10 ms·

American justice system ignores science in the pursuit of convictions

179 points by oftenwrong 8y ago

dhh2106 8y ago
Great and infuriating article. There's also issues with eyewitnesses testimony and lineups that have been well documented, meaning the rate of wrongful conviction may be quite high. "The National Registry of Exonerations has documented 553 cases since 1989 in which someone was convicted on false or misleading forensic evidence and later cleared. The growing list of exonerations includes a Texas man whose 1987 murder conviction, based on bite-mark evidence, was thrown out in December, and an Illinois man declared innocent in January in the retrial of a murder case that hinged on dubious ballistics evidence. But the exonerations likely represent only a fraction of the cases in which faulty forensics sent innocent people to prison, researchers say." Is there any research estimating how many wrongly convicted people may be incarcerated? How could that even be estimated?
- darepublic 8y ago
  can we filter by cases with large part of the case resting on forensics? Then foreach such case see if we can double check the forensics evidence
  - SllX 8y ago
    Not without enough people willing to enter the related forensic science labor pools, to make a point. Even after you’ve filtered for all the cases you could want, you’re probably going to end up with a large number. Rechecking all of the evidence in each case to either reaffirm or exonerate the people in prison because of that evidence is a labor intensive task.
- ChrisSD 8y ago
  Just a note that eyewitnesses testimony can be very helpful in most investigations, it just has to be handled very careful. However it often isn't. As you say, lineups can be particularly tricky. I mention this because often on this topics people say "eyewitnesses testimony is always unreliable!" when actually it's a bit more complicated than that.
  - hannasanarion 8y ago
    Saying that something is always unreliable isn't the same as saying it is never correct. Eyewitness testimony is an important part of any prosecution, but it should never be relied on, and juries need to be informed of the unreliability.
ksdale 8y ago
Over the holidays with the in-laws, we watched one of those Cops type shows and I was a little incredulous about the use of the drug sniffing dog. It occurred to me that they could just have the dogs alert basically whenever they wanted them to. In practice, they seemed to bring the dogs out when the driver of a vehicle was very obviously high, so it seems like they may have had probable cause anyway, but it still seemed alarming that a dog that can so easily be manipulated is an appropriate way to get into someone’s car.
- isolli 8y ago
  You would be right: > The troopers told the pair that VanderWiel’s dog “alerted” on the vehicle’s back side. However, the spot where the dog alerted was out of the frame of the video from [the troopers'] vehicle, the lawsuit said. Convenient. And not at all uncommon. And drug dogs are notorious for false alerts in the field. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2014/10/03/another-civil-asset-forfeiture-outrage/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2014/10/03/...
  - oftenwrong 8y ago
    See also: >Florida v. Harris, 568 U.S. 237 (2013),[1] was a case in which the United States Supreme Court addressed the reliability of a dog sniff by a detection dog trained to identify narcotics, under the specific context of whether law enforcement's assertions that the dog is trained or certified is sufficient to establish probable cause for a search of a vehicle under the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution.[2] Harris was the first Supreme Court case to challenge the dog's reliability, backed by data that asserts that on average, up to 80% of a dog's alerts are wrong. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_v._Harris https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_v._Harris
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - chrchang523 8y ago
      "Up to 80% of a dog's alerts are wrong" can't be evaluated without more information about base rate. If this is occurring in a context where the dogs are only being brought out when there's already prior cause to expect narcotics with >10% likelihood, that doesn't look good for the police. But if that number is more like 1%, even an 80% false positive rate corresponds to doing more than half of the remaining classification work (it's appropriate to look at this on a logistic scale). (Also, "up to" should be unpacked; a 95% confidence interval is a lot more informative than a rough upper bound.)
isolli 8y ago
To be fair, the American justice system is not the only one: > Clark's first son died suddenly in December 1996 within a few weeks of his birth, and in January 1998 her second died in a similar manner. A month later, she was arrested and tried for both of the deaths. The prosecution case relied on significantly flawed statistical evidence presented by paediatrician Professor Sir Roy Meadow, who testified that the chance of two children from an affluent family suffering sudden infant death syndrome was 1 in 73 million. He had arrived at this figure erroneously by squaring 1 in 8500, as being the likelihood of a cot death in similar circumstances. The Royal Statistical Society later issued a statement arguing that there was "no statistical basis" for Meadow's claim, and expressing its concern at the "misuse of statistics in the courts". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sally_Clark https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sally_Clark
- mikestew 8y ago
