The Innocence Project: Benjamin N. Cardoza School Of Law

The Innocence Project started in 1992 by Peter Neufeld and Barry Scheck (www. innocenceproject.org). They helped prove that the convicted person was innocent through DNA testing. Their mission was to free the incarcerated people and help the legal system to not make these mistakes again. There are too many innocent people that are wrongfully accused of crimes they did not commit. One case where the Innocence Project helped exonerate someone is the case of Marvin Anderson. In July of 1982, a woman was raped by a black man and later identified him as Marvin Anderson. Throughout his trial, people questioned the evidence and did not believe he was guilty. Anderson even asked his own lawyers to look into other witnesses that could help prove his

Being the victim of being accused and convicted for a crime, that you did not commit, can potentially ruin your chances or cause many issues to live the life that you want. By definition wrongful conviction is, “a conviction of a person accused of a crime which, in the result of subsequent investigation, proves erroneous,” (Duhaime). Within the topic of wrongful convictions, there are many subtopics that explain why they happen and why they occur so often. DNA evidence, lack of evidence, witness misidentification, and jury biases are all factors relating to the cases of wrongfully convicted persons. DNA evidence helps match the

During the year of 2015, a case that the Innocence Project was working on at the time was the Joseph Buffey Case. Joseph Buffey was convicted in 2001 in West Virginia of rape and robbery. Mr. Buffey pled guilty to the crimes based on the advise of his counsel and witness misidentification which was the heart of this investigation. On May 11, 2015, Mr. Buffey was excluded by DNA and the real perpetrator was later found. Mr. Buffey served a total of 15 years in prison for a crime that he did not commit. DNA Exonerations makes up 334 total cases that the Innocence Project has worked on. The following numbers overlap with the 334 cases. 237 cases involved misidentification by witnesses, 154 were the result of improper forensics, 92 were due to

Despite the efforts of the courts and law enforcement agencies to improve the handling of eyewitness testimony, misidentifications continue to be a major contributing factor to false convictions. The Innocence Project is a national litigation and public policy organization that has been dedicated to exonerating wrongfully convicted people through DNA testing. Since their inception in 1992, they have helped overturn 311 wrongful convictions in the United States, as of the date of this paper. Of those 311 cases, they have determined that misidentification has contributed to approximately 73% of those wrongful convictions ("The Innocence Project"). That is an extremely high percentage, and something needs to be done about this.

This Organisation is a non-profit Legal organisation dedicated to exonerating wrongfully convicted people through DNA testing and reforming the criminal justice system to prevent future injustices. The Innocence Project was established in a landmark study by the United States Department of Justice and the United States Senate in conjunction with the Benjamin N.Cardozo School of Law, which found that incorrect identification by eyewitnesses was a factor in over 70% of

Well, in nearly 25 years since post-conviction DNA evidence has been used to demonstrate criminal innocence, even in cases that landed defendants on death row or in prison for life. Eyewitness misidentification, forensic science errors, false confessions, government misconduct and bad lawyering are many of the reasons wrongful convictions occur. Eyewitness being the most common. Sometimes it can be done by error and other times it is actually done intentionally. In seventy-seven percent of the DNA exonerations, eyewitness misidentification led to wrongful convictions (The Innocence Project- How wrongful conviction happen).

The project has campaigned to expand rights of convicted and the right to undergo DNA evaluation. Some have wanted rights to utilize DNA testing because it was extremely avoid the innocence from serving time and reduce the number of convictions. They have created the organization to be sided with the suspect as they have no useful resources to proclaim their innocence and provide pro bono services and pays off all investigation and litigation costs of all

Between 1989 and 2010 a nonprofit watchdog and advocacy group reported that in the state of Illinois 85 people cases we overturned by D.N.A testing. This had cost the taxpayer in Illinois $214 million (Lydersen, 2011). There were overall 316 post-conviction DNA exonerations in this country since 1989, there have been an average of 1 per month (Johnson, 2015). The cost of wrongful conviction is extremely expensive. It cost the citizens of this country to

