Term Paper On Wrongful Convictions In Justice Department (Term Paper Sample)

Wrongful Convictions
Name
Institution - Affiliated
Date
Introduction
The Justice Department is one of the oldest departments in the country and it deals with the justice systems of the country. Many people across the country have dealt with the Justice Department in various ways be seeking a solution or being scrutinized. People have being convicted of crimes by the criminal justice system some have been guilty and some have been innocent. It is quite common to have people serve sentences when they are quite innocent because of a number of problems. At times guilty people have been let go scot free by the same system that has wrongfully convicted these innocent people. The justice system has failed in many ways and on many levels from the courts, arresting officers, prosecutors, District Attorneys, and much more.
Discussion
Over the past few years, many people have been wrongfully convicted by the Justice Department and they have served sentences. Some of these wrongful convictions have been exonerated after a tough struggle and some have not thus leaving the ‘convicts' to serve the full sentences. Many times people have been exonerated yet they were on the death row because of wrong convictions. According to a report published by the national committee of exonerations, a record of 149 people was cleared of crimes they did not commit. The exonerated people had served an average of 14.5 years in jail, 40% of the exonerations involved official misconduct (Ferner, 2016). These wrongful convictions have led to the creation of a series ‘Making a Murderer’ that highlights the wrongful convictions in the country.
Many people see the US court system failing them because of the wrongful convictions to their family members and friends. Families of the exonerated people of 2015 were disappointed by the courts and most of their appeals were rejected. Most of these people complain that the court system did not give them enough time to plead their cases and submit their evidence while some of the evidence was rejected. A lot of money is spent on the lawyers and at times the families drain out their savings trying to fight for their loved ones to be freed. According to a recent study by the University Of Michigan School Of Law, more than56% are dissatisfied with the court system, the study was carried out across 3 states interviewing 5653 people (Locke, 2015). There is an assumption that there are more than 5000 wrongful convictions each year across the country.
Many people are wrongfully convicted because at times the witnesses are bribed so that they can frame these people. More than 75 percent of the people exonerated in 2015 of homicide, it involved official misconduct, and almost 40% of the wrongful conviction involves official misconducts. About 20% of the convictions involved false confessions and many people have been exonerated because these witnesses come and recant their testimonies. In a study done focusing on convictions since 1989, hundreds of cases involved false confession but these numbers have reduced since 2007. The Innocence Project recommends that these key witnesses should be able to repeat their confessions more than once so as to authenticate their testimonies (Mustang, 2015). Another way is scrutinizing the witnesses, the jury during selection and the judges to ensure they don’t commit a felony.
At most times, many innocent people get wrongfully convicted because there was not a good adversary system in place to prove his/her innocence. At most times, the poor and the weak in the society are the ones who suffer from these wrongful convictions. Since they cannot afford lawyers of their own, the state usually appoints a public defender to represent them in their case. These people get poor legal representation from theses lawyers who are mostly inefficient and are not competent enough. At times these lawyers are so overburdened by the work that they pay little or no attention to these cases.
This happens mainly because many state legislatures have failed to provide the resources and necessary structure to provide efficient and competent legal representation. These representations are usually scandals with some defenders showing up in court drunk and most judges are not willing to listen to these disasters. At times the states fail to provide good structures such as those of the prosecution side and train these lawyers to be experts in criminal law (Bright, 2001). Such poor representation has...