Whenever it truly is proven that the innocent person was wrongfully convicted, which occurs considerably more frequently than anybody would like to admit, we have been quick to pin the culprit on some evil authority figure. According to Mark Godsey, an early prosecutor now heading the Ohio Innocence Project, there is absolutely no such sinister antagonist, only humans behaving as humans.
In his new book Blind Injustice, Godsey besides explains how and wrongful convictions occur, but provides some not hard, inexpensive strategies to greatly reduce these tragic cases. Because he served ages as a prosecutor in New York, Godsey is able to empathize together with the courts while to also sympathize using the victims of wrongful imprisonment.
Most people upon discovering someone like Ricky Jackson, who served nearly 40 years in a prison in Ohio for the crime he wouldn’t commit, feel regret for just a few seconds without ever thinking this type of travesty could someday affect them, too. However, over two thousands convictions are actually overturned by evidence like DNA testing since 1989.
The advantages for so many tragic miscarriages of justice are primarily psychological and political, good book. Prosecutors, as well as judges and juries for instance, are individuals and thus vulnerable to error.
Among such errors, Godsey contends, are blond denial, blind bias, and blind memory, all which can be the only so-called evidence a prosecutor uses as part of his effort to secure a conviction up against the accused. The book offers various tests, as both versions I failed, to say just how unreliable the three of those concepts might be when determining truth.
Political factors also give rise to many of the false imprisonments, especially as many judges and prosecutors are elected positions. The public quite naturally really wants to feel safe, so candidates who’ve reputations or agendas that not receive the highest vote totals.
Thus, a lot more convictions a prosecutor can amass, the higher quality his chances to retain his position. Instead of asking what number of innocent people he may have caused to get incarcerated, society asks approximately the number whether or not they were guilty or otherwise.
Godsey, due to his long service to be a prosecutor in New York, understands these factors. There is tremendous pressure on legal authorities to make justice without delay to a below patient public. Perhaps that’s the reason everyone, not merely law students and loved ones of victims of injustice, should read Blind Injustice.