Review for Exam #3

1. Review for Exam #3

2. The exam will be administered via D2L
on the time and date assigned for your
course’s final exam. You MUST log in and
take the exam during the designated
time.
The exam will consist of 25 multiple
choice questions, and 4 short answer
questions.

3. What are six factors that may result in a case
being treated differently?
-Offense seriousness
-Celebrated Cases
-Race/Ethnicity
-Offender’s sex
-Attorney Competence
-Financial Resources of the defendant

4. Offense Seriousness
Depending on whether the defendant is charged with a
summary, misdemeanor, or felony, their case may be treated
differently.
Less serious cases are more likely to result in a plea bargain
and also take less time if they were to go to court.

5. Celebrated Cases
-High profile cases- possibly disturbing or grizzly cases that
capture headlines. Example: mass murders, graphic killings,
etc.
-Cases involving celebrities
These types of cases are usually given more time and
attention by all parties involved- more seriously prosecuted
and more strenuously defended. Why?

6. Race/Ethnicity
Race- refers to the “major biological division of man kind”
i.e. skin color and other physical features
Ethnicity- refers to differences between groups of people
based on cultural customs such as language, religion, etc.

7. Gender
Differential treatment based on sex.
A jury, judge, prosecutor, police officer or even defense
attorney might treat a criminal defendant differently based
on gender.

8. Attorney Competence
This is different from ineffective assistance of counsel.
Attorney competence refers to an attorney’s ability to bring
their knowledge and skills to bear effectively in a particular
case. For example the ability of an attorney to persuade
jurors to listen to them, even in the face of what might be
regarded as overwhelming odds against their client.

9. Defendants Financial Resources
A defendant’s ability to hire one or more high profile
attorneys may impact the treatment of their case.
Example: O.J. Simpson’s criminal defense team

10. What is Alternative Dispute Resolution?
Alternative Dispute Resolution- refers to any means
of settling disputes outside of the courtroom.
There are several forms of formal alternative
dispute resolution that are used by the court system
today, like arbitration and mediation for example.

11. What is Mediation?
Mediation- the attempt to help parties in a disagreement to
hear one another, to minimize the harm that can come from
disagreement, to maximize any area of agreement, and to
find a way of preventing the areas of disagreement from
interfering with the process of seeking a compromise or
mutually agreed outcome.

12. What is Arbitration?
Arbitration- A simplified version of a trial without discovery
and with modified rules of evidence. Arbitration hearings
are brief in duration and the opinions are not made available
to the public. Arbitrations hearings are presided over by a
single arbitrator, a private neutral person, or a panel of
arbitrators.

13. Capital Punishment
-The U.S. Constitution’s 8th Amendment expressly prohibits
“cruel and unusual punishment.”
-The Supreme Court has never found the death penalty itself
unconstitutional, only certain applications of it.
-Furman v. Georgia was a 1972 Supreme Court Case that
invalidated the current death penalty statutes in 39 states
and required new death penalty statutes with more specific
criteria for application of the death penalty.

14. Errors of Justice
“An error of justice occurs when an innocent person is
harassed, detained or sanctioned, or when a culpable
offender receives a sanction that is either more or less than
optimal- one that minimizes social cost- or escapes
sanctioning all together…an error of justice is any departure
from optimal out come of justice for a criminal case.”

15. What is the Innocence Movement?
 In the 1980s DNA testing entered the mainstream
 Today, DNA testing can provide as close to certain evidence of guilt or
innocence as anything
 When DNA testing first became popular, certain tests has higher margins of
error than others.
 Some tests had an error rate of 1/100, others 1/1,000,000
 Other potential causes of error:
 Sample mix up
 Sample contamination
 DNA degradation- must be kept cold and dry
 Bad data analysis

16. What are the Innocence Projects?
Projects aimed at exonerating wrongfully convicted
criminals. Examples:
 The Innocence Project- the original
 Innocence Network- coordinates innocence efforts
throughout the different states. A series of organizations
that provide free legal and investigation services to
individuals seeking to prove their innocence and overturn
wrongful convictions.
 Actual Innocence Awareness Database- maintained by the
University of Texas at Austin, a database that contains a
wealth of information on the subject of wrongful
convictions.

17. What are some reforms that have occurred as
a result of the Innocence Projects?
 State-by-state innocence commissions
 Crime lab oversight committees
 Improved witness identification procedures (to minimize
the possibility of mistaken identifications)
 Separation of crime labs from law enforcement
organizations
 Compensation for those wrongfully convicted
 Improved evidence preservation
 Recording of police interrogations
 State laws permitting post conviction access to DNA
testing

18. What is Exoneration?
An exoneration occurs when a person is wrongfully convicted
and later declared not guilty.

19. Through what means may an exoneration occur?
 Exonerations occur through one of four means:
 A Governor issues a pardon based on new evidence of the
convicted’s innocence.
 Charges are dismissed by the court after new evidence of innocence
is discovered.
 There is an acquittal at a retrial
 There is a posthumous (after death) acknowledgement of
innocence.

20. Are exonerations common? Have the
become more or less common over time?
 The number of exonerations has increased in recent
years. According to one study, there were 12 per year in
1989, and an average of 42 per year by 2000.
 According to the National Registry of Exonerations, 1,067
individuals have been exonerated as of the date of the
writing of your text book (2015).
 Explanations: Growing ability of DNA testing technology,
the newsworthy nature of exoneration cases, and more
resources having been devoted to the issue of wrongful
convictions.

21. What are the leading causes of exonerations?
 Eyewitness misidentification
 Unvalidated/improper forensics
 False confessions/admissions
 Informants/snitches