StudentShare
Contact Us
Sign In / Sign Up for FREE
Search
Go to advanced search...

Causes of Wrongful Convictions in the United Sates judicial System - Research Paper Example

Cite this document
Summary
There has been a lot of research that has been carried out in the USA in attempt to establish what ones used to viewed as a claim by many; ‘wrongful conviction in the US judicial system.’ However, results of most of these studies have been extremely shocking the public as…
Download full paper File format: .doc, available for editing
GRAB THE BEST PAPER97.4% of users find it useful
Causes of Wrongful Convictions in the United Sates judicial System
Read Text Preview

Extract of sample "Causes of Wrongful Convictions in the United Sates judicial System"

Download file to see previous pages

shown that wrong convictions happen on daily basis in the US judicial system, with the Bureau of Justice Statistics admitting publicly that about 8% to 12 % of all the state inmates are either factually or actually innocent (Bohm, 2011). Therefore, this research paper is going to explore the issue of wrongful conviction in the USA judicial system, establish the root causes of the problem as well as introduce possible solutions with DNA being the most viable alternative to the problem. Controversial studies have shown that USA has one of the highest numbers of inmates in the world which is said to be roughly 7.

1 million people (Free & Ruesink, 2012). Other contentious statistics estimate that about one person in every one hundred adults is an inmate with the ratio dramatically increasing if persons under probation are considered. The country has about 8 percent of prisoners in the federal prisons incarcerated for engaging in violent crimes with about 52 percent inmates being sentenced in state prisons (Free & Ruesink, 2012). It is estimated that about two-thirds of these criminals are rearrested within the first three years after their release with 52 percent of them being incarcerated.

The findings of these studies are highly alarming and more precisely because of the high number of innocent persons who were convicted wrongly and imprisoned. However, most people in the country used to hold the presumption that the country’s judicial system is fair and blind and that no individual is convicted for a crime that he or she did not commit (Tong, Bryant & Horvath, 2009). A number of factors are believed to have attributed to the wrongful conviction of innocent people in the USA with eyewitness misidentification being one of the major causes.

Many scholars believe that eyewitness misidentification is the root cause of this prevalent problem in the country. The US judicial system used to rely so much on witness brought forward by eyewitnesses when convicting suspected

...Download file to see next pages Read More
Cite this document
  • APA
  • MLA
  • CHICAGO
(“Causes of Wrongful Convictions in the United Sates judicial System Research Paper”, n.d.)
Causes of Wrongful Convictions in the United Sates judicial System Research Paper. Retrieved from https://studentshare.org/law/1639167-causes-of-wrongful-convictions-in-the-united-sates-judicial-system
(Causes of Wrongful Convictions in the United Sates Judicial System Research Paper)
Causes of Wrongful Convictions in the United Sates Judicial System Research Paper. https://studentshare.org/law/1639167-causes-of-wrongful-convictions-in-the-united-sates-judicial-system.
“Causes of Wrongful Convictions in the United Sates Judicial System Research Paper”, n.d. https://studentshare.org/law/1639167-causes-of-wrongful-convictions-in-the-united-sates-judicial-system.
  • Cited: 0 times

CHECK THESE SAMPLES OF Causes of Wrongful Convictions in the United Sates judicial System

A Crime and a Punishment According to the Justice System

The judicial system is therefore trusted to make the right judgments and to give punishments only to those who deserve it in proportion to the nature of the crimes they have committed.... The question is what exactly went wrong with our judicial system.... Jeffrey Rosen in his article the wrongful convictions as a way of life also seem to ask the same question.... The paper describes the main mandate of the justice system.... The justice system that was once trusted to offer justice is now criticized and looked down upon by many....
7 Pages (1750 words) Essay

Post-Ruth Ellis: Changing Attitudes to Crime and Punishment in Britain

Most people would agree that, the law of the united Kingdom with regard to capital punishment, as it exists today, would not have taken that shape without Ruth's execution.... But the echoes of the trial continue to linger through the corridors of time and that is a testimony good enough to understand the impact of the case on the British legal system as well as the attitudes of people and society towards crime and punishment.... In spite of the infamous example of the Birmingham Six who had been doomed to spend seventeen long years in prison before their convictions were finally quashed by the Court of Appeal, the question of reintroducing the use of the gallows continued to be hotly discussed and in 1994, there was a even a legislative attempt to do so....
9 Pages (2250 words) Essay

Is the government justified in using capital punishment

In 1972, the united States suspended the use of capital punishment following a decision by the Supreme Court.... After the US criminal justice system reinstated capital punishment since 1976, many people have lost their lives.... As Graham reveals, discrimination reins in the American criminal justice system where people with little crimes would face execution while others with brutal offenses would be spared....
4 Pages (1000 words) Research Paper

Civil vs. Criminal trials

The Fifth Amendment in the united States Constitution is a section of bill of rights which safeguards individuals against the maltreatment of government authority in a legal process.... Family courts just like civil proceedings covers jurisdictions dealing with family disputes and family life aspects such as domestic violence, breakdown of relationships, care proceedings and adoption of children....
5 Pages (1250 words) Research Paper

Democracy and Terrorism

According to Feldman, individual rights must be balanced against social goals5 and he views human rights as being linked to the conditions necessary for democracy; human rights “help to establish the conditions of free speech, tolerance, equality and mutual respect for people's dignity…”6* Liberalism is the premise upon which the legal system underlying modern democracy exists.... McLaughlin has examined the merits of this approach proposed by Rawls, which states that where a society that has differing views about what constitutes the “good”, a system of law exists in which certain areas rest behind a veil of ignorance, where gender, age, beliefs or systems will not apply7....
6 Pages (1500 words) Assignment

Racial Inequalities in the Judicial System Against Minorities

Specifically, this paper will explore the ethnicity variable in the American judicial system – how race is associated with who gets involved in crime prison enrolment and what happens to minorities within the American legal system.... The author of this paper states that according to the united States Justice Department, in 2003, about 10.... here are various, specific and significant cases that demonstrate the race hypothesis in the American legal system, particularly in the way justice is dispensed with....
7 Pages (1750 words) Research Paper

Crime and Punishment - the Main Mandate of the Justice System

The death penalty information Centre estimates that about 1200 people executed since 1976 in the united States may have been innocent.... The judicial system is therefore trusted to make the right judgments and to give punishments only to those who deserve it in proportion to the nature of the crimes they have committed.... This paper "Crime and Punishment - the Main Mandate of the Justice system" focuses on the notion crime which is often used to describe an action or omission that constitutes an offence that is punishable by law or simply an illegal activity....
7 Pages (1750 words) Essay

Capital Punishment Should Not Be Legal and Should Be Abolished

Among the most persuasive arguments against the death penalty, it is necessary to mention the conviction of innocent which is quite common because of the inability of the judicial system to prove someone's guilt in all the cases.... Moreover, wrongfulness and immorality of retribution with the help of death as the way of punishment are also criticized because it makes the judicial system use the same methods.... Despite the fact that it was abolished in most countries, there are still states like Japan, Singapore or the united States that use this way of punishment, and the debates regarding the morality of such methods do not stop in these countries....
6 Pages (1500 words) Essay
sponsored ads
We use cookies to create the best experience for you. Keep on browsing if you are OK with that, or find out how to manage cookies.
Contact Us