Several Legal Issues
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1. In 2004, the US Congress passed legislation which encouraged all states to allow post-trial DNA tests and also provided funding for such tests (Handwerk, 2005). Since many convicts are on death row 15 to 20 years after they have been condemned to death, many were convicted before DNA typing was routinely available, and wasn't as reliable as it is today. Half of the states in the US now allow DNA testing even once the appeals process has been exhausted. In the Texas Department of Public Safety, the agency's crime lab has processed 49 such cases and in a significant percentage of cases, the inmates have been exonerated. In nine cases the inmates were excluded as donors of the samples left at the crime scene, and in eight cases the results were inconclusive. Although these cases attract a lot of attention, authorities warn that there is a lot of variability in DNA collection and handling techniques and mistakes are made in the laboratory, as well as samples being mishandled deliberately - particularly in pretrial samples (Handwerk, 2005). This means results are not always 100 percent reliable - it all depends on who is handling the samples and performing the tests, and on how and when the samples are collected. Rob Warden director of the Center on Wrongful Conviction at Northwestern University School of Law in Chicago insists that "the most fundamental reform would be to establish reliable scientific procedures in crime labs. They should be independent of law enf
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were 16,204 murders and non-negligent manslaughters in 2002 (Crime, 2006). Murder and non-negligent manslaughter are defined as "the wilful (non-negligent) killing of one human being by another" in the FBI crime index. The classification is based solely on the police investigation and not on the "determination of any court, medical examiner, coroner, jury or other judicial body." It does not include deaths by accident, suicide, negligence, justifiable homicides or attempted murders. This was a decrease of 33.9 percent since 1993. Eighty-eight percent of these crimes occurred in Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSA), 4.4 percent fell outside MSAs and 3.2 percent occurred in rural areas. Nineteen percent occurred in the Northeast, 22.6 percent in the Midwest, 43.1 percent in the South, and 22.8 percent were in the West.
Seventy-seven percent of murder victims were male, 38.7 percent were White and 48.5 were Black (Crime, 2006). Ninety percent of offenders were male. Seventy-one percent used a firearm, and 13.4 percent used knives or cutting instruments. Sixty-four of these cases were cleared, meaning either by arrest or by exceptional means (beyond the control of law enforcement). Nationwide, there were 14,158 arrests f
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Approximate Word count = 1606
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)
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