Week One Overview:
I’m well
into my first few days as a research intern with the Arizona Innocence Project
(AIP), an actual innocence clinic which investigates cases of wrongful
conviction in Arizona. The AIP is a founding member of the Innocence Network,
an affiliation of organizations that provide pro-bono representation to people
seeking to overturn a wrongful conviction. To read more about the Innocence
Network of the Arizona Innocence Project, visit the following links: http://www.innocencenetwork.org/
and http://nau.edu/Arizona-Innocence-Project/.
As a
research intern at the AIP, I will be primarily investigating the unique
disadvantages some members of indigenous populations face while navigating the
criminal justice system. I will attempt to expand the AIP so that it is more accessible
to indigenous populations and will reach out to Native American inmates in the
Arizona Department of Corrections system that I identify as having a potential
to benefit from the project’s services.
Recent reading material:
Criminal Justice in Native
America, Marianne
O. Nielsen and Robert A. Silverman (University of Arizona Press, 2009. )
Convicting the Innocent: Where
Criminal Prosecutions Go Wrong,
Brandon L. Garrett (Harvard University Press, 2011.)
Other Activities:
Online
Course. I’ve
begun taking an open online course that explores the Innocence Movement and is
put on by the University of Illinois Springfield. All of the videos can be found
on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAoogzkDh5wxjdFn-QakSXcyOVA2nBMRJ
).
The first
week of the course served as an introduction and explored the issue of wrongful
convictions in general. One of the videos for the first week featured specific
cases of wrongful convictions and subsequent exonerations, and it is definitely
worth a view: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySrhpCgtjA0&list=PLAoogzkDh5wxjdFn-QakSXcyOVA2nBMRJ#t=199
The
second week of the course examined specific systematic reasons for wrongful
convictions (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tZzjvtX9tg
). Some of these causes may include (but of course are not limited to):
·
“Tunnel
vision” in police investigation—focusing on only one suspect
·
Eyewitness
misidentification (this problem is exacerbated in cases of cross-racial
identification)
o
Offering
clues during suspect line-up.
o
Implication
that suspect must be in line-up.
·
False
confessions, omissions in confessions, coached confessions
o
Approximately
25% of DNA exonerations include instances where the defendant confessed to the crime
o
The
Supreme Court has not excluded confessions resulting from “psychological or
mental torture”
·
Government
and prosecutor misconduct
·
Lack
of proper defense representation
·
Falsified,
misconstrued, or incorrect forensics investigation
·
Racial
and class biases (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDN1l1np6CU&list=PLAoogzkDh5wxjdFn-QakSXcyOVA2nBMRJ)
o
Issues
of racial profiling, “all-white juries”,
o
Inability
to pay expert witnesses
Accomplice Liability
On
Thursday, I had the opportunity to sit in on a criminal justice class about
accomplice liability. In the U.S. legal system, accomplice liability requires
that an accomplice receives the same charge and sentence as the actual perpetrator
of the crime, regardless of the extent of the accomplice’s involvement. This is
relevant to Innocence Project work because although it is reasonable to believe
that an accomplice is innocent of physically committing the crime (ie., he didn’t
pull the trigger), according to the legal definition of an accomplice, an
accomplice can be liable for acts he didn’t commit so long as he somehow
assisted in the execution of a crime and intended to assist in the execution of
a crime. Because of this definition, it
is virtually impossible for Innocence Projects to accept cases of accomplices,
unless the accomplice and the perpetrator have reason to claim actual
innocence.
National Registry of Exonerations
As per its
own description, “The National Registry of Exonerations is a project of the
University of Michigan Law School. It was founded in 2012 in conjunction with
the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University School of Law.
The Registry provides detailed information about every known exoneration in the
United States since 1989—cases in which a person was wrongly convicted of a
crime and later cleared of all the charges based on new evidence of innocence.”
As of February 10, 2015, the registry contains 1,543 exonerations. This list only encompasses cases that have
resulted in charges being fully vacated and does not include, for example,
cases in which the defendant plead out for time served. Of these exonerations,
15 have occurred in the jurisdiction of the state of Arizona, and three have occurred
within federal jurisdiction in Arizona. Furthermore, thirteen exonerations have
already occurred in 2015. Of the 1,543 exonerees, six have been Native
Americans. Combining this fact with the knowledge we have of racial and ethnic
bias in the criminal justice system, there is good reason to believe that there
are more innocent Native Americans serving time for crimes which they did not
commit. The Death Penalty Information Center reports that the incarceration
rate of Native Americans is 38% higher than the national rate (http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/native-americans-and-death-penalty).
Detailed
information about the six Native Americans who have been exonerated can be
found at the following links:
It is
important to note that in the Registry, as in the state and federal databases,
race is self-identified and therefore it is possible that the number reported
is not totally accurate or all-encompassing.
Approximately
5.1% (~2,145) of prisoners in the Arizona Department of Corrections system
identify as Native American, compared with 1.9% (3,973) in the Federal Bureau
of Prisons system.
Well, that was a brief glimpse at
my first few days at the AIP. I am looking forward to continuing my research,
so stay tuned!
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