Criminal Justice

1- For your Research Paper, you must complete both Section A and Section B. Please select a case and then watch one movie from Section B and compare and contrast any parallels between the case you selected and the movie you selected.

Section A

1. Choose a case where a person was wrongfully accused and/or convicted. Explain the facts of the case, legally define all charges, explain the outcome, and the racial issues that surrounded the case. Interject your opinion throughout the explanation of the case, however, your opinion must be supported by relevant research.

Section B

Watch one of the following movies and compare and contrast any parallels between the case you selected above and the issues outlined in the movie you selected below.

A. CRASH is a 2004 American drama film produced, directed, and co-written by Paul Haggis that features racial and social tensions in Los Angeles between several families that unknowingly are profoundly connected.

OR

B. JUST MERCY is a 2019 American legal drama film directed by Destin Daniel Cretton and is based on the true story of Bryan Stevenson’s early career as an attorney working to reverse wrongful convictions in Alabama and how he began his organization, the Equal Justice Initiative

2- The essay must be APA format, ARE 5 pages in length in actual content, double-spaced, using a 12-point font with 1-inch margins, and include at least 7 legitimate sources. Keep in mind that this is not an opinion based assignment, however, a researched-based essay. You can use the ASU Library Database system to search articles/newspaper articles. Wikipedia, blogs, websites, and other nefarious sources of dubious credibility are not acceptable sources.

ANSWER

Wrongful Convictions

Wrongful convictions have been a growing concern, although they have existed in the judicial system for the longest time. Wrongful convictions within the United States are occurring at a staggering rate. False confessions have highly led to wrongful convictions of the innocent. One of the well-known wrongful convictions due to false confessions was the New York Central Park Jogger Case. The wrongful convictions have been linked to racial issues and institutionalized racism (Mungan, 2017). The whites’ punitiveness is less likely to be striking among the prosecutors and investigators than the minority groups such as Hispanics and African Americans.

The criminal justice system has strived to adhere to the lawfulness and rightfulness of the law to contribute to society’s greater good. However, this has not always been the case since the human institution’s juries and courts have made mistakes that have costed the lives of suspects and defendants that are wrongly convicted. Many blacks have been found on the other side of the justice system for several crimes. In 1989, a female was raped and violently attacked in Central Park (Beardsley and Teresa, 2017). The crime led to chaos in New York City, with the police under burden to identify accountable people. There were Five black Youths, Yusef Salaam, Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Korey Wise, and Raymond Santana, aged between fourteen and sixteen, who were noticed at the park during that evening.

The five were detained for the criminality and cross-examined. They were put under extreme police interrogation and searching, with four of the youths admitting the crime’s roles. However, they all gave contradicting and conflicting versions of the crime, while none of the DNA signal matched them. Later all of them confessed that they were coerced to offer false statements. However, a serial rapist later admitted to the criminality, and his DNA evidence matched the crime act. The five youths were acquitted after the serial rapist confessed the accounts of the crime.

Due to their minorities, juveniles are likely to give false confessions due to coercion. Over the years, they have been forced to give incriminating statements that led to false confessions. Considerably, they are easy to manipulate. Many Hispanic and African American juveniles have been coerced into offering discriminating statements that greatly differ from the crime scene evidence. The Case of Central Park Five is one of the best-known examples of minority Youth and Law enforcement. One of the great factors that lead to the minority youths’ wrongful convictions is the racial biasness held by prosecutors, police, juries, and defense against the people of color.

From the onset of their arrest, an interrogation through the trials, sentencing, and eventually, amnesty in 2002, the five encountered despotic treatment by varying state authorities. The dynamics of class and race trapped the case. The youths from the beginning were all considered criminals in the eyes of the laws. Considerably, forced confessions were adequate evidence for the four individuals to land in the juvenile system.

Blacks have been overrepresented in every aspect of the criminal justice system, but there is nowhere more than the percentage of recognized wrongful convictions (Gross, Possley, and Stephens, 2017). The petty offenses have criminalized the blacks, completely branding people of color and minorities as criminals. The consequences of wrongful convictions among the blacks have been severe and serious such as humiliation, incarceration, fees, fines, and arrests. Considerably, the high rates of arrests have reinforced black communities’ stereotype at a higher rate than whites.

From most exoneration, a black prisoner serving time for sexual assault or rape is three and a half times more likely to be innocent than the white sexual assault (Johnson, 2020). The main problem results from the great racial disparity that has been a danger of mistaken eyewitness identification. Additionally, innocent black sexual assault defendants have received harsher sentences compared to the whites when convicted. For instance, most of the African American and Hispanic defendants have been convicted due to rape cases. However, there is a clear line that there exists racial biasness with regards to conviction. In the case of the central park five, the Hispanics were more vulnerable due to the prosecutors, interrogators, and police’s perception. Racial disparities have led to patterns of harsh sentencing minority groups, with most minorities being convicted wrongly.

