Essays on Wrongful Convictions

Personal Statement

“Sasha, ihre fahrt ist hier.” At my teacher’s demand, I ran from my seat with such enthusiasm that I have never experienced before, and left behind everything I owned. I raced to the parent pick up line where my mother stood eagerly waiting to inform me of what she thought was good news. My parents were in military, so I spent most of my early life apart from them as they relocated every three years. This day was not only peculiar in that my mother came to pick me up, but it was the last Thursday I would ...

Whereas the need for and application of scientific evidence has become a ubiquitous practice in most criminal justice systems, not so much attention has been paid to the potential limitations and problems associated with this type of evidence. Aspects of forensic technology such as DNA analysis have been used in the identification of the guilty and exoneration of the innocent globally for decades now. However, as the Innocence Project (n.d) notes, whereas some of these forensic technology procedures such as bite mark and shoe print comparisons were developed through thorough scientific research, many of these techniques are yet to ...

While the use of scientific evidence in solving crimes has helped in the identification of criminals and the exoneration of the innocent, there are certainly a number of problems that are associated with the use of forensic technology such as DNA testing within the criminal justice system. According to Edmond (2014), the use of forensic medical and scientific evidence within the criminal justice system has in a number of occasions led to wrongful convictions and hence a miscarriage of justice due to the fact that most of them are not reliable. The aspect of the reading from the Innocent ...

The death penalty remains a most controversial topic not only in the ‘US but the rest of the world for many years now. It was in 1622 that the first execution took place in the United States in Virginia for a criminal in the American colonies as stated by Marcus (838). Many oppose while several others support the death penalty. What adds to the debatable issue are the process, mistakes, and costs involved. The last execution in the US took place in 2015. The paper considers all those issues related to the death penalty and if it is the ...

Clayton Lockett was a 38-year-old murderer of a 19-year-old girl whom he shot twice and then buried while she was still alive (Connor, 2015). Following his conviction, he was sentenced to death in Oklahoma by lethal injection. Fifteen years later in April 2014, his execution was botched when inadequate drugs, an inability to find an adequate vein for instillation, and inappropriate administration into muscle tissue resulted in an agonizing and prolonged death. The public’s response to the news releases ignited again the debate over the use of the death penalty for punishment of the worst offenders in society. ...

Criminal Identification Procedures in the 21st Century: DNA Analysis

At present, forensic science is virtually unregulated—with the paradoxical result that clinical laboratories must meet higher standards to be allowed to diagnose strep throat than forensic labs must meet to put a defendant on death row.

—Eric S. Lander, molecular biologist, 1989

Advantages and Disadvantages of DNA in Law Enforcement DNA is the most scientifically sound, among all forensic tests used in criminal investigations; yet, it is the most strictly regulated (Giannelli, 2011). In 1988, the FBI established the Technical Working Group on DNA Analysis Methods (“TWGDAM”) to assure quality control in DNA analysis. A few years later, Congress passed the DNA Identification Act ...

Some people believe that a criminal justice system cannot convict innocent persons, but, the fact remains that many individuals have been victims of wrongful convictions. The highest number of wrongful convictions occurred in the 1980s, and the Darryl Hunt case is one of them. The main problem that led to wrongful conviction was the fact that DNA finger printing was still at its infancy stage. However, as the technology advanced, DNA exonerations for crimes convicted between the years 1982 and 1989, started to take the course. The following paper bases on the Darryl Hunt’s case that saw him convicted ...