The Innocence Project works to uncover the truth and overturn wrongful convictions. In April, The Innocence Files was released on Netflix. This documentary series tells the stories of wrongfully convicted people across the United States. The series is broken into three parts: “The Prosecution,” “The Witness,” and “The Evidence.” These parts symbolize the parts of a trial where the prosecutor uses witnesses and evidence to prove to the jury that the defendant committed the crime(s). As a disclaimer, these episodes may include some trigger topics, such as sexual assault and murder. Viewer discretion is advised.
I’m currently taking a criminology course. We were learning about wrongful convictions when I realized that The Innocence Files related well to that week’s lecture. It’s a horrific thing to learn that the criminal justice system—the very system designed to protect its citizens—has caused so much harm. In this field, the greatest nightmare is sentencing an innocent person, but it happens more than one may think. A lot of factors contribute to this, including eyewitness misidentification, junk science, false confessions, and more. Eyewitness misidentification is the single greatest cause of wrongful convictions nationwide, and the series does a great job of portraying the damage it causes. In one of the cases, a rape victim identified her assailant who was presumed to be connected to other attacks. He spent 27 years behind bars after being convicted at 18 years old, and finally walked free on his 46th birthday.
To date, 700 people have been exonerated in cases where mistaken identification was a contributing factor. Additionally in 2018, there were 151 exonerations. Collectively, those wrongly accused lost 1,609 years in prison. In a way, the system is failing the people it promised to protect. This brings up the question of what the purpose of the criminal justice system is; should it be rehabilitation or criminalization? If there are so many people wrongfully placed in prison, shouldn’t there at least be a rehabilitation program? Surely that’s better than letting them stay locked up.
The Innocence Files is truly an interesting documentary that tells the stories of people who had their lives ripped from them. It gets you thinking about what’s wrong with the criminal justice system, and how so many wrongfully convicted people are still in the system. What if the Innocence Project didn’t exist? Where would they be then? These thought-provoking and emotional feature episodes are enough to get your blood boiling over the blatant injustice in the criminal field. These people spent decades of their life behind bars, a time they’ll never get back. They were silenced, and their pleas of innocence were overlooked. Now that they’ve finally regained their voice, we can at least stop and listen to their stories. Hopefully, there won’t be any more.