Exoneration

Most people assume that rapists, murderers, and every criminal in between are brought to justice and serve their time in prison for their wrongdoings. But, what if the people convicted aren't the perpetrators of these horrendous crimes. Hundreds of people have been wrongfully accused of a crime and then incarnated for many years while seeking to overcome their convictions. These innocent people are relying on exoneration to set them free. Exoneration is when a person is convicted of a crime and later proved innocent typically by DNA or other scientific evidence, even if it is many years after the crime.

Unfortunately, there is a rich history of exoneration in this country and hundreds of cases of people proved innocent of horrid crimes. These people not only had to suffer many years in jail, but they also were marked as criminals and had their lives upended during the process. Often times, the wrong person was identified at the beginning of an investigation.  Police line ups were notorious for pointing fingers at the wrong people.  There is always a chance that the victim will choose someone to be blamed even if the suspect is not in the lineup.  Police can also affect the victim’s decision making by how they praise or scold the victim trying to identify the culprit. Once a suspect has been identified, the investigation process is slanted towards finding a guilty party. 

Today, organizations are doing what they can to exonerate innocent people using DNA evidence and other scientific proof. Typically in cases that occurred before DNA testing was possible, blood, semen, and other evidence that has often been stored away for decades has been used to help free innocent people. However, with the advent of DNA testing the ability to determine a person’s innocence or guilt has been improved dramatically.

After I learned about the number of people who were falsely imprisoned and later exonerated, I felt that perhaps America's justice system is more unjust than just. I never realized how people could be convicted with such shoddy evidence or hardly any evidence at all.  Before this I had never considered that DNA testing had only been around for a few decades and that so many people may have been jailed without cause because there weren’t strong tests to establish identity. Now I am extraordinarily happy that the justice system can at least go back and correct some of its mistakes and hopefully not make theses types of mistakes going forward. Also, having better police procedures in place and a better understanding of the impact of police involvement in identifying suspects is important to ensuring that innocent people are not caught up with false accusation.   Fortunately, we have recognized that not having police say anything during a line up and letting the victim clearly know the suspect may not be in this line up will prevent people in the future from being wrongfully convicted.