False Confessions in Mississippi Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

False Confessions in Mississippi - Essay Example Mississippi State has numerous records of individual wrongly convicted because of false confession. One of the clear examples is Bobby R. Dixon who suffered a wrongful conviction in Forrest County in 1980 alongside Larry Ruffin and Phillip Bivens. Bobby confessed to charges of rape and murder and later pled guilty in an attempt to avoid the death penalty, but imprisoned for 30 years.   Investigations found that Bobby was innocent and the real perpetrator captured. Bobby left prison in 2010 on grounds of medical parole and later in the same year he died of cancer (Mississippi Innocence Project). Arthur Johnson is another person wrongfully convicted in 1992 in Sunflower County with charges of rape and burglary. The court sentenced Arthur to 16 years imprisonment though DNA tests conducted in 2007 proved him innocent leading to his release in 2008. Further investigations with a DNA profile led to the identification of a man responsible for the crime that led to the conviction of Arthur. Kennedy Brewer is another victim of false confession that led to wrongful conviction 1995 and charged with rape and murder of girlfriend’s daughter. The court sentenced Kennedy to death through lethal injection, but Dthe NA test carried later on evidence gathered from the scene of crime implicated another person. His exoneration came in February 2008 after serving 12 years imprisonment and being the fifth in death row (Mississippi Innocence Project). Police interrogators have also threatened suspects that about receiving heavier charges if they fail to admit and lighter charges if they confess responsibility for a crime that otherwise they are not. False confessions are admissions to criminal offenses and subsequent narrative of how and why the crime occurred by confessors who in reality are not responsible. False confessions are common in judicial systems, but mostly go unnoticed and unrecorded. The difficulty in noticing false confessions relates to the tendency of police not to keep records of such occurrences, which makes it difficult for researchers and criminal analysts to study their underlying characteristics (Mississippi Innocence Project).