Law enforcement has a direct ethical responsibility to preventing wrongful convictions, no matter how heavy the pressure for a conviction may be from a political standpoint. Wrongful convictions represent a miscarriage of justice and draw attention to procedural problems in law enforcement. One of the problems that has been shown to lead to wrongful convictions is the method by which eyewitness testimony is secured. Recent criminal justice policy and procedure have changed somewhat to prevent problems with false eyewitness testimony, but these changes have been irregularly implemented (Norris, Bonventre, Redlich, et al, 2017). Therefore, the onus remains upon individual departments to develop an ethical culture that prevents wrongful convictions. As helpful as eyewitness accounts have been in securing rightful convictions, “eyewitnesses make mistakes and that their memories can be affected by various factors including the very law enforcement procedures designed to test their memories,” (Committee on Scientific Approaches to Understanding and Maximizing the Validity and Reliability of Eyewitness Identification in Law Enforcement and the Courts, 2014, p. 1). Some of the processes used by law enforcement in the identification of suspects may lead to the planting of false memories in eyewitnesses being interviewed, or misleading eyewitnesses...
The Innocence Project, for example, cites cases in which witnesses were only shown photographs of the primary suspect, where photographs of the prime suspect were marked, and when eyewitness accounts actually changed after they were interviewed by police (“Eyewitness Identification,” n.d.). Lineups are only one of many ways law enforcement solicits information from eyewitnesses; interviews and other methods also need to be presided over by a much stricter set of rules and guidelines than has been used in the past.References
Committee on Scientific Approaches to Understanding and Maximizing the Validity and Reliability of Eyewitness Identification in Law Enforcement and the Courts (2014). Identifying the culprit. National Research Council. https://www.innocenceproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/NAS-Report-ID.pdf
Desai, A. (2017). Actual innocence and wrongful convictions. Virginia Public Law and Legal Theory Research Paper No. 2017-20. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2959570
“Eyewitness Identification,” (n.d.). Innocence Project. https://www.innocenceproject.org/causes/eyewitness-misidentification/
Norris, R.J., Bonventre, C.L., Redlich, A.D., et al (2017). Preventing wrongful convictions. Criminal Justice Policy Review. https://doi.org/10.1177/0887403416687359
eyewitness testimony is far from being a gold standard in criminal justice. At least 75% of wrongful convictions for violent crimes including rape and murder were based on eyewitness testimony, and many of those convictions led to the death penalty (Bohannon 2014). Stambor (2006) found that 78% of wrongful convictions were based on overreliance on eyewitness testimony. It is therefore critical to reexamine the policies and procedures surrounding the
Wrongful Conviction Review: Henry James Wrongful convictions are convictions where "factually innocent people are convicted of crimes" (Acker & Redlich, 2011, p.3). There are a number of ways that wrongful convictions can occur. Two of these ways are no crime convictions and wrong man convictions (Acker & Reclich, 2011, p.7-8). No crime convictions occur when someone is convicted of a crime, generally murder, and then it is later discovered that no
Wrongful Conviction of James Henry Henry James was only 19 years during his conviction for rape that he did not commit. It is after thirty years imprisonment that the realization of his innocence emerges thereby keeping it free. This case is a good example of the importance of evidence in the proceedings of a case. The imprisonment of the innocent man arose because of the little evidence that he had against
41+). Loftus notes that science has found "post-event information" is integrated into what most people have actually experienced because, "when people experience some actual event -- say a crime or an accident -- they often later acquire new information about the event. This new information can contaminate the memory" (Loftus, 2002, March, p. 41+). In addition, many false memories are created, deliberately or by accident, in response to leading questioning
Wrongful Convictions Based on Eyewitness Accounts Imagine if you will this hypothetical scenario -- you are walking to your car in a parking garage after a long day at work. You are tired and thinking of what is waiting for you on your desk tomorrow and what you will have to eat when you get home. Suddenly, a man jumps out from behind a parked car and points a gun at
The over-enthusiasm associated with the extensive and unrestrained caution which the prosecutors avail gives birth to the settings in which a prosecutor is able to cause the conviction of an innocent individual. Besides, the mixture of over-enthusiasm and unimpeded discretion on one side and regular non-adversarialness on the other outcomes in an irregular playing field in majority of the defendants either guilty or innocent. (Griffin, 1274) The apparent cases of
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