Wrongful convictions and plea bargains

Introduction
The criminal justice system is an organ in every national civilized government that deals

with injustice cases to ascertain that justice and are followed properly according to the rule of

law and the state’s constitution. This system constitutes the police department, the court systems

and the corrections. Each entity of the three has its responsibilities in ensuring justice is

followed. The police implement the rule, protects the public by stunning law breakers and also

prevents crimes from occurring while the court decides on what to do with the law breakers as

outlined in the nation’s set of constitution. Generally, all the three aim at reducing crimes in the

society. There are five pillars of the crime justice systems which are the judiciary, correctional

organizations, regulation enactment, the public prosecutor and the community. The system of

criminal injustice follows a procedure of several steps as indicated; the investigation of

lawbreaking, the capture of the alleged criminal, examination of the criminal perpetrator,

accusation by the court prosecutor, arraignment by the judge, discovery, preliminary hearings,

pretrial motion and custody or the bail and finally the trial.

Wrongful conviction is a state where a person is convicted of a crime but he or she is

truly innocent of the crime charges. It actually mocks the justice system and lowers the people’s

dignity, denying them time, relationship, freedom and opportunity to mingle with friends. On the

other hand, plea bargaining refers to the act of agreeing between the prosecutor and the

defendant where the defendant pleads for a lesser offense when he has a series of multiple

criminal cases. The defendant argues to pleads for a lenient sentence or agreement that would do

away with others. Wrongful convictions prove to be undesirable as they pose a great risk of

change in the case of truth becoming known. It may lead to weak and unsupportable defense in

court, poor explanations and trigger police actions showing an evidence of wrongful conviction.
 Wrongful convictions explain how an innocent person is accused of a crime in which

after doing a follow up of investigations proves it to be untrue. A person is either wrongly

convicted by a jury or a court of law thus necessitating for a frequent procedural investigation on

the matter. Most of wrongful convictions are put in place by eye witnesses who misidentify

people. In US an approximate of 2.3% to 5% of the prisoner are wrongly convicted individuals.

This percentage aggregates to an approximate of 120000 prisoners who are wrongly convicted.

What causes these convictions are discussed here. The greatest reason as mentioned earlier is the

mistaken witness who misidentifies people just to give the wrong character in presence of the

court. Statistics states that about 72% of wrongful conviction cases are due to misidentified

witnesses. the false confessions also prove to be another reason for wrongful convictions. This

happens where an individual stand at the court of law and confesses wrong information to prove

it as right. For instance, the issue of DNA clemency might prove to court to seem to be true but

might be false. Such is mostly influenced by external factors that may be income bringing or

might be advantageous to the confessor. In fact, 18% of wrongful conviction cases are due to

DNA testing which proves to be untrue. The untrue forensic evidence also follows to give false

and wrongful convictions about an individual. While DNA analysis reached a conclusion after

extensive scientific research, some more forensic techniques are used in proving to the court the

truth about a suspected criminal which might include hair microscopy, bite mark comparisons,

firearm tool mark analysis and shoe comparisons. All these techniques are not probably

scrutinized further to provide evidence of truth to the court thus might produce a form of

wrongful convictions at times. The validated forensic techniques such as blood typing are also

prone to falsehoods in that they might be inappropriately conducted or inaccurately conveyed in

a trial testimony. Government misconduct is another cause of wrongful conviction where the
government intervenes to ensure conviction of an innocent individual even in weak defense

against the suspect. Additionally, the poor lawyering has also been an issue of interest in

wrongful conviction where overworked or lazy lawyers fail to investigate on a case but rather

call witnesses and prepare a trial of innocent people.

The central park five refers to a group of five teenage boys who were wrongly convicted

on raping a woman. The five boys were proven guilty by the court after two court trials after

which they were charged with cases of attempted murder, rape, assault and robbery. All the five

boys were charged to an imprisonment of period between six years to thirteen years. The boys

were Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, Antron McCray, Yusef Salaam and Korey Wise. In

1989, these boys were hovering around a central park in New York. The BBC news indicated

that the boys were harassing people and causing troubles outside the park halls. The news state

that at the same time there walked an old white woman 28 years of age outside the park. She was

later found beaten and raped that she stayed in a coma for 12 days. The case found these young

black and Hispanic boys aged between 14 and 16 years, guilty of the case. The DNA of semen

found at the crime scene never matched any of the boys but the court prosecutors relied on the

initial interrogations.

Courts sometimes might resolve the criminal cases through plea bargaining where both

sides come together in a n agreement to negotiate a plea. Plea bargaining can be done for a

number of reasons as follows. Defendants can avoid wastage of time and resources thus cutting

off the costs of defending in court trials. The prosecution also is able to save time and expenses

of such lengthy trials. It saves the court from doing trials on every crime charged to a criminal.

