Uncovering the Purposefully Accidents
A Corsicana, Texas house fire in
1991 that killed three girls also called an end to their father, Cameron Todd
Willingham’s life. Thirteen years later, on the 17th day of February, he
gathered in the visiting room with relatives, separated with plexiglas, said
his last goodbyes without hugging his parents, and said to his parents to never
stop fighting to vindicate him. He was gone and buried next to his children’s
graves (Grann). “Justice is Blind” an idiomatic expression that calls justice
impartial and objective. Ironically, justice is blind, not in the context of
fairness and just, but in the ways, it has closed its doors to those who are
wrongfully convicted. Every organization has loopholes, and perfecting anything
is impossible, however improper or invalidated forensic science, eyewitness
misidentification and official misconducts are the leading causes of wrongful
convictions that make the Criminal Justice System more complicated than it
already is.
Laws and subsequent punishments date
back to colonial days to promote a just society, and is used until today in the
development of the Criminal Justice System. With the advancing technology in
every field, the system also takes advantage and uses forensic DNA testing as
the most important tool used to help convict people for their crimes. DNA
stands for Deoxyribonucleic acid, a carrier of genetic information and a
“self-replicating material, present in nearly all living organisms as the main
constituent of chromosomes,” and with its testing, a person can be found guilty
of his or her crime (“DNA”). Since the
1980s, the technology has helped in solving the nation’s high violent crimes
but there still remains some issues, especially in regard to the those
wrongfully convicted. While the testing was developed through extensive
scientific research at top academic centers, many other forensic techniques –
such as “hair microscopy, bite mark comparisons, firearm tool mark analysis and
shoe print comparisons – have never been subjected to rigorous scientific evaluation.”
On the other hand, forensics techniques that have been properly validated –
such as serology, commonly known as blood typing – are sometimes improperly
conducted or inaccurately conveyed in trial testimony (NAACP).
The ideology of DNA was first introduced
in 1985 by a professor at the University of Leicester, Alec Jeffreys, who could
approve how unique personalized DNA material in each person’s skin, body
fluids, blood, nails and hair was. From the information, law enforcement
agencies decided to make use of DNA technology as a major aid in being able to
isolate alleged suspects with forensic evidence collected at crime scenes, and
shifted away from investigating through evidence like shoe-print at a crime
scene (Hirby). Shoeprints are important source of information but it would not
be nearly as effective for identifying a person as their DNA or fingerprints.
In 1987, Tommy Lee Andrews convicted of rape in the Circuit Court in Orange
County, Florida was found guilty after DNA test matched his DNA from blood
sample with that of semen traces in the rape kit (Dennis and Cormier). The emergence of accurately
identifying the actual criminal started with Andrews case, and that continued
even though the admissibility of DNA evidence was not largely disputed yet.
Analysts focus on 13 or more places in the genome, called loci, where humans
are extraordinarily diverse. Each locus contains a “short tandem repeat,” a bit
of DNA that is repeated multiple times. The exact number of repeats at each
locus varies from person to person and can range anywhere between the low
single digits to the mid-50s. There are two numbers for each locus, and the
chance that two people have the same pairs at all 13 loci is low (Starr). Once
the technology was widely used and better understood by prosecutors, defense
attorneys looked to challenge the admissibility of DNA tests, but it still has
failed to do that especially since more people are imprisoned because of bad
technology.
DNA evidence is so powerful that it
has been the only reason for some criminals to stay away from their families or
reunite with their loved ones. It has played a role in about 50 percent of
wrongful convictions. As depicted in figure 1, out of 85 cases of people
convicted wrongfully, 29 cases were the immediate result of Questionable
Forensic Evidence or Testimony. The Innocence Project is the largest
organization that works on exoneration cases of those wrongfully convicted
through improper testing’s like DNA analysis and pushes the government to
reform the criminal justice system. Overall, its mission is to free hundreds of people in
jail and give them justice, by collaboratively working with the law through
legal work and as well as give support to the exonerate as they begin to
rebuild their lives. People like Clarence
Harrison and Kennedy Brewer are
of the few that spent years in jail for a crime they did not commit. Harrison
was exonerated in 2004 after being in prison for 17 years in Georgia for rape,
robbery and kidnapping a 25-year-old woman from the bus stop. At the request of
the DeKalb County Public Defender’s office, slides from the rape kit were sent
to a commercial lab for DNA analysis where the lab was unable to perform DNA analysis
on the slides. Despite that, Harrison did not give up and contacted the Georgia
Innocence Project in 2003. He was told in the early 1990s that all the evidence
had been destroyed because the last slide was sent for DNA analysis but later
discovered that one slide contained evidence from the rape kit still existed,
from where it was determined that Harrison was innocent. Similarly, Brewer was
arrested in Mississippi for killing his girlfriend’s three-year-old daughter
and was sent to death row. A semen sample was recovered from the victim’s body
but was “deemed insufficient for DNA testing.” After some analysis of bite
marks, which in fact were of insect bites, advanced DNA testing was conducted,
excluding Brewer to be the possible perpetrator. In 2008, charges against
Brewer were dropped and he was free. Although further DNA testing allowed this
man to be free, if DNA testing was properly used before, the innocent man did
not have to go through what he had, and create faults in how crimes are solved.
