In Spite of Innocence

In Spite of Innocence PDF Author: Michael L. Radelet
Publisher: UPNE
ISBN: 9781555531973
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 422

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Book Description
The stories of some 400 innocent Americans who were falsely convicted of capital crimes.

In Spite of Innocence

In Spite of Innocence PDF Author: Michael L. Radelet
Publisher: UPNE
ISBN: 9781555531973
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 422

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Book Description
The stories of some 400 innocent Americans who were falsely convicted of capital crimes.

The Death of Innocents

The Death of Innocents PDF Author: Helen Prejean
Publisher: Hymns Ancient and Modern Ltd
ISBN: 9781853116827
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
Sr Helen Prejean has accompanied five men to execution since she began her work in 1982. She believes the last two, Dobie Williams in Louisiana and Joseph O'Dell in Virginia, were innocent, but their juries were blocked from seeing all the evidence and their defence teams were incompetent. 'The readers of this book will be the first "jury" with access to all the evidence the trail juries never saw', she says. The Death of Innocents shows how race, prosecutorial ambition, poverty and publicity determine who dies and who lives. Prejean raises profound constitutional questions about the legality of the death penalty.

The Innocence Protection Act of 2002

The Innocence Protection Act of 2002 PDF Author: United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on the Judiciary
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Capital punishment
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description


The Innocence Commission

The Innocence Commission PDF Author: Jon B. Gould
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814732267
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
Beyond Exonerating the Innocent: Author on WAMU Radio Convicted Yet Innocent: The Legal Times Review Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2008 DNA testing and advances in forensic science have shaken the foundations of the U.S. criminal justice system. One of the most visible results is the exoneration of inmates who were wrongly convicted and incarcerated, many of them sentenced to death for crimes they did not commit. This has caused a quandary for many states: how can claims of innocence be properly investigated and how can innocent inmates be reliably distinguished from the guilty? In answer, some states have created “innocence commissions” to establish policies and provide legal assistance to the improperly imprisoned. The Innocence Commission describes the creation and first years of the Innocence Commission for Virginia (ICVA), the second innocence commission in the nation and the first to conduct a systematic inquiry into all cases of wrongful conviction. Written by Jon B. Gould, the Chair of the ICVA, who is a professor of justice studies and an attorney, the author focuses on twelve wrongful conviction cases to show how and why wrongful convictions occur, what steps legal and state advocates took to investigate the convictions, how these prisoners were ultimately freed, and what lessons can be learned from their experiences. Gould recounts how a small band of attorneys and other advocates — in Virginia and around the country — have fought wrongful convictions in court, advanced the subject of wrongful convictions in the media, and sought to remedy the issue of wrongful convictions in the political arena. He makes a strong case for the need for Innocence Commissions in every state, showing that not only do Innocence Commissions help to identify weaknesses in the criminal justice system and offer workable improvements, but also protect society by helping to ensure that actual perpetrators are expeditiously identified, arrested, and brought to trial. Everyone has an interest in preventing wrongful convictions, from police officers and prosecutors, who seek the latest and best investigative techniques, to taxpayers, who want an efficient criminal justice system, to suspects who are erroneously pursued and sometimes convicted. Free of legal jargon and written for a general audience, The Innocence Commission is instructive, informative, and highly compelling reading.

Conviction of the Innocent

Conviction of the Innocent PDF Author: Brian L. Cutler
Publisher: American Psychological Association (APA)
ISBN: 9781433810213
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Over the last several decades over 250 citizens convicted of major felonies were found innocent and were exonerated. Today, thanks to the work of psychologists and other criminal justice researchers, the psychological foundations that underlie conviction of the innocent are becoming clear. There is real hope that these findings can lead to positive reforms, reduce the risk of miscarriages of justice, and avoid the consequences of wrongful convictions to victims and society. In this book, Editor Brian Cutler presents a state-of-the-field review of current psychological research on conviction of the innocent. Chapter authors investigate how the roles played by suspects, investigators, eyewitnesses, and trial witnesses and how pervasive systemic issues contribute to conspire to increase the risk of conviction of the innocent. The chapters skillfully examine psychological perspectives on such topics as police interrogations, confessions, eyewitness identification, trial procedures, juries, and forensic science, as well as broader issues such as racism and tunnel vision within the justice system. This comprehensive volume represents an important milestone for research on miscarriages of justice. By bringing psychological theories and research to bear on this social problem, the authors derive compelling recommendations for future research and practical reform in police and legal procedures.

The Decline of the Death Penalty and the Discovery of Innocence

The Decline of the Death Penalty and the Discovery of Innocence PDF Author: Frank R. Baumgartner
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139469207
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 10

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Book Description
Since 1996, death sentences in America have declined by more than 60 percent, reversing a generation-long trend toward greater acceptance of capital punishment. In theory, most Americans continue to support the death penalty. But it is no longer seen as a theoretical matter. Prosecutors, judges, and juries across the country have moved in large numbers to give much greater credence to the possibility of mistakes - mistakes that in this arena are potentially fatal. The discovery of innocence, documented in this book through painstaking analyses of media coverage and with newly developed methods, has led to historic shifts in public opinion and to a sharp decline in use of the death penalty by juries across the country. A social cascade, starting with legal clinics and innocence projects, has snowballed into a national phenomenon that may spell the end of the death penalty in America.

