Assignment task: Watch
YouTube Video: Just Wrong: The aftermath of wrongful convictions
Topic Area & Questions for Discussion:
As future criminal investigative and criminal justice professionals, the integrity of your work activities will have broad reaching impacts for yourself, victims, suspects, families and society - a great responsibility. The Criminal Investigative process of finding justice is a thread tying the victim, perpetrator, law enforcement, forensic scientists, prosecutors, courts and corrections all together - sometimes for lifetimes. Falling prey to biases, shortcuts or improper actions has no room in the performance of criminal investigations. Objective fact finding - not bias and judgements based in emotion, flawed logic or flawed evidence - is paramount to the integrity of the criminal justice process to ensure justice and healing is brought to the victim and society, along with the fair and objective treatment to the alleged offenders. As you saw in the video, impacts of any of those negative actions can be devastating in a myriad of ways for lifetimes.
Q1. Discuss what you believe are two or three of the most important common characteristics of a criminal investigator, as outlined in chapter 2 of our textbook.
Q2. Thinking of the experiences described in the National Institute of Justice video, discuss how you believe the two or three most important common characteristics of a criminal investigator help to balance the needs of the victim, the suspect, and the criminal justice process? Explain your answer.
Q3. Even with objectivity and fact finding as core characteristics, discuss how emotions and humanity influence criminal investigations for the various professionals involved in the criminal justice process.
Q4. Discuss how even if all of the professionals involved in the criminal justice processes act with the highest integrity, performed objective field work, and have objective judicial experiences, could wrongful convictions could still occur?
Q5. Discuss the use of circumstantial evidence in criminal investigations. How can reliance on this type of evidence possibly lead to negative outcomes?