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Lessons of Wrongful Convictions

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Lessons of Wrongful Convictions
Stephanie Worthington
CM107: Professor Kosse

The Lessons of Wrongful Convictions

When we think of someone going to prison for a crime, we do not think about whether or not they are actually guilty. That is the job of the court to decide that. When evidence is presented to the jury, we like to think that they research all pieces of evidence thoroughly before rendering a judgment. That is not always the case unfortunately. There are more times than most people are aware of, of people being wrongfully convicted. The issue of this, is that DNA evidence is not always present in these cases. With the implantation of DNA in these criminal cases, there would be more innocent people walking the streets instead of behind bars.
There are many reasons that a person is wrongfully convicted. Some reasons are due to eyewitness identification errors, inadequate evidence or lack thereof. There are so many more factors that play into this issue. The number one reason that someone is wrongfully convicted, is due to Eyewitness misidentification. In fact, that was that factor played in 72 percent of the post-conviction DNA exonerations in the United States. At least forty percent of the eyewitness misidentifications involve cross racial identification. Studies show that people are less likely to be able to recognize the faces of a different race, rather than that of their own. (search.proquest.lib.kaplan.edu/docview) ( innocenceproject.com)
The first DNA exoneration took place in 1989. Thirty eight states have won the implementation of DNA exonerations, and just since the year 2000, there have been 257 exonerations. There have been a total of 324 DNA exonerations in the United States. 20 of those 324 served time on death row. Also, 16 were charged with capital punishment, however were not sentenced to death. The average age of these wrongfully

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