Wrongful Convictions

Today in class we had a speaker come in. The man’s name was, Terrill Swift, picture shown above. He is a man that was wrongfully convicted of a rape and murder when he was 17 years old. All the DNA testing said that he and four others were not a part of it. However, they had signed confessions given to them by the police. According to Swift the police didn’t arrest him until he got to the police station and once he was he was interrogated for hours. They showed him pictures of people and asked if he knew that and he denied knowing them. He was threatened with 100 years in jail and took in a lot of verbal abuse. Finally after hours the police told him they believed him and if he signed a piece of paper he could go home. However, he soon learned that what he had signed was a confession. When he was taken to court the courts decided that the confession over ruled the DNA and that he was guilty. He spent 15 years in jail until the Northwestern Center of Wrongful Convictions became interested in his case. After he was put on parole and forced to register as a sex offender he fought against it with the people from Northwestern and after eight long months was found innocent. However, he was sent to jail a few times before that because of parole. One day he went to Popeye’s after work to get something to eat and was thrown in jail for eight days because he violated parole. It still wasn’t easy for him. He wasn’t even allowed to see his family members unless they were over the age of 17. The whole issue just took over his life and drastically changed it. It wasn’t easy and he never did anything wrong. The person who was really responsible for the crime was a serial killer and rapist.
To think that there were four men that were sent to jail for 15 years for this rape and murder on a false confession while the real rapist and murderer was running around killing and raping more people disgusts me. There are a very large number of people that are wrong convicted. A lot of the prisoners who are innocent are never found innocent. There is something wrong with our justice system if this can keep happening. There is something that needs to be done. If people are going to be sent to jail and punished for something they did then people need to make sure it is the right person. If not then a innocent person is being punished for something they didn’t do. Their lives get ruined while the people really responsible get to run free and keep doing what they do. When Swift was talking he said that the police that got the false confessions from all of them also did it to about 12 other people. There is something seriously wrong with that and they need to be punished as well. They ruined multiple people’s lives, including the victims of the murderers they actually let go free so their lives would be easier. Not only did they ruin the victim’s lives, the wrongfully convicted’s lives, but they also ruin all their family’s lives. This kind of thing is not easy on any family that has to go through it and they shouldn’t go through it if the person was innocent or if the person was caught so they didn’t have a chance to hurt the next victim. Something needs to change and fast. There are way too many people being wrongfully convicted and way too many people getting away with serious crimes they shouldn’t get away with. There are also way too many lives being ruined and someone needs to do something about it.