  who testified that the chance of two children from an affluent family suffering sudden infant death syndrome was 1 in 73 million. Even if he's wrong, using just the wrong stats says, well, in a country of >300 million (such as the U. S.) that's going to happen once in a while. Even a smaller country like the U. K., my response would be, "so it could happen, and it wouldn’t be all that outlandish for a case to crop over the course of, say, decades?" OTOH, I don't care if the odds are 1 in 73 gazillionbillion, it could happen and the prosecution still needs to prove otherwise. We're not playing craps here.
  - ip26 8y ago
    Not to mention there's usually hidden patterns we just haven't uncovered. Some gene or household chemical or simple behavior that skews the odds. Thus at a population level the aggregate risk might be 1 in 73 million, but for this individual it's 1 in a billion and for that one it's 1 in 10 thousand. We just don't know it, because we don't know all the risk factors. It's like insurance. You might be a really safe cautious driver, and your friend a nutcase. But your insurance doesn't really know who is a nutjob predisposed to accidents ahead of time.
    - 8y ago
oftenwrong 8y ago
Field tests for Marijuana also seem to regularly be baseless. A couple had their house raided partially because some loose leaf tea in their rubbish bin field-tested positive as marijuana: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2017/12/19/jury-rules-against-family-subjected-to-swat-raid-over-loose-leaf-tea/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2017/12/19/... Police using unproven "drug recognition expert" training to "detect" marijuana use via body language: https://www.11alive.com/article/news/investigations/the-drug-whisperer-drivers-arrested-while-stone-cold-sober/85-437061710 https://www.11alive.com/article/news/investigations/the-drug... More on faulty drug testing: https://www.cacj.org/documents/sf_crime_lab/studies__misc_materials/falsepositives.pdf https://www.cacj.org/documents/sf_crime_lab/studies__misc_ma...
- wonderwonder 8y ago
  In Kansas now this is not even relevant. Police just have to claim to 'smell marijuana' and they can search a home without a warrant. The 4th amendment is being whittled down to nothing. https://www.countable.us/articles/17230-kansas-supreme-court-rules-smell-pot-justify-police-searching-home https://www.countable.us/articles/17230-kansas-supreme-court...
DataWorker 8y ago
If you select the right jury it doesn’t matter whether you have solid evidence anyway. For some cases you might want to remove black jurors, or maybe get rid of any women. If you get the right mix you get a conviction regardless of the facts of the case. Outcomes are determined by looks as much, perhaps more than actual evidence. And we know that and proceed just the same.
- mnw21cam 8y ago
  It boggles the mind that members of the jury can be selected by the prosecution or defence in this way (or at all, really). I understand the need to disqualify people if they have severe learning difficulties, have special knowledge that would disrupt the process, or if they are incapable of finding one of the possible verdicts, but otherwise the selection should be a random cross-section of society.
  - Matticus_Rex 8y ago
    It's very likely that a particular random cross-section will be extremely biased in one direction or another.
  - somebodythere 8y ago
    Why should a juror be excluded for possessing special knowledge? Wouldn't that be an advantage when it comes to finding facts?
    - pmoriarty 8y ago
      If a juror knows the defendant or the victim, or knows the prosecutor or defense attorney for that matter, that could bias them.
    - FireBeyond 8y ago
      Because neither side really has an interest in you as a juror determining things yourself, they want jurors who can be accepting of their narrative, be they prosecution or defense.
mchannon 8y ago
One I'm running into right now is the science of IP addresses. Unfortunately, 99% of criminal cases are where IP address "science" (if you can call it that) typically follows the formulaic story where somebody starts downloading certain graphical images, agents working the pipe or the other end log the IP, the ISP identifies the IP account's subscriber (after the law enforcement agency compensates them for their time), and then a search of the corresponding premises is authorized. Luckily I'm not dealing with that. But in that case, the IP address forms the Court's idea of probable cause. If the IP address is a single family home with a single computer and no wi-fi, seems pretty open-and-shut. If it's a Starbucks or a workplace, and that actually results in a team of agents descending on it and searching and seizing the occupants' computers, then I think most would agree it's an abuse of power. The challenge the Courts have is that middle category. What if I told you with a straight face that I believe you did something illegal, I have an IP address that used to be yours connected with that act, though no proof it was yours at the time, no proof you were using that location's internet at that time or even there to use it, and no idea how many other people were using the wifi there? That's good enough to convict until US courts rule otherwise.
- tyfon 8y ago
  Even with a single home, a single computer and no wifi the computer could easily be hacked and used as a VPN for such matters. I don't think it's that open and shut. Unless you require every person who has an electronic device to be personally responsible for security bugs on such systems. You can get owned even if you are careful given the right security holes.
  - mchannon 8y ago
