When it comes to the issue of forcing out a confession, has our criminal justice system evolved much from the days of the Salem Witch Trials, during which about 50 women were coerced into confessing to have performed witchcraft? Or are there still remnants of such methods of forced confessions in existence today? Or what…
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Top 6 Causes for Wrongful Convictions (Part 4) — Police and Prosecutorial Misconduct
Welcome to part 4 of this series where we will discuss how people can become wrongfully convicted and sent to prison just because of the misconduct of police and state prosecutors. Sometimes an officer may hold back some evidence found at the scene of the crime. Sometimes forensic evidence is not sent to the lab for testing….
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Top 6 Causes for Wrongful Convictions (Part 3) — Bad Forensics
When forensic evidence is presented in the courtroom, there is a general assumption that “if it is scientific, then it must be true.” The reality is much different. Witnesses in white lab coats are much easier to believe than the defendant who has already been stigmatized simply by being charged. Most jurors are inclined to…
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Top 6 Causes for Wrongful Convictions (Part 2) — Bad Lawyers
Honestly, there should be lemon laws against lemon-like lawyers. It happens all too often. Bad lawyering or inadequate counsel accounts for at least 23% of innocent people ending up in prison or even on death row, for crimes they did not commit, according to the Innocence Project. Sloppy defense is a disgrace to an American…
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Top 6 Causes for Wrongful Convictions (Part 1) — Snitches
The criminal justice system is not infallible. Actually far from it. Innocent people do go to prison as a result of perjury, faulty eyewitness identification and prosecutorial misconduct. It is the ultimate miscarriage of justice — the taking away of the freedom of a factually innocent person while also allowing the guilty person to remain…
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Is Scientific Evidence Really Accurate?
When a forensic science analyst’s testimony is brought to the courtroom, along with its test tubes and white lab coats, many times a jury accepts it as “scientific fact.” Juries are left with the impression that the evidence is more scientific than it actually is. However, many times faulty forensic data leads to wrongful…
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Prosecutor: Man Wrongly Convicted in “Coldest Case Ever Solved”
It’s horrifying any time an innocent person is robbed of their life. Even worse is when the life is that of a child. In 1957, seven year old Maria Ridulph was abducted from the small town of Sycamore, Illinois and murdered. The crime sent shockwaves across the nation. Dozens of FBI agents descended on the…
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Attorney urges Illinois to review convictions based on debunked science
In the past few years, we have seen an enormous change in forensic science and technology. In many cases, techniques that were commonplace in the past have been shown to be found to be lacking by science and therefore not suitable to be used. (See The McShane Firm secures the release of a man after…
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5 Ways the Criminal Justice System is Compromised by Bad Forensics
Fraudulent practices and bad science are nothing new at crime labs unfortunately. There have been many recent cases which highlight this. One of the most notorious has been the case of Annie Dookhan. According to the New York Times: Ms. Dookhan pleaded guilty in 2013 to 27 counts, including perjury, obstruction of justice and tampering…
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The militarization of police and the “war” on drunk driving, is this right? Pennsylvania seems to think so
Is the over-militarization of the police and the “war” on drunk driving appropriate? Pennsylvania State Police and MPOETC seem to think so No longer science-fiction – wars are being waged by the government on American citizens. In the American military science fiction television show, Battlestar Galactica (BSG), military Commander William Adama was debating the…
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