Baldwin, J. (1993) ‘Police Interview Techniques: Establishing Truth or Proof?’ British Journal of Criminology 33(3), 325-352 Blair, J. P. (2005) ‘A test of the unusual false confession perspective using cases of proven false confessions’. Criminal Law Bulletin 41, 127-144 Davies, S. L. (2005) ‘Reality of False Confessions-Lessons of the Central Park Jogger Case’, The. NYU Rev. L. & Soc. Change 30, 209 Findley, K. A., & Scott, M. S. (2006).…
Here is how misidentification often occurs: A crime is committed, the victim claims they have a vivid memory of the perpetrator, a composite sketch is created and the victim chooses a suspect from the photo and physical lineup. The investigators think they have caught the perpetrator and done justice. They are often times wrong. Eyewitness misidentification has been known as the leading cause of wrongful conviction. A study by the Innocence projects depicts that it plays a role in 72% of wrongful convictions.…
Look at these contemporary cases. Amanda Knoxx lied, saying that the Congolese owner of a bar where she used to work murdered her roommate. Charles Stuart blamed a black man for killing his pregnant wife when in fact he did. Susan Smith’s said…
There are many faults to the United States criminal justice system. Weaknesses in today’s judicial system fail to uphold our nation’s values and protect society’s most vulnerable members. Many of these weaknesses can be mistakes found in the way people think or the psychology behind many cognitive forces. One of these flawed psychological processes frame the way we see victims of crime. The book, Unfair, written by Adam Benforado points out how labeling victims can influence exactly how a case is handled.…
Social learning theory contends that “behavior is shaped by the stimuli that follow” (Stevens & Smith, pg. 271).…
In Illusory Causation in the Courtroom, published in Current Directions in Psychological Science, G. Daniel Lassiter explores illusory causation in terms of the role it plays in courtrooms. This is the possibility of the effect that camera perspective has on jurors’ judgements on the suspect’s guilt, whether it was a voluntary confession and sentence recommendations. The Death Penalty Information Center had documented cases in which death row inmates were released due to new evidence and in many cases, the cause of wrongful convictions can be traced back to the interrogation phase in which false confessions are extracted. Many experts believe that the solution to suspects being coerced into wrongful confessions are videotaping confessions.…
In society today, an individual’s identity plays a major role and it also gives an encrypting reason for the injustices that occur within our criminal system. According to Mr. Stevenson, an individual is more likely to be convicted based on their identity in the United States Criminal Justice system than their manner of innocents. Yet, justice should be served on whether an individual is actually deemed as guilty of the crime committed. In 1972, prisoners were estimated to the amount of 300,000. As of 2012, the prison system has been estimated to increase to about 2,300,000 prisoners and still showcases a continual increase in society today (Power of Identity).…
In today’s Canadian society, people are certain that the Criminal justice system with their almighty position and power has the responsibility to protect and serve the community. That being said, the fundamental purpose of the creation of criminal law is to maintain order within society and punish those who deviate beyond the social and legal norms (Robinson & Cahill, 2005). The idea of an innocent individual being wrongfully convicted of a criminal act committed by another person is astounding. The sole purpose of the system is to restrain those who are deemed deviant or mischiefs and are to be held accountable for their actions through the criminal justice system. Therefore, not to restrain the freedom of the individuals who are innocent.…
In conclusion, both an eyewitness and the reasonable person provide standards in the court of law that are used in determining whether to convict a suspect, as demonstrated by the eyewitness in the State v. Hendersen (2011) case. Unfortunately, both standards are based upon subjective perception. For example, human error in memory processing may decrease the accuracy in an eyewitness testimony. Research should be done on individual interpretation as it relates to an eyewitness or the reasonable person in order to prevent any wrongful…
An issue in developmental psychology that is a common topic of research is the question of whether or not the testimony of young children can be trusted. Can they recognize perpetrators or even remember events accurately? The answers to these questions should inform how children are questioned as eyewitnesses in the courtroom, and since many people aren’t as educated in this topic, it important for a policy to be implemented to ensure that findings from recent research are being used to effectively utilize children as eyewitnesses. There are three main topics of applicable research that I will discuss in this paper, and they are: use of initial exhaustive recall to avoid retrieval-induced forgetting, eye closure in recalling events, and repeating…
According to the innocence project, 24 percent of the wrongful convictions reversed by DNA are caused from false confessions. Despite that, many people believe that an individual who is innocent will not falsely confess to police unless he is or mentally ill or physically tortured. This belief has been noted by several scholars and documented in public surveys. Many believe this because most people do not know anything about a police interrogations, and what happens in it. People wrongly assume that the innocent suspect do not help themself by denial and that's why they falsely confessing to a crime that they did not…
In a study done by Steven D. Penrod and Brian L. Cutler, eyewitness identification was tested to find the most reliable effects on eyewitness performance. The studies that they performed indicated that jurors ' evaluations of identification evidence are heavily influenced by the confidence of the eyewitness. Unfortunately, in this case and in many other cases, the confidence of the eyewitness did not matter because he still identified the wrong man. The correlation between confidence and accurate eyewitness identification is weak (Penrod & Cutler, 1989). Because the victim’s husband was so confident in his identification, the cops did not feel obligated to find all of the evidence that they needed to prosecute Brenton.…
Rough Justice “God help us, if ever in this great country we turn our heads while people who have not had fair trials are executed” (Grisham 216). The Innocent Man, by John Grisham, is a nonfiction novel explaining the false conviction of Ron Williamson and Dennis Fritz. In the small town of Ada, Oklahoma, a waitress named Debra S. Carter was violently raped and murdered. The people of Ada were enraged and a one-sided investigation took place. Local police coerced Ron Williamson into confessing false statements by using Williamson’s bipolar disorder to their advantage.…
Jon B. Gould, J.D., Ph.D., a professor and the director of the Washington Institute for Public and International Affairs Research at American University and his team of researchers conducted a three year, first of its kind, large-scale empirical study Predicting Erroneous Convictions: A Social Science Approach to Miscarriages of Justice employing social scientific methods. It was funded by NIJ, and an NIJ video features Gould discussing wrongful convictions. After identifying 460 cases employing sophisticated analytical methods matched with a qualitative review of the cases from a panel of experts, 10 statistically significant factors were identified that distinguish a wrongful conviction from a “near miss” (a case in which an innocent defendant was acquitted or had charges dismissed before trial) NIJ…
Judicial corruption in the eyes of its innocent victims, is wrongdoing by someone in power that can be life changing. People can be fined unfair fees or watch someone who stole from them go free. However, for the judges getting the extra cash or making a decision because of personal bias, a case in which corruption occurs can be part of a normal day, and no one would ever know. Corruption is much more oblivious in other countries around the world. For example, in Azerbaijan, a prisoner can be released quickly, by a simple threat or a luxurious offer without doubt or question from anyone around.…