Biology Thursday, April 22, 2004 . This is a SciScoop post by Ricky James
The research indicates that the justice system must continue to improve its investigative methods to reduce the number of convictions of innocent people. The study focuses on three common causes of false convictions: misidentifications, false confessions and perjury. According to Gross, the police should implement different tactics to reduce the danger of false convictions based on different types of faulty information. For instance, convictions based on false confessions could be greatly reduced by videotaping police interrogations so that judges and juries can see for themselves the circumstances that led the defendant to confess.
Another key finding in the research involved racial disparities in the juvenile justice system. Ninety percent of exonerated juvenile defendants are African-American or Hispanic.
The U-M students participating in the research were Kristen Jacoby and Daniel Matheson, Law School; Nicholas Montgomery, Department of Economics and Ford School of Public Policy; and Sujata Patel, School of Public Health.
From a University of Michigan press release.
SciScoop Science News is a forum for news, views and controversial conjectures. Please contact us if would like to submit a guest post.
2 Responses to DNA Evidence Exonerates 328 Prisoners Since 1989
pinerob
April 23rd, 2004 at 9:32 am
We definitely need to improve our justice system as the article suggests. It’s no wonder we have so many people in jail.
At the very least, the suggestion that all police interrogations be videotaped so that the judge and jury can verify that the confession is warranted.
“Rogue police officers,” I guess the moral of the story is, don’t piss off police officers because they might frame you. Hopefully, it is a very small segmemt of the police population who actually do this and that in the near future we will be able to identify them and get them out of police force. Easier said than done, I know.
We have a cop in Dallas who arrested several people for possession of drugs, turned out that the “drugs” were fake. It was some sort of white powder, can’t remember the specific substance, but it went to trial and they were convicted for possession of cocaine. How did that happen? You would think it would be an easy thing to check to see if the substance is actually cocaine. You would think that somewhere in the prosecution phase or at trial, someone would actually test the substance and confirm that it is an illegal drug. The defense lawyers, I’m thinking the victims were not rich enough to hire their own attorneys, for the defendants really dropped the ball on this one, but so did the prosecutors. The worst part of it is that the cop seems to be getting off fairly easy. No punishment for him for providing false evidence. Of course, his defense was that he was ignorant of the fact that the substance planted on the innocent victims was not actually cocaine. His other defense is that he was “duped” by his informants into witnessing the false evidence and making the arrest based on that. I don’t know anywhere in America except in government jobs where you can advertise the fact that you don’t check your own work and that you are a fool and still get to keep your job. The drama is still going on. You can read about in the Dallas Morning News, search for “delapaz.”
jxliv7
April 26th, 2004 at 3:53 pm
.
It may be getting easier and cheaper for DNA tests these days, but I think the cost is still borne by the defendant. (Which brings up a pet peeve of mine about the immunity of a lot of federal/state/numicipal government agencies to being sued; but, I digress…)
There seems to be a trend among prosecutors to go for the kill and stomp all over the accuseds’ rights — withholding evidence, press conferences, plea bargains, threats, etc. However, isn’t the motto of Ms. Blind Justice “innocent until proven guilty”? You’d think the prosecutor would be more interested in the TRUTH than just putting one more notch on a briefcase.
My experience with DNA testing goes back to paternity testing — I could pay to be exonerated or I was automatically guilty. I paid. (And keep on paying, he was my son…)