Wrongfully Convicted - Book Report/Review Example

Wrongfully Convicted Wrongfully Convicted As d by Dan Simon, “The criminal process is a good as the evidence on which it feeds” (Simon, 2012, 17). The effectiveness of the criminal justice system rests on its capability to produce accurate evidence, bring out truthful testimonies, and just conviction. I. Investigation Dynamics Crime investigation is a combination of natural perceptiveness, intuitiveness, experience, mental power, judgment, and reasonableness alongside an understanding of practical, methodological aspects. Criminal investigations are carried out mainly for crime prevention. When criminal activities take place, law enforcement is in charge of the people it serves and should perform its obligation by promptly conducting an investigation of these crimes. If possible the investigation will encourage or induce the offender to attend to a court hearing in order to explain his/her actions (Simon, 2012). Finally and perhaps most essential, is that the offender’s detection, arrest, and investigation, successfully works to inhibit recidivism or reoffending thus decreasing total crime rate (Osterburg & Ward, 2013). Every investigation, irrespective of purpose, includes the job of collecting and analyzing information. The dynamics of investigation must be seen in terms of informational gathering, instead of trying to acquire evidence. However, this does not imply that investigators should disregard noticeable, evident objects of evidence or objects that can possibly become a strong piece of evidence (Osterburg & Ward, 2013). The investigation must be carried out with the mentality that evidence can be derived from information. The information collected passes through meticulous, careful inspection before it is presented in court through screening, analysis, and assessment (Orthmann & Hess, 2012). Most of the evidence collected by investigators is not admissible for demonstration in court because of the rules of evidence. Nevertheless, this does not prevent these bits of information from helping or guiding the investigator insomuch as pointing him/her toward admissible evidence; every piece of information holds a certain level of importance (Orthmann & Hess, 2012). Essentially, the criminal justice investigator considers and induces the human component—all of human behavior’s sociological, environmental, psychological, and emotional features. On the other hand, the value and level of information gained from physical objects inspected, largely relies on the capability of the investigator at a certain scene to identify possible pieces of evidence (Simon, 2012). It must be stressed that when evaluating importance of information gained from physical objects against information obtained from individuals, the courts have traditionally declared that information derived from physical objects often reveals a greater evidentiary worth. The investigator must constantly bring to mind that physical evidence does not have the capacity to mislead or keep the truth, for it is not influenced by feelings or emotions and it cannot be indicted (Osterburg & Ward, 2013). The likelihoods or odds are actually infinite and can be as plain as simply, unconsciously, passing through or coming into contact with a crime scene. It is obligatory upon the investigator to always identify, cultivate and protect existing useful sources of information. The investigator should recognize possible sources of information that is required to effectively carry out his/her investigation. An investigator is continuously challenged, tried, and assessed by his capacity to acquire information from individuals—witnesses, victims, offenders, and so on. This is important because wrongful convictions may occur due to incompetent and improper investigative dynamics. In instances where mistake has been identified, it is becoming more and more precise that mistaken identification is the primary reason of wrongful convictions (Simon, 2012). Other widespread causes of erroneous convictions are police and prosecutorial misbehavior and the tampering of evidence. Numerous instances of erroneous conviction are the outcome of multiple aspects, yet existing studies precisely suggest that enhancing the precision of the identification of the offender is the most valuable progress the criminal justice system could achieve to tackle the general dilemma of erroneous convictions (Osterburg & Ward, 2013). In most cases of erroneous identification, the errors are real; namely, it is rare to locate a case wherein a witness has intentionally pinpointed an innocent individual as the offender. Hence, witness misbehavior is largely not a problem in such instances. Nevertheless, every error, whether truthful or not, weaken the reliability of the investigative procedure. Studies that have tackled what investigators can do to most successfully protect identification evidence propose direct and simple steps (Simon, 2012). Primarily, investigators should obtain as complete and exhaustive a depiction of the offender as immediately as possible; this is rooted in the knowledge that the individual’s memory of the incident is most accurate directly and instantly after the incident (Orthmann & Hess, 2012). Furthermore, every attempt should be initiated to make sure that law enforcement people keep their distance from the investigation for they could influence the capability of an eyewitness to give an objective identification. The investigator should stay impartial or unbiased and responsive to various