ipl-logo

Convicting The Innocent Summary

955 Words4 Pages

Convicting the Innocent: Where Criminal Prosecutions Go Wrong In Brandon L. Garrett 's book, Convicting the Innocent: Where Criminal Prosecutions Go Wrong, he makes it very clear how wrongful convictions occur and how these people have spent many years in prison for crimes they never committed. Garrett presents 250 cases of innocent people who were convicted wrongfully because the prosecutors opposed testing the DNA of those convicted. Garrett provided simple statistics such as graphs, percentages, and charts to help the reader understand just how great of an impact this was. These wrongful convictions occur because the criminal justice system had many flaws. It was not only the system that had flaws but also the people on the board. The prosecutors "opposed testing, arguing that it would make no difference" whether or not those being convicted got DNA tested (Garrett 1). Confessions was one of the causes that often led to the downfall of those innocently convicted. In the case of Jeffrey Deskovic, the police officer was supposed to conduct the polygraph examination. The detective for this case explained that he did not actually conduct the examination but only tested "Deskovic 's truthfulness" and to "get …show more content…

Brandon L. Garrett used a lot of evidence to support his claims in Convicting The Innocent. Garrett used many facts to support the claims he made and represented his findings with many charts, graphs, and percentages. He reviewed police reports, interrogation transcripts and recordings, prosecution files, trial transcripts, and court opinions. Just like Garrett 's Convicting the Innocent, William Stuntz 's, The Collapse of American Criminal Justice, he talks about how prosecutors now decide whom to punish and how severely they will be punished. Garrett wrote about this in his book about how the judge and jury believed the prosecutors even though before the trial they recalled a different image of their attacker then the image they have of them during

Show More
Related

  • Summary Of Getting Life By Michael Morton

    1667 Words  | 7 Pages

    Even when Michael’s new defense team, through the innocence project, found a crime that was eerily similar to the method of murder and subsequent events to the one that Michael was convicted of, the new prosecutor in Williamson County fought hard to keep DNA testing from taking place, even stating that they objected to the testing now because the defense hadn’t requested it before (Morton, 2014). There was further evidence of ineffectiveness in that the coroner who’d changed his estimated time of death between the autopsy and trial, had come under scrutiny for his findings in this case, as well as several others, with claims of gross errors “including one case where he came to the conclusion that a man who’d been stabbed in the back had committed suicide” (Morton, 2014). This was only one of the many injustices that were committed against Michael Morton throughout his trial. In August of 2006, the defense was finally granted permission to perform DNA testing on the items that had been taken from his wife’s body (Morton, 2014). Although this testing did not reveal any information about the guilty party, it did at least give Michael the knowledge that Chris was not sexually violated before or after her death (Morton,

    Read More

  • Korey Wise Case Summary

    552 Words  | 3 Pages

    This is a case study about a young man by the name of Korey Wise who was wrongly incarcerated in the Central Park Jogger case of 1989. Due to being the age of sixteen he was the only one out of the five boys wrongly accused to be sent to an adult prison. In this prison Korey was victim to many forms of abuse, physical and mental to name a few. He was found guilty despite the lack of evidence. None of the DNA samples or Semen matched up with Korey.

    Read More

  • Todd Willingham Corsicana Case

    559 Words  | 3 Pages

    Before the advancements in science and DNA discovery, there have been many men and woman executed for a crime he/ she did not commite. After DNA was discovered there have been cases where DNA has exonerated date row inmates. If DNA wasn't discovered many men and women would have been executed and if DNA testing was available earlier it would have easily proven that Cameron Todd Willingham, Corsicana, Texas was innocent.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Bryan Stevenson's Just Mercy: A Story Of Justice And Murder

    919 Words  | 4 Pages

    I would understand if it was a case similar to O.J. Simpson, who had all the odds pointing to guilty but found innocent for the heinous murder that he committed; but, this is about a man who was falsely accused from the beginning. When Walter McMillian went to court to be trialed for the first time, there was “reliable evidence” that miraculously proved him guilty without any type of forensics to back it up. I thought that to be found guilty there needs to cold hard evidence to show the judge for a fair trial? And to not side with someone’s opinion because they heard a lie from their

    Read More

  • Book Review Of Picking Cotton By Jennifer Cannino

    1518 Words  | 7 Pages

    The day after I finished the book without any enthusiasm, I attended one of the common read event called "An Overview of the Innocence Project and Innocence Work" held by a staff attorney with the Innocence Project, Karen Thompson. As mentioned briefly at the end of the book, the Innocence Project, a nonprofit legal organization committed to exonerating wrongly convicted people through the use of DNA testing (Innocence Project 2015) origin from the project found by Richard Rosen, the law professor who helped Ron to win his freedom and were influenced by his case and the flow of letters from people in similar situation as Ron looking for a justice and seeing DNA technology as their last hope to clear their name. The presentation was quite informative and interesting, I learned the actual definition of scientific evidence - what can be considered as an actual scientific evidence or cannot be used as a scientific evidence and how it helped and continue to free many innocent people who are wrongly convicted. After the introduction and some more information on imperfection in criminal justice system and the investigation process, the audience - including me, were asked to watch a short clip as an exercise. Right away I knew she would ask us a question regarding the clip that related to false memory from the book, so I made sure to memorize every little detail trying hard not to miss anything.

