When determining the characteristics of the accused, under the totality of circumstances The Second Circuit analysis the accused individual experience, background, age, education and intelligence. Green v. Scully, 850 F.2d 901 (2d Cir. 1988). In Green, the court ruled Green’s confession as voluntary. Id. at 894. The court describes Green’s charter: a twenty-three-year-old who had familiarity with the criminal system, street-smart with above average intelligence. Id. at 902. Moreover, in Ortiz, the court ruled Ortiz’s confession was voluntary. Ortiz v. Kelly, 687 F.Supp. 64 (E.D.N.Y 1988). The court describes Ortiz characteristics as an adult familiar with the criminal system, had the capacity to reason, think, and be at his own will. Id. at 66. Therefore, Ortiz’s characteristics did not impair his confession. Id. However, the court in Lewis held that Lewis conviction for bank robbery might have been coerced into an involuntary confession. Lewis v. Henderson, 520 F.2d 896 (2d Cir. 1975). The court used the combination of Lewis’ s …show more content…
age (twenty-two), low education, continuous interrogation, (about thirty-eight hours) and deprived communication might prove that his confession was obtained by mental coercion. Id. at 897. Likewise, in Quartararo, the court ruled Quartararo confession was involuntary. The court took into consideration that the defendant was fifteen at the time of interrogation, had no experience with the criminal system was emotional, nervous, and crying. (458-459). In this case, Emma Kendal’s characteristics are similar to the defendants’ in Green and Ortiz.
Like in Green and Ortiz, Kendal is an adult, twenty-five-years-old, and with some higher education, three semesters of college. Additionally, just as in Green and Ortiz, Kendal has been arrested before. However, unlike Green and Ortiz, where the defendants’ were involved in the criminal system on similar accounts, Kendal’s prior arrest was at a rally protesting the Iraq war. Like in Quartararo, Kendal began to cry during interrogation. (459)In Ortiz, the court found that Ortiz was not under the influence of intoxicating substance during interrogation; however, the court may find Kendal under the influence because she seemed “kind of dazed,” was sleep with slow speech. Therefore, unless it is found that she was intoxicated at the time of interrogation, the court is likely to rule Kendal’s characteristics do not lead to an involuntary
confession.
Arizona was not necessary to the decision. Justice Stevens both concurred and dissented in part of the judgments. Stevens claimed that recording the confession doesn’t mean it is involuntary or that it doesn’t follow the Due Process Clause. Stevens believed that Connelly’s incompetence to stand trial meant he could have been incompetent to waive his rights. Justices Brennan and Marshall dissented and also believed that Connelly’s mental state was a reasonable factor in determining the validity of his waiving of rights. They thought that a confession given by a defendant who is mentally ill is one not given under a clear state of mind and is not voluntary. Without his confession, officers would have never obtained valid evidence to convict him of murder. Due process requires independent collection of evidence that would contribute to a conviction. Since there was no police misconduct, the evidence gathered had to be because of Connelly’s free, voluntary, confession but he was not able to make an intellectual decision at that
Application/Analysis: While using a previous case DePasquale v. State 757.1988, that court held in this case that the defendant was not entrapped when he robbed that undercover female decoy. The court held that the officers committed no misconduct, they also put five factors that show that Miller intended to steal from the decoy. The fact that Mill asked Officer Leavitt for money first and after Leavitt told him no; Miller took it upon himself to take the money away. This act was enough to show Miller intentionally committed larceny, the court held that Miller was not
Robinson trial; (2) prejustice and its effects on the processes of the law and society; (3)
There are certain standards that the courts use to determine competency. In order to find the accused competent, a court should find out by a preponderance of evidence that the defendant has remarkable ability to consult with his lawyer with a reasonable degree of rational indulgence. The def...
``In criminal law, confession evidence is a prosecutor’s most potent weapon’’ (Kassin, 1997)—“the ‘queen of proofs’ in the law” (Brooks, 2000). Regardless of when in the legal process they occur, statements of confession often provide the most incriminating form of evidence and have been shown to significantly increase the rate of conviction. Legal scholars even argue that a defendant’s confession may be the sole piece of evidence considered during a trial and often guides jurors’ perception of the case (McCormick, 1972). The admission of a false confession can be the deciding point between a suspect’s freedom and their death sentence. To this end, research and analysis of the false confessions-filled Norfolk Four case reveals the drastic and controversial measures that the prosecuting team will take to provoke a confession, be it true or false.
In determining which crime theory is most applicable to the Andrea Yates murder case, one must establish a position on her guilt or innocence. If one agrees that the original 2001 verdict of guilty is correct then the Classical theory would best apply. Beccaria’s Classical theory asserts that people think before they proceed with criminal acts. When one commits a crime, it is because the individual decided it would be advantageous to do so, when one acts without benefit of effective punishment (Pratt, 2008). However, if one agrees with the 2006 verdict of not guilty by reason o...
