Miscarriages of Justice are Inevitable if we are to Ensure that Criminals are Convicted - Essay Example

? Number and Number Miscarriages of Justice are Inevitable if we are to Ensure that Criminals are Convicted The criminal justice system in England and Wales is a very complex social institution that is heavily regulated under the law. In a society that is fair and just, the innocent people should be protected from being charged or convicted for a crime that was committed by other people. By all means, the criminals should convicted and be punish for their criminal acts. To come up with a fair and just criminal system, the prosecutors should be neutral and impartial when it comes to making decisions whether or not to convict the defendant from the crime he or she is being accused of1. Miscarriages of justice are one of the most serious problems we have in our society. Despite the lawyers’ effort in giving justice to the innocent people, there are quite a lot of legal cases wherein the poorest sector in our society failed to receive fair treatment and justice. As a system, the law unites the society as a whole. Therefore, each individual should wholeheartedly respect and abide with the law. Since a series of wrong conviction on innocent defendants could weaken the effectiveness of our criminal justice system, miscarriages of justice is often kept a secret from people outside the group of lawyers and juries. Miscarriage of justice is referring to the inability of the court to reach the desired end result for justice. To promote a fair and just legal system within the society, it is necessary to prevent miscarriages of justice2. In response to the statement “miscarriages of justice become unavoidable if we are to ensure that the criminals are convicted”, this report will focused on discussing why miscarriages of justice is unavoidable as we ensure that real criminals are convicted. To enable the readers have a better understanding about this topic, this report will first discuss the social problems associated with miscarriages of justice followed by discussing the loop-holes which could increase the risk wherein the innocent victims can be wrongfully convicted for the crime they never committed. As part of going through the main discussion, some factors that can contribute to miscarriages of justice will be identified and tackled in details. Miscarriages of Justice Miscarriage of justice is pertaining to many criminal cases wherein the defendant suffers from a wrongful imprisonment. In line with this, Layne explained that one should be clear that there are two different types of wrong conviction. First, there is a possibility wherein a guilty or not guilty defendant is unfairly convicted by not giving them a fair trial or has been legally discharged by the judge, detained on remand, or acquitted during the court trial. The second type of wrong conviction is when an innocent defendant was convicted for a crime done by other people. On top of these two types of wrong conviction, there are also cases wherein innocent victims can be detained in a prison cell without being charged guilty of a crime3. In line with this, the term miscarriage of justice is often referring to the second type of wrong conviction wherein an innocent defendant has been wrongly convicted but can also increase public concern each time a defendant who is guilty of a crime has been acquitted by the Court4. Given that issues related to miscarriage of justice are mostly kept unpublished, the continuously increasing number of cases associated with miscarriage of justice remains a social problem. In fact, wrongful conviction can eventually become a norm within the legal system in UK5. Because of the past and current cases of miscarriages of justice throughout the United Kingdom, the need for “corrective justice” arises6. According to Sir William Blackstone, “It is better to let ten guilty men go free than to wrongly incarcerate one innocent man”7. Despite the fact that it is wrong to convict an innocent person of crime he did not commit, there are quite a lot of criminal cases that took place in the United Kingdom wherein the innocent people suffer injustice. Specifically the case of Angela Canning is a good example of miscarriage of justice8. Purely because of genetic factors that remained unexplainable in the case of a sudden infant death syndrome, Angela was convicted and accused of killing her two children9 back in 2002. Even though the death of these two children made the jury suspicious of Angela, her case was eventually cleared by the Court of Appeal back on June 2003 for the reasons that there was no physical evidence found that could prove that Angela intentionally killed her two children10. Similar to the case of Angela, Donna Anthony was also convicted and accused of murdering her 11 month-old and 4 month-old sons11. In general, sudden infant death syndrome can occur naturally with unknown causes12. Therefore, mothers of infants who died from sudden death infant syndrome should never be accused of killing their own babies. Even though Donna’s Appeal was dismissed back on the 29th of June 2000 by the Court of Appeal, she was eventually acquitted and freed in April 200513. Throughout the five regions in England, the Confidential Enquiry for Still-births and Deaths in Infancy (CESDI) is believed to occur one out of 73 million cases14. Because of the statistical estimate as suggested by Sir Roy Meadow, a lot of innocent women in the United Kingdom were becoming a victim of legal injustice for the reasons that their babies had died of sudden infant death syndrome. Since there is an increasing number of innocent women who suffers from miscarriages of justice, Professor Berry – one of the editors of the sudden infant death