    I did kinda muddle the difference between guilt at trial and probable cause for a search and seizure in my post, but I believe most Americans at least would be of the opinion that even considering that possibility, it's still good enough for them to go in and seize/search that computer. It's not a charge or a conviction at that point. If no contraband shows up on the computer, charges are dropped and computer is returned intact•. And maybe hopefully there's forensic traces of malware that the defendant can use to argue his innocence. That last point has never been argued ("look here's some malware"), at least in my reading of the caselaw. Most guys (it's always men) just usually confess or plead and then try to argue their way out of it unsuccessfully afterward. Hitting and killing a kindergartener with your car carries lesser criminal penalties in this country than downloading and storing a GIF that millions of others have already downloaded and stored. Fixing the science discrepancy is only one of many things due for a reckoning in this country.
alexhutcheson 8y ago
I'm glad this is getting more attention. If you're interested in learning more, the book The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist[1] is a great in-depth dive into a couple specific cases where testimony from "experts" resulted in the conviction of innocent people. It also does a good job explaining the incentives and institutions that make it hard to stop this. [1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33296669-the-cadaver-king-and-the-country-dentist https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33296669-the-cadaver-kin...
wonderwonder 8y ago
In America for the most part if the police and / or prosecution want you to be convicted you are probably going to be. For police there are almost no consequences for lying or falsifying data except a law suit that they are not responsible for paying. Police have almost carte-blanche to do as they will including resorting to intimidation. The only good defense against being convicted in a court of law is large amounts of disposable wealth.
kstenerud 8y ago
In jury trials, prosecutors have not only a huge advantage, but also a perverse incentive to lie and cheat. They know that the jurors are not going to be experienced enough in criminal law to sniff out procedural bullshit or "expert witness" gambits or bullshit science, much like a novice is unlikely to win at poker against a professional player. And therein lies the problem. In every trial, you have professionals (lawyers) playing against novices (jurors), and since the prosecution automatically gains special believability status in the eyes of jurors, they hold the upper hand. To make matters worse, prosecutors have the automatic full cooperation of police, whereas the defense has no such guarantees. And since prosecutors are gauged by their wins, and high ranking prosecutors are the most likely to be voted/appointed into coveted judge seats, there is a perverse incentive to prosecute the innocent. But since the system operates on the fiction that all members are equal (much like all sides are equal in a game of poker), it's easy to brush aside the reality that they are most certainly not equal, and that the more experienced has such a huge advantage that it's laughable to even call it fair. In a system with professional judges, that wouldn't fly, as the trained judge would see through their shenanigans and rebuke them.
- wonderwonder 8y ago
  Further compounding this is the sheer amount of work and cases public defenders have to contend with, they are over whelmed. In New Orleans, they have 50 public defenders for 22,000 cases, to the point where they are refusing to represent on certain felony cases. Which means the accused gets to hang out in jail. Article is a quick read and does a good job explaining the mindest of people who plead guilty to crimes they did not commit: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/inside-new-orleans-public-defenders-decision-to-refuse-felony-cases/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/inside-new-orleans-public-defen...
  - Someone1234 8y ago
    This is why you should avoid waiving your right to a speedy trial when you have a public defender. While in THEORY it should give them more time to prepare, more than likely you'll get 20~30 minutes of prep time either way on the day of your trial but spend longer in jail just waiting. If you have a private defender, it might make a lot of sense to waive, since they can use that additional time to assemble enough evidence for either court or a better deal. But in modern US "justice" even if you're innocent expect to take a plea. That's just how it works now.
hnuser1234 8y ago
It is not a "justice" system, it is a legal system.
driverdan 8y ago
I'm surprised the article gave this a pass: > Investigators also found a witness who, after being hypnotized, a technique sometimes used by law enforcement to enhance memories, said he remembered seeing Johnston force the couple into a car. Hypnosis is not a valid technique to "enhance memories." It is, however, a way to change memories and create false memories.
cheez 8y ago
What I always say to people caught up in the justice system is cop a no-record plea deal, and if that fails, use dirty tricks to get the people prosecuting you. Put a private detective on the prosecutor and their helpers, get some dirt on them. Catch a police officer or an agent of the court threatening you on a recording. Etc, etc. Your lawyer won't like it, but they use the same tricks on you. Fuck 'em. Threaten to release the dirt (through your lawyer, in a legally vague way) and watch the charges go away.
GoodJokes 8y ago
America doesn't have a justice system. It has a has system that enforces laws created by those in power. Those laws have nothing to do with justice most of the time.

