...the history of the United States. Although the number is high, there are still many more wrongfully convicted people who’s still incarcerated and have yet to be considered for retrial. Unaddressed wrongful conviction cases show the weaknesses in the U.S. justice system. This paper will touch on the causes that lead to wrongful convictions and discuss possible solutions. The main factors of wrongful convictions are eyewitness misidentification, misleading/unreliable forensics, false confessions (coerced/intimidated), witness perjury, prosecutorial misconduct, insufficient lawyering, racism and implicit bias. Since the first DNA exoneration conviction in the United States case that...
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...Introspective Analysis: My Limited Writing Experience in a Nutshell I have never kept a journal or a diary. Writing things down never made me feel better so my first real experience in any type of writing was in school. Before then I had not given writing much thought. I read a lot of books, magazines and papers; how hard could it be? It wasn’t long before I had a real eye opening experience trying to write my first real formal paper. Writing has never been easy for me so when I started writing formal papers in college it was one of the more difficult assignments for me. In the first part of this essay, I will review my first experience in writing a formal college paper, how the Professor encouraged me to actually finish the paper, then in the second part of my paper I will describe my experiences with research and MLA formatting style. I will never forget my first college English Composition class. When I walked into the class it looked like any other classroom. People were sitting in what I was sure was their comfort spots in the classroom, some in front, some in back. I, of course, chose a middle seat. I pulled out the books and papers I needed for the class and sat quietly. When the Professor started the class we all signed in and of course, we had to write an introduction of ourselves to him. That seemed easy enough. I wrote it out and handed it in and was passed back a syllabus. The final draft of our first paper wasn’t even due for four weeks. At that time I never imagined...
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...When you put these two words together, you get witness misidentification which has been referred to as the single greatest cause of wrongful convictions nationwide, with nearly 75% of the convictions overturned through DNA testing. There have been 260 exonerations across the country based on forensic DNA testing with 3 out of 4 involving cases of eyewitness misidentification. (Innocence Project 1999) In 1907 or 1908, Hugo Munsterberg published “On the Witness Stand”; he questioned the reliability of eyewitness identification. As recent as 30 or 40 years ago, the Supreme Court acknowledged that eyewitness identification is problematic and can lead to wrongful convictions. The Supreme Court instructed lower courts to determine the validity of eyewitness testimony based on irrelevant factors, like the certainty of the witness, the certainty you express in court during the trial has nothing to do with how certain you feel two days after the event when you pick a photograph out of a set or pick the suspect out of a lineup. It has been said that you become more certain over time. (The Confidential Resource September 15, 2010) An eyewitness viewing a simultaneous lineup tends to make a judgment about which individual in the lineup looks most like the perpetrator relative to the other members of the lineup. This is particularly problematic when a lineup only contains innocent people. Research has shown that the effective use of fillers when composing a lineup can help combat the tendency...
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...villages were taken away, leaving them with nothing, not even small scraps of food or grain to survive on through the seasons between harvests. When harvest came, the grain and other crops would be taken away before the local population could feed their own bodies, leaving people to steal anything that they could to feed themselves and their families. The question that has plagued historians for decades is who exactly is at fault for causing a tragedy of this nature to occur. The purpose of this paper is to bring to light a possible factor of guilt for this event, and give supporting evidence from both eyewitness accounts and research, done since the occurrence of the events in 1931-1933, to prove that there is indeed guilt to be placed on a party. It is this authors viewpoint that suggests that criminal charges be brought against the government of the Soviet Union, and the Communist Party as a whole. It is important to mention that no one person was responsible for the famine, and this paper will cover the parties responsible for the atrocities that took place from 1932-1933. Before the start of the famine, there were a few aspects of the changes in government that affected the economy of the Soviet Union. Scholars concur that in terms of the number of victims—between 3 and 10 million 28—the famine of 1932–1933 constitutes an event of great enormity and significance in the history of the twentieth century and one that devastated Ukraine as well as Ukrainians who lived...
