Argumentative Essay: Can People Still Be Wrongfully Convicted?

Felon Rights: Many people take voting for granted; many will argue that voting is a privilege not a right, as this is true among many counties. Here in the United States everyone at the age of eighteen gains their right to vote. Right now roughly 4 Million Americans will not be allowed to Vote in the United States. These people are felons that have served their debt to society.

Depending on state laws, it can be for life or for a few years. According to Allard, about 3.9 million Americans, or one in fifty adults, have lost their ability to vote because of felony charges. More than one third of the total disenfranchised population are African American men (Allard 2000). There has been litigation in many different states to combat disenfranchisement, but there are still many hoops to jump through for an ex-felon to re-attain their voting rights. For example, in Virginia, an ex-felon can restore their voting privileges after a five to seven year waiting period (Allard 2000).

Former Felons Deserve to Vote Felons can permanently lose their right to vote in ten different states and have their voting rights restricted in thirty-eight of them, this means that in forty-eight states there are people who are not able to express their opinion, they have had their voice taken from them. Many people who were once convicted of a felony want to change their life around, they want to be a normal civilian to the United States, not someone seen as a juvenile or a law breaker. Being able to vote is a right and part of being a U.S. citizen, these people have had part of their citizenship taken from them, some won’t ever have that piece of citizenship for the rest of their life because of human disenfranchisement, a law passed in 1789. This law stated that all felons, blacks, and women were not allowed to vote. Since the passing of this law blacks and women were given their rights to vote however felons never were.

When one thinks about the court systems and the way justice is served they see a system that is fair and just. A system that correctly provides punishment to the guilty party, and one that can discover the truth within the innocent party. On the surface level this appears to be true. Hundreds of thousands of people are incarcerated each year in the United States, which in reality provides a false sense of safety to citizens. While a large percentage of incarcerations are of guilty parties, according to a study in C. Ronald Huff’s book, Convicted But Innocent: Wrongful Conviction and Public Policy, approximately 100,000 innocent people are convicted every year.

Millions of Americans cannot vote because of a felony conviction. People who have done nothing wrong and people who have committed minor crimes have been removed from voting rolls. The American penal system was based on the belief that status in society can be redeemed, and the standards should not be changed for felons. After a felon has served the sentenced prison time, he or she should be able to rejoin society. Felons should have the right to vote restored after being released from prison.

This was later carried out through twenty-six other states, including the U.S., which created a precedent against the execution of the mentally ill in 1986. Even though the mentally ill cannot be executed, if the person who claimed mental illness is no longer mentally ill he or she can be executed. While the insanity plea proves that some criminals are mentally unstable, it should be used with caution because many convicted criminals abuse it during court cases, imitate being mentally ill during an examination, and are able to avoid the death penalty. Despite that the insanity plea can potentially help someone in defense for a mental illness case, many people can also take advantage of these precedents to alleviate their trials. The public in most insanity plea cases, do not typically agree with the rulings because most criminals use the

So there are 4,400 deaths per year due to bulling. The people who commit suicide don 't understand the value of a life of their life. In conclusion, I believe that the value of life really means what you make of it if you are happy in the end. The value of life is what you make of it.

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.

As he faced justice through the court system, advocates unnecessarily argued that he was only a child and too young to serve as an adult. To show that an individual’s age should not be used as an excuse to justify their actions, Weir states “Some juveniles commit crimes so serious, so heinous, that public safety mandates — and justice demands — full accountability in our criminal justice system. There are those who argue this is unfair and unjust. They say the juvenile brain is not fully developed until well into the

A total 385 white people have been killed by police this year, and 66 of them were unarmed at the time of their death. But, just 25 police officers have died from firearms-related violence in the same period. Now there is a small controversy conflict in the media because of the #BlackLivesMatter movement, which I think is just certain people dry hating. The tiny issue is that some people think by saying black lives matter that we mean all lives don’t matter; but me personally, I do have moments were all lives do not matter to me in a few instances only because of how they act towards me, but this is not the cases with everyone. However, activists like the members of the Black Lives Matter movement argue that police kill blacks at a rate disproportionate

2 Pages “The United States has 88.8 guns per 100 people, or about 270,000,000 guns, which is the highest total and per capita number in the world.” (ProCon.org.) This statistic may not come as a surprise to most. What may shock you, however, is how gun control can actually hurt your communities, and in more way than one.

To address this issue, congress has the position and power to overrule each state’s laws to make it clear that convicted felons should be eligible to vote in all states. The way convicted felons are perceived by others can tend to be unjust and unfair. According to FairVote, “about 5.3 million U.S. citizens that have been convicted of a felony can not vote”.

Regardless which side of the political compass a person lies, Americans agree that too many individuals are imprisoned in the United States. In fact, the United States holds about 5% of the world population, but nearly 25% of the prison population (Ye Hee Lee 2015). The advent of dog-whistle politics combined with implicit racial bias has allowed for casual observers and social scientists alike to notice how minorities disproportionately make up the composition of prisons since the 1970s. While no single policy exists that can fix this "New Jim Crow," getting rid of private prisons offers the easiest first step toward mending contemporary racism. Simply put, policy that eradicates private prisons in the United States proves practical as they

Describing the problem: Found guilty in criminal trials when wrongful convictions transpire when acquitted suspects were oblige pleading guilty to crimes they did not commit to dodge the death penalty or severe sentencing. Moreover, wrongful conviction inexcusable injustice is enhanced once some acquitted individuals spend years in prison or on death row. How Big is the Problem? The Criminal Justice System is less than perfect which brings many controversial issues nevertheless one non-controversial fact is the reasons for opposing the use of irreversible punishment. Thus far, not every person stands exonerated of the wrongful convictions, there are still some counties and states who have had zero exonerates.

Convictions In this case, Dookhan cases appear to account for a mind-boggling 25 percent of all of the drug litigation that led to convicting in the seven constituency that uses the Hinton State Lab during Dookhan’s incumbency. Yet, Dookhan was let go on parole only because this was the first time prosecutors ad the list of all the defendants affected by the case. Annie Dookhan was convicted on drug charges from fabricating thousands of test results. For someone to face such a light sentence for ruining countless lives with falsification of many different evidences is seen as a disgrace.