With the number of DNA exonerations growing in the recent years, wrongful convictions reveal disturbing trends and fissures in the justice system. It shows how broken the system is, and why it needs urgent fixing. According to Huff (1996), over ten thousand people are convicted wrongfully for serious crimes each year. This study established that factors leading to wrongful convictions are false eyewitnesses, a prejudiced jury, incompetent prosecutors, and suspects’ ignorance. Where DNA evidence clears a suspect, array of reasons emerge; misconduct, mistakes, to race and class factors. It is important to make DNA data available to attorneys in order to enable them mount a strong

This Organisation is a non-profit Legal organisation dedicated to exonerating wrongfully convicted people through DNA testing and reforming the criminal justice system to prevent future injustices. The Innocence Project was established in a landmark study by the United States Department of Justice and the United States Senate in conjunction with the Benjamin N.Cardozo School of Law, which found that incorrect identification by eyewitnesses was a

Every time an innocent person is exonerated based on DNA testing, law enforcement agencies look at what caused the wrongful convictions. There are many issues that contribute to putting guiltless lives behind bars including: eyewitness misidentification, false confessions, imperfect forensic science, and more (Gould and Leo 18). When a witness is taken into a police station to identify a suspect, it is easy for their memories to be blurred and their judgment influenced. This can lead the witness to identify a suspect who is actually innocent. Flawed forensic science practice also contributes to wrongful imprisonments. In the past, analysts have been inaccurate due to carelessness, testified in court presenting evidence that was not based

Since 1923, when Judge Learned Hand said that the American judicial system “has always been haunted by the ghost of the innocent man convicted,” the issue of wrongful conviction has been acknowledged to man (Halstead, 1992; Huff, Rattner, Sagarin, & MacNamara, 1986). After the judge made his innocuous statements, serious study of this phenomenon began. Contrary to the statement the judge made, time and technology have revealed that an unquantifiable number of wrongfully convicted persons have served prison terms and even been executed for crimes they did not commit and some that did not even occur. Research into wrongful conviction was virtually nonexistent until Professor Edward Brochard of Yale University published his book Convicting the Innocent in 1932. This book documented 65 such cases, addressed the legal causes of miscarriage, and offered suggestions to reform. Subsequently, numerous other researchers began conducting case studies and publishing findings that affirmed that wrongful conviction represents a systematic problem within the American judicial process (Huff, 2002).

In the summer of 1994 an Illinois woman’s buzzer rang at her apartment complex in Waukegan. She went downstairs to check after nobody went upstairs to her apartment. As soon as she reached the door downstairs, two men forced her into a dark colored sedan, kidnapped her, and raped her. Distraught after her attack, the victim wandered until she ultimately found a Seven Eleven close by and the police were called. When the police arrived, the victim said she was attacked by two Hispanic men that looked to be in their mid-twenties and a bit taller than her height of five feet and seven inches. The car that she was forced into was described as dark colored, older, having four doors and tinted windows. The victim’s boyfriend saw Angel Gonzalez’s car in the apartment complex parking lot and it matched the characteristics that the woman used to describe the assailant’s car. Police later stopped Gonzalez’s car and the victim acknowledged that the car was the one she described. She was then asked if Gonzalez was one of her attackers, and she was certain that he was, despite her being in the backseat of the police car while he was in front of it. Not only was he not close enough for her to get a clear view, but he also had facial hair and a birthmark, both characteristics that she did not use to describe her attackers. This led to Gonzalez being in police custody for interrogation where they did not allow him to sleep. When he was interrogated, he

In 1992, Barry C. Scheck and Peter J. Neufeld founded the public policy organization, The Innocence Project. It was founded at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, in New York City, with the purpose of “exonerating wrongfully convicted individuals through DNA testing and reforming the criminal justice system to prevent future injustice.”

Innocence and its success in the world are ideas prevalent in stories across the world and throughout history. However, every one of these stories explores the theme of innocence as well as its ability to thrive in distinct fashions and with differing perspectives on its merits. While some storytellers perceive innocence as impractical, a virtue not capable of survival in the ruthless environments in which it struggles to overcome evil, others regard innocence as honorable, an attribute that can prevail over the evil with which it engages in battle. While House of Cards takes a more cynical perspective on the merits of innocence, regarding it as unable to triumph in a world as amoral as that in which House of Cards is staged, the Odyssey illustrates innocence with a more optimistic attitude, depicting it as a value that can overcome the evil in the world that it faces.