Increased cases of wrongly convicted persons in the United States led to the creation of an innocence project in the early 1990s. Hundreds of people in the United States have spent decades in prison for wrongful conviction by the US Criminal Judicial System. Increases cases of wrongful convictions are contributed by race factor, misidentification by an eye witness, misconduct of the courtroom, and police misconduct. In the 20th century, many cases of misconduct in the judicial system were reported, which targeted the minority and people of color. Among people exonerated by the project, the majority are blacks. Innocence project was founded by Peter Neufeld and Scheck, to reform the criminal justice system by introducing Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) testing. The paper will focus on the case of Phillip Bivens 30 years in prison for misidentification.
Phillip Bivens spent 30 years in Mississippi prison for a wrongful conviction of murder and rape of a woman in her Forrest County on May 4, 1979 (" The Cases — Phillip Bivens”) . After the formation of the innocence project, the case of Phillip Bivens was revealed where he was found innocent and released in 2010. Biven was the second person to be exonerated by the innocence project. The case was misrepresentation from every witness, a four-year-old son who described the person who raped and killed her mother. The case involved three suspects, Larry Ruffin, Philip Bivens, and Bobby Ray Dixon. During the trial, the police forced the three men to give confession threatening them of the death penalty ( Robertson, 2010) . Although the confession given by the suspect was inconsistent and factually inaccurate, the prosecution used it as evidence. Dixon and Bivens pleaded guilty in exchange for a life sentence.
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In 2010, lawyers for the three suspects Innocence Project New Orleans (IPNO) and co-counsel Rob McDuff revisited the case with DNA testing. The testing involved the performance of semen, which was left on the body of the victim by the offender. The DNA profile was run through FBSs and DNA databases to identify the perpetrator. The results of the DNA excluded the three men who were convicted of rape and murder. Circuit Judge Robert Helfrich ordered for exoneration of Philip Bivens on December 14, 2010. Lawyers of the three victims filed a federal wrongful conviction lawsuit in 2013 against Forest county law enforcement for beating and threatening Bivens and the other two men to confess to a crime (“ The Cases — Phillip Bivens”) . Unfortunately, Biven passed away in 2014 before he could get compensation.
The wrongful conviction of Philip Bivens resulted from eye witness mistakes and misconduct by the police. The description given by the four-year-old victim was contradicting and not enough to convict the three men. The child was too young, and his testimony was not supposed to be used as evidence in the court of law ( Robertson, 2010) . According to Smith & Hattery (2011), the innocence project had exonerated 39 people by 2010 who were victims of misidentification by eye witnesses. Misconduct of the police when gathering evidence contributed to the wrongful conviction of Bivens. The police used force by beating and threatening the suspects with the death penalty, a threat that made them plead guilty of rape and murder. Research conducted by Donovan& Klahm (2018) shows that police misconduct influenced by political and racial consideration contributed to the wrongful conviction and capital punishments of many innocent people. Were it not for the misconduct of the police, Bivens and his colleagues could not have spent half of their life-time in prison for the mistake they never committed.
In summary, the innocence project has helped in the exoneration of hundreds of innocent people who were wrongfully convicted. After his releases, Philip Bivens explained the psychological trauma caused by wrongful convictions and a waste of precious time and job. Biven lost his valuable career as a gardener, fisherman, and mentor for a mistake he never committed. After spending 30 years in prison, it becomes difficult to reintegrate into the community, as evidenced by the death of Bivens four years later after exoneration.
References
Donovan, K. M., & Klahm IV, C. F. (2018). How priming innocence influences public opinion on police misconduct and false convictions: a research note. Criminal Justice Review , 43 (2), 174-185. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0734016817707809
The Cases — Phillip Bivens. Innocence Project . Retrieved 17 February 2020, from https://www.innocenceproject.org/cases/phillip-bivens/.
Robertson, C. (2010). 30 Years Later, Freedom in a Case With Tragedy for All Involved . Nytimes.com. Retrieved 17 February 2020, from https://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/17/us/17exonerate.html.
Smith, E., & Hattery, A. J. (2011). Race, wrongful conviction & exoneration. Journal of African American Studies , 15 (1), 74-94. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12111-010-9130-5
