Wrongful Convictions Ruin Lives
Could It Happen to Me?
Imagine one day as you are going about your business being suddenly arrested and charged with a crime. You can't provide an alibi, the authorities are convincing when they tell you they have evidence, witnesses and other proof of your guilt. You protest your innocence, but it does no good.
You are taken to trial, convicted and sentenced to a long term in prison. Once there you are abused, raped, stabbed, nearly killed, and all the time you weep and sob that you were wrongly convicted - you are innocent.
Does it sound like some far-away dictatorship? Guess again, this sort of thing happens all too often right here in the United States.
I know you might rather not think about it, after all, you are a law-abiding citizen, and certainly no one would ever mistake you for a criminal. Well, think again. There are other law-abiding citizens who were caught up in the nightmare of guilty until proven innocent, guilty because someone in power said so, and guilty simply because you were in the wrong place at the right time.
Perhaps you are a person with enough wealth to fight the charge and possibly win. But what is you are poor, or simply down on your luck? What if someone lies and puts you at the crime scene? There are many reasons why innocent people are convicted. And sometimes they suffer the ultimate penalty. Mind you, innocent people have been put to death. They died, suffering horribly, for someone else's crime.
The Innocence Project is one organization that tries to help and free people wrongly convicted. Using DNA and other methods, they insist that convictions be reopened, motives scrutinized, and innocent people set free. It is a noble enterprise, one you would welcome if you were the victim of wrongful prosecution.
According to The Innocence Project, 216 innocent people have been exonerated by DNA testing. Sixteen of those were on Death Row, awaiting execution. 12 years is the typical wait to be set free, and 70% of wrongfully convicted people are minorities. In 35 % of the cases DNA evidence found the real criminal. It is a shameful record for any District Attorney that even one innocent person is convicted, and the reasons for the wrongful convictions may also have nefarious reasons: withholding of evidence, forced confessions, over-zealous officials, or simply racial hatred.
However, even when an innocent person is set free, they suffer needlessly. There are the psychological scars, some of which are insurmountable. There are the records that somehow fail to get expunged. There is the stigma, the shame, of having been in prison, most likely having been sexually violated, and the old friends and family that may abandon you. You feel and are often truly alone, without the skills or ability to cope in a world that ruined your life.
Again, according to The Innocence Project, most of the exonerated have never been compensated for the time spent in prison. The few who have discover they do not have the skills to manage their money. Many of the people wrongfully convicted are under-educated, have few marketable skills, and simply do not know how to survive the trauma and shame of their wrongful conviction. Post traumatic stress syndrome is a mild name for having your life ruined, your future destroyed, and your hopes for anything approaching a normal life taken forever from you.
The cases make headlines, the exonerated look happy to at last be free, but the life they live afterwards often fades into obscurity, homelessness, and early death.
Now imagine yourself in the position of someone who has suffered needlessly, simply because of some circumstances far beyond your control. Yes, it could happen to you, even if you are not a minority, even if you are well-to-do, and even if you obey the law every day of your life. There is no protection for any of us as long as there is no protection for lowliest one of us.
What would you do if YOU were convicted of a crime you didn't commit?
kocharvimal