standpoints when carrying out an investigation (Simon, 2012). The investigator must be guided by the evidence to anywhere the evidence may point them and not try to appropriate given evidence to the omission of others into a pre-established decision. The investigator should continually go beyond the observable and pursue the truth. II. The case of Michael Morton Michael Morton was charged of murder in 1987, convicted for murdering his wife. On the 4th of October 2011, Michael was released an innocent man from the Williamson County court in Texas after the charge of murder against him was reversed due to a DNA finding that says Michael did not murder his wife, and that another person committed the crime (Siegel & Bartollas, 2015). It was discovered that a neckerchief collected at the crime scene of another murder had Christine Morton’s blood and another person, Mark Alan Norwood. Norwood was a notorious criminal who resided in the vicinity. Michael was imprisoned for more than two decades before being freed. Norwood was then charged of Christine’s murder in 2013 and was sentenced to life imprisonment (Siegel & Bartollas, 2015). After Michael was released from prison, the co-director of the nonprofit organization Innocence Project, Barry Scheck, declared to the media that “Mr. Morton was the victim of serious prosecutorial misconduct that caused him to lose 25 years of his life and completely ripped apart his family. Perhaps even more tragically, we now know that another murder might have been prevented if law enforcement had continued the investigation rather than building a false case against Mr. Morton” (Siegel & Bartollas, 2015, 220). The prosecuting attorney fabricated stories of domestic abuse once the case went to trial. Astonishingly, critical evidence that had been collected at the scene of the crime was not submitted or reported to court (Davies, 2013). Some of the pieces of evidence that was hidden from the defense are the following (Siegel & Bartollas, 2015, 220): A statement by the victim’s mother, who told police that the couple’s 3-year-old child witnessed the murder and provided a chilling account; A report that a neighbor had on several occasions observed a man park a green van on the street behind the Morton’s house, then get out and walk into the wooded area off the road. A report that a check made out to Christine Morton by a man named John B. Cross was cashed with Christine’s forged signature nine days after her murder. Also, fingerprints found on the sliding door of the Morton’s house were not disclosed. And crucially, the sole witness to the murder was Eric, the son of Michael and Christine. Even though he was very young during that time, 3-years-old to be exact, he described to the investigators the crime— a “big and angry monster” (Davies, 2013, 124) had entered their house and murdered his mother. He informed the investigators that his father was not in the house at that moment and precisely depicted the crime scene. This testimony from an eyewitness was not presented in court. With these important pieces of evidence undisclosed, the jury and the judge had easily made a guilty decision and sentenced Michael to life imprisonment (Davies, 2013). In response to the miscarriage of justice committed by the previous Williamson County District Judge and District Attorney, Ken Anderson, the Texan government recently ratified a new legislation that has been referred to as the Michael Morton Act, which fully came into force on the 1st of January 2014 (Hankins, 2015). It demands presentation of all gathered evidence such as witness testimony to defendants, irrespective of what the prosecuting attorney deems about their bearing to the defendant’s culpability or punishment. This attempt to expand the Supreme Court order in the Brady v. Maryland case is praiseworthy, yet it still depends on truthful prosecutors to be competent, and it does not offer alternative against untruthful prosecutors who discard or conceal exonerating evidence (Hankins, 2015). The Texas Code of Criminal Procedure advocates the obligation of prosecutors: “It shall be the primary duty of all prosecuting attorneys, including any special prosecutors, not to convict, but to see that justice is done. They shall not suppress facts or secrete witnesses capable of establishing the innocence of the accused” (Hankins, 2015, para 4). Such are honorable objectives, yet they are usually overwhelmed by the actual dynamics of an adversary structure, where the defendant, commonly lacking sufficient resources, confronts the enormous powers and influence of the government. Thus the criminal justice system demands truthful contributors (Simon, 2012). Yet the unethical actions of numerous prosecutors and the absolute protection from culpability they habitually revel in do not reveal the entire reality about the weaknesses of the criminal justice institution. The daily activities of the criminal justice system depend greatly on court-assigned attorneys, but numerous of them fail to perform their tasks satisfactorily, are inadequately funded, and are provided inadequate resources to make preparations for trial (Davies, 2013; Simon, 2012). The Morton case also reveals that courts can commit an error and innocent people are habitually convicted, imprisoned for a long time, or even executed. If prisoners were not able to acquire legal representations or deprived of the privilege to put their case to trial, individuals like Michael would not ever be able to enjoy their liberty and freedom. III. Interrogating