179 points by oftenwrong 8y ago

Great and infuriating article. There's also issues with eyewitnesses testimony and lineups that have been well documented, meaning the rate of wrongful conviction may be quite high. "The National Registry of Exonerations has documented 553 cases since 1989 in which someone was convicted on false or misleading forensic evidence and later cleared. The growing list of exonerations includes a Texas man whose 1987 murder conviction, based on bite-mark evidence, was thrown out in December, and an Illinois man declared innocent in January in the retrial of a murder case that hinged on dubious ballistics evidence. But the exonerations likely represent only a fraction of the cases in which faulty forensics sent innocent people to prison, researchers say." Is there any research estimating how many wrongly convicted people may be incarcerated? How could that even be estimated?

darepublic 8y ago
can we filter by cases with large part of the case resting on forensics? Then foreach such case see if we can double check the forensics evidence
- SllX 8y ago
  Not without enough people willing to enter the related forensic science labor pools, to make a point. Even after you’ve filtered for all the cases you could want, you’re probably going to end up with a large number. Rechecking all of the evidence in each case to either reaffirm or exonerate the people in prison because of that evidence is a labor intensive task.
ChrisSD 8y ago
Just a note that eyewitnesses testimony can be very helpful in most investigations, it just has to be handled very careful. However it often isn't. As you say, lineups can be particularly tricky. I mention this because often on this topics people say "eyewitnesses testimony is always unreliable!" when actually it's a bit more complicated than that.
- hannasanarion 8y ago
  Saying that something is always unreliable isn't the same as saying it is never correct. Eyewitness testimony is an important part of any prosecution, but it should never be relied on, and juries need to be informed of the unreliability.