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...Genocide Foundations Name Institution Affiliation Date Genocide Foundations Introduction Over the years, genocide studies receive positive and negative influences from both the cultural and political contexts. The two contexts have extensively influenced the view of genocide. The major view of genocide is that it is a domestic occurrence of states. On a literal perspective, various authors have contributed to the subject of genocide. The assignment looks to extensively explore the foundations of genocide based on book reviews. The paper will provide an in-depth analysis and reviews of three books on genocide, What is Genocide by Martin Shaw, Centuries of Genocide by Totten and On the nature of genocidal intent by Campbell. Shaw, M. (2007). What is Genocide? Cambridge: Polity Press. ISBN: 0745631827. Martin Shaw’s takes up the subject of defining genocide in all contexts. Through the book, What is Genocide, Shaw seeks to address two major issues related to genocide definition. • Unchanging definition of genocide • Reasons and need for changing definition of genocide Modern comprehension of the genocide ideology arises from a historical and contemporary viewpoint. It is evident over the years that the definition of genocide has undergone minimal change. In the book, the author offers key reasons for the unchanging definition of genocide while at the same time offering major reasons...
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...Forensics Instructor Janice Bella March 4, 2013 Organic versus Inorganic Growing up as a kid I was forced to watch the television shows my parents enjoyed. During that era murder mysteries were extremely popular. Shows like Jake and the Fatman, Colombo, Matlock, and Murder She Wrote just to name a few. None of those shows relied heavily on science per say, moreover, those shows were written with the most insignificant clue becoming the one piece of evidence that is the key to the whole case. Just as dated as those television shows, so is the investigative practice. Present day, almost all investigative crimes involve the collection of forensic evidence that is broken down into two categories: organic versus inorganic evidence. This paper will detail the differences between organic and inorganic evidence, explain the strengths and weaknesses of each, and breakdown the significance of either organic or inorganic evidence as it travels through the justice system from the crime scene to prosecution. The way evidence collected can be broken down into two categories; organic and inorganic. According to Saferstein (2011), “Organic substances contain carbon, commonly in combination with hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, chlorine, phosphorus, or other elements. Inorganic substances encompass all other known chemicals substances. Each of these two broad groups has distinctive and characteristics properties (p. 123, Para 3). In laymen’s terms, organic evidence is biological evidence that...
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...Wrongfully Convictions Introduction: Each year, many people that are innocent are dished out short or long term prison term for crimes that they did not commit. These innocent people have been “wrongfully convicted”. Sometimes these wrongfully convicted charges are unbeknownst to the judge and or jury; other times, they are just wrongfully convicted due to corrupt law enforcement officers. This corrupt issue is very wrong and should be done away with immediately, which is my reason my choosing this topic. In this research paper, I plan to find reasons for wrongful convictions, the actual number, statistics, of individuals that have been wrongful convicted, and those individuals who have stepped up to make a difference in this dilemma. Although there aren’t any statistics kept by the Criminal Justice Department on the number of crimes that were recorded as wrongful convictions, research has estimated about 5% of the cases that are tried annual result in a false conviction. Since 1989, 1,241 people have been wrongfully convicted and later cleared of all charges based on evidence that they were innocent, according to the National Registry of Exonerations, a project of the law schools at the University of Michigan and Northwestern University (Clark 2013). The Michigan Innocence Clinic was the first clinic of its kind to work on non-DNA exonerations. Their work has revealed particular circumstances far too often seen in cases of wrongful conviction. These cases show us how...
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...Eyewitness Memory in Accuracy on Recall of 2nd Year Students of Daughters of Mary Immaculate School (DMI) Beginning from the conception until our present condition, we possess a certain characteristics which can only be found in ourselves. It is a unique way to see that everyone can speak in different way and act in different manner. We perceive different things in accordance with what our sensation sense. We can see, hear, smell, taste, and feel a stimulus and tend to bring that information in the brain for our own interpretation. After reaching it to the brain, the person produces reactions whether it is acceptable or not on particular setting. If it is unanimously acceptable to all, it doesn’t mean that we all have the same way of thinking or in a state of group mind. Every individual can still showcase another different facial expression after they come up to a decision. This is why individual differences are obviously seen to all individual. One of the basic parts of the body that can be the medium for accepting information towards our environment are eyes. It plays a vital role in encoding all perceived stimuli to our brain. From the part of the retina which is rods and cones, the information is relay to the ganglion cells and transmitted to the optic nerve until it reached to the occipital lobe. This is one part of the brain that responsible for the process of visual information. Stimulus that reached to the brain can either be remembered or not. Memory has the ability...
