Download or read book Actual Innocence written by Jim Dwyer and published by Doubleday Books. This book was released on 2000 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ten true tales of people falsely accused detail the flaws in the criminal justice system that landed these people in prison

Download or read book Convicting the Innocent written by Brandon L. Garrett and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2011-08-04 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On January 20, 1984, Earl Washington—defended for all of forty minutes by a lawyer who had never tried a death penalty case—was found guilty of rape and murder in the state of Virginia and sentenced to death. After nine years on death row, DNA testing cast doubt on his conviction and saved his life. However, he spent another eight years in prison before more sophisticated DNA technology proved his innocence and convicted the guilty man. DNA exonerations have shattered confidence in the criminal justice system by exposing how often we have convicted the innocent and let the guilty walk free. In this unsettling in-depth analysis, Brandon Garrett examines what went wrong in the cases of the first 250 wrongfully convicted people to be exonerated by DNA testing. Based on trial transcripts, Garrett’s investigation into the causes of wrongful convictions reveals larger patterns of incompetence, abuse, and error. Evidence corrupted by suggestive eyewitness procedures, coercive interrogations, unsound and unreliable forensics, shoddy investigative practices, cognitive bias, and poor lawyering illustrates the weaknesses built into our current criminal justice system. Garrett proposes practical reforms that rely more on documented, recorded, and audited evidence, and less on fallible human memory. Very few crimes committed in the United States involve biological evidence that can be tested using DNA. How many unjust convictions are there that we will never discover? Convicting the Innocent makes a powerful case for systemic reforms to improve the accuracy of all criminal cases.

Download or read book Race Ethnicity and Policing written by Stephen K. Rice and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2010-03-15 with total page 544 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The text includes both classic pieces and original essays that provide the reader with a comprehensive, even-handed sense of the theoretical underpinnings, methodological challenges, and existing research necessary to understand the problems associated with racial and ethnic profiling and police bias.

Download or read book Convicting the Innocent Sixty Five Actual Errors of Criminal Justice written by Edwin Montefiore Borchard and published by . This book was released on 2015-08-08 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Wrongful Convictions and the DNA Revolution written by Daniel S. Medwed and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-03-30 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For centuries, most people believed the criminal justice system worked - that only guilty defendants were convicted. DNA technology shattered that belief. DNA has now freed more than three hundred innocent prisoners in the United States. This book examines the lessons learned from twenty-five years of DNA exonerations and identifies lingering challenges. By studying the dataset of DNA exonerations, we know that precise factors lead to wrongful convictions. These include eyewitness misidentifications, false confessions, dishonest informants, poor defense lawyering, weak forensic evidence, and prosecutorial misconduct. In Part I, scholars discuss the efforts of the Innocence Movement over the past quarter century to expose the phenomenon of wrongful convictions and to implement lasting reforms. In Part II, another set of researchers looks ahead and evaluates what still needs to be done to realize the ideal of a more accurate system.

Download or read book Smoke But No Fire written by Jessica S. Henry and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2021-10-05 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 2020 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards Winner, Silver (Political and Social Sciences) Winner of the Montaigne Medal, awarded to "the most thought-provoking books" The first book to explore a shocking yet all-too-common type of wrongful conviction—one that locks away innocent people for crimes that never actually happened. Rodricus Crawford was convicted and sentenced to die for the murder by suffocation of his beautiful baby boy. After years on death row, evidence confirmed what Crawford had claimed all along: he was innocent, and his son had died from an undiagnosed illness. Crawford is not alone. A full one-third of all known exonerations stem from no-crime wrongful convictions. The first book to explore this common but previously undocumented type of wrongful conviction, Smoke but No Fire tells the heartbreaking stories of innocent people convicted of crimes that simply never happened. A suicide is mislabeled a homicide. An accidental fire is mislabeled an arson. Corrupt police plant drugs on an innocent suspect. A false allegation of assault is invented to resolve a custody dispute. With this book, former New York City public defender Jessica S. Henry sheds essential light on a deeply flawed criminal justice system that allows—even encourages—these convictions to regularly occur. Smoke but No Fire promises to be eye-opening reading for legal professionals, students, activists, and the general public alike as it grapples with the chilling reality that far too many innocent people spend real years behind bars for fictional crimes.

Download or read book Convicted but Innocent written by C. Ronald Huff and published by SAGE Publications. This book was released on 1996-01-23 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Addressing the specific issues surrounding wrongful convictions and their implications for society, Convicted but Innocent includes: survey data concerning the possible magnitude of the problem and its causes; fascinating actual case samples; detailed analyses of the major factors associated with wrongful conviction; discussion of public policy implications; and recommendations for reducing the occurrence of such convictions. The authors maintain that while no system of justice can be perfect, a focus on preventable errors can substantially reduce the number of current conviction injustices.

Download or read book Eyewitness Evidence written by National Institute of Justice (U.S.). Technical Working Group for Eyewitness Evidence and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 60 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Miscarriages of Justice in Potentially Capital Cases written by Hugo Adam Bedau and published by . This book was released on 1987 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Criminal Justice Policy written by Stacy L. Mallicoat and published by SAGE Publications. This book was released on 2013-10-15 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Criminal Justice Policy provides a thematic overview of criminal justice policy and its relationship to the American criminal justice system. Scholars, practitioners, and politicians continually debate the value of these policies in their evaluations of the current system. As the nature of this subject involves a host of issues (including politics, public sentiment, research, and practice), the authors expertly highlight these concerns on criminal justice policy and address the implications for the overall system and society at large. This text is organized into three parts: Foundations of criminal justice policy focuses on the role of politics, best practices, and street level bureaucracy in criminal justice policy. Criminal justice policy in action provides an analysis of fifteen different policy issues in criminal justice, such as immigration, drugs, mental health and capital punishment. Each section begins with a basic summary of the policy, accompanied by a brief synopsis of the framing issues. This brief, but informative summary, draws students’ attention to essential concepts and ideas, provides a roadmap for what they can expect to learn, and ensures continuity throughout the text. The text concludes with a discussion about the future directions of criminal justice policy.

