A miscarriage of justice, also known as a failure of justice, occurs when a person is convicted and punished for a crime that they did not commit.
United States courts are supposed to be the guardians of justice. Yet, incorrect verdicts occur far too often. Since 1989, the United States has used DNA testing to exonerate 225 innocent people after they have spent years in captivity. At least 123 people have been exonerated from death row since the 1970s. Condemning the innocent makes a mockery of justice, robbing men and women of dignity, relationship, time, opportunity, and freedom. Wrongful convictions also endanger the public because locking up an innocent person means the real culprit walks free.
When our criminal legal system convicts innocent people, it does not serve justice. Instead, it creates more victims, while the actual perpetrator of the crime remains free to potentially further endanger society. If we pride ourselves in a system where individuals are innocent until proven guilty, we have an obligation to correct and prevent these devastating tragedies. Even one innocent person in prison is one too many.
As the number of DNA exonerations has grown across the country in recent years, wrongful convictions have revealed disturbing fissures and trends in our criminal legal system. Together, these cases show us how the criminal justice system is broken and how urgently it needs to be fixed. In each case where DNA has proven innocence beyond doubt, an overlapping array of causes has emerged – from mistakes and misconduct to factors of race and class.
Eyewitness Misidentification
Eyewitness misidentification is the leading cause of wrongful convictions in the United States. Over 75 percent of DNA exoneration cases have involved convictions based on mistaken identification evidence. A variety of factors can affect the reliability of an identification, mainly the simple fallibility of human memory.
Unvalidated Forensic Science
Forensic science is a useful tool, but many forensic disciplines apply techniques and methods that have not been approved by the scientific community. Unvalidated forensic science, such as hair and fiber comparison and bite-mark analysis, have played a role in over 50 percent of convictions later overturned by the use of DNA evidence, proving that there has to be higher standards for forensic testimony at trial.
False Confessions
Innocent defendants have made incriminating statements, confessed, or plead guilty in approximately 25 percent of DNA exonerations in the United States. Multiple factors can contribute to false confessions, such as a defendant’s poor mental health and/or the use of coercive interrogation techniques. These factors result in an often threatened and confused defendant, who will confess to the crime in an attempt to relieve their current discomfort.
Jailhouse Informant Testimony
In 15 percent of convictions later overturned using DNA evidence, the defendant was imprisoned because an jailhouse informant testified against them. Jailhouse informants often have incentives to lie on the stand in order to escape prosecution themselves or receive shorter sentences. Jailhouse informant testimony is especially dangerous when such incentives are not disclosed to the jury, so they do not understand it could be bias. It is important to regulate the use of incentivized informants as to reduce the possibility that these unreliable witnesses mislead judges and juries.
Police and Prosecutorial Misconduct
While most prosecutors and law enforcement officials are honest and have the best intentions to protect society, the pressure to secure a conviction at times may lead police and prosecutors to act in an inappropriate, unfair, or unlawful manner. This government misconduct can include withholding or fabricating evidence, coercive interrogations by investigators, or suggestive methods used by police to obtain an identification. While police and prosecutorial misconduct is more likely in high profile cases with a great amount of press coverage, because law enforcement feels pressure to obtain a suspect.
Poor Defense Lawyering
Defendants are guaranteed a right to counsel but an ineffective defense attorney can lead to the wrongful conviction of a factually innocent person. Inadequate defense lawyering can include the overall failure to prepare for trial, to investigate the crime and the defendant’s alibi, and to challenge witnesses and experts.
Systemic Racism and Implicit Bias
What is systemic racism?
Systemic racism shows up in our lives across institutions and society. It includes the wealth gap, employment, housing discrimination, incarceration, drug arrests, immigration arrests, and infant mortality.
There is no obvious sign of America’s broken criminal justice system than that of the contrasting impact on people of color.
Criminalizing Race
Racially disparate system and its devastating consequences
- African Americans are about six times likely to be incarcerated compared to their white counterparts.
- The role of the criminal justice professional.
- From time to time citizens who harbor racist attitudes make it onto juries where they are asked to judge those they hold in disdain.
Implicit racial bias
As humans we unconsciously have attitudes or stereotypes about race that help us understand the world around us. Our decisions in life are based on this understanding and we act upon them often unaware of our attitudes. This reflex response is known as Implicit Racial Bias (IRB).
IRB affects us all regardless of where our racial biases stand or our associations with members of other races.
Prosecutors
IRB and stereotypes skew prosecutorial decisions in racially biased ways. This affects their discretion with charges, pretrial, trial, and post-trial strategies.
Police
IRB works in three ways:
- Who the police choose to monitor
- How the police interpret the behavior of those they scrutinize
- How they react to their conclusions
Jurors
- Research shows that when jurors are asked to recall facts, they are inclined to misremember information in racially biased ways.
Judges
- They are also prone to “stereotype consistent memory errors” that have an impact on how they set bail, rule on pretrial motions and trial objections, assess guilt, determining instruction during jury trials, and appropriate sentencing.
Sources:
– Wikipedia
– Prison Fellowship
– New England Innocence Project