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Nevertheless, the officer insisted that Spriestersbach was actually Castleberry and took him to jail. He was fingerprinted and had his photo taken, generating r

Nevertheless, the officer insisted that Spriestersbach was actually Castleberry and took him to jail. He was fingerprinted and had his photo taken, generating records that could have been used to prove he wasn’t Castleberry, the Innocence Project asserts. It's beyond me how anyone has one iota of faith in the US judicial system anymore.

slackfan 5y ago
This could have happened anywhere in the world, the US is hardly unique.
- DecoPerson 5y ago
  I have faith in a situation like this being far less likely to occur in Australia.
  - zepto 5y ago
    Why? I see no reason to believe Australia’s social problems aren’t as bad as as the US.
  - satori99 5y ago
    Don't be too sure. Very similar things have happened in Australia before, and no doubt will again https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornelia_Rau https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornelia_Rau
  - UnpossibleJim 5y ago
    https://www.mondaq.com/australia/crime/893326/imprisoning-the-innocent-the-causes-of-wrongful-convictions-in-australia https://www.mondaq.com/australia/crime/893326/imprisoning-th... There isn't a large Innocence Project (though a small one has popped up and should be supported) in Australia and there are overzealous prosecutors in Australia, just as in a lot of places (though the competition in America seems to be exceptionally strong). Faith is nice and all, but it doesn't free the innocent. There's a link to support Australia's innocence project, maybe tithe.
  - hilbert42 5y ago
    It's not yet as bad but it's becoming more and more like the US every day. Australian politicians rarely create original law, they either ape laws from elsewhere or are forced into copying laws from the country they're trying to do trade deals with. Thus Australian law is becoming more and more like that of the US. For that matter, things won't improve in any anglophone country until they ditch the adversarial system for the inquisitorial one that has a better chance of getting to the truth of a case. But don't hold your breath, that won't happen anytime soon.
  - drno123 5y ago
    With the current lockdown and incoming martial law, it seems that you already live in a dystopian universe.
  - wil421 5y ago
    Here you go. IIRC Australia hasn’t been side kind to it’s Indigenous population. https://obriensolicitors.com.au/case-studies-unlawful-imprisonment-false-arrest/ https://obriensolicitors.com.au/case-studies-unlawful-impris...
- pempem 5y ago
  Then really its a global problem we need to figure out. Every day on HN we have debates about the trading of privacy for data for a more secure world. This is an indication that our efforts are broken, because people. But also that those people held a lot of different roles, in a diversity of offices across our judicial system.
- SavantIdiot 5y ago
  How can you possibly make such a claim with any supporting evidence that it could be "anywhere"? EDIT: Confused "anywhere" with "everywhere". I'll take my F in logic today and show myself out.
  - TheFreim 5y ago
    Does someone need to provide a source proving that mistakes happen outside the United States?
  - sophacles 5y ago
    Actually, I think your doubt needs some sources. The foundational principle is that there exists at least one of: * a human that has never once made any mistake whatsoever * a system composed of humans who are mistake capable but the system itself actually makes no mistakes. Such a thing seems impossible - if you can point to the existence of such a thing, your doubt is worth entertaining, otherwise it's just contrarianism.
- tonyarkles 5y ago
  Here's, among others, one of the absolutely wild examples from Canada: https://lop.parl.ca/sites/PublicWebsite/default/en_CA/ResearchPublications/202077E#a2-5 https://lop.parl.ca/sites/PublicWebsite/default/en_CA/Resear... Multiple people convicted by evidence provided by a quack of a doctor used as an Expert Witness by the crown.
- tunesmith 5y ago
  Therefore what? Bad thing happens in the US, yes that's true, but well, that same bad thing happens in other places too, so therefore.... what?
  - staticman2 5y ago
    Don't get me wrong, i find this story outrageous, but whether our system is doing comparatively well or comparatively poor seems like useful empirical information. For one thing, if another country handles things better, that shows humans are capable of improving their system.
    - tunesmith 5y ago
