The article “When Our Eyes Deceive US” speaks about the wrong decisions that can lead to a wrongful conviction. This particular article decided to focus on cases of wrongful convictions of sexual assault. The first case mentioned was that of the wrongful conviction of Timothy Cole. His victim positively identified him three times (twice in police lineups and one in person at the trial), he was exonerated by DNA testing. To the utmost misfortune, the real rapist had been confessing to the crime for nine years. The study then cites Gary Wells and Deah Quinlivan in Law and Human behavior who published a study in the journal of the American Psychology-Law Society that revealed that in of the over 230 wrongfully convicted in the United States …show more content…
In previous court cases, such as Manson v. Braithwaite, the Supreme Court deemed that if identification can be determined to be “reliable”, such evidence could be used. The study continues further to document a specific case of mistaken identity. In 1984, Ronald Cotton was sentenced to prison for the rape of 22-year-old, Jennifer Thompson. While many were pleased that a rapist was off the street, the police has gotten the wrong man. In this case of mistaken identity, Cotton was proven innocent after 10 years due to DNA analysis. His exoneration implicated Bobby Poole, despite the victim claiming she was positive she had never seen Poole, and that when she thinks back on the attack, she sees Ronald Cotton. In their publication, Wells and Quinlivan suggest a list of factors that can sway a victim toward misidentification, such as “feedback” from police investigators to failed attempts to increase certainty in one’s foggy memories that become reinforced over time. These factors, which can be added to Thompson’s aching need to regain her control over her life and her need to justify her belief in the justice system, also certainly led to her difficulty to identify her rapist in a police lineup that did not even include a picture of her actual
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.
This article has the potential to show the reader how often wrongful convictions actually do happen and the means that someone wrongfully convicted has to go through to try and turn there case back around. I do believe that this article is a little bias and that the reader doesn’t really get to see the amount of times that the courts actually get the cases right. It’s just a good article in the fact it shows the amount of times wrongful convictions happen and the time it takes and effort from and individual to get a case
In addition to the harrowing case of Ronald Cotton, the reliability of an eyewitness testimony was recently challenged with the incorrect conviction of Kash Register. While sitting in his parked Chevrolet in 1979, an elderly man named Jack Sasson was viciously robbed of his life when he was shot five times at close proximity (Bazelon). Brenda Anderson, a nineteen year old who occupied an apartment on the same street, informed police that she heard the rowdy sound of gunfire, and when she peered out her window, noticed an African-American man stumbling away from the scene, before turning back and firing further rounds (Bazelon). When Anderson was shown photographs of several young men, she quickly recognized Register, who was a previous classmate
Picking Cotton: Our Memoir of Injustice and Redemption is a non-fiction book by activists Jennifer Thompson-Cannino and Ronald Cotton, with author Erin Torneo, first published in 2010. It tells the true story of Jennifer Thompson, a young woman who was violently raped in her apartment. She identified Ronald Cotton as her attacker and he was sent to prison. However, after eleven years, new DNA evidence conclusively proved he was innocent, and he was released.
Bennett Barbour was a 22-year-old handyman that was falsely accused of rape to a 19-year-old college student from the College of William and Mary in 1978. The victim was raped while the assailant had a gun to commit a crime, after the incident, the victim called the police and described the rapist as a 145 pound 5’6” tall man (Barbour, 2012). A week later the victim was at a police station and shown different pictures of the person she thought assaulted her, she pointed-out Barbour’s picture and again during two lineups. After, he was arrested and sent to trial. Barbour weighed 115 pounds had a brittle bone disease and had a pin in his elbow, making it impossible to rape anyone (Barbour, 2012).
In recent years, the fascination with crime and criminal investigation has peeked interest and resonated with the general public, creating a highly profitable market in crime films and literature. More specifically, books with fictional accounts of crime are one of the more notable interests to a variety of different individuals. Robert Rotenberg's novel, Old City Hall uses Toronto's as it backdrop in the criminal investigation of the murder of a woman. In this fictional world Kevin Brace, husband of the victim and distinguished Canadian radio personality, is arrested and put on trial for his wife's murder. Rotenberg narrates the story through a range of perspectives of detectives, lawyers, a journalist with the Toronto Star and a witness
Memories can be misinterpreted easily especially with the passage of time. This is why during interrogations, eyewitnesses’ can feel pressured and choose the wrong suspect such as the Tillman case. Tillman was accused of kidnapping and raping a woman in 1988. DNA analysis of the semen showed that it had come from someone else and he was wrongfully imprisoned for eighteen years (Duke
The criminal justice system depends majorly on eyewitness identification for investigating and prosecuting crimes. Psychologists have been the only ones who have warned the justice system of problems with eyewitness identification evidence. Recent DNA exoneration cases have corrupted the warnings of eyewitness identification researchers by showing that mistaken eyewitness identification was the largest factor contributing to the conviction of many innocent people eyewitness testimonies are not reliable therefor you would assume they would be taken out of court, but instead
Most cases where someone has been exonerated due to DNA retesting had a problem with eyewitnesses misidentifying the suspects. This is a problem that can change someone’s life forever. Misidentification of suspects is a flaw in the criminal justice system that can be addressed through more police training and increased help from the judges. Misidentification by the eyewitnesses and the police officers are current problems in the justice system. Suspects are identified by the eyewitnesses of the crime, but this can lead to some problems with who is identified.
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,
Witnesses to crimes are sometimes asked to view a police lineup to see if they can identify the culprit. Using experimentally created events, psychological researchers have long warned that eyewitness identification evidence is less reliable than people seem to believe. Corroborating the concerns of psychologists, since the advent of forensic DNA testing in the 1990s, 258 people convicted by juries in the United States have been freed based on exculpatory DNA tests, and 200 of these were cases of mistaken eyewitness identification (Innocence Project, 2010). Examination of the reasons for these mistaken identifications has provided rich avenues of investigation guided by cognitive and social perspectives. Here we focus on (a) variables that
Forensic psychologists will help create a criminal profile through the use of interviews and assessments to understand the victim or the possible offender. This allows for a better understanding of the individual and for the offender to be brought to justice (Godwin et al., 2001). Courts have relied on forensic assessments of offenders or witnesses in order to make sound decisions (Nicholson & Norwood, 2000). Overall, this episode was able to demonstrate the flaws of polygraphs, illustrate an interview, and depict a false rape allegation despite the reasoning behind the action. Forensic psychologists play a role in the criminal justice to reach an end goal and was demonstrated in this episode of Lie to
One famous case of a wrongful conviction sparked a documentary called “An Unreal Dream” about a Austin, Texas man named Michael Morton. Morton was accused of murdering his young wife Christine the day after his 32nd birthday. On August 13, 1986, Christine was brutally murdered while lying in bed. The only witness to the murder was the couple’s 3-year-old son Eric. Michael who worked at a local grocery store, was not at home the time of the murder.
There have been numerous cases where false conviction has ruined someone’s life. This too, happened to Tammy Marquardt (Wynne), a middle-aged woman currently 43, who had lost all three of her sons during her early twenties due to the false charges of smothering and murder that imprisoned her. It changed her life completely. She would have never expected to go from being a regular single mom to being a criminal, but she did. This is her story.
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.