Wrongful Convictions In The Criminal Justice System

Improved Essays
Wrongful convictions undermine the Criminal justice system and the procedural structure that is supposed to “uphold” and help deliver justice. Justice is a term that has many different definitions however within the Canadian Justice System, what is Justice? Is justice having criminals being convicted regardless of how evidence was obtained or excluding important evidence based on how it was obtained, which may allow someone who is guilty, to be “free”. The Justice system protects the accused by ensuring that evidence will be attained properly, as well as providing the accused with the right to remain silent and not self-incriminate. These rights are put in place to protect the rights of the accused and to try and prevent wrongful convictions. …show more content…
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. Proceeding with stricter guidelines and procedures may seem like the

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Prior to the end of the 19th century, the correctional system in Canada was only focused on punishing criminals. The correctional system did not think about rehabilitating criminals to transition them back into society (Correctional Service Canada, 2010).…

    • 1073 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Justice is widely known as being blind, but this can hinder justice’s ability to provide effective judgement. Eli Ashpence once said, “A blind justice is merely an impartial justice. True justice would have eyes in the back of her head and a pair of mismatched shoes.” (Ashpence 2015) Just like Eli, I believe that to serve true justice, the situation and past of the criminal should be taken into consideration, because often, situations are not as black and white as they seem. Consequently, there is a grey area present that may be an exception for normal justice. When the grey area is acknowledged the wrongdoer can obtain a punishment that will better them. Additionally, doing such can differentiate treatment between a person who broke the…

    • 1111 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Great Essays

    The supreme court of Canada exists to provide an unbiased body ensuring that the laws of the land uphold the rights and freedoms of the Charter. Though the Supreme Court acts as a system of checks and balances on the executive power of Canada, at what point does the system of the court give the judiciary too great a level of power? When acknowledging the constitutions and legislature in which the Supreme Court justices gain and hold their power, s. 1 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and the lack of equal representation in the court, it is indisputable that the highest court in Canada is overly powerful. It is evident through the examination of court rulings and the systemic practices of the judiciary that the Supreme Court of…

    • 1470 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Superior Essays

    On the other hand, wrongful convictions happen when innocent alleged criminal defendants are found guilty in criminal trials by judge or jury, and if they are compelled to plead guilty to crimes they did not commit (MacFarlane, 2008, p. 2-5). Today, many people have gone through this process of wrongful convictions and many of them still reside in prisons across North America. Every year, hundreds of people are convicted of crimes that they did not commit. Some causes of wrongful conviction are poor judgment, witness misidentification, bad lawyers, bad police, and lack of evidence. The problem with this is that the Criminal justice system, which many people in society respect, hires the people who convict the innocent alleged suspect (MacFarlane, 2008, p. 2-5). These same people under the Criminal justice system are the same people who, society sees as people who should protect and serve us. The Criminal justice system is a system of law enforcement with the responsibility of prosecuting, defending, arresting, and punishing those suspected with committing criminal acts. However, police and lawyers only want to fulfill their duties and they lack the knowledge and process to thoroughly gather evidence and convict the right criminal. The issue pertaining to how wrongful convictions affect the criminal justice system is thereby hurting the integrity and breaking the trust between society and the system. People trust the system to protect the rights of the innocent person, and to arrest and detain the criminal from harming society. That trust is broken when the criminal justice system arrests an innocent person. The main question that comes to mind is whether the criminal justice system can set up restrictions to help the innocent convicted individual and many other convicted people later found to be…

    • 1699 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Great Essays

    Miscarriages of justice, where an innocent individual is wrongfully convicted of a crime, were, until recently, thought to occur infrequently. Although the number of wrongful convictions is an unknown figure, it has been said to be approximately one to five percent of convictions in America each year, where one percent averages out to about 6000 cases (Anderson, Anderson & Marquis, 2001). Wrongful convictions do not occur as a result of a single error by a sole individual.…

    • 2950 Words
    • 12 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Balancing the tension between community interest and individual rights and freedoms are a significant component of the criminal trial process and is relatively successful in that retrospect. In order to be effective and efficient the criminal trial process should reflect the moral and ethical standards of society, ensure the community is sufficiently protected and respects the rights of the individual. However, despite efforts to achieve justice for all members of society, the criminal trial process does fail to provide adequate success in some areas of the law such as the jury system, Legal Aid and the provocation defence. All these areas to an extent highlight the lack of success the criminal trial process serves in balancing community interests…