Reclaiming Lives

Reclaiming Lives PDF Author: Joan Treppa
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781952976162
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
ONE AVERAGE BUT DETERMINED WOMAN SETS OUT TO SHAKE UP THE JUSTICE SYSTEM IN THE NAME OF SIX WRONGFULLY CONVICTED MEN. The 1992 death of mill worker, Tom Monfils, and the resulting trial of six men accused of his murder shocked a community. In 2009, Joan read a factual book about the case which sent her on a mission to seek justice for these men. Realizing a deep emotional connection to them, she ignites the interest of a retired crime scene expert/private investigator who initiates a reinvestigation. Reclaiming Lives provides an uncomplicated examination of our nation's criminal justice system. Its overall message validates truths in the face of adversity, delivers hope where there was none, and demonstrates the capacity to overcome insurmountable obstacles. As of April 30, 2021, the National Registry of Exonerations reports that some 2,776 actually innocent, but wrongly convicted, individuals in the U.S. have been exonerated since 1989. As "Reclaiming Lives" painfully reveals, however, this number represents only a fraction of the total number of actually innocent people who have been wrongly convicted since 1989, but not yet exonerated. Joan Treppa's dedicated, years-long effort to obtain justice for the "Monfils Six" defendants is testament to the inherent difficulty in overturning wrongful convictions, even when the evidence of actual innocence compellingly refutes the prosecution's case. "Reclaiming Lives" teaches the reader why it is not only critical to prevent wrongly convictions from occurring in the first instance but also why the criminal justice system must be far more willing than it has often been to correct these injustices after they are shown to have occurred. - Steve Kaplan, former post-conviction counsel for Keith Kutska.

Actual Innocence

Actual Innocence PDF Author: Jim Dwyer
Publisher: Doubleday Books
ISBN: 038549341X
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 314

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Book Description
Ten true tales of people falsely accused detail the flaws in the criminal justice system that landed these people in prison

Radical Innocent: Upton Sinclair

Radical Innocent: Upton Sinclair PDF Author: Anthony Arthur
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0307431657
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 418

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Book Description
Few American writers have revealed their private as well as their public selves so fully as Upton Sinclair, and virtually none over such a long lifetime (1878—1968). Sinclair’s writing, even at its most poignant or electrifying, blurred the line between politics and art–and, indeed, his life followed a similar arc. In Radical Innocent: Upton Sinclair, Anthony Arthur weaves the strands of Sinclair’s contentious public career and his often-troubled private life into a compelling personal narrative. An unassuming teetotaler with a fiery streak, called a propagandist by some, the most conservative of revolutionaries by others, Sinclair was such a driving force of history that one could easily mistake his life story for historical fiction. He counted dozens of epochal figures as friends or confidants, including Mark Twain, Jack London, Henry Ford, Thomas Mann, H. G. Wells, Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt, Albert Einstein, Charlie Chaplin, Albert Camus, and Carl Jung. Starting with The Jungle in 1906, Sinclair’s fiction and nonfiction helped to inform and mold American opinions about socialism, labor and industry, religion and philosophy, the excesses of the media, American political isolation and pacifism, civil liberties, and mental and physical health. In his later years, Sinclair twice reinvented himself, first as the Democratic candidate for governor of California in 1934, and later, in his sixties and seventies, as a historical novelist. In 1943 he won a Pulitzer Prize for Dragon’s Teeth, one of eleven novels featuring super-spy Lanny Budd. Outside the literary realm, the ever-restless Sinclair was seemingly everywhere: forming Utopian artists’ colonies, funding and producing Sergei Eisenstein’s film documentaries, and waging consciousness-raising political campaigns. Even when he wasn’t involved in progressive causes or counterculture movements, his name often was invoked by them–an arrangement that frequently embroiled Sinclair in controversy. Sinclair’ s passion and optimistic zeal inspired America, but privately he could be a frustrated, petty man who connected better with his readers than with members of his own family. His life with his first wife, Meta, his son David, and various friends and professional acquaintances was a web of conflict and strain. Personally and professionally ambitious, Sinclair engaged in financial speculation, although his wealth-generating schemes often benefited his pet causes–and he lobbied as tirelessly for professional recognition and awards as he did for government reform. As the tenor of his work would suggest, Sinclair was supremely human. In Radical Innocent: Upton Sinclair, Anthony Arthur offers an engrossing and enlightening account of Sinclair’s life and the country he helped to transform. Taking readers from the Reconstruction South to the rise of American power to the pinnacle of Hollywood culture to the Civil Rights era, this is historical biography at its entertaining and thought-provoking finest.

Innocence and the Death Penalty

Innocence and the Death Penalty PDF Author: United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on the Judiciary
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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Book Description