 |
| Figure 1: Courtesy of Forensic Science Magazine |
Apart from improper forensic
testing, there is always a risk of having unreliable staff within the
system who are a reason to some wrongful convictions. Willingham, as shown in
figure 2, is sitting at his death row, even after insisting upon his innocence
and refused to plead guilty in return for a life sentence. Dr. Gerald Hurst,
a Cambridge-trained chemist known for debunking arson
 |
| Figure 2: Courtesy of the New Yorker |
myths,
said so in a report that Texas Governor Rick Perry regrettably chose to ignore
the reports which led to Willingham’s execution, even after a comprehensive
report proved that he was innocent (Wachtel). The Governor’s inability to look
beyond the faults in the case and neglect the visible evidence shows how
corrupt the system is.
Another case many defense lawyers refer to and use to help
strengthen their wrongful convictions, especially those connected to DNA
testing, is the story of Annie Dookhan. She was a state chemist arrested for
proceeding drug samples received from suspects three times faster than her
fellow colleagues. Her ambition to declare drug samples positive that were not
tested at all, tampering with evidence, forging signatures and lying to the
court, trainted more than 40,000 drug samples. After her arrest in 2000, she
pleaded guilty to 27 counts and was sentenced to three to five years in prison
and two years’ probation. Dookhan’s plea affected many innocent lives who were
in jail for the crimes that they did not commit (Seelye). Surprisingly, no one
in the lab had questioned her behavior or bothered to re-analyze the evidence
she was working with. In an article published by Arizona Law Review, she said
she “messed up bad,” and “amazingly, her misconduct had gone undiscovered for
nine years, even though she testified--and was cross-examined--in at least 150
trials” (Driscoll). Apparently, such people and additional problems like DNA’s
incapability of determining whether the convicted person was the source of the
DNA on the evidence.
The third leading cause is
eyewitness misidentification testimony, a factor in 75 percent of
post-conviction DNA exoneration cases. According to the Innocence Project, 40
percent of these eyewitness identifications involved a cross racial
identification, where studies indicate that people are less able to recognize
faces of a different race on their own. For example, in the Book Picking Cotton: Our Memoir of Injustice and
Redemption, the rape survivor, Jennifer Thompson misidentified the
perpetrator with Ronald Cotton, a high-school dropout, which led to him serving
in jail for 10 years for a crime he did not commit. The National Registry of
Exonerations writes that the contributing factor for his conviction was only
based on the witness testimony. Cotton was exonerated through DNA evidence in
1995. Again, there are many faults that could lead to innocent convictions, and
from Thompson's story, eyewitness makes it a top and important one.
Wrongful
convictions jeopardizes the future of many families and proves that the main
issues like invalidated forensic testing’s, misidentification of witnesses and
unethical work ethics need to be resolved quickly. Elizabeth Flint, a Criminal
Justice and Legal Studies major believes that compensation for these people
exonerated should be a priority. Government, she says need to consider the
years they have lost and put pressure on them to analyze, train and immediately
change any misfits they see in the system.
Work Cited
“Help Us Put an End to Wrongful Convictions!” Innocence Project, Innocence Project,
Web. 7th
April 2018.
“Advancing Justice through DNA Technology: Using DNA to
Solve Crime.” The United States
Department of Justice, Web. 28 March 2018.
Seelye, Katharine Q., and Jess Bidgood. “Prison for a State
Chemist Who Faked Drug
Evidence.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 22 Nov. 2013.
Driscoll,
SK 2014, “I Messed up Bad: Lessons on the Confrontation Clause from the Annie
Dookhan Scandal,” Arizona
Law Review, vol. 56, no. 3, pp. 707-740.Web. 23rd April
2018.
Grann, David. “Trial by Fire.” The New Yorker, The New Yorker, 10 July 2017,
“Innocence
Project.” NACCP, NACCP. Print. 25th April
2018
Wachtel,
Julius. “ DOJ: Texas Executed an Innocent Man.” Police Issues. Police Issues.
Web,
24th April 2018
Thompson-Cannino,
Jennifer, et al. Picking Cotton: Our
Memoir of Injustice and Redemption.
St. Martin's Griffin, 2010.
“Touch
DNA: From the Crime Scene to the Crime Laboratory.” Forensic Magazine, 14 June
2016
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