{"id":713,"date":"2011-02-11T13:06:26","date_gmt":"2011-02-11T13:06:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/jazztheologian\/2011\/02\/anatomy-of-a-wrongful-conviction-p4-final-installment.html"},"modified":"2011-02-11T13:06:26","modified_gmt":"2011-02-11T13:06:26","slug":"anatomy-of-a-wrongful-conviction-p4-final-installment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/2011\/02\/anatomy-of-a-wrongful-conviction-p4-final-installment.html","title":{"rendered":"Anatomy of a Wrongful Conviction (p4-Final Installment)"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is the final installment of this series of posts on wrongful convictions (Part 1<\/a>—Part 2-<\/a>–Part 3<\/a>)<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n
How and why do they keep happening?  What’s the “anatomy of a wrongful conviction?”<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
H. Patrick Furman<\/a> is a law professor at the University of Colorado School of Law. In a 2003 article for The Colorado Lawyer, he outlined five key factors in the frequency of wrongful convictions.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
They are…<\/div>\n
\n
<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\n
    \n
      \n
    1. Mistaken Identification<\/li>\n
    2. Ineffective Representation<\/li>\n
    3. Police and Prosecutorial Misconduct<\/li>\n
    4. Perjured Testimony, primarily by informants<\/li>\n
    5. Corruptions of Scientific Evidence<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/ol>\n

      (For a full explanation of each of these factors you can read his article here)<\/a><\/div>\n

      <\/div>\n
      What’s worse is that the system doesn’t know what to do with innocent people.  We believe that people are innocent until proven guilty; however, on a previous post, an attorney by the name of Marian made this shocking statement: “Defending an innocent client is almost impossible.”  <\/div>\n
      <\/div>\n
      Here’s the complete comment: <\/div>\n


      \n<\/p>\n

      “As
      \nan attorney, the one client I really hope never to get is a genuinely innocent
      \none. The criminal law system has no way to handle them. The system is about
      \nmaking deals. More than 90% of all criminal cases are resolved by plea
      \nbargaining. The innocent defendant has nothing to bargain with. All he can do
      \nis take his chances at trial, and, if he loses, be penalized a lot more heavily
      \nthan if he had confessed to some fiction. Evidence is usually provided either
      \nby police officers who are absolutely convinced of the defendant’s guilt or
      \nindifferent to the possibility of his innocence on this particular charge
      \n(“if he didn’t do it this time, he probably got off on something at least
      \nas bad that he DID do”, or by accomplices or jailhouse snitches who have
      \nstrong incentives to testify to whatever the prosecutor wants, or by
      \neyewitnesses who are at least as likely as not to be mistaken. And the cases
      \nare driven by the prosecutor, who has the freedom to decide what offenses to charge,
      \nrather than by the judge, whose sentencing options are almost automated. And,
      \nfinally, we have no idea how an innocent person is supposed to behave on trial.
      \nIf he protests his innocence, he must be lying. If he merely sits silent and
      \ndepressed, that must be consciousness of guilt. If he smiles, confident that
      \njustice will be done, he must be a monster. If he loses control, he’s crazy,
      \nbut not legally insane. I know of no law school that teaches its students how
      \nto defend an innocent client. Anybody can defend a guilty defendant. Defending
      \nan innocent client is almost impossible.”<\/span><\/p>\n


      <\/span><\/p>\n


      <\/span><\/p>\n

      <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      This is the final installment of this series of posts on wrongful convictions (Part 1—Part 2-–Part 3) How and why do they keep happening?  What’s the “anatomy of a wrongful conviction?” H. Patrick Furman is a law professor at the University of Colorado School of Law. In a 2003 article for The Colorado Lawyer, he outlined…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":79,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-misc"],"yoast_head":"\nAnatomy of a Wrongful Conviction (p4-Final Installment) - The Jazz Theologian<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/2011\/02\/anatomy-of-a-wrongful-conviction-p4-final-installment.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Anatomy of a Wrongful Conviction (p4-Final Installment) - The Jazz Theologian\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This is the final installment of this series of posts on wrongful convictions (Part 1—Part 2-–Part 3) How and why do they keep happening?  What’s the “anatomy of a wrongful conviction?” H. Patrick Furman is a law professor at the University of Colorado School of Law. 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Author of Finding the Groove: Composing a Jazz-Shaped Faith (Zondervan) and the upcoming, Strange Fruit: The Cross as a Way of Life (2011). Founder of Project 127, a ministry dedicated to seeing the day when there are no children waiting for homes in Colorado's foster care system. Robert deeply desires to see the body of Christ mobilized to serve the least of these. The poor, the down and out, the disenfranchised and disabled, those deemed unimportant and the unborn. He believes that God loves all people yet he has a special heart for the poor and the poor in spirit, the miserable and the marginalized. A Contributing Editor for Leadership Journal and Urbanfaith.com. He acquired a B.A. in Bibilcal Studies from Colorado Christian University and a Master of Arts in World Christianity (Missiology) from Denver Seminary. Robert is married to the love of his life, Barbara, and they have six energetic children (3 boys & 3 girls--one bio, five adopted--two from Ethiopia). Friend of God...Passionate about the Body of Christ...Lover of this thing called jazz! Please visit Jazztheologian.com for contact info., speaking schedule, videos, Facebook and Twitter.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/author\/rgelinas"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/79"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=713"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/713\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}