Institutional Flaws In Criminal Cases

Chapter 5 describes how, within the last century, mounting scholarly evidence has exposed institutional flaws within our judicial and police systems, resulting in the convictions of innocent persons for capital crimes. In some cases, overzealous behavior by police and prosecutors, led to the imprisonment of “factually” innocent defendants. While police sometimes coerced confessions or failed to conduct full investigations, prosectors and judges failed to evidence which might exonerate the defendant. Other judicial violations found through study included failure to follow courtroom procedures related to rule of law. One of the first wrongful conviction initiatives was through a congressional investigation in 1912. Although a noble undertaking for its time, the reports was flawed in its evidentiary compilation. The data was poorly collected and its findings poorly deduced. According to the report, no innocent person had been executed by the Federal government.

Building on the increasing literature, recommendations were made to improve the processing of criminal …show more content…
Bedau and Radelet, as described Thistlethwaite and Wooldredge (2010) spent several years categorizing instances of capital defendants convicted on the basis of mistakes gross physical facts. Bedau and Radelet conservatively concluded by the end of their study, from 1900 to 1985, three innocent people per every two years have been executed in capital cases. Specifically, one person is convicted per year, per in capital crime – African-Americans were widely over-represented in the study. The authors also recognize the American criminal justice system is not designed to correct errors once they are discovered. Exonerating convicted defendants is a relatively small number and can take years to identify and