The US justice system continues to record increased numbers of exonerations. The National Registry of Exonerations dating back into the 1960s provides a figure of above 150 cases of individuals who were convicted wrongly with majority spending years in the penitentiary system before being exonerated. According to Findley & Scott (2006), the rise in numbers of exonerated cases in the US has been consistent since the 1980s with the figure reaching above 2000 individuals. The leading reason for such higher exoneration numbers has been blamed on the accountability trends that have declined within the prosecutorial offices across the US (Findley & Scott, 2006).
Steven Allan Avery’s case is one such case that saw an innocent suspect wrongfully convicted and serving term before being exonerated after 18 years. Avery was wrongfully convicted for the rape of Penny Ann Beerntsen in along Lake Michigan, Wisconsin (Nirider, Tepfer, & Drizin, 2012). The Steven Avery conviction solely relied on eye-witness accounts despite Avery presenting alibi in court for cross-examination (Krieger, 2011). It was until 2002 when DNA testing exonerated Avery and a man Gregory Allen was implicated in the event. It is such circumstantial evidence that has seen several jurisdictions including Wisconsin review their eyewitness protocol to help limit cases of wrongful convictions.
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The case against Steve Avery was exonerated because it was a wrongful conviction following eyewitness testimony. Increasing eyewitness reliability would call on the prosecutorial offices to reduce the time of testimony and identification for purposes of increasing accuracy. Police officers who plant evidence and those prosecutors who withhold evidence to deliberately influence case outcomes should be prosecuted and suspended for interfering with a judicial process (Nirider, Tepfer, & Drizin, 2012). The Steve Avery case was finally determined through scientific processes of DNA evidence. The remedies to wrongful convictions include an integrated prosecutorial process that involves several measures including witness statement, testimony, DNA evidence, and timely determination of cases.
References
Findley, K. A., & Scott, M. S. (2006). Multiple Dimensions of Tunnel Vision in Criminal Cases, The. Wis. L. Rev. , 291.
Krieger, S. A. (2011). Why our justice system convicts innocent people, and the challenges faced by innocence projects trying to exonerate them. New Criminal Law Review: In International and Interdisciplinary Journal , 14 (3), 333-402.
Nirider, L. H., Tepfer, J. A., & Drizin, S. A. (2012). Combating Contamination in Confession Cases . Retrieved from http://www.law.northwestern.edu/legalclinic/wrongfulconvictionsyouth/resources/publications/documents/CombatingContamination.pdf
