Innocence Project

Since 1992, almost three hundred people in the United States have been exonerated by the Innocence Project. What this means is that almost three hundred people have been acquitted for a crime that they were falsely convicted of committing and were then released back into society. Many of these false convictions were the result of a lack of technology back in the time of the trials which lead to unvalidated or improper use of forensic science. Some additional reasons that people are wrongfully convicted are misidentifications from eyewitnesses and false confessions. In this paper, I plan to write about Kenneth Ireland. His story shows how wrongful convictions and exonerations are issues in the United States.

On September 3, 1986, when Kenneth was only sixteen years old, a thirty year old woman named Barbara Pelkey was found dead in the factory where she worked overnight. She had been raped and suffered a massive blow to the head. Kenneth heard about the crime while watching from his bedroom and was stunned that something that horrific could happen to someone in his small town. There was an autopsy done on the victim as well as a rape kit being collected. The rape kit found that there were sperm cells present on the vaginal and anal swabs. The investigation continued for another year without any arrests, but soon after two informants came to the police and accused Kenneth Ireland and two other men of committing the crime. The police said that the two witnesses had claimed that Kenneth and the other men were making statements to them about their involvement in the crime. In addition to that information, these informants had also given additional unpublished details about the crime and had told the police that their knowledge of this information had come straight from Kenneth Ireland. Six months later, a third informant came to the police and told them that Kenneth had admitted to committing the crime. The informant wasn’t sure if Kenneth was awake at...