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...JFK Assassination: Are the Conspiracies Accurate? In 1976, the US Senate ordered a fresh inquiry into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, who was murdered in 1963 during a motorcade in Dallas, Texas while campaigning for re-election. People who had been involved in the original Warren Commission investigations were asked to make fresh statements. The FBI and the CIA were persuaded to release more of their documents on Oswald. New lines of inquiry were opened and individuals who had not previously given evidence were persuaded to come forward. Most important of all, pieces of evidence such as photos and sound recordings were subjected to scientific analysis using the most up-to-date methods and equipment. The House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) completed their investigation in 1979 and they finally came to a discrete verdict that Lee Harvey Oswald fired three shots at Kennedy, one of which killed the president. A fourth shot was fired from the grassy knoll, which was contradictory to the statement printed by the Warren Commission 16 years earlier. However, the HSCA could not determine who the second gunman was, and how he was in relation to Oswald. If the Warren Committee had been thorough and not corrupt the first time, the second investigation would never have been necessary. However, because of government negligence and corruption, we still to this day do not know who really killed President Kennedy. The public became more interested in the...
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...DNA Role in Forensics Science At a crime scene there may be a lot DNA evidence left behind or none. DNA can identify victims and suspects. It can help solve cold case and give new leads to other cases. DNA is also use to determine kinship in a missing person case. It can also help exonerate someone from a crime that they were convicted of. When handling DNA such as blood at a crime scene it is important that it is properly documented, photographed, collected and stored. Besides blood, DNA can include: body fluid, hair and skin. Such DNA can be matched to an individual. DNA is the acronym for Deoxyribonucleic acid. According to Campbell Essential Biology with Physiology, “The word nucleic is referring to “DNA location in the nuclei of eukaryotic cell.” (Page49). “DNA is genetic material that humans and other organisms inherit from their parents which consists of gain molecules” (Page 48). The shape of DNA is a double helix. Some would say it looks like a twisted ladder. “The double helix has four bases; (A) Adenine, (C) Cytosine, (G) Guanine and (T) Tyhmine. The bases have to be properly linked to their pair or else there will be a mutation in the gene. The following are the base pairs that bind:”Adenine with Tyhmine and Cystosine with Guanine” (Page 49). DNA testing began in the mid 1980’s. In the online article, DNA Factors states: Ever since the start of DNA testing in 1985, biological material has been a reliable physical evidence to help solve crimes (Williams)...
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...Argument Paper November 22nd, 1963, the day President Kennedy was assassinated, was marked as one of the most tragic days in US history; however, it also marked a revolutionary change from print media to news broadcasting; the audience of America gained their news through television rather than newspapers. Just as the US saw a transition from print to visual or news broadcasting, journalists presently are now seeing a transition from visual to web-based news. Social media sites like Twitter and Facebook as well as blogs are slowly becoming the new medium of communication or web-based news. Similar to the print to visual news transition, the transition from visual to web-based news is also having its fair share of rough patches. Many people in the journalistic field argue that this new medium of communication lacks correct facts and has an opinionated view of the truth. However, in today’s society an accredited source of information is an idea that cannot be disproven. Through constant updates, being a watchdog, and becoming a catalyst of journalism, these ideas will help aid web-based journalism become an accredited source of news. Constantly updating the public with reliable information makes web-based news an accredited voice of information (Andrews 1). In the early hours of September 11, 2001, blogs became the best available source of eyewitness reporting,” according to Paul Andrews, author of Is Blogging Journalism (Andrews 1). Without a constant update on the situation...
