“But I’m Innocent!” – Being Wrongfully Convicted of a Crime
The last thing anyone wants to deal with is being wrongly accused of a crime but, unfortunately, it can happen. Many believe that “everything will be OK” because they are innocent … and innocent people cannot be convicted of a crime, right? Wrong. If you have been wrongfully convicted of a crime in New Jersey, don’t wait until your case is closed. Contact a NJ criminal defense lawyer from Villani & DeLuca right away. Wrongful convictions can be devastating.
But I’m Innocent! (So were the 1,482 others)
ExonerationRegistry.org is the largest database of its kind ever assembled, according to its creators from the University of Michigan Law School and the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University School of Law. The Registry provides detailed information about every known exoneration in the United States since 1989 — cases in which a person was wrongly convicted of a crime and later cleared of all the charges based on new evidence of innocence. Currently 1,482 exonerations are listed. In the past few decades a surge of hundreds of exonerations of innocent criminal defendants has drawn attention to the problem of erroneous conviction. A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, now estimates that at least 4.1% of all defendants sentenced to death in the US in the modern era are innocent.
“False convictions, by definition, are unobserved when they occur: If we know that a defendant is innocent, he is not convicted in the first place. They are also extremely difficult to detect after the fact. As a result, the great majority of innocent defendants remain undetected. The rate of such errors is often described as a “dark figure” —an important measure of the performance of the criminal justice system that is not merely unknown but unknowable.”
What to do?
If you have been falsely accused of a crime in New Jersey that you didn’t commit, you should contact a NJ criminal defense attorney at Villani & DeLuca P.C. today. You should also gather all evidence relating to the incident such as clothing, photos, videos, etc. Collect documents such as emails, financial records, GPS records showing where you were at the time of an incident and make a list of possible witnesses.
Be Careful
Don’t talk to law enforcement without an attorney present or voluntarily submit to any testing such as DNA tests. Resist the urge to take matters into your own hands by talking to the victim in attempt to ‘sort things out’; you could be accused of attempting to intimidate a witness. And certainly don’t act like you’re guilty by suspiciously destroying evidence.
Getting thrown in jail for a crime you didn’t commit is a nightmare. If you feel you have been wrongfully convicted or think that because you’re innocent, you’ll avoid conviction; call the NJ criminal defense lawyers at Villani & DeLuca P.C. today to set up your complimentary initial consultation. Famous last words: “But I am innocent; I don’t think I need an attorney.”
