Homicide Investigation

Importance of Thorough Homicide Investigation

It is patently unethical for the police to conduct a homicide investigation that is less than thorough. Police investigators are required by law and ethics to search for and report exculpatory as well as inculpatory evidence. In states that utilize capital punishment, persons wrongly convicted of murder are particularly vulnerable because executions cannot be recalled.

Contemporary advances in DNA technology indicate that some people have been wrongfully convicted. Some anti-capital punishment interest groups in the United States have formed organizations to assist convicted murderers in obtaining new trials based on potential DNA evidence. The number of cases of miscarriage of justice involving wrongful convictions for homicide is not known with any certainty. The reasons for such wrongful convictions are equally as elusive. One case revealed that the prosecuting attorney withheld exculpatory fingerprint evidence that would have provided reasonable doubt for a jury. Other cases reveal that eyewitness testimony has frequently been shown to be erroneous and sometimes self-serving. Other reasons include perjured testimony, or testimony from forensic specialists who have testified beyond the scope of what the evidence scientifically indicated. For example, one person with an I.Q. of 64 admitted to a murder because the police said they would turn him over to the mob outside the jail. Errors like these are not common occurrences in the justice system, but poor investigations, poor procedures, fear of looking like a fool, and a host of other reasons have resulted in the convictions of persons who were in fact innocent. A thorough homicide investigation is absolutely necessary not only for convicting the guilty but also for proving the innocence of persons arrested for crimes.

For example, in 1950, Robert Bailey Ballard was convicted of first-degree murder in West Virginia and sentenced to death. His alibi witnesses were two Charleston police officers who, at the time of the murder, were in the process of arresting him for drunk driving. Two witnesses wrongly identified him as the killer. In spite of the overwhelming evidence of his innocence, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear his case. Forty-eight hours before he was to be executed, he obtained a reprieve after the warden called the famous crime author Erle Stanley Gardner. In 1951, the governor commuted his sentence to life in prison, and in 1960 he was awarded a pardon. In a 1913 case, made famous by a movie and a novel, Leo M. Frank of Georgia was convicted of a murder he did not commit. In 1915 his sentence was commuted to life in prison. Two months later, he was lynched by fellow inmates. In 1982, a witness admitted having seen the chief witness against Frank carrying the body. The chief witness was the real culprit. Mr. Frank was pardoned posthumously.

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