ksdale 8y ago

Over the holidays with the in-laws, we watched one of those Cops type shows and I was a little incredulous about the use of the drug sniffing dog. It occurred to me that they could just have the dogs alert basically whenever they wanted them to. In practice, they seemed to bring the dogs out when the driver of a vehicle was very obviously high, so it seems like they may have had probable cause anyway, but it still seemed alarming that a dog that can so easily be manipulated is an appropriate way to get into someone’s car.

isolli 8y ago
You would be right: > The troopers told the pair that VanderWiel’s dog “alerted” on the vehicle’s back side. However, the spot where the dog alerted was out of the frame of the video from [the troopers'] vehicle, the lawsuit said. Convenient. And not at all uncommon. And drug dogs are notorious for false alerts in the field. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2014/10/03/another-civil-asset-forfeiture-outrage/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2014/10/03/...
- oftenwrong 8y ago
  See also: >Florida v. Harris, 568 U.S. 237 (2013),[1] was a case in which the United States Supreme Court addressed the reliability of a dog sniff by a detection dog trained to identify narcotics, under the specific context of whether law enforcement's assertions that the dog is trained or certified is sufficient to establish probable cause for a search of a vehicle under the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution.[2] Harris was the first Supreme Court case to challenge the dog's reliability, backed by data that asserts that on average, up to 80% of a dog's alerts are wrong. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_v._Harris https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_v._Harris
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - chrchang523 8y ago
    "Up to 80% of a dog's alerts are wrong" can't be evaluated without more information about base rate. If this is occurring in a context where the dogs are only being brought out when there's already prior cause to expect narcotics with >10% likelihood, that doesn't look good for the police. But if that number is more like 1%, even an 80% false positive rate corresponds to doing more than half of the remaining classification work (it's appropriate to look at this on a logistic scale). (Also, "up to" should be unpacked; a 95% confidence interval is a lot more informative than a rough upper bound.)

isolli 8y ago

To be fair, the American justice system is not the only one: > Clark's first son died suddenly in December 1996 within a few weeks of his birth, and in January 1998 her second died in a similar manner. A month later, she was arrested and tried for both of the deaths. The prosecution case relied on significantly flawed statistical evidence presented by paediatrician Professor Sir Roy Meadow, who testified that the chance of two children from an affluent family suffering sudden infant death syndrome was 1 in 73 million. He had arrived at this figure erroneously by squaring 1 in 8500, as being the likelihood of a cot death in similar circumstances. The Royal Statistical Society later issued a statement arguing that there was "no statistical basis" for Meadow's claim, and expressing its concern at the "misuse of statistics in the courts". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sally_Clark https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sally_Clark

mikestew 8y ago
who testified that the chance of two children from an affluent family suffering sudden infant death syndrome was 1 in 73 million. Even if he's wrong, using just the wrong stats says, well, in a country of >300 million (such as the U. S.) that's going to happen once in a while. Even a smaller country like the U. K., my response would be, "so it could happen, and it wouldn’t be all that outlandish for a case to crop over the course of, say, decades?" OTOH, I don't care if the odds are 1 in 73 gazillionbillion, it could happen and the prosecution still needs to prove otherwise. We're not playing craps here.
- ip26 8y ago
  Not to mention there's usually hidden patterns we just haven't uncovered. Some gene or household chemical or simple behavior that skews the odds. Thus at a population level the aggregate risk might be 1 in 73 million, but for this individual it's 1 in a billion and for that one it's 1 in 10 thousand. We just don't know it, because we don't know all the risk factors. It's like insurance. You might be a really safe cautious driver, and your friend a nutcase. But your insurance doesn't really know who is a nutjob predisposed to accidents ahead of time.
  - 8y ago

oftenwrong 8y ago

Field tests for Marijuana also seem to regularly be baseless. A couple had their house raided partially because some loose leaf tea in their rubbish bin field-tested positive as marijuana: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2017/12/19/jury-rules-against-family-subjected-to-swat-raid-over-loose-leaf-tea/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2017/12/19/... Police using unproven "drug recognition expert" training to "detect" marijuana use via body language: https://www.11alive.com/article/news/investigations/the-drug-whisperer-drivers-arrested-while-stone-cold-sober/85-437061710 https://www.11alive.com/article/news/investigations/the-drug... More on faulty drug testing: https://www.cacj.org/documents/sf_crime_lab/studies__misc_materials/falsepositives.pdf https://www.cacj.org/documents/sf_crime_lab/studies__misc_ma...

