Wrongful Convictions

Wrongful Convictions

Racism is the belief that one race is superior or inferior to another, and that a person’s race determines a person’s personality and traits. There are many situations where people of colour are accused of doing something over a white person because of their skin colour, and that is what happened in “A Summer of Kings” by Han Nolan. More people of colour are wrongfully convicted of crime than white people in today’s society, due to racism still being prominent today. It is still a common issue today, although this novel took place in 1963, which was around the time of the Martin Luther King Jr. movement.

There are constantly stories in the media about black people and accusations of crime against them, or people being

In July of 2017, a nineteen year-old girl from Texas came to her church and told everyone that three black men wearing ski masks had abducted her and sexually assaulted her. The girl later admitted that the whole story was false, and that she had even cut and bruised herself to make the story believable. (Holloway, Kali . "10 Times White People Falsely Accused Innocent People of Color of Crimes They Didn't Commit” | Alternet.) Another story of a white person making up a story and accusing a black person of doing something wrong actually is about a ten year old boy and his seven year old cousin. In April of 2016, the two boys were on their way to school, but they returned home saying that a black man with a knife had tried to abduct the two boys. They confessed a week later that they had made up the story to get out of school for the day, and it was evident that at the young ages of seven and ten that they had the benefit of white privilege. (Holloway, Kali . "10 Times White People Falsely Accused Innocent People of Color of Crimes They Didn't Commit” | Alternet.) Both of these stories included white people making up stories about people of colour and

He was sentenced to 210 years in jail, and spent 15 years in jail for a crime that he didn’t do. After DNA testing, it was revealed that Anderson has in fact done absolutely nothing wrong. He is just one of many black people that are wrongfully committed, and while there are white people that are wrongfully convicted, a study from National Registry of Exonerations found that black people are more likely to be wrongfully convicted, and they end up staying in jail longer before being exonerated for their crimes. African Americans are only 13% of the American population, but represent almost half of innocent defendants wrongfully convicted of crimes and later exonerated since 1989. (Vega, Tanzina. "Study: Blacks more likely to be wrongfully convicted - CNNPolitics.”). These statistics truly show how in the United States, there are still people that are wrongfully convicted and aren’t treated fairly in the judicial system. There are countless stories on the news and online everyday that show how unfair many people of colour are treated in the judicial