syndrome study started criticizing the figure of one out of 73 million based on the ground of “familial factors”15. To prevent the social injustice associated with miscarriage of justice, the legal practitioners are commonly a subject of controversy not only by a different groups of local media but also the public campaigners including the academic and government sectors. To replace the idea on miscarriage of justice with a new “regime of truth” which could portray a long list of social problems and damages that wrong conviction could bring to our people16, Naughton wrote a book entitled “Rethinking Miscarriages of Justice: Beyond the Tip of the Iceberg”. Aside from identifying the root cause behind wrongful convictions in England and Wales, Naughton focused on discussing how wrong convictions can be prevented within the criminal justice system17. Upon analyzing the impact of wrongful conviction over the lives of the victims, Naughton emphasized the point that it is that duty of the prosecutors to interpret the truth based on the presented evidences and facts and that the final conviction “bears no relation to whether or not the appellant is guilty or innocent”18. For this reason, the prosecutors should carefully review the presented evidences and facts to avoid miscarriages of justice. The criminal justice system is a very complex social institution composed of the law enforcement body, authorities at the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), the lawyers, and the prosecutors in each court19. As part of the legal system, it is the law enforcement bodies such as the local police in each geographic areas are the ones who can use their powers to have a stop-and-search warrant in order to look for concrete evidences from a guilty person followed by detaining and interrogating them when necessary20. It is the CPS who is in-charge of making further decision on whether or not to release the suspect21. In case a suspect needs to be prosecuted, the local police and law enforcers has the option to submit the case directly to the CPS22. As part of the role and responsibilities of the CPS, this public institution could legally appeal against acquittals each time the jury is guilty of refusing to acknowledge and hear the newly submitted evidences because of false impression over the law enforcer who happens to submit new physical evidence to the Court. If there are traces wherein the suspect is not telling the truth, a lawyer will be assigned to the accused23. Juvenile cases wherein the defendant is below 18 years of age will first be prosecuted at the lowest court whereas serious cases will be transferred to the Crown Court where the legal proceedings will be held in a formal manner24. If the case is not solved at the Crown Court, it will be forwarded to the Court of Appeal25. Since the Court of Appeal is aleardy the highest court, re-appealing the case of an innocent defendant can only increase the risk of miscarriages of justice. Even though defendant would re-appeal the case to the Court of Appeal for the reason that the law enforcers failed to disclose sufficient and accurate physical evidences from the crime scene, the act of re-appealing to the Court of Appeal only increases the risk wherein the Court would come up with a wrong conviction. In order to solve wrongful criminal convictions problems, the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) was established back on the 1st of January 199726. Aiming to give justice to the factually innocent victims of wrongful conviction and imprisonment based on a legal process, thousands of previous cases are currently lined up hoping that it will be re-opened by the CCRC27. Because of potential conflict with political interests, Naughton argued that the establishing the CCRC is not the most effective solution that could solve miscarriages of justice. Even though there are innocent victims of wrong criminal conviction, the CCRC can sometimes be unwilling to refer the case to CACD for further technical considerations28. Since the CCRC considers the act of referring miscarriage of justice cases to the CACD as a waste of time prevents the innocent victims from having the opportunity to prove themselves innocent of the crime. Aside from the inefficiency of the CCRC, there are quite a lot of internal and external factors that can lead to miscarriages of justice. One of the common factors that contributes to the high rate of miscarriages of justice throughout the United Kingdom is due to false confession. In line with is, it is possible for a convicted person to be tortured by the authorities to admit something that they never did or simply claim to be the suspect of a crime in order to protect the real criminal. Likewise, it is also possible on the part of the eyewitnesses to confess inacurate information simply because they failed to remember every little details that happened in a crime scene. As a result of false confession, the innocent victims of wrong conviction has to go through many years of hardship before they can manage to be free from the prison cell and try to prove their innocence otherwise. Even though the law enforcement body is not directly in-charge of prosecuting the suspect, the law enforcement group could significantly make the innocent suspect guilty of a crime by manipulating the physical evidences that was gathered from a crime scene. In line with this, Becker revealed that digital images used in a crime scene can be manipulated through the use of modern digital imaging software29. Given that crime scene evidences can be use to manipulate a criminal case result, the local police should be made highly responsible and accountable for the evidences and crime scene report they submit to the court30. With regards to the presence