Exoneration

Exoneration is when a person is freed from being guilty and proven innocent. In class we listened to as story about a group of teenage boys who were found guilty for a really bad crime, but later were actually proven innocent. The video we watched showed how ineffective and untrustworthy prosecution can be with evidence such as eye witnesses, compared to how effective DNA evidence is in finding the real criminals that committed the crimes.

The recording we listened to was a story about 4 black teenage bots who were wrongfully convicted of the murder of a white women in a black neighborhood. The boys served 15 years in prison for this crime. The police investigators involved in the case basically framed the boys to admit they did the crime when they truly never did. Many years later the case was brought back into the light now being able to test DNA evidence and found that the boys were innocent and then exonerated. The DNA evidence allowed the police to find the real murderers, who were two different men.

This story was really crazy to hear. I was surprised on how much under the table things go on at times with crimes like convincing suspects to confess to a crime they did not do making them think that they will be better of or be able to see their family. As well lots of other investigating procedures that are not always done properly contribute to wrongful convictions.