Kalief Browder: Wrongful Conviction Report

“Cherish your freedom, don’t take it for granted, and enjoy every day you’ve got,” Rafael Madrigal, an exoneree who spent nine years in prison for an attempted murder he did not commit, once said upon his release. Although Madrigal did not express public hatred or anger after being released from prison, the time taken from his life still haunts him nine years later. Madrigal’s case further justifies the argument that wrongful conviction can happen to anyone, and affect anyone’s life. With the belief that our law system is so perfect and structured, it is sometimes hard to believe cases such as Madrigal’s. By irrational standards, we have been taught that our law system here in

America is fair and ideal as is. The truth; our law system is much more harmful and prejudiced than revealed to the public eye. Possibly the most significant deficiency within the system, wrongful convictions are a result of various issues within jurors, prosecutors, and the system as a whole. What's worse, wrongful convictions are often overlooked in news and media portrayal. The cases we see in the media are sugar coated and elaborated to the point where they are simply “good news stories.” This means they are solely for entertainment purposes and are not completely truthful. Furthermore, wrongful convictions are much more common than observed by the public. An article by Huffington Post approximated the values, “There's no clear data on how many innocent people have been wrongfully convicted. The Innocence Project, citing multiple studies, estimates from 2 percent to 5 percent of prisoners are actually innocent. The U.S., which leads the world in incarceration of its citizens, has approximately 2 million people behind bars.” In other words, America has a great number of innocent people behind bars, yet little reform is being made on this grievance. Another article by Newsweek stated that “Since 1973, 144 people on death row have been exonerated.” Wrongfully convicted persons not only lose their lives figuratively, but are threatened by the chance of literally being sentenced to death. With such dangerous and severe punishments implemented in our system, now is the time to change these horrifying statistics.
Previously, I had known about wrongful convictions, but never looked into them at all; when I stumbled across an article sharing the traumatic story of Kalief Browder, my interest in the subject was piqued and I wanted to learn more about this injustice.

Kalief Browder was a sixteen year old boy who was wrongfully accused of stealing a backpack. He spent three years in solitary confinement on Rikers Island before committing suicide in 2015. Kalief’s story truly upset me, and I wanted to learn why this had happened, and what I could possibly do to ensure this never happens again in the future. My first interests within wrongful conviction were racial bias, reform, and reparation. Questions formed in my mind such as: Why is there not better training towards prosecutors? How common are wrongful convictions? What is being done to combat this grievance? How are exonerees given the resources, if any, to restart their lives? And more specifically, what type of apology, if any, is made? I found it sickening that our law system is not doing anything substantial to shut down this issue. Therefore, I decided to pick wrongful conviction as my topic, and began my research. I read many articles, magazines, and a book about wrongful conviction. Also, I interviewed Colin Bowen, a criminal defense attorney in Oakland, California, and Rhonda Donato, a former attorney for the Innocence Project in Northern California. Despite a few nuances, such as Donato having to postpone our interview, both characters had much to say and much information about wrongful conviction. Through this project, I hope to share with the class the heartbreaking truth behind wrongful convictions, and inspire them to help make a difference. Wrongful convictions are brought about by many many different flaws in our criminal justice system, primarily erroneous eyewitness testimony, and racial stereotyping and systemic bias in the law enforcement

