Wrongful Conviction

Wrongful Conviction

Historical Background

Believe it or not, many people who are convicted of a crime and end up in prison were falsely accused. Although the American criminal justice system works in most cases, not all juries get things right, and the consequences can be tragic. An innocent party pays the price for something he or she did not do, while the guilty party roams free. The best way to avoid such an unjust result and ensure the proper outcome when faced with criminal convictions is to immediately seek counsel from the best criminal defense attorneys available. Skilled and knowledgeable defense lawyers know their way around the criminal justice system and can navigate through the complex procedures to ensure the fairest possible conclusion.

Crime, defined as offenses against public law and punishable under that law, is a creation of government. Many actions currently defined as crimes were illegal before the advent of criminal law, but were offenses against private law; successful prosecution resulted in victim compensation. By designating an act to be a crime, the state replaces the victim as the focal concern of the legal system which has a number of very significant ramifications. First, making the victim whole through restitution ceases to be a primary concern of the law. As a consequence of replacing restitution with retribution victims often lose much of their incentive to seek justice and to cooperate with the legal system. Second, the legal code comes to be increasingly populated by victimless crimes, understood as crimes for which there is no complaining victim. Examples include drinking alcohol (under prohibition), smoking marijuana, or engaging in certain sexual activities with a willing partner.

Some libertarians believe that the category of crime should be replaced in its entirety by an alternative category, intentional tort, which focuses entirely on the victim. Others believe that the state should criminalize only those acts that involve harm to others. All argue that victimless crimes should be decriminalized.

The history of Anglo-Saxon Law is illustrative of how our current concept of crime has developed. Anglo-Saxon law was very much concerned with the protection of individuals and their property. Every freeman's house had a "peace"; if it was broken, the violator had to pay damages minutely detailed by the wergeld system. The primary legal institutions were voluntary organizations called tithings and hundreds. When a theft occurred, for example, the men of the several tithings that made up a hundred, and who had a reciprocal duty to pursue the thief, were informed. The hundreds were further organized into shires and together they performed the function of adjudicating disputes. Refusal to abide by the law or to accept a judgment (e.g., to pay restitution) resulted in outlawry (ostracizing the wrongdoer and endowing victims and their supporters with the right of victims to exact revenge). Early codes also provided that "the ealdorman, and the king at need, may be called in if the plaintiff is not strong enough himself". When the king was prepared to support the decision of ...