Suspects Untruthful confessions are possibly the most challenging, difficult source of erroneous conviction, partly due to the interplay of psychological functioning of defendants and the process through which confessions are acquired. There are numerous findings, especially about the psychological aspect of false confession, suggesting that people most predisposed to give a confession, even to an act they did not commit, are those who belong to a minority group, are underprivileged, and most particularly those with poor intelligence or learning impairments (Osterburg & Ward, 2013). Nevertheless, more relevant to contemporary research is the correlation between the interrogation process and false confessions. Absence of legal principles concerning acceptability of evidence gained by means of interrogation is widely known. This is somewhat due to the disjointed features of the interrogation process (Simon, 2012). Quite rarely does a case involve only one interrogation, and it is even more unlikely that interrogations are the initial contact of law enforcement and suspect. More probably, interrogations are led by a sequence of interviews, which are evidential, or information-gathering periods of defendants and other involved entities (Orthmann & Hess, 2012). This procedure itself can simply establish the ground for investigators to be persuaded of a defendant’s culpability before they enter into the interrogation process. Thus, according to Osterburg and Ward (2013), although instructions like recording or documenting interrogations is an encouraging measure toward answerability for obtaining misleading confessions, the liberty and low transparency of criminal investigators particularly before any formal interrogations complicate the process of identifying how criminal justice methods could have influenced what turns out as finally being a documented confession. Almost all professional law enforcement agencies emphasize the application of interrogation methods, like the Reid system, as customary both for carrying out unbiased interrogations and for finding signs of a defendant’s innocence or guilt. Nevertheless, studies have reported that the possibility of people being capable of differentiating guilt from innocence employing these methods is, generally, not more desirable than one could suppose by coincidence alone (Davies, 2013). Nonetheless, techniques like the Reid method are not merely flaunted for their ability to generate confessions, but also recognized as a practical, sensible protection against untruthful confessions (Lassiter, 2006). Hence police departments frequently see not much of a need for further techniques and rules concerning interrogation processes to be essential. A thought-provoking part of the interrogation methods is the exercise of the threat of death penalty in interrogation processes. Although there are certain findings that show that this specific method is common in capital punishment states, there are until now no evidence by which police are openly asked about such application of interrogation techniques (Lassiter, 2006). Nevertheless, there is additional proof that this could be integral. Of the identified instances of erroneous convictions that involved untruthful confession, a vast majority took place in capital punishment states (Davies, 2013). Although this number is not definite at all, it does indicate that additional evaluations of this technique are needed. For all processes, the presence of rules, criteria, and observance of these guidelines have been discovered to be critical for the professionalization of law enforcement agencies. It is also believed that they are also imperative to lessen the possibility of erroneous conviction, while they make investigative processes and other criminal justice practices more accountable and transparent, as well as making police officers officially answerable to a procedure of justice instead of merely the outcome of conviction (Orthmann & Hess, 2012). Philip Zimbardo, a widely recognized behavioral scientist and social psychologist, informed the psychological society about the real-world and theoretical implication of the concept of police-induced confessions. He explained (Lassiter, 2006, 4): How can the court formulate criteria to assess ‘psychological coercion,’ ‘voluntariness of a confession,’ ‘ability to resist pressure’ and similar concepts without reference to psychology? Central in the definition of these concepts is knowledge of personality, behavior deviations, performance under stress and deprivation, the effect of social demand characteristics, research on persuasability and attitude change, and many other areas of psychology. Daryl Bem (1966), another prominent social psychologist, publicized a paper explaining how even indirect, apparently non-forcible control or manipulation within the interrogation setting can result in bias, misrepresentations, and distortions in a person’s capability to effectively distinguish what is real or true from what is fake or untrue. IV. The Case of Central Park Five A young woman taking her regular nighttime jog in Central Park was sexually violated, brutally mugged, and left barely alive in an assault by approximately twelve teenagers, who wandered the park in a violent riot. The victim, Trisha Meili, a 30-year-old investment banker, almost died due to skull ruptures (Byfield, 2014). Five teenagers were captured in relation to another assault Wednesday night, and investigators stated that they were listed as suspects in the attack on the young