The Innocence Commission
The criminal justice system is best described as a search for the truth, however the more precise definition of it states that it is the system of law enforcement, the bar, the judiciary, corrections, and probation that is directly involved in the apprehension, prosecution, defense, sentencing, incarceration, and supervision of those suspected of or charged with criminal offences. As the justice system is handled by humans, it is bound to make mistakes and such errors lead to circumstances in which an innocent is found guilty; this is called a miscarriage of justice. Miscarriage of justice means the failure of a judicial system or court in the administration of justice, especially when an innocent is convicted in a crime (Dictionary.com, 2007). Miscarriage of justice is also known as wrongful conviction. If someone is wrongfully convicted, that person is punished for an offence he or she did not commit and the actual perpetrator of the crime goes free. As well, public confidence in the system declines when wrongful convictions are identified. There are several elements that cause a miscarriage of justice, such as non-disclosure of evidence by police or prosecution, confirmation bias on the part of investigators, fabrication of evidence, poor identification, and unreliable confessions due to police pressure or psychological instability. They are all considered unjust as they violate the principle of justice. The three major causes for wrongful conviction are false confession, eyewitness error, and official misconduct.
When a defendant has confessed to committing a crime, the vast majority of police, prosecutors, and jurors see it as rock-solid evidence of guilt. Many of these involved children or suspects with mental illnesses or mental retardation. Even more cases involve adults with no history of mental illness or retardation who are subject to interrogation for up to 37 hours or are falsely told that there is credible evidence against them. Although it may seem illogical, they are led to believe that confessing to the crime, even if they are innocent, is the most reasonable choice. In many cases, the false confessions do not match the actual crime. According to The Innocence Project, the cause of false confessions are “duress, coercion, intoxication, diminished capacity, mental impairment, ignorance of the law, fear of violence, the actual infliction of harm, the threat of a harsh sentence, and misunderstanding the situation” (Innocence Project, 2004). Some scholars suggest that false confessions can be explained by the state of that individual during the interrogation by the police officer. The Innocence Project believes that first, confession from a juvenile is unreliable because children are easy to manipulate and are not always fully aware of their situation. Second, is people with mental disabilities have often confessed because they are more willing to corroborate with authorities. Furthermore, many officers do have the special training on how to question those suspect with mental disabilities. Third, is a mentally capable adult can also give a false confession because of the variety of factors like the length of interrogation, exhaustion or a belief that they will be released after confessing, and prove their innocence later (Innocence Project, 2004). Most of time, people often have a common decision or belief that confessing will be more beneficial to them than continuing to maintain their innocence.
Eyewitness error or eyewitness misidentification is the most common wrongful conviction cause for convicting innocent people. However, eyewitness testimony can be persuasive evidence before a judge or jury. That is because the vast majority of eyewitnesses to crimes are honest people who want to help solve crimes. Unfortunately, studies of wrongful conviction cases and of the fallibility of human memory have proven that eyewitnesses frequently are mistaken. Social science researches have showed that the human mind does not work like a tape recorder. People cannot record events exactly as they have seen or recall them anytime they want to. Some of the social science researchers believe that there are two main categories of variables affecting eyewitness identification: estimator variables and system variable. According to the Innocence Project,
“Estimator variables are those that cannot be controlled by the criminal justice system. They include simple factors like the lighting when the crime took place or the distance from which the witness saw the perpetrator. Estimator variables also include more complex factors, including race (identifications have proven to be less accurate when witnesses are identifying perpetrators of a different race). The presence of a weapon during a crime and the degree of stress or trauma a witness experienced while seeing the perpetrator are also estimator variables that have been proven to reduce the accuracy of identifications. System variables are those that criminal justice can and should control. They include all of the ways that law enforcement agencies retrieve and record witness memory, such as lineups, photo arrays and other identification procedures. System variables that substantially impact the accuracy of identifications include selection of “fillers” (or members of a lineup or photo array who are not the actual suspect), instructions to witnesses before identification procedures, administration of lineups or photo arrays, and communication after witnesses make an identification” (Innocence Project, 2004).
