discussion posts Wrongful Convictions, law homework help

discussion posts Wrongful Convictions, law homework help

Need to respond to these questions:

Good information that you provided. Just a couple of questions. On the wrongful convictions you said, “This menace has been portrayed as a small with some of the criminal justice role players like judges and prosecutors approximating the rate at 0.027%.” What does this mean?

Then, “This study on c the contrary revealed very little about exonerations which meant that the number of wrongful convictions were up to thousands.” What does this mean?

And finally, “For instance in Illinois the statistics provide wrongful convictions at 1% to 3.5% and that very few among these convicts are exonerated.” If not exonerated, how do we know that they are wrongful convictions? Based on the their word or ?

Original Post:

1. Wrongful Convictions

A wrongful happens when a defendant who is innocent is found guilty in a criminal trial or even when a defendant pleads guilty to a crime they did not commit usually to avoid extreme sentences like death penalty. A wrongful conviction also refer to a situation where a jury finds a person who has a good self-defense guilty or where the constitutional rights of a person have been violated during trial but the appellate court reverse their convictions regardless of their factual guilt.

Most of wrongful convictions occur due to honest witness error while others are caused by negligence of the criminal justice system including the defense lawyers. May people who have been convicted wrongfully have in many instances been said to suffer psychological illnesses. This is due to the stress that they undergo in the prison. It is an injustice that unfortunately happens every day in the American criminal justice system (Jones, 2012). This menace has been portrayed as a small with some of the criminal justice role players like judges and prosecutors approximating the rate at 0.027%. This is based on a research done as between the years 1989 and 2003. This study on c the contrary revealed very little about exonerations which meant that the number of wrongful convictions were up to thousands.

This means that wrongful convictions are prevalent in our system and we should not ignore that fact. For instance in Illinois the statistics provide wrongful convictions at 1% to 3.5% and that very few among these convicts are exonerated. Accordingly, about 10,790 adults were wrongly convicted for felony in 2004 of whom some were wrongly jailed while others were taken to prison.

2. Cyber crimes: Cyber stalking

A cyber crime is a criminal act that involves a computer, internet and computer technology. Some of the most common cyber-crimes are cyber-stalking, identity theft, spam and phishing among others. Cyber stalking has been classified as one of prevalent cyber crimes with many internet users falling victims of cyber bullying. Cyber stalkers meet their victims in different ways; mostly they normally have a relationship either in the real world or online world. Cyber stalking starts when this relationship ends. However, strangers who have collected information on the internet can also be cyber stalkers. The desire to control and even harm their victims is what motivates cyber stalkers. They may go to the measures of personifying their victims and post messages or controversial posts on the boards and chat rooms. In this real regard, cyber stalking is a real crime (Mansourabadi, 2014).

Cyber stalking and bullying is traumatizing especially for children because it is because of such incidents that make a child withdraw from social gatherings and becomes scared of the outside world. In some extreme instances, cyber stalking has been known to result to death. This is because though it starts with the real world and develops into the internet it also penetrates into the physical world where the perpetrators result to physical violence.

In case one becomes a victim of cyber stalking, the best way to deal with it is to report the perpetrator to the internet service provider or to the authorities. One could first gather as much evidence as possible before reporting to the police.

3. Terrorism

Terrorism could be referred to the use of violence and force on persons and property in furtherance of social or political objectives. Terrorism is unlawful and results to destruction and damage to persons who are victims or property (Rausch, 2015). One of the most interesting thing about terrorism is that even after counter measures being taken, terrorism does not reduce or unfortunately continues to grow. It is interesting that dimensions of fighting terrorism have been widened with states coming together, international governing bodies working together as well a signing of treaties in bid to counter the menace. However, the objective goal has not been achieved with terrorism acts continuing to spread throughout the world.

It is intriguing that even if the whole world seems to talk against terrorism, most states seem to be reluctant in taking the steps to fight against such actions. For instance, the international convention that was the first intergovernmental treaty (drafted in 1937) which was supposed to specifically address the terrorism issues including the applicable punishments was put in place. The convention was signed by 24 nations, however, only India has ratified it. This means that even though the menace continues to make the world insecure, very few states are willing to be on the front line to fight it. This prevents terrorism from being eradicated.

References:

Mansourabadi, A. (2014). The criminology of cyber stalking: investigating the crime, offenders and victims of cyber stalking. International journal of criminology and sociological theory, 7(2).

Jones, J. A. (2012). Wrongful Conviction in the American Judicial Process: History, Scope, and Analysis. Student Pulse, 4(08).

Rausch, C. (2015). Fundamentalism and terrorism. Journal of Terrorism Research, 6(2).