wonderwonder 8y ago
In Kansas now this is not even relevant. Police just have to claim to 'smell marijuana' and they can search a home without a warrant. The 4th amendment is being whittled down to nothing. https://www.countable.us/articles/17230-kansas-supreme-court-rules-smell-pot-justify-police-searching-home https://www.countable.us/articles/17230-kansas-supreme-court...

DataWorker 8y ago

If you select the right jury it doesn’t matter whether you have solid evidence anyway. For some cases you might want to remove black jurors, or maybe get rid of any women. If you get the right mix you get a conviction regardless of the facts of the case. Outcomes are determined by looks as much, perhaps more than actual evidence. And we know that and proceed just the same.

mnw21cam 8y ago
It boggles the mind that members of the jury can be selected by the prosecution or defence in this way (or at all, really). I understand the need to disqualify people if they have severe learning difficulties, have special knowledge that would disrupt the process, or if they are incapable of finding one of the possible verdicts, but otherwise the selection should be a random cross-section of society.
- Matticus_Rex 8y ago
  It's very likely that a particular random cross-section will be extremely biased in one direction or another.
- somebodythere 8y ago
  Why should a juror be excluded for possessing special knowledge? Wouldn't that be an advantage when it comes to finding facts?
  - pmoriarty 8y ago
    If a juror knows the defendant or the victim, or knows the prosecutor or defense attorney for that matter, that could bias them.
  - FireBeyond 8y ago
    Because neither side really has an interest in you as a juror determining things yourself, they want jurors who can be accepting of their narrative, be they prosecution or defense.

mchannon 8y ago

One I'm running into right now is the science of IP addresses. Unfortunately, 99% of criminal cases are where IP address "science" (if you can call it that) typically follows the formulaic story where somebody starts downloading certain graphical images, agents working the pipe or the other end log the IP, the ISP identifies the IP account's subscriber (after the law enforcement agency compensates them for their time), and then a search of the corresponding premises is authorized. Luckily I'm not dealing with that. But in that case, the IP address forms the Court's idea of probable cause. If the IP address is a single family home with a single computer and no wi-fi, seems pretty open-and-shut. If it's a Starbucks or a workplace, and that actually results in a team of agents descending on it and searching and seizing the occupants' computers, then I think most would agree it's an abuse of power. The challenge the Courts have is that middle category. What if I told you with a straight face that I believe you did something illegal, I have an IP address that used to be yours connected with that act, though no proof it was yours at the time, no proof you were using that location's internet at that time or even there to use it, and no idea how many other people were using the wifi there? That's good enough to convict until US courts rule otherwise.

tyfon 8y ago
Even with a single home, a single computer and no wifi the computer could easily be hacked and used as a VPN for such matters. I don't think it's that open and shut. Unless you require every person who has an electronic device to be personally responsible for security bugs on such systems. You can get owned even if you are careful given the right security holes.
- mchannon 8y ago
  I did kinda muddle the difference between guilt at trial and probable cause for a search and seizure in my post, but I believe most Americans at least would be of the opinion that even considering that possibility, it's still good enough for them to go in and seize/search that computer. It's not a charge or a conviction at that point. If no contraband shows up on the computer, charges are dropped and computer is returned intact•. And maybe hopefully there's forensic traces of malware that the defendant can use to argue his innocence. That last point has never been argued ("look here's some malware"), at least in my reading of the caselaw. Most guys (it's always men) just usually confess or plead and then try to argue their way out of it unsuccessfully afterward. Hitting and killing a kindergartener with your car carries lesser criminal penalties in this country than downloading and storing a GIF that millions of others have already downloaded and stored. Fixing the science discrepancy is only one of many things due for a reckoning in this country.

