ASSIGNMENT
Assignment
In the documentary video of Frontline titled “Confessions”, the illegal and unconstitutional act committed by the police include miscarriage of justice during the investigations of the four accused known as the “Norfolk Four” composed of four males named Danial Williams, Eric C. Wilson, Derek Tice, and Joseph Dick Jr. The police abused their power by manipulating the investigation of these four men to obtain false conviction. The four accused were convicted for crimes of murder and rape of Michelle Moore-Bosko, which took place in Norfolk, Virginia. The four men were convicted on the basis of their confession after they have been coerced by the police and received threats that the maximum penalty of death penalty will be imposed upon them. For fear of the death penalty, the accused were forced to admit the crimes that they did not commit. After pleading guilty of killing and raping Moore-Bosko, many organizations protested the conviction of the Norfolk Four by claiming that there was miscarriage of justice”. Three of the accused namely, Dick, Williams and Tice were sentenced to suffer life sentences in prison without parole for pleading guilty to the crime of murder. The other accused Wilson was convicted of rape and suffered 8.5 years of imprisonment.
The documentary film shows that the police deliberately obtained false confessions against the four accused by relying on false evidence. The acts of the police show blatant violation of the Constitution by not giving the accused their right against self-incrimination without giving them the opportunity to defend themselves against the false accusations. This will entitle the accused to file tort actions to claim compensatory and punitive damages against the investigating police officers (Ross, 2012). The police should recompense them for the mental anguish, pain, besmirched reputation, moral shock, and mental torture that they had to go through while the case was ongoing. The police officers should be punished for the misconduct for committing coercion. The police should be held accountable for abuse of power. The police have committed grave violations of the Constitution for the use of excessive force, discriminatory treatment, and fabrication of testimony in order to get false confessions.
Detective Ford was the investigating officer who interrogated two of the accused, Williams and Dick in order to obtain their confessions. However, the documentary film showed that their confessions and the evidence obtained from the two were inconsistent each other. One glaring inconsistency is the confession of Williams who stated that he only acted alone. On the other hand, Dick claimed that he and Williams killed and raped the victim, Michelle. Another glaring manifestation of inconsistent statements of the two accused is they stated that the crime was alleged to have been committed between 9:00 and 11:00 in the evening. However, such statements negated the claim of the witness Taylor, who claimed that she and Michelle remained out of the crime premises from 12 noon until 11:30 in the evening. On the other hand, the naval logs showed that Dick was actually on duty on when the murder of Michelle took place.
The chief police officer also stated that he had taken special interest on one of the accused named Dick due his diminished mental capacity. In fact, there was physical impossibility for Dick to be able to sneak off from his work only to commit the crime of murder and go back to work on board. Since these two accused claimed that they committed the attacks and sexual assault on the victim, Michelle did not conform to the physical evidence that was obtained. As it turned out, another statement of accused Williams claimed that he attacked Michelle with the use of a shoe and assaulted her face at least three times. After the investigation and trial of the case, Detective Glenn Ford was charged in the year 2010 for the crime of unrelated extortion after he accepted the payments from criminal suspects in exchange for the favorable treatment.
There was defect in the procedure of the investigation that the police conducted which resulted to serious consequences in the lives of the accused since they can no longer erase the criminal records. After they had been charged and convicted for the crimes of rape and murder, which they did not commit, they had had to go through trial and detention. Imprisonment means loss of income and psychological trauma after being coerced by the police to admit a crime they did not commit. The pressure exerted by police to obtain false confession violates the rights due to accused against self-incrimination and to be considered innocent until proven otherwise. These abusive conduct of police must be prevented since they used their power in order to pursue their deceptive practices and convicting the innocent rather than by careful analysis on the quality of the investigation. The importance of preventing abuse of power of the police officers promotes the rights of the accused provided by the human rights law and principles of criminal procedure.
References:
Ross, D.L. (2012). Civil Liability in Criminal Justice. Waltham: Anderson Publishing
