Wrongful Convictions: The "Perfect" Evidence

In class on Tuesday, we listened to a story talking about wrongful convictions. Wrongful convictions are when there is a crime, and the police find a suspect who didn't actually commit a crime. Instead of realizing that these people may not have committed the crime in the first place, they get them to confess in some way. There have been cases of trickery, lies, or the suspect will give a false confession because they feel as if nothing will happen if they try to fight back.

One story that I found to be interesting was the one that they talked about at the very end of the broadcast. It talked of a 14-year-old boy who had just had his sister killed. He was taken into questioning, where the cops told lies in order to make the boy think that he had actually killed his own sister when he really hadn't. He didn't have his parents with him to support him, either, because they had been told that he was being taken to grief counseling.

It is absolutely terrible that the police would do something so horrible. I don't remember learning that a police's job is to trick 14-year-old boys into believing they killed their own sister. Along with this case, there are just so many other cases where the police tricked people into confessing crimes they didn't commit. I don't think that it is fair that innocent people have to go to jail for things they didn't commit, and yet it is still happening today. Hopefully, today's society can be more efficient in catching the correct perpetrator and knowing when the person they have in question doesn't add up with the evidence they have.