Any side of the case can initiate a plea but it is only passed on the party’s agreement. The

defendant pleads guilty to a lesser charge when only has several charges. An alternative to plea
bargaining is the upcoming issue of states encouraging diversion programs to do away with less

criminal cases from full formal procedures of the justice system. The government may also

provide a plea to avoid trials and exposure to long sentence. Only a defendant who admits the

commitment of the crime can plea for bargain. However, plea has been attributed to racial

disparities in US. Court prosecutors might be using race to denote criminality. In criminal justice

system, the study of racial disparities illustrates that on arrest matters, the initial charging and

sentencing, African Americans are likely to be arrested and charged and also receive harsher

sentences as compared with whites. This then makes the African Americans receive high initial

charges. Since prosecutors set the starting point of plea bargain processes from initial charges,

they are authorized to reduce serious charges to lesser ones to ensure that defendants do not serve

a prison time.

In US almost everyone excluding the case participants seem to dislike the plea bargaining

as they claim that it’s a way to escape punishment by criminals and is a way that has caused

deaths to many. The people claim that prosecutors seem to favor some defendants in outlining

the plea deals than others especially attributing it to racial disparities. Plea bargaining is good as

it allows the criminals to be convicted of the wrongs done just because they want an agreement.

Plea bargaining has some form of mockery to the justice system in that prosecutors add more

charges to the defendant for the purpose of plea bargaining, a situation that the defendant is not

certain to succeed. While passing the plea the judge asks a series of questions to the defendant

including a question on any deals made in return for the guilty plea, on which the defendant

denies but for a matter of fact there is a deal already.

The fact that people dislike the plea bargains in response to prosecutor issues does not

provide the best way to manage the court cases. The fact remains that there are to remain
mistakes in court proceedings, innocent people will not lack in wrongful convictions. The video

outlines how wrongful convictions do happen. The process of executing innocent people who are

wrongly convicted seem to be a game for people who have a very great desire to achieve a

specified form of ending. On getting a contrary response to their expectation, they do such things

to bring back their expectations to reality. These people know the wrong and do it.

Contradictions from the defendants hides the element of wrong conviction as some defendants

lie on some factual matters some times.

Wrong conviction is not at all good. I am really against it because of several reasons.

First a wrongly convicted person undergoes greater experiences of guilt feelings, devastation,

fear, depression and helplessness. The defendant has worse impact than the original

victimization. False accusations have been attributed to trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder

to the wrongly imprisoned thus increasing their chances of death. The wrongly convicted group

finds it hard to locate jobs opportunities due to lack of skills which they could have acquired

while they served the imprisonment wrongly accused for. Additionally, these individuals face s

lot of stigma from the surrounding individuals thus hardening their possibility to secure

employment. These impacts not only affect the individuals at that specified time, but are long-

term memories that affect the psychological life of the accused. The individuals end up changing

their identity from the anxious state and become paranoid and less confident. There is a very

high probability of the wrongly accused individuals becoming hostile, mistrustful and no longer

feeling to help others from the experience felt from the accusations. Greater of the losses the

individual faces are the loss of the dignity, credibility, hope for better and purpose for living. So

in general, a wrongly accused person even after being freed from the imprisonment undergoes

through stigma from people and from self, physical and psychological health effects such as
depression, sleep problems and anxiety, relationship problems such as isolation, strain to make

friends and family strains, wrong attitudes and motives towards the criminal systems among so

many other impacts. The issue of plea bargains is not also admirable. The issue allows very large

criminal offenses to be committed by one or several individuals and they fail to attend to the full

magnitude of the crime committed. A criminal having some relationship with prosecutors will

have nice moments in imprisonment even if he has committed what kind of crime. Prosecutors

may show unfairness in giving the plea directives to defendants to choose favoring some

defendants than others.

Racial disparity is one of the cases affecting US court systems. Racial disparity is evident

in a series of court rulings among African American members, Hispanic members and the whites

in US. The issue goes forth also to the bail issue to the court after ruling. Bail is the pre-trial

restrictions of a suspect to ascertain his or her compliance to the judicial requirements. A bail is a

form of security to ensure that the suspect will reappear to the court proceedings when required.

It is commonly in form of sum of money ruled by the court, that a suspect brings to hold his or

her position of pretrial imprisonment and freeing him or her to attend the court proceedings from

outside when required. Racial disparity has mentioned that African Americans are most likely to

be arrested, detained and incarcerated than whites and Hispanics in US. Hispanics are also more

likely to undergo the same as compared to whites. When it comes to bails, racial disparity is not

any different from other factors. African Americans are charged 35% more bails than the whites

while the Hispanics are charged 19% higher bails than the whites. Such racial difference issues

arise due to the following; the American bail system, inadequate information on ethnic groups in

US, lack of oversight on decisions made, allowance of non-lawyers to rule on the bail decisions

and finally the bias of the system actors.

 Conclusion

Wrongful conviction and plea bargains play a very lamentable role in the lives of the

people allegedly accused on wrong conviction. They have so many negative effects to the

individual while in imprisonment and while freed. Plea bargains mostly practice unfairness and

racial discrimination from the pleas outlined by prosecutors to various criminals. Racial

differences are used mostly in US in executing most court rulings with the African Americans

facing the hardest moments in US and the whites facing the smoothest prison life in the same

state.