    Read More

  • Adnan Syed: Murder Or Guilty?

    902 Words  | 4 Pages

    What if the DNA was tampered with or contaminated? DNA testing is not always reliable and this issue is evident in a large number of investigations. One well known incident of this occurring is the Josiah Sutton rape case- "In 2004, Josiah Sutton was exonerated after serving four and a half years of a 25-year sentence for a rape he did not commit. Sutton's conviction was the result of a mistaken identification and faulty scientific testing performed by the Houston police laboratory.

    Read More

  • Trumps Science: The Case Of Picking Cotton

    1247 Words  | 5 Pages

    DNA has given some innocents their freedom, but others are still being locked up. Jurors are giving guilty verdicts to people who don’t deserve it based on theories and confessions that may have been beaten out of them. It was reported in the studies that exculpatory DNA does sometimes help a defendant that had confessed, but then prosecutors come up with theories and that doesn’t help the defendants, as was the case of Joseph Buffey (Appleby & Kassin, 2016). I didn’t expect for exculpatory DNA not to be taken into consideration when prosecutors told a theory that can explain why DNA of the accused was not at the scene of the crime. It just doesn’t make sense.

    Read More

  • Anthony Robinson's Arguement In The O. J. Simpson Trial

    1611 Words  | 7 Pages

    Anthony Robinson strove all his life to escape the caste system of the ghetto he grew up in. He graduated from a prestigious college and joined the military, only to be falsely identified in a rape case and convicted. He argued many times that he was innocent and was devastated that he ended up in jail, adding to the reputation of those who grow up in the ghetto usually end up in prisons. He had to serve thirteen years in jail before he was paroled able to prove his innocence; he accomplished this with a DNA sample after saving his own money to fund a DNA examination to prove he did not commit the crime and clear his record(1,2). Sadly, Robinson is not the only one who's life was ruined because he was falsely convicted and given no fair trial.

    Read More

  • A Thin Blue Line By Errol Morris

    1008 Words  | 5 Pages

    Since 1989, over 1500 people have been exonerated for crimes they served time for but did not commit.(NRA) These are only the cases we know about. In our country’s justice system, many wrongfully convicted people are never given a chance to be exonerated and remain in prison for their entire sentencing. Errol Morris, an American film director attempted to shine a light on the dark side of the criminal justice system. In his 1988 documentary, “A Thin Blue Line,” Morris conveys the need for our justice system to be reformed as he trails the court case of Ranadall Adams, a man wrongfully convicted of a murder; following the case through the prosecution painting an unfair view of Adams, flimsy witness testimonys, and prosecutors who’s motives are

    Read More

  • Clarence Harrison's Execution Essay: The Innocent Project

    509 Words  | 3 Pages

    In 1988, Harrison asked for a DNA test, which was done but testing at that time, came back with the results of unable to determine, being that the US had only been using it since 1986. (Justice) After have spent 15 years in prison, Clarence Harrison contacted a group named “The Innocent Project,” to take on his case to prove his innocence and was accepted.

    Read More

  • Innocence Project Thesis

    1227 Words  | 5 Pages

    Since the founding of our judicial system there have always been individuals claiming innocence to a crime that they have been found guilty of, traditionally, after their sentencing no matter how innocent they may or may not be would have to serve, live and possibly die by the decision of their peers. The Innocence Project, founded in 1992 by Barry C. Scheck alongside Peter J. Neufeld faces this issue by challenging the sentencing of convicted individuals who claim their innocence and have factual ground to stand upon. The Innocence Project uses the recent advances in deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) testing to prove their client’s innocence by using methods that were not available, too primitive or not provided to their clients during their investigation,

    Read More

  • Argumentative Essay: Can People Still Be Wrongfully Convicted?

    323 Words  | 2 Pages

    However, there is no way to gather the exact percent of individuals that have been wrongfully convicted. DNA evidence has certainly decreased the number of wrongfully convicted, unfortunately, there

    Read More

  • The Pros And Cons Of Wrongful Conviction

    949 Words  | 4 Pages

    With millions of criminal convictions a year, more than two million people may end up behind bars(Gross). According to Samuel Gross reporter for The Washington Post, writes that also “even one percent amounts to tens of thousands of tragic [wrongful conviction] errors”(Gross). Citizens who are wrongfully convicted are incarcerated for a crime he or she did not commit. Many police officers, prosecutors, and judges are responsible for the verdict that puts innocents into prison. To be able to get exonerated many wait over a decade just to get there case looked at, not many are able to have the opportunity of getting out.

    Read More

  • Wrongful Convictions In Criminal Justice

    539 Words  | 3 Pages

    Luckily, it is known what causes wrongful convictions and how to fix them. Many wrongful convictions are due to mistaken eyewitnesses, jailhouse snitches, or false evidence. I think many of the wrongful convictions could be solved with harder evidence, more information. A case should not rely on a single eye witness but multiple.

    Read More

  • Why Is Torture Justified

    965 Words  | 4 Pages

    (Costanzo & Gerrity, 2009, p. 185). Garrett (2011)’s study showed that more than 25% detainees wrongfully convicted but later exonerated by DNA evidence made a false confession or incriminating statement. In

    Read More

More about Convicting The Innocent Summary

Open Document