The presumption of innocence in John Grisham's legal narrative

Murder and Injustice in a Small Town

Death sentence

Are you innocent until proven guilty?

The constitution of the U.S.A. has the provision of being treated as though one is innocent until the due process of the law takes its course and one is proven guilty or set free on absolute innocence grounds. It should be pointed out that if you committed the crime then you are guilty regardless of the conditions. However, the American citizens have the protection of the constitution from such a presumption. The presumption of innocence is one of the basic rights in the constitution, though it is not directly inscribed and only gets to the citizen through English jurisprudence and has been in that system from time immemorial till it has been considered common law (Craig Walenta, 2010). The tricky part however is the implementation of this concept at the time of the arrest to the time when the case will be finalized and judgment passed against an individual. The treatment that the suspect gets from the time he is arrested and the detention, sometimes the torture, hearings in court have more often worked towards pointing to the suspect that he is already guilty until he will be proven innocent. There have been several cases of police brutality during arrest and transportation to a detention centre and to extreme cases incidences of torture as is the case in Guantanamo Bay. If one is truly innocent at the time of arrest till the conclusion of the case in court, then there must be treatment that befits the innocent status of the person, otherwise this will only remain a say in the American system.

In the context of the Grisham's book, one can be innocent even after being proven and pronounced guilty. This negates the normal justice system that we are used to as America. This sprouts from the various incidence that he recounts of people who had false convictions and later on released after fair trial or better technology helped them to escape the death row, like the case of Williamson and Fritz.

Due process rights of defendants and why the important are for all observed during arrest search and seizure and interrogation.

The fourth amendment to the constitution of the U.S.A. is a part of the Bill of Rights which protects the citizens against irrational searches and seizures. It also provides that a judicially sanctioned warrant must be obtained before search a possible seizure, accompanied by reasonable cause for the search. The search and arrest is confined in extent to the information given to the court issuing the warrant normally by an officer of the government, who has to swear by it and therefore held accountable to the same court. However this does not hold if the person being searched does not have reasonable expectation of privacy.

Unreasonable government seizure is also entailed in the Fourth Amendment which prohibits unreasonable seizure of an individual, their homes or personal items without a warrant. It also proscribes seizure of persons which can include brief detentions. However, seizure does not occur merely because police officers questioned one in a public place, or when his freedom of movement is not denied (Samuel Dash, 2004). When an individual refuses to answer questions or listen to the officers then he cannot be seized due to that. The police officers need reasonable and very objective grounds for seizure.

There are however some instances where a search may be conducted. For instance the "stop and frisk" instances along the highways do not call for a warrant. It is provided by the court as an interpreter of the law that upon suspicion of a felony or unusual conduct, the police officer may conduct a "pat-down search" on the spot. However the officer must pint out specific tangible reason and facts prompting the search and must of necessity stick to that reason. Therefore, his questioning must focus only on the purpose of the search and the search be temporary. For instance if the police officer suspects that the person must be carrying contrabands, once he searches and questions him on the same and finds him clean, he cannot go ahead and question him on legality of his possession of the car.

Should a prosecutor be held accountable for unethical prosecutorial misconduct?

The issue of prosecutorial misconduct has been a subject of discussion for a long time in the legal fraternity. There have been instances of unethical misconduct during the jury selection and even during the opening statements and even in the progress of the cases. Some of the misconduct are merely due to the inalienable position or situation that the juror may be in like close relationship with the parties directly involved in the case, yet some are outright unethical conduct by the jurors that seeks to undermine the integrity of the cases before them or to construe the evidence to a different direction or even intentionally leave out some details/twist details to a format that suits them. Such intentional unethical misconduct when detected and proven should be treated with the seriousness they deserve and punish the concerned prosecutors since they are basically contravening the fundamental rights of the defendants to have a fair hearing and attaining justice in the court of law. The instance at hand is the prosecutor in this case who used unreliable witnesses, forced "dream" confessions as well as flimsy evidence to convict Williamson and Fritz, who received death sentences. The unethical conduct of the prosecutor made it hard for Williamson to prove his innocence and wasted a good 11 years of hislife behind bars until the DNA availability initiated by Innocence project came to his salvation.

Should the U.S. abolish the death penalty?

Each state or nation has the crime categories that deserve the death penalty, these, in most cases are crimes that are considered to be serious and are directly against humanity or can accrue to situations that cost humanity. These laws are however growing less popular with time and people are condemning them from individuals to the civil society with the sole reason that there is no room to correct the behavior for the criminal and on the sanctity of life basis. The first option is guaranteed lengthy minimum sentences. This serves as a relief especially to the society that the murderer and potential repeat murder will not be walking the neighborhood in as few as seven years hence justice seen to have been done. These sentences should go long enough to see the person leave prison a wasted individual at a very advanced age to serve as an example to the younger people about crime avoidance.

The other alternative is the life imprisonment for such crimes. There can be life sentences without possibility of parole passed on such people. In this manner it will be a compromise on the sentence of death that he was worth but again serves the victims of the crime to obtain justice (Death Penalty Information Center, 2010).

Is the criminal justice system in the U.S. fair and just?

To strike the accurate fairness and just system could be elusive and impractical as that would mean attaining perfection in the justice system which is imaginary. However, from the serialization of the known cases of the wrongful convictions that Grisham has outlined in his book The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town it is apparent that the America justice system is far from being fair and just. We see cases of people like Tommy Ward, Karl Fontenot, Denice Haraway, Greg Wilhoit among several other cases and all we see is a justice system that is not thorough in its work and hence ending up with false convictions.

What is the importance of DNA evidence and what if no DNA evidence existed in this case?

The DNA evidence is instrumental in the contemporary processing of crime scenes by the investigative bodies like FBI and CSI. It is the finest science that is used to break down the genetic elements that are specific to each person and cannot be shared, hence once profiled, it would be possible to attach an individual to a crime scene without any mistakes or fear of confusion.

During the conviction of Williamson and Fritz in Grisham's book, there was no benefit of DNA for the forensic team and the investigative agencies to use, hence the reliance on the witnesses who turned out to be unreliable. If there was no DNA profiling availed by the Innocence Project, then we could have had the two subjected to the execution yet they were innocent. Fortunately this never came to pass as the DNA came in time to save them. Instead they are the ones who sued for false conviction and were handsomely compensated.