Two Wrongs Don’t Make a Right

This Organisation is a non-profit Legal organisation dedicated to exonerating wrongfully convicted people through DNA testing and reforming the criminal justice system to prevent future injustices. The Innocence Project was established in a landmark study by the United States Department of Justice and the United States Senate in conjunction with the Benjamin N.Cardozo School of Law, which found that incorrect identification by eyewitnesses was a

In the Timearticle More Innocent People on Death Row Than Estimated: Study by David VonDrehle, “almost four percent of U.S. capital punishment sentences are wrongful convictions,

In the last several years, too many people in the United States have been wrongfully sentenced with the death penalty. Several accused have their sentence overturned or they have been totally exonerated. There are at least 8 people who were executed by United States and later proven innocent (http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org). Over a 20 year period, 68% of all death sentences were reversed (http://karisable.com). A noteworthy example is of Jerry Banks who was convicted and sentenced with the death penalty for two counts of murder in 1975. Five years later, in 1980, Banks' conviction was overturned on the basis of newly discovered evidence which was allegedly known to the state at the time of trial. Another example was the case of Lawyer Johnson who was sentenced to death in 1971 by an all white jury for the murder of a white victim. Later in 1982, Johnson’s conviction was overturned and Johnson exonerated when a previously silent eyewitness identified the state’s chief witness as the real murderer. (http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org) Human error is inevitable, particularly

-Innocence, there are innocent people on death row, and there have been people put to death. Since 1977, 144 prisoners on death row have been found to be innocent of the crimes there were convicted of.

In March of 1985, Bloodsworth was sentenced to death. Through it all Bloodsworth maintained his innocence and in 1993 with the help of a new technique used to test for DNA, Bloodsworth got his chance to prove he was innocent. Bloodsworth became the first person ever to be exonerated from death row by DNA evidence. (Jain, 2001) In one

Since 1989, 300 convictions have been overturned as a result of DNA evidence, and 17 people have been sent to death row after being wrongfully convicted. The main legal justification for people being exonerated is DNA evidence, which has been growing in use and technologically advancing in the past few years. Canada has had many cases of people being wrongfully

With this being said in 2001 the legislature passed a law assuring DNA testing to any damned inmates whose innocence could possibly be protected as a consequence. Since the numbers of execution has declined per year from the high 30’s to the low 20’s but this doesn’t have anything to with the advancement in the use of DNA. Furthermore, in 2005 the Supreme Court limited the claim of capital punishment when it ruled that inmates who committed capital offenses when they were a minor could not be put to death. Also Texas altered the law so that the prison term for capital murders would be life in prison and ineligible for parole instead of the death penalty; by using this method the outcome that would reflect less inmates being placed on death row and more inmates serving life. This method worked and usually jurors would send about 30 inmates to death row a year, however with the change in the law the jurors on send about 15 inmates to death row. As a result, the residents of death row have declined from 446 prisoners at the beginning of 2005 to 354 inmates at the beginning of 2009. The amount of prisoners presently on death row is the lowest it has been since 1992 (Carson).

We do not now how many innocent individuals are currently imprisoned, but we have an idea of the number of people who have been exonerated of crimes for which they were convicted. The National Registry of Exonerations has identified 1491 men and women who have been exonerated from state facilities since 1989 in the United States (University of Michigan Law School, 2015). From 2005 to 2014, there was an average of 64 exonerations from state facilities per year, with exonerees serving an average of twelve years. The Innocence Project (2015), which takes cases in which DNA analysis can be used to prove a prisoner is innocent, has secured 329 post-conviction DNA exonerations and is actively working on 250-300 cases.

DNA exonerations are very common. So much so that in the United States alone, there have been “317 post-conviction DNA exonerations” (2014). The very first DNA exoneration dated back to 1989. The Innocence Project examined these DNA exonerations and found that “8 of the 317 people exonerated through DNA served time on death row. Another 16 were charged with capital crimes but not sentenced to death” (2014). More so, the average time served was about 13.5 years, and the average age was 27 (2014). This means that before the age of

In addition to undeserved charges, DNA testing has exonerated hundreds of people for crimes in which they were convicted over the past few years. When DNA testing became readily available to the criminal justice system, crucial flaws began to surface. It was realized that people were serving hard-time for felony crimes they didn’t commit.

There are many controversial points of view on the death penalty in America’s society. Is the death penalty socially correct? Is it just? The death penalty is an execution sentence that a person convicted of a capital crime must face. A person can only be sentenced to death in 33 states (deathpenatly.org). There have been as of April 1, 2012, 3,170 death row inmates in the Unites States history, with an exception of the two inmates in New Mexico and eleven in Connecticut that remain on the death row due to the law not being made retrospective to these inmates. The controversy whether the death penalty is just or unjust has been a debate in America for many years. There have

"Since 1973, over eighty people have been released from death row with evidence of their innocence" (Innocence and the Death Penalty 1). Statistics say that of the three-thousand six hundred people on death row right now, at least one hundred of them are innocent (Capital Punishment 1). When an innocent person is executed, the real killer is still on the streets ready to victimize someone else (Pragmatic Arguments 1). The most important problem is that when an innocent person is executed, they represent another human being who did not deserve to die.

According to a 1987 study published in the Stanford Law Review, at least 23 non-culpable individuals have been executed from 1900 to 1987, which is more than one innocent execution every four years. These miscarriages of justice are often due to evidence that was not discovered or made available until after the execution. Although recent scientific improvements, such as forensic DNA evidence, have enabled investigators to more accurately pinpoint guilt in a suspect, no current amount of scientific or technological advancement can completely guarantee that errors will never be made. In an issue such as the death penalty, where the stakes are so high – human life – any margin of error, no matter how minuscule, is unacceptable.

Many prisoners in the past have been known to be killed before they were proven innocent. Many documented cases where DNA testing showed that innocent people were put to death by the government. This sometimes happens because there are defendants who are given minimal legal attention by often minor qualified individuals. The government has made many mistakes which are being wrong about convicting someone for something they didn’t do, and killing this person for the wrong reason. Putting the wrong person to death is the biggest mistake that can be made and the government cannot afford to make this mistake.

While it may seem unlikely that many people would be convicted of a few of the latter crimes, there were nearly 3,000 people on death row in the last year. Of those 3,000 people, 117 were found to be innocent. It is predicted that at least 3% more of those sentenced would have been exonerated with enough time and resources.