      Ah yes, that does help. Too often I see people make statements like that and it just comes across as fatalistic, like an attempt to dissipate the will of others to do anything about it at all. I wonder what the other countries are that do better, and what they do differently. Maybe there should be a mandated evidence review every x years, irrespective of sentence.
  - mucholove 5y ago
    I love this attitude. In life, so many people are happy to reference themselves to a very poor standard. For mang Dominicans, it’s OK in the case of Dominican Republic to be the third country in Latin America for so many statistic—automobile accidents, coronavirus deaths, you name it. This is unacceptable to me. Pick the highest bar—and if the highest bar isn’t good enough—set a new standard. Sure, we will have failures—but we need to push the envelope and do “good” not “better than worse”.
  - ars 5y ago
    So therefore humans are humans. If it was unique you can point to what makes it unique - but if it happens everywhere, then it's because humans are humans. If you don't understand the source of the problem you have no change of fixing it.
- ModernMech 5y ago
  The US is definitely unique in that it confines the largest number people against their will in the world, in terms of both per capita and raw population numbers. That context cannot be lost when examining the cruelty of the system. It's obviously at an extreme end of the spectrum, so treating it like "any other country" doesn't hold up. The system is designed to target and exploit vulnerable, poor people and turn them into productive assets. Once it has them, getting them out can be incredibly difficult because they become so profitable. Our penal system is not designed for rehabilitation but for profit generation.
- lozenge 5y ago
  Here's one (sort of) from the UK. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal Hundreds jailed or fined due to a faulty computer system blaming them - no other evidence - Post Office covered it up repeatedly - victims still not fully compensated.
pstuart 5y ago
It's a legal system, not a justice system.
- harpiaharpyja 5y ago
  I'm not sure what point you're trying to make with that statement. I think justice should be considered the entire purpose of a legal system. And if it isn't working, it should be fixed. Accountability sounds like a good place to start. If an official causes harm to another person through negligence or otherwise they should be held accountable to the same standards as anyone else.
  - SerLava 5y ago
    They're just saying our legal system doesn't try to consistently create justice.
    - shadowgovt 5y ago
      It definintely tries (that's sort of the point of it). ... but it doesn't always succeed for multiple reasons. One of the most common being that it's not always possible to grant all parties justice. Sometimes, courts have to evaluate a zero-sum situation and decide how cost will be shared, so there's no way to move forward without constraining someone's rights. And people's definitions of "justice" vary, and are far more often grounded in emotion than coherent philosophy... It's not always even logically possible to grant all parties justice. The useful distinction to keep in mind is that the legal system will follow the law, but whether the outcome of that is "justice" is a subjective evaluation more than a measurable concept.
      - samatman 5y ago
        > It definintely tries (that's sort of the point of it) This is probably argument from definition (unclear) but in any case, it's a statement which needs backing up. To cite a usual boogeyman for such discussions, the Soviet court system under Stalin wasn't at all interested in justice. It's not clear to me that the incentives in the US court system align with justice more than accidentally. As in, sometimes the guilty go to prison, as a side effect of the prosecutor's office needing to clear their docket and present good numbers to keep their budget up. Very occasionally, the innocent are cleared of crimes, and even more occasionally than that their lives aren't ruined in the process; defense attorneys want to look good as well.
shadowgovt 5y ago
Mostly because these stories are incredibly rare. The Innocence Project does excellent work to try and prevent people like this from falling through the cracks.
- Causality1 5y ago
  The stories are rare. We don't know how rare the events are. What percentage of people do the Innocence Project manage to review? It's certainly not everyone.
  - goodpoint 5y ago
    Absolutely not. The high imprisonment rate and the number of people imprisoned without a process is a clear symptom.
