Identifying Opportunities for Change.
Now that there’s an understanding on the trends related to exonerations by crime, race, and gender, identifying opportunities for improvement and reform are key to bettering the Justice system. This is why understanding how wrongful convictions happen is important; knowing past procedures and their overall outcomes inspires ideas for improvement.
Below is a video from the Founders of the Innocence Project and their mission for the organization.
Some cities and states across the country have already implemented ideas of reform. Harris County, Texas has tackled the most prevalent cause of wrongful convictions: Eyewitness Misidentification. An article in the Inquiries Journal goes into depth on the errors posed by witness misidentification stating, “a misidentification can result in the wrongful convictions of an innocent person as well as prompt police investigators to stop looking for the real offender.”
A known fact in the world of law is that time is very critical to some cases and the more time wasted the less of chance police have in catching the actual perpetrator. Often times, witnesses also believe the guilty person is included in the lineup applying pressure to the witness to pick a suspect.
There are 3 ways of improving the use of witness misidentification. The first being, although witnesses have selected a suspect from the lineup, prosecutors and police should remain thorough in follow ups with the witness. The next suggestion is to better investigation procedures as author Joshua Jones states, “witnesses should be notified that the guilty party may not be present in the lineup and are not required to answer definitively.” The final suggestion being, jurors should be informed of the confidence level presented by the witness during identification. In some cases witnesses are not really certain or confident in the person they pointed out as the suspect, but this information isn’t delayed to jurors or the judge over the case. So, the witness may be more uncertain than confident they’ve selected the right person but still testify against them.
An article by the BBC, called Why Harris County Texas Leads the US in Exonerations, talks about Harris County, Texas and how they are leading the country in exonerations. Reading the headline initially it appears as though this is a bad thing, but Harris County is actually trying to right all their wrongs from the past before implementing changes to their justice system. A lot of the exonerations coming out of Harris County are because of false confession and plea deals. Jessica Lussenhop writes about how once a defendant pleads guilty their case is put at the bottom of the pile at the forensics lab.
As far as forensic evidence and false confessions go, There are two ways to reform the use of forensic evidence and plea deals. Because most court systems receive new and various types of cases, prosecutors often pressure defendants to take plea deals for petty crimes such as drug possession and petty theft.
Prosecutors can reduce the amount of exonerations by confirming forensic evidence before finalizing plea deals. According to the BBC, A lot of jurisdictions are known to destroy evidence once someone pleads guilty as well. Discarding field kits and rape kits limit the number of ways to overturn those convictions, but maintaining evidence for every case for a number of years will reduce room for error and help in correcting mistakes quicker.
This paper was meant to educate and inform those uneducated about the fact that innocent people can be convicted of crimes. Providing knowledge on how wrongful convictions happens opens conversations on ways to minimize the issue. It’s hard to understand the affect wrongful convictions can have on someone and their life until it happens to you, but hopefully with more awareness, support, and effective changes no one will have to life the nightmare of being wrongfully convicted again.
If you want to be a part of the solution to this problem, contact local authorities, ask questions, and volunteer or donate to innocence projects across the country. Losing the idea that innocent people remain innocent and that accidents happen. the sooner the issues plaguing the American justice system are corrected the less of a change for repeated mistakes in the future.
