What Does Limiting Wrongful Convictions Look Like?
All in all, this case truly symbolizes the stark injustices people of colour experience within media coverage and the criminal justice system, and how positive action needs to be done to create an impartial and just system. Four ways we can limit the number of wrongful convictions, in this case are, introducing better interrogation techniques for youth, eliminating the use of police coercion, ensuring police departments don’t engage in selective evidence use, and ensuring the media lacks bias based on racism. Everyone who plays a role in the legal system should obtain greater knowledge in the interrogation processes for youth, to better these techniques. Since youth have a greater likelihood of being vulnerable and submissive to coercion and false confessions. This is due to their predisposition to act in a self-incriminating manner. Ultimately, creating wrongful convictions and consequences towards youth. This is relevant in the Central Park Five Case since the police should’ve been educated enough to know that the boys shouldn’t have been interviewed without receiving legal help first. Due to their lack of knowledge to request aid, and their inclination to depend on concrete reasoning. As well as, the factor that their interview should not have been so long in length. Since this increases the likelihood of them creating a false confession to escape the intolerable environment. Secondly, wrongful convictions like this case can be avoided by eliminating the use of police coercion. By doing this, subjects will be unlikely to create a false confession solely for the reason of getting a more lenient sentence or inaccurately admitting to something they didn’t do. Due to the interrogator leading them there. Thirdly, eliminating the use of selective evidence. If the New York Police hadn’t have acted unethically in choosing certain evidence, these teenagers would have never been persecuted. Since there was no evidence to prove their participation in the crime. Lastly, the media (specifically newspapers) should be responsible for eliminating biases since they play a crucial role in establishing the public’s perception of the case. Furthermore, causing greater amounts of racial segregation to grow as a result of the wrongful misconception of the men. By educating and eliminating these aspects in the legal system, we can be one step closer to achieving a more just system and decreasing the number of wrongful convictions.