- KerryJones 5y ago
  There are organizations dedicated to handling the repeated abuse of mental health facilities in similar ways here -- not the legal aspect, but the mental health. "Incredibly rare" feels like it's playing into the narrative of "oops, this is rare". So, I would argue, "one of many": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenhan_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenhan_experiment
- dehrmann 5y ago
  And if everyone who dropped the ball on this got a year in prison for it, they'd be even more rare.
  - toiletaccount 5y ago
    thats a good way to gum up the system so nothing ever gets done.
    - gowld 5y ago
      Then people will be empowered to enforce community standards instead of being held back by a State force that doesn't do its job but prevents them from doing theirs.
Clubber 5y ago
The worst part is it took 2 years and outside lawyers to rectify the situation. It's as if the justice system doesn't even care if it gets it right or wrong, it's just a mindless machine. "I don't care, not my job."
- tartoran 5y ago
  This could be fixed with punishment for the responsible party.
- smachiz 5y ago
  If you read the article, it wasn't outside lawyers. He was freed because one of the doctors in the mental facility (who originally declared him incompetent) had a change of opinion and actually tried to verify his claims and realized he was telling the truth. The innocence project is just trying to clear his name, after he went to live with his sister in Vermont.
  - Clubber 5y ago
    >If you read the article, it wasn't outside lawyers. He was freed because one of the doctors... I can't read the article because it's behind a paywall. I said he needed outside lawyers to rectify the situation. Just because he was freed doesn't mean his life is back in order. I suspect he has an arrest record, criminal conviction and a record of time served to contend with. Not to mention he hasn't worked in 2+ years. I'm sure his credit is toast. What happened to the place he used to live? I don't know if his voting rights have been restored. I would imagine a google search for his name would bring up at least one article on his conviction for employers to be deterred. Imagine what your life would look like if you just vanished from civilization for 2 years. The punishment is a lot more than just the incarceration.
    - skinnymuch 5y ago
      He was homeless with mental health issues. Obviously not the mental health BS the state said he had. This does not change the crux of your post, just some of the points.
jimothyjames 5y ago
because it's the only one we got
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
jstummbillig 5y ago
It is beyond me how people intelligent enough to hang around HN can pretend to have no understanding of how systems work. The justice system mostly works (relative to what its designed to do and the system it evolved out of, which you might both disagree with, but let's not complicate this). By the nature of what it handles (humans) and what you are (human) it will look abhorrently cruel when it fails. And, as with any system, it will definitely continue to fail as long as it is in place. Assessing an acceptable failure rate is kinda hard – but realistically there has to be one or you will just have to do without any system at all. So, more interestingly, the thing to look out for is whether a) there are institutions that report on system failures and b) we learn from those failures and correct them at all. As far as I can tell that generally happens in democratic countries. The next thing to look at is the speed in which we do those corrections. Could they be quicker? Sure. However, it seems like democracies are a tad slow about everything to people everywhere. Or, put differently, we are all wired a little bit too impatiently for how our democracies are currently designed. I feel that's good thing, constantly scrutinising our systems, keeping them on their toes and improving as we go.
- rabboRubble 5y ago
  the issue for me isn't that a mistake was made, the issue is that the parties responsible for the mistake conspired in secret without official record to cover up their error, and left the man dumped in a homeless shelter with fifty cents.
  - jstummbillig 5y ago
    Agreed. What happened here is absolutely horrific.
  - pas 5y ago
    This happens "all the time". Taking responsibility is not 'in vogue' nowadays. (Prime examples are the lasts president. Obama was big on cracking down on whistleblowers. Orange explicitly claimed many times that managing stuff is not his responsibility, he has people for that.)
- 5y ago

