Wednesday, November 13, 2019
Guilty Until Proven Innocent: ‘When They See Us’
Watching ‘When They See Us’ was an inside look at the story of boys being wrongly accused and later convicted of rape and attempted murder of a woman. These boys were known across the globe as the Central Park Five. The five boys who hours before being taken into police custody were running through Central Park, having fun and enjoying themselves. However, the story twists itself into knots real quick, when five boys are assumed to have committed the brutal rape and assault of a woman in the park, found the same night the boys were there. However, the officers at the station knew that nothing added up in the statements the boys made, but they made up their minds and it was those five boys who committed the crimes, and they wouldn’t stop until they got a confession of them doing just that. Later, after hours of confusion and coercion by police officers, they admit to the rape that they did not commit.
This case is a very famous example of people being wrongly accused of a crime and it got me thinking about how often do things like this happen? Looking more in-depth at the death row alone, a study published in National Geographic calculated that 4.1% of the time people were wrongly accused. One may argue that death row is such a small percentage of the prison population that it isn’t that many people. While that may be the case, giving the death penalty as an option in a case, puts that case under much more scrutiny. The idea that so many people who are innocent are getting put on death row is appalling and shocking when you think about it. However, this is only talking about people given the death sentence, not the people who died because of a death sentence. But “with an error rate of 4 percent...it is all but certain that several of the 1,320 defendants executed since 1977 were innocent” (National Geographic). So this raises the questions of overall, how many people got convicted of crimes that they haven’t done? And how strong is our ‘justice’ system actually? As William Blackstone once said, “It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer”, and I could not agree with that position and statement more.
Source
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/phenomena/2014/04/28/how-many-people-are-wrongly-convicted-researchers-do-the-math/#close
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I agree that in order for the system to work, some guilty people will walk free. I feel like this is the case with OJ Simpson. The system protected his rights considering the circumstances. Even though it was pretty obvious that OJ killed Ron and Nicole, the evidence was not sufficient enough to convict him. Instances like this are examples of when the justice system is working to protect the rights of individuals, and not trying to blame people just because they need someone to blame like in the case of the Central Park 5.
ReplyDeleteI agree with how the justice system over the years have changed from finding justice for someone to accusing innocent people without a fair trial. Example was for the OJ Simpson trial, it was based racially and the Jurors ruled OJ not guilty as a response or "payback " to the Rodney King Trial that didn't find justice for Rodney and the black community. In this instance, The Central Park 5 were found guilty because the district attorney based it off the boys and their families backgrounds along with race which was one factor that helped them find them guilty. It shows how race/racial difference and public opinions have changed the systems from giving someone a fair trial.
ReplyDeleteIt is phenomenal to see the sentences many receive for their actions, as it seems that race and wealth are two factors that once contributed significantly in deciding the punishment. In the "When They See Us" documentary, these 5 young boys are seemingly attacked due to their race, as there was no reason to accuse them of such actions due to the fact there was no evidence building on the accusations. Without the education and the money to pay lawyers to save them from the situation they were thrown in, the boys dug themselves in a deeper hole where they each received a sentence for something they had not done. Another trial we witnessed was the OJ trial, where he was able to free himself from punishment due to the fact he was not seen as the average African American man and had the money and fame to afford the defense that was able to save his life. He had valid evidence indicating that he was the killer, though with such money he ran away from the death sentence and was proven innocent for a certain period of time.
ReplyDeleteI would definitely agree with that last statement. On one hand, yes 10 guilty people would go free, and they could still do harm to others, but for one person to suffer for something they didn't do would not even be close to the other 10. But to some circumstance, the 10 people who were guilty and went free would most likely not be rapists or murderers. There needs to be some sort of line drawn when there might be some suspicion that they could harm others. Just for the sake of other people's lives.
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