woman. All the five suspects pleaded not guilty and revealed that their recorded confessions were fabricated by the police. Kharey Wise, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, Kevin Richardson, and Antron McCray were imprisoned for 5 to 13 years. Kharey Wise was freed several months after the sole DNA gathered at the scene of the crime, which was not once linked to any of the suspect, was tied to another person (New York Times, 2012). Attorneys for the five suspects appealed to have the verdicts terminated, stating that new proof—the DNA and confession of another suspect—had emerged that may have significantly changed the first decisions. The district attorney (DA) has been reexamining the Central Park case for several months (Burns, 2012). The Central Park Five case is mostly interesting and controversial for it touches on the widely held belief about criminal convictions. What the media and the criminal justice system would not say to the public is that untruthful confessions are disturbingly widespread. As reported by the Innocence Project, a quarter of innocent suspects who were acquitted with DNA findings made gave convicting testimonies or self-incriminating confessions (Burns, 2012). An uneven number of people who dishonestly confess have mental disorders or are mentally disabled; kids and teenagers also habitually fail to comprehend or exercise their rights in the course of a criminal interrogation. Law enforcers try to catch the offender, but quite frequently they arrest the people they consider to be the most possible and fit the evidence into it (Davies, 2013). Before even interrogating the suspect, they have already established the guilt of the suspect. The purpose of the interrogation is not to determine or find the truth—it is to harden or reinforce guilt (Simon, 2012). The five defendants immediately retracted their confessions once they were officially captured. They were basically children who were deprived of sleep for a few days and interrogated without legal representation in attendance; they were informed that if they give their confession, they will be freed (Byfield, 2014). The testimonies they gave in their confessions were conflicting with and contrary to the physical evidence. Some of the suspects stated they stabbed the victim, yet the investigators found no stab injuries. Their accounts differed on the scene and timeline of the crime, and the victim’s depiction. There were very few pieces of physical evidence linking them to the mugging and sexual violence (New York Times, 2012). They were put on trial and sentenced nevertheless. Meanwhile, Matias Reyes, the person who truly perpetrated the crime and almost killed the victim, carried on his binge of serial rapes all over the city of New York. While imprisoned for murder and rape, Reyes confessed to the Central Park crime in 2002 (New York Times, 2012). DNA findings linked him to the felony. Significantly, even when a judge cleared out the verdicts of the Central Park Five, Ray Kelly, the police administrator, supported the investigation outcomes that threw five innocent teenagers into prison: “The judge’s ruling has neither exonerated the defendants nor found any collusion or coercion on the part of the police” (New York Times, 2012, 95). Law enforcement officers are human beings and sometimes commit errors; that is understandable. But it is not defensible to refuse to change corrupt practices and to put one’s own motives and biases in convicting a suspect even before formal investigation processes. Law enforcement agencies all over the nation keep on opposing thoroughly documented interrogations and policies against forcible interrogation techniques. In New York, videotaping of interrogations for major crimes like rape and murder is now compulsory (Lassiter, 2006). More law enforcement agencies should follow and emulate this example, and must move beyond this by getting rid of intimidation, threat, dishonesty, and sleep deprivation, which quite frequently have unfavorable outcomes (Orthmann & Hess, 2012). When prosecutors and police officers do not take the evidence seriously, when they are more interested in making a conviction than capturing the true offender, the victims are defeated, and a larger number of individuals fall into the hands of criminals. References Bem, D.J. (1966). Inducing belief in false confessions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 3, 707-710. Burns, S. (2012). The Central Park Five: The Untold Story Behind One of New York City’s Most Infamous Crimes. New York: Vintage Books. Byfield, N. (2014). Savage Portrayals: Race, Media and the Central Park Jogger Story. New York: Temple University Press. Davies, J. (2013). Wrongly Convicted: Miscarriages of Justice. New York: RW Press. Hankins, L. (2015). Criminal Justice and the Michael Morton Case. Retrieved from http://texasfreethoughtjournal.net/article/criminal-justice-and-michael-morton-case. Lassiter, G.D. (2006). Interrogations, Confessions, and Entrapment. Athens, OH: Springer Science & Business Media. New York Times (2012). The Central Park Jogger Case. New York: VOOK. Orthmann, C. & Hess, K. (2012). Criminal Investigation Hardcover. Mason, OH: Delmar Cengage Learning. Osterburg, J. & Ward, R. (2013). Criminal Investigation: A Method for Reconstruction the Past. London: Routledge. Siegel, L. & Bartollas, C. (2015). Corrections Today. Mason, OH: Cengage Learning. Simon, D. (2012). In Doubt: The Psychology of the Criminal Justice Process. New York: Harvard University Press. Read More