How Private Investigators Revamp the Integrity of Criminal Trials

Criminal investigations are a tricky business, especially when it comes time for trial.  Pressure mounts to prove or disprove evidence and place the right person behind bars as quickly as possible, but while law enforcement officials arguably do their best, mistakes do happen.  According to statistics taken by Scripps News, approximately one third of murders go unsolved each year, and these unsolved murders don’t count toward the number of cases that result in false convictions.

Since their work commenced in 1992, an organization called the Innocence Project has exonerated over 329 wrongly-convicted prisoners, largely by DNA evidence.  These convicts were initially imprisoned due to witness misidentification, improper forensic science, false confessions, or government misconduct.  Held guilty for years or even decades, these detainees finally tasted freedom after members of the Innocence Project looked into their old case files.

While the project seeks to overturn faulty convictions, hundreds of other crimes remain unsolved each year.  Since the government started reporting statistics in 1965, the percent of solved homicides decreased from 90 to 64% by the year 2012.  In the city of Detroit in 2012 alone, investigators claimed only a 9% solution rate, a total of 34 out of 386 homicides.  In the same year, New Orleans solved a mere 15% of their 193 killings.  Atlanta sits on a file of approximately 1,800 cold cases since 1965, and legal investigations in Cleveland, Ohio, and Phoenix, Arizona, both face over 2,000 unsolved mysteries from the same time period.

As a result of the overwhelming number of cold cases pressing upon local police departments all over the States, law enforcement officials are looking for help.  Between patrolling the streets in an effort to keep present-day America safe and striving to wrap up unresolved crimes of the past, police officers have their hands full.

This is where Pittsburgh private investigator firms come in.  If you or someone you know feels an investigation has been wrongly concluded, or if you suspect a crime has been committed but can’t prove it, FORLETA can help.  We dedicate ourselves to apply the expertise and time that police departments sometimes don’t have.  Our main concern is getting to the bottom of any investigations you feel have been unsatisfactorily carried out, and we commit to chip away at injustice being served.  Call now to begin fighting for the truth.