Wrongful Conviction

Wrongful Conviction PDF Author: C. Ronald Huff
Publisher: Temple University Press
ISBN: 9781592136452
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 326

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Book Description
Imperfections in the criminal justice system have long intrigued the general public and worried scholars and legal practitioners. In Wrongful Conviction, criminologists C. Ronald Huff and Martin Killias present an important collection of essays that analyzes cases of injustice across an array of legal systems, with contributors from North America, Europe and Israel. This collection includes a number of well-developed public-policy recommendations intended to reduce the instances of courts punishing innocents. It also offers suggestions for compensating more fairly those who are wrongfully convicted.

Wrongful Conviction

Wrongful Conviction PDF Author: C. Ronald Huff
Publisher: Temple University Press
ISBN: 9781592136452
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 326

Get Book Here

Book Description
Imperfections in the criminal justice system have long intrigued the general public and worried scholars and legal practitioners. In Wrongful Conviction, criminologists C. Ronald Huff and Martin Killias present an important collection of essays that analyzes cases of injustice across an array of legal systems, with contributors from North America, Europe and Israel. This collection includes a number of well-developed public-policy recommendations intended to reduce the instances of courts punishing innocents. It also offers suggestions for compensating more fairly those who are wrongfully convicted.

Wrongful Convictions

Wrongful Convictions PDF Author: Jack Smith
Publisher: CreateSpace
ISBN: 9781517040864
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 104

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Book Description
Astonishingly Wrongful convictions that led to rethinking capital punishment Ever since DNA evidence started exonerating death row inmates, public concern about wrongful executions has been on the rise. It has been such a source of worry that some states have abolished the death penalty entirely. Although we want to believe that the criminal justice system designed to protect us is infallible, mistakes can be and are made. The ultimate tragedy is when an innocent person is executed for a crime that he or she didn't commit.Inside find three stories of wrongful executions in the UK, where justice was swift and limitless appeals were not supported. In one case the person was actually exonerated forty-six years after being hanged. Eliza Fenning and the Devilish Dumplings In March 1815, the entire household of Robert Turner, a London law stationer, was struck by a mysterious illness. When a search was made for its cause, a substance believed to be arsenic was found in the dish used to mix up yeast dumplings the family had eaten for dinner. Although she had fallen ill too, Eliza Fenning, the twenty-one-year-old maid who had prepared the dumplings, was charged with attempted murder and hanged. Her execution is still regarded as one of Britain's worst miscarriages of justice.The Messalina of IlfordEdith Thompson and her younger lover, Frederick Bywaters, were executed in January 1923 for the murder of Edith's husband. Although Mr. Bywaters confessed and insisted that Mrs. Thompson had nothing to do with the murder, she was held equally responsible for the crime because of some letters that expressed hostile intent toward her overbearing spouse. Her supporters believed that she had really been condemned for being an adulteress. There is currently a campaign in process to win her a posthumous royal pardon."Let Him Have It"On January 28, 1953, nineteen-year-old Derek Bentley was hanged at Wandsworth Prison for the murder of a Metropolitan Police constable. Bentley had not fired the fatal shot, but his sixteen-year-old accomplice was too young to receive the death penalty, so the mentally impaired Bentley went to the gallows instead. In 1998, thanks to four decades of vigorous campaigning by his family, he received a posthumous pardon. His execution was instrumental in the abolition of capital punishment in the UK.It is too late to save these victims of wrongful execution, but the time has come to accept that, regardless of our individual feelings about the death penalty, all future debates on the subject must proceed with the knowledge that innocent people have been put to death.Grab your copy today!

Wrongful Conviction and Criminal Justice Reform

Wrongful Conviction and Criminal Justice Reform PDF Author: Marvin Zalman
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135077444
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 349

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Book Description
Wrongful Conviction and Criminal Justice Reform is an important addition to the literature and teaching on innocence reform. This book delves into wrongful convictions studies but expands upon them by offering potential reforms that would alleviate the problem of wrongful convictions in the criminal justice system. Written to be accessible to students, Wrongful Conviction and Criminal Justice Reform is a main text for wrongful convictions courses or a secondary text for more general courses in criminal justice, political science, and law school innocence clinics.

The First Miscarriage of Justice

The First Miscarriage of Justice PDF Author: Jon Robins
Publisher: Waterside Press
ISBN: 1909976121
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 259

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Book Description
‘I would have been the first miscarriage of justice… There was this spate of cases: the Birmingham Six, Guildford Four and Cardiff Three. Each one was another nail in my coffin’: Tony Stock, 2008. The story of Tony Stock is astonishing: deeply disturbing it sent out ripples of disquiet when he was sentenced to ten years for robbery at Leeds Assizes in 1970. Over the next 40 years the case went to the Court of Appeal four times and has the distinction of being the first to have been referred to that court twice by the Criminal Cases Review Commission. Tony Stock died in 2012 still fighting to clear his name: spending from his meagre savings to hire private investigators and hoping beyond hope to see justice. Reviews ‘The story of Tony Stock should be mandatory reading for everyone, not merely those involved with the laws. It concerns the quality of our criminal justice system and its serious reluctance and unwillingness to root out injustice’: Michael Mansfield QC. ‘One of the most outrageous miscarriages of justice of modern times’: Barry Sheerman, Labour MP for Huddersfield. In the Press ‘If anyone seriously believes the Court of Appeal has reformed itself since the dark days of the Birmingham Six and Bridgewater Four, they should study the unreported and amazing case of Tony Stock’: Private Eye. ‘I would have thought that the injustice done to Tony (Stock) was fairly self-evident and yet his conviction still stands. I find this very difficult to accept’: Ralph Barrington, investigations adviser at the Criminal Cases Review Commission. ‘The fight for justice that will not die’: Yorkshire Post.

