Wrongful Convictions Research Paper
Lessons from Wrongful Convictions
Unit 4 Assignment
Cm107 College Composition
Professor Ann Reich
By: Tracie Moon
“Today, however, most Americans realize that innocent defendants are occasionally convicted, and that America 's criminal justice system has other deep-seated problems with administering equitable punishments.”
I want to begin by saying that this topic has affected me. I have done outside research on the issue. I find it immoral, disruptive, and unjust and it troubles me. To actually put myself in the minds and states of those that have been incarcerated due to wrongful conviction. When in reality they are innocent. I can barely even take myself or my mental state anywhere close to understanding what these people have gone …show more content…
Most of the people who are lucky enough to be found and retried have spent over a decade in prison or on death row.
Then when they are found innocent at the mercy of pure luck that someone took an interest in their case by chance. They are just kicked out of their cell onto the street and are expected to engage in society like nothing ever happened. All the while the people who are responsible for this inconvenience that has been served to these individuals, go on about their lives and careers. Not even offering up an apology, or any type of remorse or compensation to these people.
“Between 2003 and 2005, Gould served as the Chair of the "Innocence Commission for Virginia" (ICVA), an organization "created to investigate the causes of factual exonerations and to recommend measures to prevent such errors in the future" (p. 5). The Commission has its roots in a symposium issue of Judicature (September-October 2002) on "Wrongful Convictions of the Innocent.” In that issue, Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld proposed the establishment of state-sponsored innocence commissions to learn what could be learned from the known miscarriages. From that challenge emerged the ICVA, although it was left to private law firms, not the state, to come forward within the half million dollars in pro-bono …show more content…
60)
Nine factors surface from the case descriptions as mutual features that are related to these I mistaken convictions, ranging from flawed eyewitness identification to the lack of post conviction procedures that might help correct the mistakes. In most cases, more than one of these factors was present.
DNA evidence was not being used as evidence until 1989. It said in the article I read in Unit 2 that Texas is the only state that preserves all evidence forever. Everywhere else the evidence is destroyed when all the convicted appeals run out. The assistance of DNA is usually the main factor in proving these people innocent and their
Unit 4 Assignment
Cm107 College Composition
Professor Ann Reich
By: Tracie Moon
“Today, however, most Americans realize that innocent defendants are occasionally convicted, and that America 's criminal justice system has other deep-seated problems with administering equitable punishments.”
I want to begin by saying that this topic has affected me. I have done outside research on the issue. I find it immoral, disruptive, and unjust and it troubles me. To actually put myself in the minds and states of those that have been incarcerated due to wrongful conviction. When in reality they are innocent. I can barely even take myself or my mental state anywhere close to understanding what these people have gone …show more content…
Most of the people who are lucky enough to be found and retried have spent over a decade in prison or on death row.
Then when they are found innocent at the mercy of pure luck that someone took an interest in their case by chance. They are just kicked out of their cell onto the street and are expected to engage in society like nothing ever happened. All the while the people who are responsible for this inconvenience that has been served to these individuals, go on about their lives and careers. Not even offering up an apology, or any type of remorse or compensation to these people.
“Between 2003 and 2005, Gould served as the Chair of the "Innocence Commission for Virginia" (ICVA), an organization "created to investigate the causes of factual exonerations and to recommend measures to prevent such errors in the future" (p. 5). The Commission has its roots in a symposium issue of Judicature (September-October 2002) on "Wrongful Convictions of the Innocent.” In that issue, Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld proposed the establishment of state-sponsored innocence commissions to learn what could be learned from the known miscarriages. From that challenge emerged the ICVA, although it was left to private law firms, not the state, to come forward within the half million dollars in pro-bono …show more content…
60)
Nine factors surface from the case descriptions as mutual features that are related to these I mistaken convictions, ranging from flawed eyewitness identification to the lack of post conviction procedures that might help correct the mistakes. In most cases, more than one of these factors was present.
DNA evidence was not being used as evidence until 1989. It said in the article I read in Unit 2 that Texas is the only state that preserves all evidence forever. Everywhere else the evidence is destroyed when all the convicted appeals run out. The assistance of DNA is usually the main factor in proving these people innocent and their