Chester was 21 that morning at home. when he woke up, got dressed and went downstairs to have breakfast with his Dad before Chester Sr. headed to his job as maintenance foreman at Philadelphia’s Central High School.

“Do you have any scrambled eggs left,” Chester asked his Mom as his Dad reached for the last of the biscuits.

“I’ve got a few left and I can even give you a couple biscuits I’ve hidden away. Just don’t tell your father.”

She pointed to the stove and then put a finger to her lips indicating Chester shouldn’t give the biscuit’s location away.

Chester finished his eggs, opened the stove, kissed his Mother and slipped on his coat for  protection from the cold.

It would be the last time he could touch his mother for awhile.

Before the day was over, Chester, with no criminal record, would be pulled over in Center City and charged with the fatal shooting of a University of Pennsylvania student in a botched street robbery.

When we think of the justice system, we usually think of a place where justice is served. However, this is not the case anymore. There have been many wrongful convictions and that's not even the worst part. The worst part is that these people were sentenced to a life in prison for something they didn't do. The only thing that's left is one more chance at life or nothing at all. If you ever wonder why people do these terrible things, or you want to know why people don't believe in the justice system, this is for you.

Causes of Wrongful Conviction

Mistaken witness identification, or eyewitness error, is the single greatest cause of wrongful convictions nationwide, according to Western Michigan University, playing a role in 72% of convictions overturned through DNA testing. The other causes include:

• False Confession. 
• False Forensic Evidence  
• Perjury
• Official Misconduct

How does the justice system work?

The American Justice system is based on the English Common Law system. The basic idea is that there are two sides, the plaintiff and the defendant, who present their arguments before an impartial judge (and sometimes a jury). In a criminal case, the prosecutor acts as a plaintiff on behalf of the citizens or state and there are five steps or phases:

5 Steps of the Criminal Justice System

• Arrest.
• Preliminary hearing.
• Grand jury investigation.
• Arraignment in Criminal Court.
• Trial by jury.

Majority of Innocent Defendants are Persons of Color

The Equal Justice Initiative reports “More than half of wrongful convictions can be traced to witnesses who lied in court or made false accusations. ... Other leading causes of wrongful convictions include mistaken eyewitness identifications, false or misleading forensic science, and jailhouse informants. Faulty forensics also lead to wrongful convictions.”

In a 2017 study, the National Registry of Exonerations found African Americans are only 13% of the American population but a majority of innocent defendants wrongfully convicted of crimes and later exonerated. They constitute 47% of the 1,900 exonerations listed in the National Registry of Exonerations (as of October 2016), and the great majority of more than 1,800 additional innocent defendants who were framed and convicted of crimes in 15 large-scale police scandals and later cleared in “group exonerations.” 

While racial disparity happens in all major crime categories, the study focused on the largest numbers of exonerations: murder, sexual assault and drug crimes. During any of the five steps of the Justice System, the wheels can come off the wagon because of existing challenges. These include:

5 Challenges Facing Criminal Justice Professionals Right Now

• Drug Use and the Crime Cycle. Between 50 and 80 percent of men test positively for drugs when they're arrested. 
• Youth in the Criminal Justice System. 
• The High Incarceration Rate. 
• Violence Against Women. 
• The “Three Strikes” Legislation.

Black/White Gap Narrows

According to Pew Research, blacks have long outnumbered whites in U.S. prisons. But a significant decline in the number of black prisoners has steadily narrowed the gap over the past decade, according to new data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

At the end of 2017, federal and state prisons in the United States held about 475,900 inmates who were black and 436,500 who were white – a difference of 39,400, according to BJS. Ten years earlier, there were 592,900 black and 499,800 white prisoners – a difference of 93,100. (This analysis counts only inmates sentenced to more than a year.) The decline in the black-white gap between 2007 and 2017 was driven by a 20% decrease in the number of black inmates, which outpaced a 13% decrease in the number of white inmates.

The Takeaway

In 2019, a judge ordered Chester released at age 49, citing evidence that police and prosecutors built their case on fabricated statements from people they coerced as witnesses and later withheld evidence pointing to the likely true perpetrators of the crime.

The agreement announced recently is the latest in a string of seven-figure settlements stemming from claims of misconduct by city police in the late 1980s and ’90s. Those cases have led to more than a dozen exonerations in recent years and have cost Philadelphia more than $35 million since 2018.

“There are no words to express what was taken from me,” Hollman said in a statement. “But this settlement closes out a difficult chapter in my life as my family and I now embark on a new one.”

“There was irrefutable evidence that Chester was innocent, is innocent and has always been innocent and would never have been wrongfully convicted aside from extraordinary police misconduct,” his attorney, Amelia Green said.

Despite the long sentence, Chester doesn’t hold the record for the most number of years wrongfully served. That distinction belongs to Richard Phillips. Phillips was sent to prison in 1972 and released 46 years later.

The justice system is flawed and the number of wrongful convictions has increased. Let's rethink how the justice system should work.