slackfan 5y ago

This could have happened anywhere in the world, the US is hardly unique.

DecoPerson 5y ago
I have faith in a situation like this being far less likely to occur in Australia.
- zepto 5y ago
  Why? I see no reason to believe Australia’s social problems aren’t as bad as as the US.
- satori99 5y ago
  Don't be too sure. Very similar things have happened in Australia before, and no doubt will again https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornelia_Rau https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornelia_Rau
- UnpossibleJim 5y ago
  https://www.mondaq.com/australia/crime/893326/imprisoning-the-innocent-the-causes-of-wrongful-convictions-in-australia https://www.mondaq.com/australia/crime/893326/imprisoning-th... There isn't a large Innocence Project (though a small one has popped up and should be supported) in Australia and there are overzealous prosecutors in Australia, just as in a lot of places (though the competition in America seems to be exceptionally strong). Faith is nice and all, but it doesn't free the innocent. There's a link to support Australia's innocence project, maybe tithe.
- hilbert42 5y ago
  It's not yet as bad but it's becoming more and more like the US every day. Australian politicians rarely create original law, they either ape laws from elsewhere or are forced into copying laws from the country they're trying to do trade deals with. Thus Australian law is becoming more and more like that of the US. For that matter, things won't improve in any anglophone country until they ditch the adversarial system for the inquisitorial one that has a better chance of getting to the truth of a case. But don't hold your breath, that won't happen anytime soon.
- drno123 5y ago
  With the current lockdown and incoming martial law, it seems that you already live in a dystopian universe.
- wil421 5y ago
  Here you go. IIRC Australia hasn’t been side kind to it’s Indigenous population. https://obriensolicitors.com.au/case-studies-unlawful-imprisonment-false-arrest/ https://obriensolicitors.com.au/case-studies-unlawful-impris...
pempem 5y ago
Then really its a global problem we need to figure out. Every day on HN we have debates about the trading of privacy for data for a more secure world. This is an indication that our efforts are broken, because people. But also that those people held a lot of different roles, in a diversity of offices across our judicial system.
SavantIdiot 5y ago
How can you possibly make such a claim with any supporting evidence that it could be "anywhere"? EDIT: Confused "anywhere" with "everywhere". I'll take my F in logic today and show myself out.
- TheFreim 5y ago
  Does someone need to provide a source proving that mistakes happen outside the United States?
- sophacles 5y ago
  Actually, I think your doubt needs some sources. The foundational principle is that there exists at least one of: * a human that has never once made any mistake whatsoever * a system composed of humans who are mistake capable but the system itself actually makes no mistakes. Such a thing seems impossible - if you can point to the existence of such a thing, your doubt is worth entertaining, otherwise it's just contrarianism.
tonyarkles 5y ago
Here's, among others, one of the absolutely wild examples from Canada: https://lop.parl.ca/sites/PublicWebsite/default/en_CA/ResearchPublications/202077E#a2-5 https://lop.parl.ca/sites/PublicWebsite/default/en_CA/Resear... Multiple people convicted by evidence provided by a quack of a doctor used as an Expert Witness by the crown.
tunesmith 5y ago
Therefore what? Bad thing happens in the US, yes that's true, but well, that same bad thing happens in other places too, so therefore.... what?
- staticman2 5y ago
  Don't get me wrong, i find this story outrageous, but whether our system is doing comparatively well or comparatively poor seems like useful empirical information. For one thing, if another country handles things better, that shows humans are capable of improving their system.
  - tunesmith 5y ago
    Ah yes, that does help. Too often I see people make statements like that and it just comes across as fatalistic, like an attempt to dissipate the will of others to do anything about it at all. I wonder what the other countries are that do better, and what they do differently. Maybe there should be a mandated evidence review every x years, irrespective of sentence.
- mucholove 5y ago
  I love this attitude. In life, so many people are happy to reference themselves to a very poor standard. For mang Dominicans, it’s OK in the case of Dominican Republic to be the third country in Latin America for so many statistic—automobile accidents, coronavirus deaths, you name it. This is unacceptable to me. Pick the highest bar—and if the highest bar isn’t good enough—set a new standard. Sure, we will have failures—but we need to push the envelope and do “good” not “better than worse”.
- ars 5y ago
  So therefore humans are humans. If it was unique you can point to what makes it unique - but if it happens everywhere, then it's because humans are humans. If you don't understand the source of the problem you have no change of fixing it.
ModernMech 5y ago
The US is definitely unique in that it confines the largest number people against their will in the world, in terms of both per capita and raw population numbers. That context cannot be lost when examining the cruelty of the system. It's obviously at an extreme end of the spectrum, so treating it like "any other country" doesn't hold up. The system is designed to target and exploit vulnerable, poor people and turn them into productive assets. Once it has them, getting them out can be incredibly difficult because they become so profitable. Our penal system is not designed for rehabilitation but for profit generation.
lozenge 5y ago
Here's one (sort of) from the UK. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal Hundreds jailed or fined due to a faulty computer system blaming them - no other evidence - Post Office covered it up repeatedly - victims still not fully compensated.

pstuart 5y ago

It's a legal system, not a justice system.

harpiaharpyja 5y ago
I'm not sure what point you're trying to make with that statement. I think justice should be considered the entire purpose of a legal system. And if it isn't working, it should be fixed. Accountability sounds like a good place to start. If an official causes harm to another person through negligence or otherwise they should be held accountable to the same standards as anyone else.
- SerLava 5y ago
  They're just saying our legal system doesn't try to consistently create justice.
  - shadowgovt 5y ago
    It definintely tries (that's sort of the point of it). ... but it doesn't always succeed for multiple reasons. One of the most common being that it's not always possible to grant all parties justice. Sometimes, courts have to evaluate a zero-sum situation and decide how cost will be shared, so there's no way to move forward without constraining someone's rights. And people's definitions of "justice" vary, and are far more often grounded in emotion than coherent philosophy... It's not always even logically possible to grant all parties justice. The useful distinction to keep in mind is that the legal system will follow the law, but whether the outcome of that is "justice" is a subjective evaluation more than a measurable concept.
    - samatman 5y ago
      > It definintely tries (that's sort of the point of it) This is probably argument from definition (unclear) but in any case, it's a statement which needs backing up. To cite a usual boogeyman for such discussions, the Soviet court system under Stalin wasn't at all interested in justice. It's not clear to me that the incentives in the US court system align with justice more than accidentally. As in, sometimes the guilty go to prison, as a side effect of the prosecutor's office needing to clear their docket and present good numbers to keep their budget up. Very occasionally, the innocent are cleared of crimes, and even more occasionally than that their lives aren't ruined in the process; defense attorneys want to look good as well.