Most of time, eyewitness error victim can be prove his or her innocence by using DNA test. Some wrongful convictions are caused by honest mistakes. In some cases, however, officials take steps to ensure that a defendant is convicted despite weak evidence or even clear proof of innocence. This type of conduct is known as official misconduct or police/prosecutor misconduct. In their zealous desire to solve a case, police often overlook, both inadvertently and by design, procedures intended to ensure that the right person is charged with a crime. Overly suggestive identification techniques, coercive interrogation tactics, and failure to follow up on leads inconsistent with the investigative officers’ theory of the case have all contributed to wrongful convictions. When police officers already believe themselves certain that they have caught the right man, their one-on-one show-ups, suggestive lineups, and coerced identifications have often placed the wrong person in jail. Violence and dishonesty toward suspects have both resulted in many false confessions that have led inevitably to wrongful convictions. Not only police officer but prosecutors can also cause wrongful conviction. Dishonest prosecutors can easily suppress or destroy exculpatory evidence. They can make up evidence. Furthermore, criminal justice is human endeavor and the possibility for corruption exits. According to The Innocence Project, “official misconduct can happen at any level and stage of a criminal investigation. This misconduct can be deliberate suggestiveness in identification procedures, the withholding of evidence from defense, the deliberate mishandling, mistreatment or destruction of evidence, the coercion of false confessions, and the use of unreliable government informants or snitches” (Innocence Project, 2004). Even though official misconduct can cause wrongful conviction, those cases are really rare, and most law enforcement and prosecutors are honest and trustworthy. Here are some example cases that we have chosen to illustrate the three major reasons why people are wrongfully convicted. First, we highlight false confessions in the case of “The Scottsboro Boys”. The “Scottsboro Boys” case produced as many trials, convictions, reversals, and retrials as did an alleged gang rape of two white girls by nine black teenagers on Southern Railroad freight run on March 25, 1931 (Hartford Web Publishing, 1997). The case of the Scottsboro Boys arose in Scottsboro, Alabama during the 1930s, when nine black youths, ranging in age from thirteen to nineteen, were accused of raping two white women, one of whom would later recant (Hartford Web Publishing, 1997). The trials, in which the youths were convicted and sentenced to death by all-white juries despite the weak and contradictory testimonies of the witnesses, are regarded as one of the worst travesties of justice perpetrated against blacks in the post-Reconstruction South (Hartford Web Publishing, 1997). The case quickly became an international cause célèbre and the boys were represented by the American Communist Party's legal defense organization. The death sentences, originally scheduled to be carried out quickly, were postponed pending appeals that took the case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where the sentences were overturned. Despite the fact that one of the women later denied being raped, the retrials resulted in convictions. All of the defendants were eventually acquitted, paroled, or pardoned (besides one who escaped); some after serving years in prison (Hartford Web Publishing, 1997). Second, the case of Gary Dotson illuminates eye witness-error. On the evening, of July 9, 1977, the complainant was walking home from work when two men forced her into the back seat of a car and raped her (Institute for Psychological Therapies, 1989). She also testified that one of the men tried to write words on her stomach using a broken beer bottle. She was then pushed from the car onto the street. In July 1979 Gary Dotson was convicted of aggravated kidnapping, and rape. He was sentenced to not less than 25 and not more than 50 years (Institute for Psychological Therapies, 1989).
The prosecution's case included the following evidence: (1989)
• A composite sketch of the defendant, which the complainant helped with, was prepared by the police.
• The victim identified Dotson from a police mug book.
• Dotson was identified by the victim from a police lineup.
• The State's expert serologist testified that the semen on the victim's undergarment came from a type B secretor and that the defendant was a type B secretor. (It was later reported that the State's serologist failed to disclose that the victim was also a type B secretor.)
• Testimony was presented that a pubic hair removed from the victim's underwear was similar to the defendant's and dissimilar to the victim's.
