How Can Individuals be Wrongfully Convicted: How Prisoners Are and Can Be Serving Prison Sentences for Crimes They Did Not Commit and The Decision-Making Process for The Sentencing
There are a myriad of reasons why individuals can be wrongfullyconvicted and end up serving long prison sentences. One of the mainreasons why this occurs is that victims often identify the wrongperpetrator. Eyewitness testimony is particularly powerful in cases wherethere is very little evidence linking the accused to the crime. In manycases, this eyewitness error is not intentional; the victim is traumatizedand wants someone to pay for the crime. In addition, eyewitness error canoccur when the perpetrator and alleged perpetrator have similar features. According to the Journal of Criminal and Criminology, eyewitnesserror is the cause of many wrongful convictions. The article explains "A study of 84% of DNA exonerations revealed that mistaken eyewitness identification was the primary evidence used to convict the actually innocent defendants. (15) This study was by no means the first one of its kind. In 1932, Edwin Borchard, a law professor at Yale University, published a collection of sixty-five cases where an innocent person was convicted for a crime he did not commit. (16) In his book, Borchard cited eyewitness error as the "m
Sentencing Procedures Sentencing procedures vary from state to state. The district attorney reopened the case and foundthat there was DNA evidence that linked Reyes to the crime. In addition, many of the parents of the accuserswere not aware of their rights and were just as intimidated by the policeas the teenagers. Such was the case of Daniel Henderson who got a 15-yearsentence for a $250 forgery and larceny charge. In thiscase, the rape victim was white and the teenagers were minorities. Federal crimes are those crimesthat are committed on or against federal property or crimes that arecommitted against laws set forth by a federal agency. Santana, fourteen, admitted to "grabbing the lady's tits" as another boy "was smackin' her; he was sayin', `Shut up, bitch!' "McCray, fifteen, said he simulated sex "so everybody just know I did it. It also doubles sentences on the second "strike," requires consecutive sentences for multiple counts, and limits "good time" credits. " (Hancock) The article goes on to explain that the interrogations were designedto break the will of the accused. The California law mandates 25 years to life in prison for an offender convicted of any felony following two prior convictions for serious crimes. The article reports that, "Most of the boys had been up for two days when the prosecutor finally turned on the videotape to capture their confessions. When a federal lawis broken, the sentencing is conducted using federal laws. " (Maier) Wrongful convictions can also occur when alleged perpetrators givefalse confessions. The article explains that the claims of coercedconfessions were ignored and the teenagers went on to serve thirteen yearsin prison.
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