of an eyewitness, Walker and McCartney revealed that “human memories are fragile and may be masked by emotion or even open to manipulation”31. It means that the fact that the eyewitness could experience a state of shock makes the eyewitness vulnerable to memory loss. Even though the eyewitness managed to remember every little detail that happened in the crime scene, it is also possible on the part of the eyewitness to receive death threats in case the eyewitness revealed the truth to the law enforcement authorities or in front of the jury. Because of fear of being harmed by the real criminals, the eyewitness can be vulnerable to manipulate the real story that took place in the crime scene. Conclusion and Recommendations If we are to ensure that criminals are convicted, miscarriages of justice are unavoidable. Even though it is a standard legal procedure to treat defendants innocent until proven guilty, it is undeniable that there are a lot of uncontrollable factors that could promote miscarriages of justice in criminal cases. Among these common factors include the use of unreliable statement coming from expert witnesses, low copy number DNA (LCN DNA), the lack of DNA evidences, unfair law enforcers, and conspiracy between the prosecutors and the court of appeal. In solving criminal cases, the use of expert witnesses is considered significant and legal evidence within the criminal justice system32. Based on pure circumstantial situations wherein the law enforcers are using force and threat to prevent the witness in giving out their true confessions. For this reason, the use of expert witnesses can only increase the risk for miscarriages of justice. In case the expert witness is not firm with his initial statement, the jury could anytime mislead the expert witness from pointing out their true confessions during the trial. Giving special protection to the expert witness could increase the witness’ confidence in terms of manipulating their personal testimony. In the absence of DNA evidence such as fingerprint or blood samples, relying too much on the use of expert testimony could lead to inaccurate identification of the suspects. This increases injustice against the defendant during the trial stage. Low copy number DNAs (LCN DNAs) are test samples that contains “less than 100pg of DNA or around 15 diploid cells”33. Given that the use of LCN DNA is composed of low levels of the actual DNA sample, the use of LCN results could increase the risk of contaminating the laboratory results caused by either allele drop-out or allele drop-in34. Forensic science is a significant part of a successful criminal investigation. In line with this, the use of complete DNA profile comparison between the suspect and the gathered evidences could increase the chances of convicting the criminals35. Therefore, the absence of DNA evidences could weaken the success rate of a criminal investigation. Plea bargaining is commonly used as a strategy when obtaining from the suspect. In line with this, Yeung revealed that excessively relying over the use of plea bargaining could increase the risk of miscarriage of justice because this strategy could undermine the human and procedural rights of the accused suspect36. In other words, there is a strong possibility wherein the law enforcers would offer incentives to the innocent suspect to plead guilty. Hoping for a lesser degree of punishment, the innocent victim could simply agree to admit the crime he did not commit. Aside from the use of plea bargaining, it is also possible on the part of the criminal case investigators to manipulate, fabricate, or destroy the gathered physical evidences from a crime scene in order to protect or frame-up the suspect and his or her accomplices from becoming convicted37. A good example of a false-positive scenario is when the crime scene investigator intentionally removed the weapon used in the crime scene and/or leave behind hair samples or fibre that belongs to someone else who is totally innocent of the crime. In litigating criminal cases wherein the defendant belongs to a lower class citizen, there is a strong possibility for the prosecutors and the court of appeal to enter into a conspiracy against the provision of a fair trial for the suspect. When this happen, there is a lesser chance wherein the suspect and his or her accomplices to prove themselves not guilty in front of the prejudice prosecutors. Article 6(2) of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) clearly stated that “everyone charged with a criminal offence shall be presumed innocent until proven guilty according to the law”38. Therefore, defendants, whether guilty or not guilty of a crime, should be given a fair trial before being convicted or acquitted from the case. Since the criminal justice system is heavily based on evidences and facts, human errors regardless of whether it is intentional or unintentional can anytime occur within the criminal justice system. In order to reduce the cases of miscarriages of justice, it is necessary on the part of the prosecutors to carefully study all factors that could significantly contribute to wrongful conviction. It is possible that the local authorities who are in-charge of gathering solid evidences from the crime scene to have the power to manipulate the evidences in such a way that they could come up with a ‘made to fit’ criminal report. Since the law enforcers are the front-liners in terms of gathering physical evidences from the crime scene, anyone who is found guilty of manipulating the gathered physical evidences should face heavy penalty such as a long-term imprisonment for disrupting the social justice. *** End *** Number of Words: 3,592 References Barbara, John J. 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