Paul Bernardo: Wrongful Conviction Case Study

Alves, S. (2011, September 27). Lessons from the Amanda Knox Arrest. Retrieved April 13, 2012, from Indelibleinternational: http://indelibleinternational.com/index.php?pc=justArticle&ora=E0_70130&so=safety

During the processes, there are some key people that will contribute to clarify what happened. Among them, the police, the forensic service, the expert witnesses or witnesses testimony. Sadly, while sometimes those are the ones who elucidate the crime, at times, their confessions may be critical for the innocent person who is finally convicted because of their lies and corruption.

The State of Maryland has charged Adnan with Hae’s murder solely using Jay’s alibi as their premise; they overlooked the alibis of former Woodlawn High School students who knew of Adnan, Hae, or Jay. Asia McClain, a

In the video “The Confessions” presented by Frontline, a murder of a women that was committed by one man, quickly resulted into a false gang murder-rape scene committed by eight men. The victim, Michelle Bosko, was seen to be raped and killed in her apartment in Norfolk, Virginia. From the video, it has been proven that seven out of the eight men that confessed were innocent, but somehow they all received an unequal punishment. Because the innocent men admitted to a murder that they didn’t commit out of fear, they were all sentenced to some time in prison. The head detective, Glenn Ford, intimidated the men so much that they either were convinced that they were at the crime scene or they told him every detail that he wanted to hear.

Due to the interview taking place after hours and the case not being assigned until the following day, I was unable to be present at the time of the interview. However, I have since observed a copy of that interview. The following is a summary of the forensic interview conducted that night by Megan Merrill with Deja Jones. This is a summary, not an exact transcript.

This paper takes a leap into the corrupted side of the criminal justice system. After analyzing several articles regarding wrongful conviction cases in the Unites States, it is apparent that wrongful conviction cases occur more often than society believed. It has come to surface in recent years that wrongful convictions are a big problem with our criminal justice system. Researchers have discovered the causes of wrongful convictions to be bad lawyering, government misconduct, informants, false confessions, flawed forensic science and eyewitness error. Furthermore, this paper explores the affects victims face due to a wrongful conviction. As society has begun to steadily realize that miscarriage of justice is a possibility, researchers have considered reforms to the criminal justice system.

Among the many differing cases of wrongfully convicted Canadians, the case of Guy Paul Morin is very interesting. There were many issues that caused an innocent man from Queensville, Ontario to be convicted of the murder of Christine Jessop. We’re going to look at how the police failed to conduct a thorough investigation, how the court system failed, and how cases like this can be preventing in the future.

As the video evidently shows, the overall case was fabricated with the use of psychological tactics that broke some fundamental aspects of ethics. Getting one to confess to a crime is never easy, hence borne the numerous methods introduced and followed by almost all law enforcement officers to “read” possible suspects during interrogations. Further, with the right assembly of personal/background information, the combination of circumstances/techniques, and psychological manipulation can even make the most hardened suspect to confess (“How Police Interrogation works”). To add on, there was a time when “physical abuse” toward the possible suspects during interrogations and the confession obtained thereafter was accepted in court (“How Police Interrogation works”); Not only is this a misuse of authoritative power, but also unethical—inflicting mental /or physical pain upon the individual to confess almost seems extreme.

Darryl Hunt is an African American born in 1965 in North Carolina. In 1984, he was convicted wrongfully of rape and murder of Deborah Sykes, a young white woman working as a newspaper editor. This paper researches oh his wrongful conviction in North Carolina. Darryl Hunt served nineteen and a half years before DNA evidence exonerated him. The charges leveled against him were because of inconsistencies in the initial stages of the case. An all-white bench convicted the then nineteen-year-old Hunt, even though there was no physical evidence linking him to the crime. A hotel employee made false claims that he saw Hunt enter the hotel bathroom, and later emerge with bloodstained towels. Other witnesses also fixed Hunt to the case.

Of course, it is tough to comprehend why a reasonable and innocent individual such as Mr. Rivera would confess to a crime he did not commit (Gould). Upon further review, however, there were notable flaws as to how this case was treated. To

Since the late 1980s, there have been thousands of cases in which prime suspects have been wrongfully convicted, the most common causes being eyewitness misidentification, incriminating statements, and statements from informants. According to The Innocence Project, there have been almost four hundred post-conviction DNA exoneration cases in our country, and they are working to investigate even more wrongful conviction cases. This life changing program, along with their six attorneys, gather information about thousands of cases and determine whether or not DNA evidence can be reevaluated. Kenneth Ireland’s case was submitted for litigation after they found that the court relied heavily on false statements from witnesses. Researchers working

In March 2, 1963, eighteen-year-old Barbara Ann Johnson was accosted by a man who shoved her into his car, tied her hands and ankles, and drove her to the edge of the city, where he raped her. He then drove Johnson to a street near her home, letting her out of the car and asking that she pray for him. Phoenix police later picked up Ernesto Miranda for investigation of the Johnson’s rape and included him in a lineup at the police station. Miranda was identified by several women one of them identified him as the man who had robbed her at knifepoint a few months earlier, and Johnson thought he was the rapist. At trial, Miranda’s court-appointed attorney got the officers to admit that during the interrogation the defendant was not informed of his

As defined, a wrongful conviction is a conviction of a person accused of a crime which, in the result of the subsequent investigation, proves erroneous. Persons who are in fact innocent but who have been wrongly convicted by a jury or other court of law. For this reason, wrongful convictions disrupt trust in our justice system, therefore, such convictions undermine public safety by leaving the correct or legitimate positives of the guilty in the community to carry out future offences. With this in mind, one needs to secure the society and/or families of crime victims that are caused by the incorrect or misleading errors that all humankind institutions occasionally make through accidental, unintentional, and through failures in working the system.

“Anyone can be falsely accused of a crime. Everyone accused of a crime deserves a fair trial,” a quotation said by John Garamendi. Even though everyone deserves a fair trial, not everyone receives one, such as Amanda Knox, an American student studying overseas who was twice convicted of the 2007 murder of another student, Meredith Kercher. A documentary was made about her and her boyfriend’s, Raffaele Sollecito, trial and situation titled Amanda Knox, directed by Rod Blackhurst & Brian McGinn. The film has changed the minds of many viewers, many of which go into the documentary believing Knox is guilty, and come out thinking she is innocent. Amanda Knox is an illuminating film that thoroughly convinces its audience of Knox’s innocence

Have you ever been grounded or punished by your parent’s for something you honestly didn’t do? Maybe your sibling or friend stole something or hurt someone and the blame and the “horrible” consequences were put on you. No phone, no TV, no friends over, confined to your room. Straight tortures and a feeling of betrayal and dishonesty from everyone around you. Now, imagine being an adult wrongfully accused of a major crime such as an armed robbery or murder, which they didn’t commit, except it isn’t being grounded or their parents they 're worried about, its sitting behind bars, no longer a free citizen, fighting for their freedom with most likely one of the following things happened such as an eyewitness identified the wrong individual, false confessions, Perjury, maybe even forensic science error. Imagine as a child how you felt being grounded in the comfort of our own home. Just picture how an individual would feel wrongfully convicted in a cold, 10x10 box with a cold cot to sleep on! The injustice of being convicted and imprisoned for a crime one did not commit is intuitively apparent. I would take being grounded over a jail cell any day.