Innocence Project

The Innocence Project Author: Naomi Douglas Date: 9th March 2012 Contents * The Innocence Project Organisation * Death Row * Two Cases * Niamh Gunn * YouTube, Books * References The Innocence Project Organisation: 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

sustained that eyewitness identification is often unreliable. As the Innocence Project website illustrates, studies show that the human mind is nowhere near like a ‘tape recorder’ and we as humans do not record events exactly as we see them. Instead, witness recollection is just like any other evidence at a crime scene and must be preserved carefully and sensibly retrieved or it can be considered as contaminated. The Innocence Project plays a major role in the explanation of this striking problem and

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

Title: The Innocence Project Author: Naomi Douglas Date: 9th March 2012 Contents * The Innocence Project Organisation * Death Row * Two Cases * Niamh Gunn * YouTube, Books * References The Innocence Project Organisation: 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

them the opportunity to be exonerated if their innocence is proven to be the case. Even though the right to appeal is the inmates right, some people are not familiar with the steps needed to come out with a verdict they will be content with. In this instance the Innocence Project would be the inmate’s number one recourse. The Innocence Project has a worldwide website that describes their history and purpose. The website describes the Innocence Project as “a national litigation and public policy organization

apartment complex also picked him out of the lineup. In 1983 he was convicted guilty and sentenced to 30 years in prison, but he maintained his innocence and sought aid in proving his innocence, which was impossible until DNA testing came about. The examination of slides from the hospital where the victim was treated 20 years prior proved Bernard Webster’s innocence, and he was exonerated two thirds into his sentence (“Mid-Atlantic”). Unfortunately, many more innocent people have been wrongfully imprisoned

The most vicious cause of wrongful conviction is eyewitness misidentification. According to the Innocence Project, 72% of overturned wrongful convictions through DNA testing were due to eyewitness misidentification1. As this statistics implies, eyewitness identification (Eye-ID) is untrustworthy information. The main reason why Eye-ID lacks accuracy is due to malleability of memories. The Innocence Project asserts there are two variables greatly influence memory and also Eye-ID. One type of variables

A 28-year-old woman was attacked while walking home from work in Lowell, Massachusetts on the 16th of November 1983 (“Dennis Maher,” 2016). A man she did not know approached her and tried to engage the woman in conversation prior to forcing her into a yard nearby, where he proceeded to sexually assault her (“Dennis Maher,” 2016). The next evening, a 23-year old woman walking home from work was pushed to the ground by a man yielding a knife less than one hundred yards from the site of the first assault

The first and greatest cause of false convictions is eyewitness identification according to the innocence project website almost 75% of cases later overturned were due to wrongful eyewitness identification. One of the main issues as we learned in class is that our minds do not keep a perfect recording of events in our memory they are often impacted by additional information given after the fact. Information about a suspect given afterwards such as suggesting their hair color, height, weight, or other

the victim’s identification prompted his sentence of thirty-two years in prison. Steven Avery did not give up and tried to prove his innocence. He tried in 1995 with some evidence under Beersten’s fingernails. While it revealed that it matched an unknown assailant, it didn’t eliminate Avery (Weghorst & Warden). In 2002, an attorney from Wisconsin Innocence Project got a court order to analyze the pubic hair collected in the rape kit, which was submitted to be compare to FBI databases. The hair did