Racial prejudice has continued to affect the United States criminal justice system. Racial minorities’ perception of crime has directed the criminal justice process. Excessive criminalization of the minorities has led millions of juveniles from the minority group suffering from wrongful convictions (Cassell, 2018). For instance, Central Park Five has revealed institutionalized racism that demonized the five boys and privileged Meili. The prosecutors ignored the obvious inconsistencies in the shreds of evidence and coercion used against them.

On the other hand, white victims have broken the rules since they have realized that the enforcement is racially biased. The real rapist in the case of the central five parks was roamed free due to the racial criminalization of minorities and more women victimized. More families have been affected due to institutionalized racism, distracting the interrogators, police, judges, and juries from finding the truths. The investigators ignored the timeline discrepancies and lack of physical evidence linked to the boys.

Section B

The crash is a 2004 American drama film that focuses on social and racial tension in Los Angeles. The film was inspired by a real-life situation where a Porsche was carjacked outside a Boulevard video store. The film differs from other films that are linked to racism. Considerably, rather than categorizing the characters into victims and offenders, the victims of racism are considered racists. Their actions have been shown to stem from misconception and ignorance rather than malicious personality. The film has demonstrated various ethical interactions that make characters that lead to questioning why there are such separation and hatred between varying races. Each storyline indicated how once the race is superior to the other. The crash is a film that pays attention to various main characters that have personal issues. The film includes a racist traffic cop, a politically charged attorney, a victimized store owner, and a detective ready to protect his family (Gallander, 2020).

The crash is all about a series of conflicts and confrontations among a broad cross-section of individuals with race-based perceptions about each other. The exposition has shown how varying true to life encounters have contributed to separation between varying ethnicities and the interconnection between different people. Crash offers interlocking stories of blacks, whites, Iranians, Latinos, Koreans, the rich, poor, criminals, powerless and powerful, who are all defined by racism in one way or another (Putera, 2016). The film has shown how people have accepted resentment and prejudices against members of other groups. For instance, a rich African American couple is humiliated by a racist cop who subjects the couple to a body search.

Both the film and the case have been driven by the daily realities of racial prejudice in society and the criminal justice system. They have explored the contradictions and complexities of oppression, racism, white privilege, and internalized oppression. For instance, the film has indicated how ordinary people from economically and racially diverse backgrounds have accidentally crushed each other for more than 36 hours. The film has tried to show people’s attempts to live their lives evading prejudice and racism but are still trapped within institutionalized and individual racism. The central park’s case has also shown how institutionalized racism has existed within the criminal justice system in the United States. Both have indicated racial division within the American society that has made every stranger a potential danger to the whites.

Crash and the five boys’ cases indicate inconsistencies in applying legal laws that have been applied to people taken to be foreigners. For instance, the store owner who had migrated to the United States and wanted to purchase a gun for his family store fails to get his legal right to purchase a gun. He was prohibited from doing so based on his heavy accent and race. Both are centered on the fact that a person’s ethnic background alone is the reason why their legal rights are forsaken despite, in the long run, justice will win through. For instance, after the five boys’ wrongful conviction, justice is served after the real rapist claims to have committed the crime. However, while the case study tries to show white privilege and white supremacy, which leads to institutionalized racism, Crash attempts to show that everyone is a racist. This is because it tries to show how individuals like to divide themselves.

Conclusion

In summation, both the film and case study of the five boys shows how people in the United States have been fascinated with justice and crime. The perceptions of the law and the criminal justice system have been constructed around the public opinion and portrayal of other persons. However, institutionalized racism exists within the United States’ criminal justice system. Both have offered realistic portrayals of the criminal justice system and racism within the United States.

References

Beardsley, K., & Teresa, C. (2017). The Journey from” Just Us” to Some” Justice”: Ideology and Advocacy, the New York Amsterdam News, and the Central Park Jogger Story. American Periodicals: A Journal of History & Criticism, 27(2), 165-179.

Blood, K. (2020). Case Studies of Three Wrongful Convictions.

Cassell, P. G. (2018). Overstating America’s Wrongful Conviction Rate: Reassessing the Conventional Wisdom about the Prevalence of Wrongful Convictions. Ariz. L. Rev., 60, 815.

Gallander, R. (2020). The Wreckage of Racism: Crash Film Analysis. Angelo State University Social Sciences Research Journal, 8.

Gross, S. R., Possley, M., & Stephens, K. (2017). Race and wrongful convictions in the United States.

Johnson, M. B. (2020). Wrongful Conviction in Sexual Assault: Stranger Rape, Acquaintance Rape, and Intra-familial Child Sexual Assaults. Oxford University Press, USA.

Mungan, M. C. (2017). Wrongful convictions, deterrence, and stigma dilution. Supreme Court Economic Review, 25(1), 199-216.

PUTERA, S. P. (2016). AN ANALYSIS OF THE CROSS-CULTURAL IMMIGRANT CONFLICTS IN PAUL HAGGIS’MOVIE” CRASH” (Doctoral dissertation, University of Muhammadiyah Malang).