The wrongful convictions movement is one amongst numerous other movements in the world. It is a movement to fight against mistakes made in the criminal justice system that cost innocent people years of their lives. It is very easy to convict an innocent person of a crime rather than convicting the actual criminal. In many cases in which exonerees are said to be guity, it is more than likely due to either systemic racism, eyewitness misidentification, unvalidated forensic science, police and prosecutorial misconduct, false confessions, or poor defence lawyering.
Just imagine spending years of your life in prison, paying for someone else's crime. Imagine being locked in a jail cell for the rest of your life while criminals are roaming the streets. These are the questions we must ask ourselves in order to understand the true importance of the wrongful convictions movement. People are taken out of society and forced to live a life of solitude, away from their loved ones all due to mistakes made by the criminal justice system. People of all ages are victims of wrongful convictions. It's easy to believe that something like this may never happen to you, but the truth in this matter is that noone is excluded from this matter. Our reason for fighting is so that innocent people recieve the justice that they deserve, and to prevent wrongful convictions from happening.
In the occurances where the criminal justice system wrongfully accuses someone of a crime, in majority of the cases the victim is an African American/Hispanic male. There is an estimated 61.1% of colored exonerees who spend up to about 10 years in prison before being released, compared to white exonerees who spend about 7 years in prison before being released. Although the purpose of this movement is so that no one has to spend any years in prison serving time for a crime that they didn't commit, it can't be ignored how the system treats people of color, compared to how whites are treated.
Dominic Daley, James Halligan, John Gordon, Chief Leschi, Chipita Rodriguez, William Jackson Marion, Oscar Neebe, Charles Hudspeth, George Washington Davis, Jack Davis, Caleb Powers, Ed Johnson, Bill Wilson, Thomas Griffin and Meeks Griffin, Leo Frank, Thomas Mooney, Nicola Sacco, Bartolomeo Vanzetti, Joe Arridy, George Stinney, Jack McCullough, Clarence Earl Gideon, Rubin Carter, James Joseph Richardson, Richard Phillips, Wilbert Jones, Gregory Bright, Delbert Tibbs, Michael Lloyd Self, David Bryant, Ledura Watkins, Clifford WIlliams, Jr., Lewis Fogle, Charles Ray Finch, Dewey Bozella, Brian Baldwin, Brian Banks, Tazell Cash, Michael Hickingbottom, Joshua Horner...