Miscarriage of justice

If you have been charged with a criminal offense in Pennsylvania, or elsewhere, then you know that your arrest may have been based on eyewitness testimony. Identifications and testimony given by eyewitnesses have long been considered one of the most reliable types of evidence. More and more, however, it has been shown that eyewitness recall might not be as accurate as it was once thought to be. In fact, Science magazine reports that eyewitness testimony was the basis for approximately 75 percent…

The Evidences- where the case went wrong: According to the file there was just one evidence against Morton and that evidence was a note found at the crime scene. That note was signed with “I L Y,” for I love you, and “M,” for Michael, who was Christine’s husband. (Bazelon, 2012). That note was all about a husband’s anger over his wife as she did not let him have sex with her at the night of Morton’s birthday. But that of course was not an enough evidence to prove someone guilty of homicide. It…

means to release them when proven innocent. There are many factors taken in place and mistakes done by the criminal justice system that has led to wrongful conviction and even death sentences. Why are innocents convicted? There are three factors that can lead someone to be wrongfully convicted: false confessions made by the innocent person, inaccurate systems used by the criminal justice system, and lack of DNA evidence. The first cause is false confession. A false confession is an admission of…

. Another very important piece of policing that has also evolved with the times is police interrogation methods. An interrogation is when someone examines a suspect by questioning them formally. The biggest difference in interrogation methods used in the past compared to the more modern method is between the confrontational and non-confrontational methods. Confrontational interrogation, also known as the Reid Technique, is an aggressive way to obtain a confession. It begins by a fact finding…

Psychological studies have contributed to our understanding that there are many factors that lead cases to be exonerated at court. Factors such as: eye witnesses, juries, false confessions and biases. Using studies from Peter J. van Koppen and Shara K. Lochun, and Tim Newburn, we can understand how unreliable eyewitnesses can be to a crime and how juries can be unreliable as a judging panel, respectively. Using Keith A. Findley’s research we can comprehend how false confessions and biases come…

Wrongful convictions or also known as error of justice occurs when an innocent person is detained or sanction due to a mistake in the criminal justice system. [1] Wrongful convictions is a problem that is growing at fast rate in our criminal justice system and it is becoming more visible every day, this has resulted in the creation of many programs and projects that try to help those who might have been sentenced wrongfully. [2] A wrongful conviction is a serious problem because it can take the…

There are numerous flaws in the criminal justice system that prevent justice from being served. One of these flaws are wrongful convictions. A wrongful conviction is when a person is convicted and punished for an offense that they did not commit. Some of the common causes of wrongful convictions are eyewitness misidentification, false confessions, government misconduct, and bad lawyering. Eyewitness misidentification is a main cause of wrongful convictions. DNA has proven that eyewitness…

and the innocent convicted are treated by the criminal justice system. Victims and the innocent criminal are being mistreated by the system itself. The wrongfully convicted individual was intentionally harmed by the criminal justice system because of the lack of expertise in evidence gathering. Donald Marshall, Jr. was a Mi’kmaq man who was wrongfully convicted of murder. This case raised many questions of whether the Canadian criminal justice system has any fairness and equality, especially…

These cases show that confessions are not always prompted by internal knowledge or actual guilt, but are sometimes motivated by external influences. If they argue the money = innocence standpoint, use “bad lawyering” instead. The resources of the justice system are often stacked against poor defendants. Matters only become worse when a person is represented by an ineffective, incompetent or overburdened defense lawyer. The failure of overworked lawyers to investigate, call witnesses or prepare…

Prevent Wrongful Convictions in the United States 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…