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Tom Robinson Accused In To Kill A Mockingbird

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However, other people may be believe that the American Criminal Justice System is trustworthy and fair to all individuals. Thus, they believe innocents should have nothing to fear based on the assumption that the Criminal Justice System is never mistaken. Given the advanced technology used in courtrooms today, people think that this can always be depended on for accurate results. For instance, in modern courtrooms, prosecutors and attorneys use “undeniable scientific evidence” such as DNA testing and fingerprint evidence (Volokh). Therefore, some people think that it is virtually impossible for an innocent person to be convicted for a crime with this irrefutable technology. Even though attorneys and prosecutors should use scientific evidence …show more content…

For example, in the realistic fiction novel To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, a black man named Tom Robinson was falsely accused of raping a white woman, Mayella Ewell. Based on the evidence Atticus (Tom Robinson’s lawyer) presented in the story, it was clear that Robinson was innocent. However, Tom Robinson was still convicted based on the assumption of the time period (1930s) that all Negro men lie. The jury was terribly corrupt towards Tom Robinson because he was a Negro. Because of racism around the world and especially the country, innocents should fear the justice system. Moreover, another example is “the system is extremely racist, of course, white people are arrested less than many minorities” (Sachs). In this country, many innocent people are arrested and convicted based on the their race or religion. For instance, in a report by NBC News, a record-breaking 149 innocent people were exonerated in 2015. Around ⅔ of the people wrongly convicted were minorities. In one instance, a Latino man named William Vasquez was cleared of an arson that killed a mother and her five children in 1981. Vasquez was innocent, but he served thirty-one years in prison, where he went blind for untreated glaucoma (NBC News). He was sent to jail because the building owner (Hannah Quick) accused him of the arson. Before Quick was about to die, she confessed that she was lying; therefore, Vasquez was released from prison. Because of this mishap in the criminal justice system, he lost his eyesight and spent most of his life in prison. All in all, the justice system is extremely corrupt towards certain individuals based on race or

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