Wrongful Conviction: Is Race A Factor? Almost everyday, someone is being arrested for a crime they had committed. However, the justice system in some cases failed to convict the right person and have sent innocent people to jail based upon misleading identification of suspects. In U.S history, several famous wrongful conviction such as the Scottsboro Boys and Ed Brown were convictions based upon race because of the racial strife from the Jim Crow era. (Grimsley). Even after the Jim Crow era, most
information on human experts. Journal of Forensic Sciences, 57, 343-352. Experimental research. (2008). Explorable.com. Forensic science misconduct. (n.d.). NY: Innocence Project. Improving the practice and use of forensic science. (2008). The Justice Project. 1-32. Kassin, S. M., Dror, I. E., & Kukucka, J. (2013). The forensic confirmation bias: Problems, perspectives, and proposed solutions. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition,
especially John Willis. After three more men were put in jail wrongly due to the false ‘evidence’ Pamela Fish was entrusted with, she was refused a re-hire after her employment papers expired. Fish can no longer cause harm to innocent suspects. Willis, on the other hand, was given a settlement by the state to make up for his wrongful
years in prison, they were eventually exonerated. It was found that one of the suspects had falsely confessed to the crime after prolonged pressure and mistreatment from the police. The case of ‘The Guildford four’ highlights the problem of wrongful convictions resulting from false confessions. The Innocent Project also found that 15-20% of DNA-exonerated (innocent) defendants had falsely confessed prior to their trails (as cited by Kassin, 2005). Interviewing suspects is a crucial part of criminal
Andre Hatchett was convicted of murder in 1991. However, there was no DNA evidence linking him to the crime. Only a single eyewitness said that he saw Hatchett attack the women in a park. During the trial, the eyewitness had testified and Andre Hatchett was charged with murder and was put in jail for 25 years. But 25 years into his sentence it was found that he was wrongly convicted and the eyewitness had testified for having a burglary charge dropped against him. An eyewitness was responsible for