Summary to be provided by Ian
Writing the Wrongs: The Role of Defence Council in Wrongful Convictions - A Comentary
No TrackBacks
TrackBack URL: http://www.psychologicalscience.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-t.cgi/148
Summary to be provided by Ian
TrackBack URL: http://www.psychologicalscience.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-t.cgi/148
According to this article, wrongful convictions are a big problem in our justice system and others. This artcile in fact, focused on the justice system in Canada. There are many factors that contribute to the problem. Major ones include: the presumption of guilt, the use of eyewitness testimony and the weight placed on it, the use of faulty forensic evidence, the use of jailhouse informants, and police misconduct.
Focus can be placed on the use of eyewitness testimony for our context, and the weight placed on it. As we all know, the eyewitness testimony can be problematic in many different ways. Other items that effect wrongful convictions, also effect the eyewitness testimony. For instance, police misconduct. This contributor was considered the most significant by the author of this article. He touched on the idea of 'tunnel vision' which results from incompetence, negligence, or the desire to want to convict ANYBODY! This seems to be an issue in many police systems.
The article also focused on the role of the lawyer in these cases. A personal account was included in this article, which had some effect on myself and I am sure many other readers. This one story really opens eyes to what the problem entitles.
All in all, wrongful convictions need to be studied and corrected to decrease the frequency of them occurring. They effect many people's lives including the wrongfully convicted, and later victims of the true perpetrator that is never found.
I chose to read Kennedy’s commentary on the Role of the Defense Counsel in Wrongful Convictions from Ian’s selected articles. The article focuses on wrongful convictions in Canada and eight different systemic factors which often contribute to incorrect imprisonments and occasional capital punishment of innocent individuals. A collection of people active within the Canadian legal system consulted with one another and identified the eight factors I mentioned earlier. One of the key factors, in my opinion, was listed first: that “the presumption of innocence has become the presumption of guilt.” It seems like hardly anyone taken to trial is viewed as “innocent until proven guilty” in the eyes of the people, whether it be in the court system or in real life, even though that phrase is intended only to apply to the judicial system. It seems like that approach, if adopted by all involved (investigators, jury, and judges) would go a long ways in reducing the occurrence of wrongful convictions. At the same time, and I thought about this when the issue of “tunnel vision” is mentioned in the article, is that if investigators maintain a consistent “innocent until proven guilty” approach and continue dedicating a large portion of time to a wide variety of leads when other strong leads exist and seem to be more logical, efficiency of work may be drastically reduced, even if accuracy is improved. The discussion of “tunnel vision” within the article is actually somewhat unnerving, although I probably could have guessed it happened before reading this article. The locking on to one potential suspect and, from the investigators to the prosecution, filtering of the evidence so that it matches the “selected” suspect makes you uncomfortable, knowing that that situation has probably occurred and sent numerous innocent suspects to jail for crimes that they weren’t guilty of. It could potentially happen to you or someone you know someday, and just seeing the justice system that’s designed to protect you fail that way is a scary sight.
SB