Preventing the Injustice of Wrongful Imprisonment

Wrongful conviction and imprisonment is a big issue in the United States. A man by the name of Jerry Miller who “spent 25 years in prison for rape was exonerated… a judge threw out his convictions because DNA evidence showed he could not have committed the attack”. However Mr. Miller’s case is not an abnormal one, he has become the 200th person exonerated of all charges with thanks to post conviction DNA testing. The “Innocence Project”, “a national litigation and public policy organization dedicated to exonerating wrongfully convicted people through DNA testing and reforming the criminal justice system to prevent future injustices” , came to Jerry Millers representation and helped him to obtain the court order he needed to test the DNA to prove his own innocence. “Just since 2000, there have been 135 DNA-based exonerations….. 14 people sentenced to death, a combined total of 2,475 nights in jail”, all for crimes these 200 people did not commit, these men have post conviction DNA testing to thank for their freedom, but still there are 2.3 million people imprisoned in the United States, most in prison for crimes that do not involve forensic evidence. Leading people to believe that thousands of innocent people are being held behind bars as prisoners for crimes they did not commit but they do not have enough substantial evidence to show proof. Out of the 200 cases that the people were acquitted 77% were convicted solely on mistaken eyewitnesses.

Mr. Miller accounted for a portion of that 77%. Miller was a suspect in this case because days before the crime, Officer Kenneth Fligelman had stopped him and said that he was suspected of “looking” into parked cars. Mr. Millers theoretical raping happened on the roof of a parking ...

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The issue of innocent people being put behind bars has got to be dealt with. In order for prosecutors to plea bargain said innocent people into taking a guilty plea, they should have to show undisputable evidence, nothing that is circumstantial or only has the word of someone else behind it. It use to look as though nothing was going to change, that people were going to continue to be wrongfully accused and imprisoned, but after Jerry Miller became the 200th person to be extradited using post conviction DNA testing peoples eyes have opened a little bit more. Prosecutors probably will not change their views on trials until about 600 or 700 people have been released because they have been wrongfully accused. There are innocent people losing their lives, being locked up, and rotting away all the potential that they could have had. We must solve this injustice.