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7 JIJIS 75 (2007)
An Explanation of a Wrongful Death Sentence from Georgia

handle is hein.journals/jijis7 and id is 83 raw text is: AN EXPLANATION OF A WRONGFUL DEATH SENTENCE FROM GEORGIA Rudolph Alexander, Jr. Ohio State University Abstract Wrongful convictions typically signify to many individuals situations in which convicted persons were exonerated based on DNA, the discovery of untruthful testimony, or suppressed evidence. Generally, the persons responsible for wrongful convictions are prosecutors, law enforcement officers, and witnesses. On some occasions, defense attorneys facilitate wrongful convictions through inadequate representation due to a lack of interest, inexperience, or little or no investigation. Many citizens will consider people to have been wrongfully convicted only if they have been completely exonerated or found to be factually innocent. Yet, wrongful convictions can occur as a result of defense attorneys deliberately misrepresenting defendants in courtrooms and/or trial judges who are corrupt or racist. This article discusses an instance of wrongful conviction in the author's life that resulted from intentional legal misrepresentation by defense attorneys and a racist judge. Further, this article discusses why, for the most part, such practices go uncorrected and unacknowledged. An Explanation of a Wrongful Death Sentence from Georgia n the last few years, the issue of wrongful convictions has become increasingly interesting to criminal justice professionals, journalism students, and social justice advocates (Huff, 2004; Luna, 2005; Medwed, 2005; Monroe, 2006; Siegel, 2005). As stated by Luna (2005), wrongful convictions occur due to mistaken identity, false confessions, or prosecutorial and police misconduct. Further, some wrongful convictions occur because the defense attorneys are either inexperienced in capital cases, fail to investigate a case properly (Liptak, 2006), or are under the influence of substances during the trial (Gettleman, 2001). Wrongful convictions typically involve cases in which persons who were factually innocent were convicted. For instance, some prisoners have been freed from sexual assault convictions when the DNA in the case failed to support them as the perpetrator (Alexander, 2006; New York Times, 2006; Levy, 2006; Williams, 2006). In other cases, however, legal corruption may facilitate wrongful convictions, although these cases are more difficult to discern or acknowledge. Recently, the public was able to witness the kind of legal corruption that can help lead to wrongful convictions when an appellate attorney in North Carolina admitted that he intentionally allowed a death row prisoner's appeal time to lapse because he believed that this prisoner deserved to die (Rimer, 2000; Thompson, 2000). Additionally, corrupt judges may facilitate wrongful convictions. In 2007, a New York divorce court judge was sentenced to 3 to 10 years in prison for fixing divorce cases (Brick, 2007). In writing Direct correspondence to alexander.2@osu.edu © 2007 by the author, published here by permission The Journal of the Institute of Justice & International Studies Vol 7

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