March 1985 the victim recanted her testimony. She said she had fabricated the rape to hide a legitimate sexual encounter with her boyfriend. Dotson contended that the victim's recantation of testimony constituted grounds to vacate the original sentence. At the hearing on Dotson's motion for a new trial, the same judge from the original trial refused to order a new trial. His reasoning was that the complainant was more believable in her original testimony than in her recantation (Institute for Psychological Therapies, 1989). The chief judge of the Cook County Criminal Court ruled that Dotson was entitled to a new trial. The State attorney's office, however, decided not to prosecute based on the victim's lack of credibility and the DNA test results. Dotson's conviction was overturned on August 14, 1989, after he had served a total of eight years (Institute for Psychological Therapies, 1989). Lastly, we consider the case of Louis Greco to demonstrate how one may be framed to constitute a false conviction. Louis Greco died behind bars for murder after maintaining his innocence for 30 years (Lawrence, 2004). Greco, a World War II veteran hobbled by a shot to the ankle in the Philippines, always claimed he was in Florida on March 12, 1965, when the mob shot Edward Deegan in a Chelsea alley. He passed three polygraphs and won two commutations that were never acted upon by former governors. (2004) In a motion quietly filed in Suffolk Superior Court in September, the DA's office finally acknowledged what new testimony and secret FBI memos uncovered recently have revealed (Lawrence, 2004). Greco was framed by mob hit man-turned-government witness Joseph Barboza. “It appears that justice may not have been done” (Lawrence, 2004). Assistant DA Mark Lee said in the motion to drop all charges against Greco posthumously. The motion cites “legal and ethical considerations raised by the newly discovered FBI documents, as well as principles of consistency and fundamental fairness” (Lawrence, 2004) as the reasons. The vast majority of convictions are gained through good police work, good investigation, and good prosecution. Most of the time the information is correct and the conviction is appropriate and well-deserved. However, as can be seen in the examples above, mistakes do happen. Sometimes these mistakes are accidental, and sometimes they are intentional. In order to preserve the excellent quality of our criminal justice system, however, we must always be looking for ways to improve the accuracy of the system and prevent wrongful convictions. When examining eyewitness error there are a number of ways to improve accuracy. “Better training for police officers, for one thing. The U.S. Attorney General's office has made the following recommendations: (1) the officer working with the witnesses should not know which person is the suspect; (2) the eyewitness doing a photographic lineup understands that the suspect might or might not be in the lineup; and (3) the witness is absolutely certain they have identified the right person” (O’Connor, 2005). Consistently using these simple practices would help reduce the amount of eyewitness error. It is also preferable to rely on evidence that has a strong foundation in science, such as DNA, rather than the fallible memories of individual witnesses. Cases where the witness or witnesses intentionally misidentify an innocent defendant as being guilty of a crime are more difficult to avoid. Quality investigating by detectives and crime labs is essential. Also important is the need for investigators to be open minded and be willing to pursue evidence that leads away from the primary suspect as vigorously as evidence that points squarely to him or her. A suspect being framed is the most difficult of these three to avoid, and thankfully, also the least common. Cases where the criminal makes an innocent party look like the perpetrator can be resolved, as before, by quality investigating and open minds willing to look at other alternative to the seemingly obvious circumstances. Imperfection is a part of human nature. Mistakes will always be made, and unfortunately, innocent people will occasionally be sent to jail for crimes they did not commit. Thankfully, with the emergence and prevalence of technologies like DNA, we are now able to much more accurately identify the guilty party when a crime has been committed. This allows investigators not only to positively identify a person actually guilty of a crime, but also to clear those persons who are suspected of committing the crime but are innocent. In an ideal world, no innocent person would ever go to jail, and no guilty person would ever escape punishment for his or her crimes. Those in the criminal justice profession must always strive for excellence in what they do, because when an innocent person goes to jail, a guilty person remains on the streets.

References
Dictionary.com. (2007). Definition. Retrieved June 25, 2007, from Dictionary.com Web site: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/miscarriage%20of%20justice
Hartford Web Publishing. (1997). NY Times: Turning truth on its head – The Scottsboro case. Retrieved June 20, 2007 from: http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/047.html
Innocence Project. (2004). Understand the causes. Retrieved June 25, 2007, from The Innocence Project Web site: http://www.innocenceproject.org/understand/
Institute for Psychological Therapies. (1989). Gary Dotson (Chicago, Illinois). Retrieved June 20, 2007 from: http://www.ipt-forensics.com/journal/volume10/j10_3_6_13.htm
Lawrence, J.M. (2004). Suffolk DA clears Greco posthumously on 1965 murder rap. Retrieved June 20, 2007 from: http://www.truthinjustice.org/greco.htm
O’Connor, T. (2005). False Confession, Wrongful Conviction & Eyewitness Error. Retrieved June 20, 2007 from http://faculty.ncwc.edu/TOCONNOR/psy/psylect06.htm