alexhutcheson 8y ago

I'm glad this is getting more attention. If you're interested in learning more, the book The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist[1] is a great in-depth dive into a couple specific cases where testimony from "experts" resulted in the conviction of innocent people. It also does a good job explaining the incentives and institutions that make it hard to stop this. [1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33296669-the-cadaver-king-and-the-country-dentist https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33296669-the-cadaver-kin...

wonderwonder 8y ago

In America for the most part if the police and / or prosecution want you to be convicted you are probably going to be. For police there are almost no consequences for lying or falsifying data except a law suit that they are not responsible for paying. Police have almost carte-blanche to do as they will including resorting to intimidation. The only good defense against being convicted in a court of law is large amounts of disposable wealth.

kstenerud 8y ago

In jury trials, prosecutors have not only a huge advantage, but also a perverse incentive to lie and cheat. They know that the jurors are not going to be experienced enough in criminal law to sniff out procedural bullshit or "expert witness" gambits or bullshit science, much like a novice is unlikely to win at poker against a professional player. And therein lies the problem. In every trial, you have professionals (lawyers) playing against novices (jurors), and since the prosecution automatically gains special believability status in the eyes of jurors, they hold the upper hand. To make matters worse, prosecutors have the automatic full cooperation of police, whereas the defense has no such guarantees. And since prosecutors are gauged by their wins, and high ranking prosecutors are the most likely to be voted/appointed into coveted judge seats, there is a perverse incentive to prosecute the innocent. But since the system operates on the fiction that all members are equal (much like all sides are equal in a game of poker), it's easy to brush aside the reality that they are most certainly not equal, and that the more experienced has such a huge advantage that it's laughable to even call it fair. In a system with professional judges, that wouldn't fly, as the trained judge would see through their shenanigans and rebuke them.

wonderwonder 8y ago
Further compounding this is the sheer amount of work and cases public defenders have to contend with, they are over whelmed. In New Orleans, they have 50 public defenders for 22,000 cases, to the point where they are refusing to represent on certain felony cases. Which means the accused gets to hang out in jail. Article is a quick read and does a good job explaining the mindest of people who plead guilty to crimes they did not commit: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/inside-new-orleans-public-defenders-decision-to-refuse-felony-cases/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/inside-new-orleans-public-defen...
- Someone1234 8y ago
  This is why you should avoid waiving your right to a speedy trial when you have a public defender. While in THEORY it should give them more time to prepare, more than likely you'll get 20~30 minutes of prep time either way on the day of your trial but spend longer in jail just waiting. If you have a private defender, it might make a lot of sense to waive, since they can use that additional time to assemble enough evidence for either court or a better deal. But in modern US "justice" even if you're innocent expect to take a plea. That's just how it works now.

hnuser1234 8y ago

It is not a "justice" system, it is a legal system.

driverdan 8y ago

I'm surprised the article gave this a pass: > Investigators also found a witness who, after being hypnotized, a technique sometimes used by law enforcement to enhance memories, said he remembered seeing Johnston force the couple into a car. Hypnosis is not a valid technique to "enhance memories." It is, however, a way to change memories and create false memories.

cheez 8y ago

What I always say to people caught up in the justice system is cop a no-record plea deal, and if that fails, use dirty tricks to get the people prosecuting you. Put a private detective on the prosecutor and their helpers, get some dirt on them. Catch a police officer or an agent of the court threatening you on a recording. Etc, etc. Your lawyer won't like it, but they use the same tricks on you. Fuck 'em. Threaten to release the dirt (through your lawyer, in a legally vague way) and watch the charges go away.

GoodJokes 8y ago

America doesn't have a justice system. It has a has system that enforces laws created by those in power. Those laws have nothing to do with justice most of the time.