Injustices of the Justice System

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Injustices of the Justice System

Today’s justice system is broken and flawed, with a history of falsely convicting innocent people due to a variety of things, including eyewitness misidentification, invalid or improper forensic testing, and even racial bias on the jury. Many wrongful convictions happen as a result of a combination of these things, and other causes can contribute in each individual case (“causes”). Countless people throughout history have been punished for crimes they did not commit, and with recent advancements in DNA testing bringing about hundreds of exonerations of the wrongfully convicted, one has to wonder how many innocents have languished in prisons throughout history. With all the flaws and potential for error in our courtrooms today, justice can not be brought about by our current system; in order to repair it, we need governmental reform to promote true equity and prevent future miscarriages of justice.

The two largest contributors to wrongful convictions are eyewitness misidentification and improper forensic testing; the human brain is not like a tape recorder, which means we cannot record information with undoubted accuracy nor can we easily repeat such information like a tape that has been rewound and many of the so-called sciences involved in forensic tests are unfounded and untested. The justice system relies heavily on eyewitness testimony, especially in the absence of other evidence, but several studies and cases have shown that this practice is frequently unreliable, with 77% of DNA exoneration cases involving eyewitness misidentification (“Eyewitness Misidentification”), and many juries are presented forensic evidence as scientific fact, when in reality nobody knows how accurate these tests ...

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...o go unpunished.

Works Cited

"The Causes of Wrongful Conviction." The Innocence Project. The Innocence Project, n.d. Web. 23 Apr. 2014.

"Criminal Justice Reform Commissions." The Innocence Project. The Innocence Project, n.d. Web. 23 Apr. 2014.

"Eyewitness Misidentification." The Innocence Project. The Innocence Project, n.d. Web. 22 Apr. 2014.

"The Innocence Project - Know the Cases: Browse Profiles:Clarence Harrison." The Innocence Project - Know the Cases: Browse Profiles:Clarence Harrison. The Innocence Project, n.d. Web. 23 Apr. 2014.

Lee, Harper. To Kill a Mockingbird. New York: Warner, 1982. Print.

"Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project » Bernard Webster." MidAtlantic Innocence Project RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Apr. 2014.

"Unreliable or Improper Forensic Science." The Innocence Project. The Innocence Project, n.d. Web. 23 Apr. 2014.

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