Introduction
In recent years, the number of offenders being unfairly
and unjustly convicted by the court systems of the United States has been
getting much attention. Since 2012, the
number of exonerations that has been listed in the National Registry of
Exonerations (2012) has surpassed 1,600 cases.
Many of these convictions have been due to police or prosecutor
misconduct such as planting evidence, withholding evidence, or lying about the
facts of a case or progression of events. Eyewitness misidentification is
another serious problem that can put a suspect at the focal point of an
investigation to the exclusion of other possible suspects, leading
investigators to a presumption of guilt based on said identification. Unfortunately, this misconduct is indicative
of a growing problem within both the criminal justice and the legal systems
whereby many innocent citizens across the country are being wrongfully accused
and convicted of crimes which they did not do.
It is an unfortunate consequence that the presumption of guilt, rather
than innocence, leads down this path. The
fallout from such convictions has left the nation reeling, both in frustration
and anger, of the very systems which had been put in place to protect citizens
against such injustices.
Literature
Review
Article 1 Review
The first
article, An Epidemic of Prosecutor Misconduct, discusses how prosecutorial
misconduct has become even more rampant than ever before. Many prosecutors will not prosecute a case
unless it will lead to a conviction, and this will often lead to unethical
actions on their part such as withholding the release of exculpatory evidence,
making false statements to the jury, destroying evidence, overstating the
strength of the evidence (i.e. a ‘preponderance of evidence’), and many other
types of misconduct just to get a conviction.
The National Registry of Exonerations (2012) has concluded that an
astounding 43% of wrongful convictions can be attributed to prosecutor
misconduct (Center for Prosecutor Integrity, 2013, p. 4).
In the
criminal justice system of today, the authors purport that the prosecutor has
become one of the most formidable dramatis personae among all court
officials. 90% of all criminal cases
heard in courts are concluded by plea bargains that have been negotiated by
prosecutors. It is the prosecutor’s
determination of whom to arrest, what the sentencing recommendations should be,
what crime to charge the defendant with and he or she even advises on the terms
of the plea bargain (Center for Prosecutor Integrity, 2013, p.1).
According
to the article, An Epidemic of Prosecutor Misconduct (2013), thousands of
American citizens are victimized each year by prosecutors who withhold
evidence, overcharge, or otherwise engage in acts of misconduct, just to get a
conviction. Then, when these people seek
reparation after the fact, they are met with delays, denials, and animosity.
Article 2 Review
In the
second article, the State of the State Address, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo
encouraged lawmakers to create a system to make identification procedures by
eyewitnesses more authoritative and supported the use of videotape when
questioning suspects. These actions were
in response to the growing concern of wrongful convictions within the criminal
justice system. According to Cuomo (2013),
it is mistaken identification by eyewitnesses that often times leads to wrongful
convictions (pg. 104). It is by
instituting these measures during questioning that the rights of both law
enforcement officials and suspects would be protected and the problem of
wrongful convictions might be mitigated.
Article 3 Review
In the
third article, Fighting CPS (2011), the author delves into another aspect of
the criminal justice system and its inadequacies and ultimate misconduct. Frontiera (2011) states that Child Protective
Services (CPS) can, and many times, does wrongfully remove children from their
homes, ultimately causing extreme trauma and duress to both the child(ren) and
their family.
The
book then goes on to document various cases and the actions taken by CPS during
said cases. Admittedly, many times these
actions, are justified and children are saved from abusive homes. The problem comes in when there is no proper
investigation done by law enforcement.
CPS simply assumes that innocent families are guilty of child abuse or
neglect, decides to step in and take the child(ren) out of the home. The burden is then on the side of the parents
to prove that they are not guilty of abuse, which sometimes takes years to
prove (Fortiera, 2011).
The
ramifications for the family, in legal costs and stress as well as the mental
trauma of having a family ripped apart can be overwhelming. Frontiera (2011) lays out some
recommendations that can be taken to improve the "system", such as
recording any and all conversations with a CPS worker, not allowing them to
interview children, pay attention to details, as well as others.
Article 4 Review
The
case of Michael Morton brings to light just how common misconduct, fraud and/or
negligence by prosecutors is in cases involving DNA evidence. Mr. Morton was convicted of his wife’s murder
by the prosecutors in the case because, they theorized, she did not have sex
with him on his birthday (Innocence Project, n.d.).
It
wasn't until almost 25 years later, in December 2011, that Morton was finally
exonerated of the crime. Certain DNA
evidence and testimony from his son, who had been in the room at the time of
the murder, and others in the community, had originally been suppressed and
never brought to light. The prosecutor
in the case did not present any physical evidence or call any witnesses to
testify, but simply theorized that Michael Morton had killed his wife for not
having sex with him. Subsequently, Michael Morton was convicted of the murder
of his wife and sentenced to life in prison (Innocence Project, n.d.).
It
wasn't until the group, The Innocence Project, stepped in and was given
permission to perform further DNA testing on the evidence in 2005 and again in
2011, that Morton was proven to have been falsely accused and was released on
October 4, 2011. The DNA profile that
had been revealed from the new tests named a convicted felon as the perpetrator
(Innocence Project, n.d.).
Article 5 Review
During
his research, Samual G. Gross, a University of Michigan Law Professor,
concluded that since the 1980s, there have been upwards of 850 exonerations of
inmates who were wrongfully convicted - 282 of which were exonerated by DNA
evidence alone (John T. Floyd Law Firm, 2015).
Based on the research done by Beth Schwartzapfel and Hannah Levintova
for their piece titled "How Many Innocent People Are In Prison", it
was hypothesized that about 20,000 or one percent of inmates in the United
States prison population were wrongfully convicted.
Some of these exonerations come by way of
district attorneys who, when reviewing the facts of certain cases, note that
some of the circumstances in the initial investigations simply don't look
right, call for a retrial of the case
using evidence that was not given in the first trial (John T. Floyd Law Firm,
p. 6).
There
are also the cases when the prosecution has wrongfully convicted a person and
does not want that information to become public, as in the case of Hank
Skinner, who had been sentenced to death for the brutal murder of his
girlfriend. Skinner tried for years to
get the DNA testing done of the evidence in the case, but DA Lynn Switzer would
never allow it. It was surmised that
Switzer didn't allow the testing to be done so that the news of another Texas
inmate had also been wrongfully convicted and given the death penalty would not
get out (John T. Floyd Law Firm, 2015).
References
Center
for Prosecutor Integrity. (2013). An epidemic of prosecutor misconduct.
Retrieved from http://www.prosecutorintegrity.org/wp-content/uploads/EpidemicofProsecutorMisconduct.pdf
Cuomo,
Andrew M. (January 09, 2013). NY rising.
2013 State of the State. Retrieved
from http://www.scribd.com/mobile/doc/119659923
Frontiera,
Deborah K. (2011). Fighting CPS: Guilty Until Proven Innocent of Child
Protective Services Charges. The ABC's Press.
Innocence
Project. (n.d.) Evidence of fraud, negligence or misconduct by prosecutors or
police is disturbingly not uncommon among the DNA exoneration cases. Government Misconduct. Retrieved from http://www.innocenceproject.org/causes-wrongful-conviction/government-misconduct#resources
John
T. Floyd Law Firm. (2015). Wrongful conviction and prosecutorial misconduct. Retrieved
from http://www.hg.org/article.asp?id=27301
University
of Michigan Law School. (May 2012). National registry of exonerations. Retrieved from http://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Documents/1600_Exonerations.pdf
