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This is the issue: it's unreliable, and its results presented as a matter of fact. This is also the latest I've heard of, in a long line of the criminal justi
by Frondo 5y ago
This is the issue: it's unreliable, and its results presented as a matter of fact.
This is also the latest I've heard of, in a long line of the criminal justice system presenting what's often closer to fiction as an indisputable fact of someone's guilt. One of the cases that made me incredibly angry was the junk arson science surrounding the conviction and execution of Cameron Todd Willingham in Texas in 2004:
https://innocenceproject.org/cameron-todd-willingham-wrongfully-convicted-and-executed-in-texas/ https://innocenceproject.org/cameron-todd-willingham-wrongfu...
But I also think of how unreliable eyewitness testimony is, and yet people's recollections of events (when we know, and have known for so long, that memory is plastic!), sometimes years later, are treated as fact:
https://www.ncsc.org/trends/monthly-trends-articles/2017/the-trouble-with-eyewitness-identification-testimony-in-criminal-cases#:~:text=Research%20has%20found%20that%20eyewitness-identification%20testimony%20can%20be%20very%20unreliable.&text=Although%20witnesses%20can%20often%20be,most%20unreliable%20forms%20of%20evidence https://www.ncsc.org/trends/monthly-trends-articles/2017/the....
I don't know how to solve this, since the "proven" part of "innocent until proven guilty" seems like it's built on a house of cards, and the only people with a direct incentive to change it are suspects (i.e. the people that the criminal justice system has already decided could've done it, and how can you trust a criminal's motivations? eye roll)