    • 1138 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Canadians are known for their humane practices. They are known for apologizing too much, letting others go first, and their general kindness. Canada's legal system is another thing that is well-known and generally agreed upon around the nation. However, there's one part of this system that Canadians are very appalled with; and that's the prison system. Prisons face a lack of necessities and are full of racism. Offenders are given free or subsidized post-secondary education, and given jobs in the community. These prisons don't have adequate training on dealing with inmates who suffer from mental health issues and are incredibly overcrowded. All of these things combined make Canada's prison system the worst part of Canada's legal system.…

    • 1139 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Wrongly convicted individuals will become more common. Attorney client priveledge exists to protect innocent people from being wrongly convicted. In an aff world you would see the number of wrongly convicted individuals increase. (no evidence, just logic.) just because a person is innocent doesn’t mean they are protected from prosecution. A major cause of wrong convictions is eye witness misidentification. People are wrongly convicted of crimes they didn’t commit all the time! Often times they have some serious evidence backing up that conviction. Evidence can prove a person to be innocent, but it can also make them seem very guilty. An attorney is the key communication between a client and prosecutor. Without full information an attorney cannot do their job in full.…

    • 471 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In chapter 10 of Examining Wrongful Convictions: Stepping Back, Moving Forward our authors Take a look into our plea-bargaining systems role into wrongful convictions. According to our authors plea- bargaining dispose of roughly 95 % of adjudicated criminal cases (Maguire, Tbls. 5.24.2008, 5.46.2006). Over my years of taking criminal justice course I have learned to so many innocent people actually plead guilty to crimes they did not commit. DNA evidence which lead to an exoneration is evidence of just that. Wrongful convictions produce out of our Plea Bargaining are much less likely to result in an exoneration due to the defendants own admittance. As we have learned, there are many reasons to why a innocent man may plead guiltily for a crime…

    • 751 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Imagine spending 30 years in jail for doing nothing. It seems impossible, surely the justice system of the United States is better than that. For Lawrence McKinney, it is very possible. McKinney spend 31 years in jail, only receiving a 75 dollar check when he was released, after being proved innocent (Powell). Many more cases just like McKinney’s happen all the time. Court systems have many layers, each one of them trying to filter out the innocent, but it is not enough. Something has to be done to stop the number of wrongfully convicted individuals from rising, and release all of the innocent citizens already in jail.…

    • 1491 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior 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? There’s many different reasons to explain this problem we have in our justice system. In my opinion, the alarmingly large numbers of wrongful convictions each year are due to racial tensions, problems with DNA analysis, and lastly, false eyewitness confessions.…

    • 928 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    It seems that even with the guidance of the 13th Amendment we still have the repeating error of wrongful conviction. Every 1 in 25 Americans that has been sentenced to death have been later proven of being innocent (Gross, 2015). To Resolve the problem of wrongful conviction in the prison and jail system the governor should lower the sentencing of minor crimes, strengthen the use of DNA and, review old cases often. The United States has been known of being very tough when it comes to implementing punishment, although some crimes are heinous and deserves punishment there’s also those who were convicted of petty crimes and were falsely identified and either facing a life sentence and or dead.…

    • 1008 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The criminal justice system is supposed to be set up where a person who was convicted for a crime was found guilty by a preponderance of evidence brought against that individual not just people being sent to prison for the rest of their lives or sentence to death because there was not enough evidence brought against the offender, however, was still found guilty. But, due to the high rise of DNA cases being exonerated across the United States, there have been some disturbing fact reveals as to why individuals are being wrongfully accused for crimes they did not commit. According to data research from the Innocence Project, the criminal justice is no longer working the way that it should and there is a desperate need for it to be fix and stop…

    • 435 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    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…

    • 2703 Words
    • 11 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Our current legal systems leads to wrongful conviction, which is a terrible injustice. The legal system does not come to the knowledge of many until a innocent person spends years in prison. There is a rising number of exonerations due to DNA. However, the growth of exonerations is causing more awareness about injustices in our legal system. In many minds there is rise of doubts now about the accuracy of the criminal justice system. 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.…

    • 1006 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays