are still used to this day even though the reliability of this source of evidence is not as good as the Supreme Court believed. It’s a wonder why this is still being used as much seeing as how it is the number one cause of false …show more content…
Multiple factors influence the decision to imprison an individual. These include but are not limited to faulty eyewitness, stereotypes, gender, and racial bias. What was found was that people often tend to categorize other individuals from different races in categories and also align the stereotypes for that race to that individual. In this case, white people or white eyewitnesses would group the black defendants in category that is considered criminal which influences their judgment in selecting the offender. Eyewitnesses are not the only ones who do that but people in the court like the judge or juries tend to do the same thing. With all the bias and stereotypes in the judicial system it’s not difficult to see all the obstacle African American have against them when they are on trial wanting to prove their innocence. Wrongful convictions have been on the rise in the United States and with the injustice in the court, it would not