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...cell phone to operate on voice command; today’s jurors expect the introduction of evidence packed with modern science and technology in trials. These high expectations result in part from the amalgamation of public awareness, use, and availability of modern science and technology derived from a variety of sources, including, but not limited to, mass media. The CSI effect does not only exist in criminal cases it also exists in civil litigations. Although the CSI effect may not be from a television show, it is enhanced by mass media and television programs. A trial attorney should go in the courtroom with skills to go against unrealistic expectations. (Dysart, 2012) No other forensic science technique has received as much attention as DNA analysis. To date, DNA has exonerated more than two-hundred people in the United States. These exonerations are a reminder that our system is flawed, and they have shed light on serious problems with the criminal justice system, including forensic science. While many assume that forensic science is a near-perfect tool for discovering the truth in criminal cases, a recent study found that false or misleading forensic expert testimony is a leading contributing factor in wrongful convictions.(Justice...
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...the term may be useful in another direction; civil cases and errors of impunity. Many criminal justice systems have set ways to quash or overturn, a wrongful conviction. However, it is difficult for the criminal justice systems to overturn the decisions of wrongful convictions. In certain instances, overturning a wrongful conviction may take several years, or until the courts have already convicted the innocent person or the person has died. This paper examines the causes of wrongful convictions and focuses on the DNA exoneration policy. Causes of Wrongful Convictions The first clinic to work on non-DNA exonerations was the Michigan Innocence Clinic. It revealed particular circumstances that people have always deemed as the wrongful conviction. The scenarios reveal that the criminal justice needs amendments and change how the Michigan Innocence clinic should deal with the system’s trends. The following are among the causes of wrongful convictions: Eyewitness Misidentification: sometimes the eyewitnesses could misidentify a person and cause wrongful conviction on the person. According to Loftus & Greene (1980), the human is not a recorder and as such, it is a reliable source of information. It is because eyewitnesses cannot remember everything exactly the way it happened. Similarly, Junk science is another cause of wrongful convictions. There has been numerous forensic methods for testing but have brought...
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...Divisions Contest Categories Important Notices for Contestants Program Materials 6 6 6 6 7 7 7 II. Rules For All Categories A. General Rules for All Categories B. Required Written Material for All Entries C. Contest Participation 8 10 11 III. Individual Category Rules A. B. C. D. E. Paper Exhibit Performance Documentary Web Site 13 15 17 17 19 IV. How Will Your Entry Be Judged? A. B. C. D. E. F. G. Benefits of the Evaluation Process Who are the Judges? How Does the Evaluation Process Work? Consensus Judging The Subjective Nature of Judging The Decision of the Judges is Final Evaluation Criteria i. Historical Quality ii. Relation to Theme iii. Clarity of Presentation H. Rule Compliance I. Sample Judge’s Evaluation 22 22 22 22 23 23 23 23 23 23 24 24 25 27 NATIONAL HISTORY DAY V. Category Checklist For Further Information 3 What is National History Day? National History Day (NHD) is a yearlong educational program that makes history come alive every day. You learn about interesting issues, ideas, people, and events of your choosing. It is an exciting way to study history because you express what you have learned in a creative and original performance, documentary, paper, web site, or exhibit. Through NHD you learn the skills and techniques of the historian...
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...Jarrett Rowland English 108 “Research Essay 2 RD” MWSU-Dr. Heard 15 November 2010 Missouri Mountain Lions Return: Can the State Support A Breeding Population? One hot wildlife question being debated in coffee shops, sporting goods stores, and Internet chat sites across Missouri goes something like this: “Do we have mountain lions here or not?” The short answer is yes, sometimes. But we have far fewer than rumors would lead you to believe. What we do not have is any evidence of a viable, breeding population of mountain lions in Missouri. As a result, the Missouri Department of Conservation has changed the state classification of the species from endangered to extirpated. An extirpated species is one that is considered extinct as a viable breeding population from a portion of its historical range. The Conservation Commission has determined that, based on considerations of human safety and risk to livestock, it is undesirable to have a breeding population of mountain lions in Missouri. Therefore, the Department of Conservation will not encourage the species to reestablish itself in the state. Despite rumors, the Department has never stocked mountain lions and will not do so in the future. Although mountain lions, sometimes called cougars, pumas, panthers or catamounts, were common in Missouri and elsewhere in the Midwest prior to European settlement, they were eradicated during the 19th century. As the countryside was settled and developed, the large predators were shot....
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