Even those who should have a clear sense of the an interrogation, fail to see the coercion brought upon the suspect that might lead to a false confession, and once a confession has been made, false or true, detectives or police terminates their investigation that could have found potential evidence to exonerate them. Once a confession is obtained, police tend to ‘‘close’’ cases as solved and refuse to investigate other sources of evidence (Leo and Liu) which is why such a high number of innocent people still remain behind bars. Across samples, police-induced false confessions were evident in between 15 and 25% in cases, making it one of the likely leading causes of wrongful conviction (Leo and Liu), but still juries disregard this evidence! Unfortunately, more cases like Rivers are out there. According to the Washington Post, the National Registry ha logged 1,733 exonerating cases of false confession. In one case, a man by the name of Ricky Jackson spent four decades for a crime he did not commit, only to be exonerated by DNA evidence after 40 years. To emphasize, few states, if any at all, courts provides information to the jury regarding how to assess voluntariness, nor do
The act of interrogation has been around for thousands of years. From the Punic Wars to the war in Iraq, interrogating criminals, prisoners or military officers in order to receive advantageous information has been regularly used. These interrogation techniques can range from physical pain to emotional distress. Hitting an individual with a whip while they hang from a ceiling or excessively questioning them may seem like an ideal way to get them to reveal something, but in reality it is ineffective and . This is because even the most enduring individual can be made to admit anything under excruciating circumstances. In the Fifth Amendment of the Bill of Rights there is a provision (“no person shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself” ) which reflects a time-honored common principle that no person is bound to betray him or herself or can be forced to give incriminating evidence. This ideology of self-incrimination has been challenged heavily over the past s...
“ ….Judgments, right or wrong. This concern with concepts such as finality, jurisdiction, and the balance of powers may sound technical, lawyerly, and highly abstract. But so is the criminal justice system….Law must provide simple answers: innocence or guilt, freedom or imprisonment, life or death.” (Baude, 21).
One of the main factors in wrongful convictions, tunnel vision, has been recognized by psychologist as a human tendency to quickly convict a suspect so that society feels safe. Although tunnel vision is seen as a natural instinct it can convict innocent individuals and weaken the criminal justice system . Jerome Frank, a judge in the United States Circuit Court of Appeals explored the causes of wrongful convictions and noted that in 36 cases tunnel vision was a significant factor in the conviction of innocent individuals. As demonstrated, tunnel vision is a prevalent factor and may affect cases resulting in judges and juries convicting wrong suspects. However, the human tendency towards tunnel vision is a distinctive feature of an individuals psychological characteristics. Psychologist view tunnel vision as the product of cognitive biases. These natural biases explain why tunnel vision is common even amongst respected legal enforcers and honest justice systems. Although tunnel vision is a common natural tendency, it can be altered and lead to the conviction of innocent individuals.In situations when a high profile case is
Thus, the judge may know little more about the case than the facts necessary to support a guilty plea. When decision makers are faced with incomplete information and the predictions they are required to make are uncertain, defendant characteristics, such as the race of the offender is used to determine how dangerous they will be when out roaming in the streets. This may skew their decision and give partial sentencing verdicts.
There is no way to measure how everyday people of the jury compartmentalize the information given to them. By disregarding information, does it work in favor of justice or does it highlight a forbidden topic. Using a jury trial and the disregarding of evidence played a key role in the OJ Simpson case that began in 1994 (Jasanoff: 714). Just after a year of his acquittal of the first case, he became the defendant of a civil suit placed by the relatives of the victims. When asking juries to disregard statements and evidence can change their decision-making abilities, especially if the evidence directly links the alleged criminal to the crime as it did arguably in OJ Simpson’s case. During this trial, the defense tried to highlight and find errors in the Los Angeles Police Department’s procedures for collective and transporting evidence (Jasanoff: 715). The evidence, which was once connected to the trial, was now inspected to establish both its validity and reliability. The outside influence of the evidence played a role in the decision, which included the credentials of the lab and their procedures. In sum, the jury’s roles in legal proceedings emphasize the influence of the everyday nature in the law. In these cases, the jury has much more control on the case rather than the law controlling their
Any of these reforms, if they had been done during Hayes’s and Matthews’s cases, could have prevented their wrongful convictions concerning the murder. Between interrogation reform and eyewitness reform, any change in the direction of validating what actually occurred or making sure information was presented in an unbiased manner would have shown great differences in what happened to these two men. These two individuals, wrongly convicted due to two of the six main faults in the process, are now part of 16 exonerated cases from the Innocence project that involved two people accused of a single crime.
In recent years, there have been many law cases that have influenced the world of sports. One case that had a direct impact on the sport of baseball was a case called Gionfriddo vs. Major League Baseball. In 2001, four former Major League Baseball players who played in the Major leagues between 1932 and 1948, Pete Coscarart, Dolph Camilli, Frankie Crosetti, and Al Gionfriddo filed suit against Major League Baseball (MLB), for violating their common law and statutory right of publicity by publishing data, statistics, photographs and video depictions of the players without their permission or compensation. This information was made available publicly through MLB’s website. The purpose of this case was to determine whether the published information constituted “commercial speech” under the First Amendment, entitling it to a reduced level
Therefore, under these ethical standards, prosecutors cannot file charges if there is not enough evidence to support a conviction, they also do not file if it is not in the public interest to do so. This is what makes the possibilities limitless; however, three key factors also play a part in determining which cases to prosecute. If prosecutors follow these three factors in determining cases then the contradiction of limitless discretion and high ethical standards should be remedied for others. These are factors that should be followed are as followed: the seriousness and nature of the offense, the offender’s culpability, and the likelihood of being able to obtain a conviction at a trial. “Ethical conduct, then, must be the core of the prosecutor’s role in the criminal justice system” (Hemmens, Brody, & Spohn, 2013). Therefore, even though prosecutors have almost limitless discretion in their decisions, they still must