Soc 120 Week 3 Discussion 1

Every crime that is “solved” and given to the District Attorney for prosecution goes through strict and rigorous guidelines to ensure that the person being charged with the crime is in fact the perpetrator. There are of course some instances where the person on trial did not commit the crime; however, with advances in technology (DNA evidence, fingerprints, video surveillance, and key eye witness testimony), the chances of all of that evidence being wrong is highly unlikely. Once all of the evidence has been relayed to the jurors via the trial as to how and why the perpetrator committed the crime, the jurors are then allowed to deliberate for however long it takes to find the defendant either guilty as charged or innocent. All of the jurors are chosen from a long list of people to ensure that they are as honest and open minded as possible in order to give the best possible judgment towards the case. Based on the evidence presented in the case, the defendant is either found guilty or not-guilty.

Of course, every system is not flawless. Sometimes mistakes occur or someone “fat-fingers” the evidence that sometimes results in the wrong person being accused of a crime. However, again, with advances in technology, this is not as frequent as it was in the past.

According to the deathpenalty.org website, “since 1973, over 140 people have been exonerated and freed from death row”. Also, “In the United States, there are over 3,000 people sitting on death row as of 2013”. There is almost no possibility that all of those people on death row are innocent. If some of those people are truly in face innocent, then unfortunately, they were at the wrong place at the wrong time. All of the evidence points towards them and unless there is literally video surveillance placing you across the world from when/where the crime took place, you are unfortunately going to pay for someone else’s crime.

If someone is exonerated and released from prison due to new evidence or the witness...