The Politics of Innocence

The Politics of Innocence PDF Author: Robert J. Norris
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479815985
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 166

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Book Description
The political dynamics that shape the Innocence Movement Since 1989, more than 3000 people are known to have been exonerated after being wrongly convicted in the United States. Each one of these cases represents a gross miscarriage of justice; they are stories of lives upended by a criminal legal system gone awry. Yet, this number just scratches the surface and does not capture the full breadth of wrongful convictions, which may well number in the tens of thousands. The Politics of Innocence explores the political dynamics that have shaped the proliferation of innocence-related policies across the United States and the ways in which wrongful convictions affect public opinion about the criminal legal system. Although some have suggested that this issue transcends ideological divisions, the authors argue that public opinion and the policies that address wrongful convictions are a product of the political landscape. Using original data, the authors show how political ideology influences awareness of the issue, affects support for policy reform, and, in particular electoral contexts, influences state policy adoption. The Politics of Innocence is a moving and data-driven account of wrongful convictions.

Innocent

Innocent PDF Author: John N. Huffington
Publisher: Omnibus Publishing
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Told in his own words, the true story of John N. Huffington's wrongful conviction and his road to freedom.

Wrongful Convictions and Miscarriages of Justice

Wrongful Convictions and Miscarriages of Justice PDF Author: C. Ronald Huff
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0415539935
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 434

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Book Description
This volume brings together the world-class scholarship of 23 widely acclaimed and influential contributing authors from North America and Europe. The latest research is presented in 18 chapters focusing on the frequency, causes, and consequences of wrongful convictions and other miscarriages of justice and offering recommendations for both legal and public policy reforms that can help reduce the causes of these errors while protecting public safety as well.

The Case of Stephen Downing

The Case of Stephen Downing PDF Author: Stephen Downing
Publisher: Pen and Sword True Crime
ISBN: 9781526742025
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
On 12 September 1973 a seventeen-year-old naïve and vulnerable young gardener Stephen Downing returning from a short lunch break encountered the badly beaten and unconscious figure of thirty-two year old Wendy Sewell lying on the footpath of Bakewell Cemetery close to Catcliff Wood and the consecrated chapel where she had been attacked. Stephen ran to the nearby workmen's building and in the meantime the perpetrator of the attack who had been hiding, dragged Wendy's body out of sight to a second location where she was subsequently found soon after. There then occurred a horrifying sequence of events which were to change his young life forever. He was immediately taken into custody and questioned at length without a solicitor and eventually signed a false confession statement and Wendy was to die some two days later from her injuries. Following a very biased prosecution based three day trial during February 1974 Downing was found guilty by a jury, convicted and sentenced to what was eventually a full life sentence. Just eight months later during October 1974 there followed an appeal with fresh evidence from an eye witness who saw Wendy Sewell alive after Downing left the cemetery for lunch, however the prosecution rubbished this evidence and the appeal failed. In the many years which followed Downing's incarceration he was moved from prison to prison, continuing to maintain his innocence and in doing so jeopardised any chance of parole as he was "In Denial Of Murder" until eventually his plight reached journalist Don Hale, whose tireless efforts eventually led to a Criminal Cases Review and appeal in which Downing was released as a middle aged man after some twenty-seven years, the longest miscarriage in the United Kingdom legal history.

American Justice in the Age of Innocence

American Justice in the Age of Innocence PDF Author: Sandra Guerra Thompson
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781462014118
Category : Criminal investigation
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The exoneration of more than two hundred and fifty people who have been wrongfully convicted makes it clear that America's criminal justice system isn't foolproof. It's important to understand the causes of wrongful conviction in order to find solutions to this growing problem. Edited by one of the nation's leading legal scholars and two of her top students, this collection of essays examines critical issues, including - what American justice in the age of innocence looks like; - how to implement procedural mechanisms to ensure the integrity of the judicial system while safeguarding the public; - whether or not the legal system is doing a good enough job uncovering wrongful convictions. This anthology provides insightful lessons based on cutting-edge research and legal analysis. Wrongful convictions are not a foregone conclusion, but the justice system must break free from a pattern of punishing innocent people and go after the true culprits. Written for judges, lawyers and scholars alike, American Justice in the Age of Innocence educates the public and helps current prisoners who are innocent contest their wrongful convictions.

Convicting the Innocent

Convicting the Innocent PDF Author: Brandon L. Garrett
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674060989
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 376

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Book Description
On January 20, 1984, Earl Washington—defended for all of forty minutes by a lawyer who had never tried a death penalty case—was found guilty of rape and murder in the state of Virginia and sentenced to death. After nine years on death row, DNA testing cast doubt on his conviction and saved his life. However, he spent another eight years in prison before more sophisticated DNA technology proved his innocence and convicted the guilty man. DNA exonerations have shattered confidence in the criminal justice system by exposing how often we have convicted the innocent and let the guilty walk free. In this unsettling in-depth analysis, Brandon Garrett examines what went wrong in the cases of the first 250 wrongfully convicted people to be exonerated by DNA testing. Based on trial transcripts, Garrett’s investigation into the causes of wrongful convictions reveals larger patterns of incompetence, abuse, and error. Evidence corrupted by suggestive eyewitness procedures, coercive interrogations, unsound and unreliable forensics, shoddy investigative practices, cognitive bias, and poor lawyering illustrates the weaknesses built into our current criminal justice system. Garrett proposes practical reforms that rely more on documented, recorded, and audited evidence, and less on fallible human memory. Very few crimes committed in the United States involve biological evidence that can be tested using DNA. How many unjust convictions are there that we will never discover? Convicting the Innocent makes a powerful case for systemic reforms to improve the accuracy of all criminal cases.