The article “Vindication Now Arrives after Battle of 28 years” is about the story of Freddie Peacock and how he was found guilty of raping a woman outside his Rochester, NY apartment complex in 1976. He was convicted based on the woman’s testimonial evidence saying that he was her assailant and because of the fact that he had “confessed” during an unrecorded interview. The confession supposedly came about because he had not taken his schizophrenia and bipolar medication in five months and he later recanted his confession. Peacock was sentenced to 5 years in prison and since getting out had spent his time trying to clear his name. His name was only cleared after he had written to the Innocence Project, a group that works to clear the names of those wrongfully convicted using DNA evidence. On February 5, 2010, Freddie Peacock became the 250th person to be cleared, by DNA evidence, of wrongful convictions.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/05/nyregion/05dna.html
5 comments:
What was particularly interesting about this article was how it showed how important DNA evidence is when it comes to crime. I thought it was interesting that even though the crime happened many years prior, with DNA evidence, the mans name was still able to be cleared after all of this time. This article also made it clear that pure testimonial evidence cannot be relied on for accuracy, even by the victim. While it does play a very important role, scientific evidence is also needed.
What I would have liked to have learned more about would be how the man was convicted in the first place and why when he was sentenced, it had not come to the attention of the judge that the man was off of his medication. One of the first deciding factors when convicting a felon is if they are capable of standing trial and I am curious to see if he was put through a testing process to see if he even was fit to stand trial.
Finally, I didn’t know there was something called the Innocence Project that helps those wrongly convicted clear their names. I think this is a good program because there have been so many people wrongly convicted whose names are forever tainted with a crime they did not commit. I wonder though if this program does their own investigation and who judges how a persons name can be cleared.
I thought that the fact that DNA evidence was able to be used to clear the mans name even though the crime happened many years ago. I thought it was interesting how much this article stressed that the pure testimonial evidence can’t be relied on for accuracy, though important scientific evidence is the most important. I also thought it was well presented how it showed how important DNA evidence is when it came to the crime scene. I would’ve liked to learn more about the actual trial and why the man was convicted. I also would’ve liked to know more about the information that cleared his name from the crime and that trial. I didn’t know there was something called the Innocence Project that helps those wrongly convicted clear their names. I think this is a good program because there have been so many people wrongly convicted whose names are forever tainted with a crime they did not commit.
I really enjoyed this review and thought that In particular, Leigh showed how important DNA evidence is when it comes to criminal investigation. I also thought that it was very interesting that even though a crime occurred many years ago, DNA evidence can still do enough to clear a man of all charges. This review also articulated well that pure testimonial evidence cannot be relied on for accuracy, even by the victim. Although it does play a very important role, a lot of scientific evidence is also needed.
I would have liked for her to have explained how the man was originally convicted and when he was sentenced. Also, the fact that the judge did not know that the man was off his medication is a fact that could have been expanded upon in the review.
Finally, I did not know about "The Innocence Project" and the fact that it helps wrongly accused felons clear their names. I believe that this program has a lot of value because if someone is wrongly accused, they deserve the ability to clear their names.
The three aspects of this review that were well written were how she gave the background of the case, how she described why the confession should be viewed as invalid, and how she gave the fact that he was the 250th person to be cleared of any wrongdoing by DNA evidence. This review could have been made better by perhaps supplying information about why the judge let the man be convicted on such flimsy evidence and perhaps including information on how his mental condition affected the trial, if it did at all. From this review I learned that there have been 250 people cleared of the crimes they were convicted of by DNA evidence.
One part of this review that I thought was well presented was the fact that Freddie Peacock was convicted solely on the victim’s testimony and an unrecorded confession. Right away that does not seem like a very solid case. A second part was that Freddie Peacock may have only confessed to this because he was off of his medications, but still he was sent to prison for 5 years. A third is that after Peacock was released from prison he worked hard to clear his name with great initiative. He then became the 250th person to have their name cleared.
One suggestion that I have for this article is to possible go a little more in depth of the victims testimony, what she said that caused Peacock to be convicted and why did Peacock get convicted solely on this testimony and a very rocky confession. Another suggestion is to state why Peacock has been off of his medication for the past five months. If he did not need the medication then his confession is true.
What I was impressed most about this article was that there is an Innocence Project that works with certain “criminals” to clear their name based on the DNA evidence that convicted them. Also, this process took 28 years to finally clear Peacocks name. From 19 76 when he was convicted to 2010 he strived to clear his name.
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