My thoughts on wrongful convictions is that regardless of the alleged crime, when a person experiences a wrongful conviction, it is a blow to the health of the American justice system. It doesn’t matter if the defendant was wrongfully convicted of drunk driving or murder, the results are the same. Although cracks appear in our already troubled system of justice, the most wrongful convictions could happen for many reasons. One because prosecution attorneys sometimes may go to great extreme lengths to achieve convictions and exclude the facts. Or, it could be the police officers themselves who are corrupt. Allowing wrongful convictions is a terrible affront to the justice system that was once praised by us Americans. Preventing these wrongful convictions will help us fix and heal our justice system and help us embrace the concept of “innocent until proven guilty”. 

 

        Many people are starting to realize that our justice system isn’t always there for us, especially for us men and women of color  and that police misconduct and their very questionable “legal” methods have begun to ruin our justice system . In other words, if you are a person of color just know that you will have to work 100 times harder to get justice or be acknowledged as a victim rather than a suspect. To society especially during the early 1900s to late, people of color were always discriminated against and if you thought for a second that the justice system, the system that’s supposed to protect everyone's right regardless of color, was on their side, you are certainly mistaken. In the book “Just Mercy”, Stevenson was the lawyer defending a black man named Walter McMillian. Walter was an innocent black man who was accused of killing a white girl. During the investigation, they interrogated Ralph Myer who they initially thought was the suspect. Because of their prejudice towards black, the authorities didn’t even take the time to question the liability in his side of the story so when he accused Walter of killing the girl, they automatically believed him. This makes me question whether or not America lives up to it’s standards of being “the land of the free and the home of the brave”. If you have a country that’s not willing to accept other races and will go through extreme measures to put these innocent people in jail, then it is clear that our justice system isn’t for “all”. Too many wrongful convictions have been slipped under the bus. It’s really scary to think that without great lawyers like Stevenson, then many innocent people would’ve been killed or would have spent the rest of their lives in jail. 

 

         This country doesn’t live up to it’s standards of being developed, at least not in terms of the justice system. This country isn’t willing to give up money to support our low income families, but are willing to spend millions of dollars on capital punishment. One things for sure, our justice system is much more damaged than we think and if there is no change then we can’t expect to move forward., so it’s up to us citizens to speak out against these issues and for the government to punish those that actually need to be punished. 

            To get into the topic of death row or capital punishment, there have been many cases of people being put on death row but soon after were found innocent. This issue is much more serious than wrongful convictions because you are taking the life of an innocent person, while the real criminal is out there lurking around. If a person was sentenced to years in prison  and years after was found not guilty at least they can start their life again. However, if you are put to death, you can never come back, if you are later found innocent. Therefore, the death penalty should be considered a barbaric and inhumane form of punishment that deserves no place in the world. Our justice system is not always trusting. Innocent lives are too often served life sentences and even put on death row for crimes they didn’t commit. On top of all this, death row is very expensive, so if the government is going to pay that much money, shouldn’t they at least have legitimate and appropriate representation to see whether or not they actually committed the crime. 

 

        The death penalty is seen as providing people with an answer to the horrible, unspeakable things that people do to one another. We are filled with such a sense of pain and disgust that we need justice to somehow make things right. However, there is a fine line between vengeance and justice. People claim that the death penalty is right because it is a great example for the concept of “an eye for an eye” but if you wish death upon a person because they killed another person, how does that make you any better of a person, or even better than the killer themselves? You then become just as guilty as them because believe it or not, you end up having similar mindsets. People need to realize that death is not always the answer.