Wrongful Convictions Essay

Courts often prove to be corrupt through the abundance of wrongful or unfair convictions found within them. Many people around the world have been wrongfully convicted, and sentenced to death despite their innocence because of issues like “eyewitness misidentification,” “junk science,” “false confessions,” “government misconduct,” “snitches,” and “bad lawyering” (Causes of Wrongful Convictions). As an attempt to assuage this unleveled playing field, several corporations have been established with the intent to exonerate those who are wrongfully convicted. Corporations, like the Innocence Project, which is a corporation in the United States, take on cases of those who seem to be wrongfully convicted, and appeal them to the court in hopes of
Anderson was convicted and served twenty years due to government misconduct, inadequate defense, and eyewitness misidentification. The officer leading this Anderson’s arrest and conviction is the culprit of the government misconduct, which is when government officials “lose sight of these obligations and instead focus solely on securing convictions,” that landed the innocent man lacking a criminal record with a two-hundred and ten year sentence (Innocence Project). The officer in this case took broad information from the victim and pinpointed it to fit that of Anderson because he was “only…man” the officer personally knew of that vaguely fit this criteria despite his lack of a criminal record. Because there were no governmentally filed photographs of Anderson, the officer went directly to his employer and obtained photos, which he showed to the victim making her believe he was the culprit. Because of this misconduct, the victim falsely identified Anderson as the assailant, and this brought eyewitness misidentification into the realm of attributing factors of Anderson’s false