Sociology 3312A/B Final: Wrongfully Convicted Final Exam
11 Dec 2017
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Factual innocence: a person is factually innocent if they did not commit the crime they were charged/convicted of, different from "legal innocence" -technical term. Wc factors: race, gender, class, age, mental illness/disability, forensic evidence, circumstantial evidence, falsified evidence, hidden/withheld evidence, prior record, tunnel vision, eyewitness testimony. Informants - plea deals for testimony against defendant - rewards for information: pre-trial publicity of case, judge"s opinion of case/bias, bias of lawyer - want to win case, bias of police - need a conviction, jailhouse informants. 2: marginalization, wrong time/wrong place, pressure on police to convict, ability to afford good defense lawyer, no pre-trial, poor evidence collection, convicting the most plausible suspect - should be guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, noble cause. Notorious cases: dreyfus case french captain charged with selling military secrets to germans in oct 1894. He was wealthy, ambitious and unpopular in the war office which prepared a secret document that degraded him.
