Many people in most parts of the world are facing charges for crimes that they did not commit. Some have been executed innocently due to mistaken identity and errors during case hearings. In most cases, the defendant is not able to prove themselves innocent due to apparent circumstances that link them with the case at hand despite claiming not to be guilty. Nothing hurts more than to be wrongly convicted over a crime that one did not commit. By the year 1992, it was clear to many people that no matter how careful the process was, the court was vulnerable to make mistakes and that is what led to the introduction of The Innocence Project (Savard, 2018). This program is defined as the non-profit legal organization with the mandate of exonerating people who have been wrongly convicted through the usage of DNA testing. This is aimed at reforming the criminal justice system that is also known to make mistakes and on the same hand, help in preventing future injustice (Savard, 2018). Using Joseph Sledge's case, this paper will carefully analyze whom the defendant was wrongly convicted using inaccurate evidence. Joseph Sledge's case took place in the year 1976 to 1978 in North Carolina. Sledge was a 36-year-old man from Georgia who was already serving a four-year sentence in jail. He was convicted of stealing t-shirts in that same year of 1976. According to Ford (2015), Sledge's timing of escaping from prison got from good to worse as he continued with his sentence. All his misfortunes started when he decided to escape from prison, and on the same day he managed to escaped, Josephine Davis and her daughter by the name Ailene were heartlessly murdered the same day in their farmhouse in a nearby county (Ford, 2015). Sledge was soon re-captured, and he was termed as the main suspect in their murder and was later charged. Despite the case being weak as none of the evidence pointed to Sledge as the murderer, the FBI went ahead to say that the hair found on the scene matched Sledge's DNA. The court went ahead to convict him knowing very well that that was not enough evidence to term him as a murderer. Things started getting out of hand for Sledge when two other convicts in the same prison told the court that he had later confessed to them that he had eliminated two whites. Without further investigations, Sledge was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1978 (Hynson, 2015). The defendant lawyers, on the other hand, were not convinced by the decision made. They tried to request for an appeal, but they were only faced with numerous delays. However, in 2012 the hairs used against Sledge which have earlier reported to be missing were found by the county clerk in an envelope. After the lawyers interrogated the two jail informant, they discovered that the claims were false, prompting the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission to intervene. After conducting DNA, it was proved that the hair had no connection with Sledge and that he was not guilty of the crime (Blythe, 2015). The three judges later ruled that Sledge was innocent and should be released. The event happened on January 23 after he had spent four decades in prison despite being innocent. Generally, the Innocence Project works in the sense that if DNA can prove someone to be guilty, then it can also prove their innocence. For Sledge's case, the Innocence Project took 18 months studying the case before it was brought for hearing by the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission (Blythe, 2015).
First of all, the arrest was supposed to take place because the accused had escaped from prison, but he should not have been quickly accused without proper investigations. For this case, there were no thorough investigations since connected Sledge was convicted innocently using cooked evidence. The hair found on the scene could have been of anyone, and the fact that he had escaped on the same day still proves nothing. Sledge's arrest for this case is not of much concern since he was already a convict who had escaped and therefore he could have been arrested. The judges were also quick to convict him without having stronger evidence, and they should not have just relied on other prisoners statements which also had no trace of truth. The other error was to assume that because he escaped the same day they were murdered then, he must be the prime suspect to the crime. He should not have been accused of the crime until evidence pointed him as the first suspect (West, & Meterko, 2015). Therefore further investigations should have been conducted to try and look for other possible suspects in connection to the crime. The FBI also knew that the hair did not match Sledge's hair, but they went ahead to assume that it was close to his. Finally, word of mouth alone from other convicts is also not enough to prove someone guilty since they might be lying (Hynson, 2015). The court was only careless to sentence him to life imprisonment without strong evidence, especially considering that this is a serious case. In conclusion, many people, just like Sledge, continue to suffer in prison for crimes they did not commit just because someone in his line of duty was lazy to conduct thorough investigations. Some have been executed wrongly, and there was no one to defend them or prove their innocence. This is a sad reality that continues in most parts of the world since they are not lucky like Sledge, who was later defended by the Innocence Project team. Just like North Carolina, other cities and countries should take this case as an example and consider creating an Innocence Inquiry Commission.
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References
Blythe, A. (2015). Christine Mumma defends actions as seeking justice for an innocent man. The News & Observer . Retrieved on 3 December 2019, from https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/crime/article25366714.html
Ford, M. (2015). Guilty, Then Proven Innocent. The Atlantic . Retrieved on 3 December 2019, from https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/02/guilty-then-proven-innocent/385313/
Hynson, W. D. (2015). North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission: An Institutional Remedy for Actual Innocence and Wrongful Convictions. NC Cent. L. Rev., 38 , 142.
Savard, M. (2018). What You Should Know About the Innocence Project . Retrieved on 3 December 2019, from https://www.shondaland.com/act/a19045548/the-innocence-project/
West, E., & Meterko, V. (2015). Innocence project: DNA exonerations, 1989-2014: Review of data and findings from the first 25 years. Alb. L. Rev., 79, 717.
