by Ray Langley

Created on: April 12, 2010   Last Updated: April 13, 2010

Crime and Punishment: Convicting the Innocent

From the time of grade school, children are taught the principals of America: our freedom of speech, freedom of religion and that everyone is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law, but what they do not teach is the very specific circumstance for which these rights apply. To stop Convicting the Innocent, we have set forth rules and laws that is to protect persons from unfair trials and prejudicial proceedings, if they are apparent.

As one looks at the scope of the criminal justice system, we can find many examples of innocent people convicted for crimes that they did not commit.

How this happens is not as complex or as far-fetched as it should be, and anyone without a multimillion-dollar bank account is at risk. A poor investigation, a false allegation, mistakes by eyewitnesses, or even the lack of any other suspect can put the cross hair of the legal systems squarely on “whoever” is the next likely candidate.

Even people with alibi’s that exonerate them suffer a conviction, if they cannot afford the travel cost of the defense witnesses to the jurisdiction of the trial.

Whom it happens to is not as random as the “how” it happens. Most of the time Convicting the Innocent, is tandem to convicting the poor, downtrodden, minorities, mentally disabled, foreigners, or the people who are “known” criminals.

These investigations are typically flawed, but the defendant does not have adequate representation to dispute it in court. As stated in the “Stanford Journal for Legal Studies” (http://agora.stanford.edu/sjls) eyewitness testimony is unreliable, yet is one of the foundations for convictions in the American legal system.

How to fight against Convicting the Innocent, begins with the abandonment of ones belief that the truth will set them free. The truth, as anyone convicted wrongly can attest to, hardly has anything to do with court proceedings.

American justice has its basis on rehabilitation, and that begins with admitting to ones crimes. Once someone is in the custody of the department of corrections, it is easier for that person to be “rehabilitated” and then paroled then it would be to over turn the verdict. Crusaders for the innocent have web sites like:

www.innocenceproject.org

www.americaswrongfullyconvicted.com  

www.justicedenied.org/

Convicting the Innocent, is the collateral damage of our legal system, which many argue is a small price to pay for the overall security of criminal justice. Yet, as the technology of crime solving advances into a science, Convicting the Innocent should concern us all. As even airtight science can have errors.

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