Download or read book Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2009-07-29 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scores of talented and dedicated people serve the forensic science community, performing vitally important work. However, they are often constrained by lack of adequate resources, sound policies, and national support. It is clear that change and advancements, both systematic and scientific, are needed in a number of forensic science disciplines to ensure the reliability of work, establish enforceable standards, and promote best practices with consistent application. Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: A Path Forward provides a detailed plan for addressing these needs and suggests the creation of a new government entity, the National Institute of Forensic Science, to establish and enforce standards within the forensic science community. The benefits of improving and regulating the forensic science disciplines are clear: assisting law enforcement officials, enhancing homeland security, and reducing the risk of wrongful conviction and exoneration. Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States gives a full account of what is needed to advance the forensic science disciplines, including upgrading of systems and organizational structures, better training, widespread adoption of uniform and enforceable best practices, and mandatory certification and accreditation programs. While this book provides an essential call-to-action for congress and policy makers, it also serves as a vital tool for law enforcement agencies, criminal prosecutors and attorneys, and forensic science educators.

Download or read book Convicting the innocent written by Edwin Montefiore Borchard and published by Рипол Классик. This book was released on 1961 with total page 407 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Identifying the Culprit written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2015-01-16 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Identifying the Culprit: Assessing Eyewitness Identification makes the case that better data collection and research on eyewitness identification, new law enforcement training protocols, standardized procedures for administering line-ups, and improvements in the handling of eyewitness identification in court can increase the chances that accurate identifications are made. This report explains the science that has emerged during the past 30 years on eyewitness identifications and identifies best practices in eyewitness procedures for the law enforcement community and in the presentation of eyewitness evidence in the courtroom. In order to continue the advancement of eyewitness identification research, the report recommends a focused research agenda.

Download or read book Actual Innocence written by Jim Dwyer and published by Berkley. This book was released on 2003 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of nightmarish true tales of people falsely accused detail the slovenly police work, corruption, errant witnesses, and other flaws in the criminal justice system that landed these people in prison or on death row. Reprint.

Download or read book Convicting the Innocent written by Edwin M. Borchard and published by CreateSpace. This book was released on 2010-05-14 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: My major interests lie in an aspect of the law somewhat remote from criminal law, I have nevertheless long urged that the State or community assume the risks of official wrongdoing and error instead of permitting the losses resulting from such fault or mistake to be borne by the injured individual alone. Among the most shocking of such injuries and most glaring of injustices are erroneous criminal convictions of innocent people. The State must necessarily prosecute persons legitimately suspected of crime; but when it is discovered after conviction that the wrong man was condemned, the least the State can do to right this essentially irreparable injury is to reimburse the innocent victim, by an appropriate indemnity, for the loss and damage suffered. European countries have long recognized that such indemnity is a public obligation. Federal and state governments in the United States ought to adopt the same policy, instead of merely releasing the innocent prisoner from custody by pardoning him for a crime he never committed and without any admission of error or public vindication of his character. A district attorney in Worcester County, Massachusetts, a few years ago is reported to have said : "Innocent men are never convicted. Don't worry about it, it never happens in the world. It is a physical impossibility." The present collection of sixty-five cases, which have been selected from a much larger number, is a refutation of this supposition. Inasmuch as the conditions described are of interest primarily to the American public, American cases, mainly from the twentieth century, have, for the most part, 1 been chosen for publication. Fifty cases, by reason of their importance or some striking characteristic, have been used as principal cases; the other fifteen, more concisely reported, follow thereafter. Together, they present an interesting cross section of American life.

Download or read book Race and Justice written by Marvin D. Free, Jr. and published by . This book was released on 2015-03-25 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ¿This book will be the definitive scholarly reference on this topic and a must-read for anyone interested in miscarriages of justice. Essential.¿ ¿Choice ¿A good choice for academic collections and public libraries where social issues are of interest.¿ ¿Rebecca Vnuk, Booklist ¿Insightful and well-researched.... an important contribution. Free and Ruesink¿s approach provides much needed context for the large number of wrongful conviction cases involving African Americans.¿ ¿Shaun Gabbidon, Pennsylvania State University Harrisburg In this investigation of some 350 wrongful convictions of African American men, Marvin Free and Mitch Ruesink critically examine how issues of race undercut the larger goals of our criminal justice system. Free and Ruesink expand the focus of wrongful conviction studies to include not only homicide, but also sexual assault, drug dealing, and nonviolent crime. Their careful analysis reveals that black men accused of crimes against white victims account for a disproportionate number of wrongful convictions. They also uncover other disturbing failings on the part of prosecutors, police, witnesses, and informants. Highlighting the systemic role of race, the authors challenge us to move past the ¿just a few bad apples¿ explanation and to instead examine what it is about our criminal justice system that allows the innocent to be judged guilty. Marvin D. Free, Jr., is professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin¿Whitewater. He is coauthor of Crime, Justice, and Society and editor of Racial Issues in Criminal Justice: The Case of African Americans. Mitch Ruesink teaches psychology at Waukesha County Technical College.

Download or read book Mistaken Identification written by Brian L. Cutler and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1995-08-25 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines traditional safeguards against mistaken eyewitness identification.