community.
A common cause of wrongful conviction is eyewitness testimony, which is so often incorrect or falsely altered that it has become an insufficient form of evidence in many cases. As criminal defense attorney Colin Bowen stated, “On the one hand, [causes of wrongful conviction] can range from poor eyewitness identification or poor collection of evidence. Eyewitness identification, if you read the literature, it’s probably some of the most scary types of cases because people are not lying. They believe that that’s the person, that they’re wrong” (Bowen Interview). Many people, out of fear, subconsciousness, or anger do not tell the complete truth in court. However, as Bowen explained, many people believe their accusations are truthful because of how quick their interactions with the defendant were. Sometimes the interactions can be less than a minute long, which proves that trusting eyewitness identification without any other evidence is a terrible mistake our lawyers, attorneys, judges, and judicial committees need to be aware of. “Findings from basic psychological research and neuroscience studies indicate that memory is a reconstructive process that is susceptible to distortion. In the courtroom, even minor memory distortions can have severe consequences that are in part driven by common misunderstandings about memory” (US National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health Article). Memory alone is much too insufficient to charge someone with a crime without supporting evidence; memory almost inevitably leads to error. One example of this inaccuracy is the case of Julius Earl Ruffin, “Julius Earl Ruffin knows all too well how inaccurate eyewitness identification can be. On May 3, 1982, in a Norfolk, Va. circuit court, the 29-year-old was convicted of a rape that he did not commit and was sentenced to five life sentences. The case rested solely on the testimony of the victim, Ann Meng, a young mother of three who confidently pointed to Ruffin as her assailant. Twenty-one years would pass before Ruffin was able to prove his innocence with DNA evidence” (ABC News Article). This case proves how one statement from an eyewitness can drastically change someone's life forever. Besides a specific intention to have someone put behind bars, many citizens truly think they have the right person, but the encounter was so quick they really had no way of telling. As far as specific reasons behind false eyewitness testimony confessions, many people will lie out of fear for themselves or loved ones, out of anger, or wanting to get revenge, and personal bias they have with the defendant.
One of the reasons eyewitness testimony is unreliable is racial bias, which may affect jurors judgment in ways they are not even aware. Eyewitness testimony is only one example of racial stereotyping in our legal structure. Some of the problem and explanation of wrongful convictions has to do with the racist heritage that has been so pervasive in our society for hundreds of years.The statistics speak for themselves, “African Americans are only 13% of the American population but a majority of innocent defendants wrongfully convicted of crimes and later exonerated. They constitute 47% of the 1,900 exonerations listed in the National Registry of Exonerations (as of October 2016), and the great majority of more than 1,800 additional innocent defendants who were framed and convicted of crimes in 15 large-scale police scandals” (Samuel R. Gross of Umich Law Article). Even though African Americans are arguably the largest minority group in America, they become the vast majority when it comes to issues of wrongful conviction cases. Upon reading the words of Samuel R. Gross, I could not help but wonder what the reasons behind this racial bias are. I found that “the explanations for these racial disparities range from deliberate racial stereotyping — such as the perception of jurors and law enforcement that African-Americans are more ‘prone to violence’ — to unconscious racism. For example, witnesses are far more likely to misidentify perpetrators of different races from their own, even if they hold no conscious racial prejudices” (American Civil Liberties Union Article). Here we see how racial bias can be present throughout many different professionals in the criminal justice system, ranging from “jurors and law enforcement” to “witnesses.” An article by the American Civil Liberties Union further broadens this issue: “As the brief recounts, African-American defendants are more likely to be wrongfully convicted of crimes punishable by death. . . The majority of nationwide death row exonerations are all also disproportionately people of color.” Almost half of the 1,900 exonerates mentioned in the article from 2016 were African American. These statistics prove that race plays a huge role in wrongful conviction, and in our criminal justice system as a whole. We need better training so professionals working in our law system are completely fair minded towards all defendants, regardless of their background or color of their skin. Besides racial bias, there are other forms of bias present in our criminal justice system.

To end wrongful convictions for good, we must all get involved. Everyone can do their part, whether this means staging a protest, or simply donating to the Innocence Project or similar organizations. Donato voiced her opinions on how we can get more people involved in preventing this injustice: “I think the best way to educate people about it is just hearing exonerates stories, which is much more powerful than having them go to some forum, or watch a documentary, or a news show. I think that is one of the best ways. You know, to hear: he was sixteen. He was going to be going to USC on a college scholarship, and got convicted wrongfully of rape. When you hear his story, it's really powerful. I mean, I think that's what makes people want to make the change” (Donato Interview). As Donato stated, we need to educate those around us on this issue. We need to make people sympathize and relate to the victims of wrongful conviction. This is the best way we can educate people on this grievance. Together, we can stop this injustice.
Unfortunately, various issues in our law system influence wrongful convictions, varying from issues of race, to eyewitness testimony, and finally to systemic bias. As we have seen, there are many different factors within these topics that further influence this injustice. Our criminal justice system favors many social groups, predominantly white, wealthy males over the minorities, significantly poorer African American, and Latino members of the community. Currently, innocent people’s lives are being taken away from them as a result of injustice in our legal system. The victims of wrongful conviction have no warning, no time to prepare. They are taken from their homes, taken from their loved ones, taken from their friends and essentially taken from the lives they happily lived, and the next victim could be anybody! We have to be the generation to make change. We have to put ourselves into the shoes of someone who has been wrongfully convicted. Imagine having your whole life taken from you on the account of something you did not do. Wrongful convictions challenge the ideals of equality and justice for all that our legal system in America is known for. The incorporation of Innocence reform into the legal system will only benefit those working in the system, as well as those affected by the injustices of our current system.