shadowgovt 5y ago

Mostly because these stories are incredibly rare. The Innocence Project does excellent work to try and prevent people like this from falling through the cracks.

Causality1 5y ago
The stories are rare. We don't know how rare the events are. What percentage of people do the Innocence Project manage to review? It's certainly not everyone.
- goodpoint 5y ago
  Absolutely not. The high imprisonment rate and the number of people imprisoned without a process is a clear symptom.
KerryJones 5y ago
There are organizations dedicated to handling the repeated abuse of mental health facilities in similar ways here -- not the legal aspect, but the mental health. "Incredibly rare" feels like it's playing into the narrative of "oops, this is rare". So, I would argue, "one of many": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenhan_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenhan_experiment
dehrmann 5y ago
And if everyone who dropped the ball on this got a year in prison for it, they'd be even more rare.
- toiletaccount 5y ago
  thats a good way to gum up the system so nothing ever gets done.
  - gowld 5y ago
    Then people will be empowered to enforce community standards instead of being held back by a State force that doesn't do its job but prevents them from doing theirs.

Clubber 5y ago

The worst part is it took 2 years and outside lawyers to rectify the situation. It's as if the justice system doesn't even care if it gets it right or wrong, it's just a mindless machine. "I don't care, not my job."

tartoran 5y ago
This could be fixed with punishment for the responsible party.
smachiz 5y ago
If you read the article, it wasn't outside lawyers. He was freed because one of the doctors in the mental facility (who originally declared him incompetent) had a change of opinion and actually tried to verify his claims and realized he was telling the truth. The innocence project is just trying to clear his name, after he went to live with his sister in Vermont.
- Clubber 5y ago
  >If you read the article, it wasn't outside lawyers. He was freed because one of the doctors... I can't read the article because it's behind a paywall. I said he needed outside lawyers to rectify the situation. Just because he was freed doesn't mean his life is back in order. I suspect he has an arrest record, criminal conviction and a record of time served to contend with. Not to mention he hasn't worked in 2+ years. I'm sure his credit is toast. What happened to the place he used to live? I don't know if his voting rights have been restored. I would imagine a google search for his name would bring up at least one article on his conviction for employers to be deterred. Imagine what your life would look like if you just vanished from civilization for 2 years. The punishment is a lot more than just the incarceration.
  - skinnymuch 5y ago
    He was homeless with mental health issues. Obviously not the mental health BS the state said he had. This does not change the crux of your post, just some of the points.

jimothyjames 5y ago

because it's the only one we got

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

jstummbillig 5y ago

It is beyond me how people intelligent enough to hang around HN can pretend to have no understanding of how systems work. The justice system mostly works (relative to what its designed to do and the system it evolved out of, which you might both disagree with, but let's not complicate this). By the nature of what it handles (humans) and what you are (human) it will look abhorrently cruel when it fails. And, as with any system, it will definitely continue to fail as long as it is in place. Assessing an acceptable failure rate is kinda hard – but realistically there has to be one or you will just have to do without any system at all. So, more interestingly, the thing to look out for is whether a) there are institutions that report on system failures and b) we learn from those failures and correct them at all. As far as I can tell that generally happens in democratic countries. The next thing to look at is the speed in which we do those corrections. Could they be quicker? Sure. However, it seems like democracies are a tad slow about everything to people everywhere. Or, put differently, we are all wired a little bit too impatiently for how our democracies are currently designed. I feel that's good thing, constantly scrutinising our systems, keeping them on their toes and improving as we go.

rabboRubble 5y ago
the issue for me isn't that a mistake was made, the issue is that the parties responsible for the mistake conspired in secret without official record to cover up their error, and left the man dumped in a homeless shelter with fifty cents.
- jstummbillig 5y ago
  Agreed. What happened here is absolutely horrific.
- pas 5y ago
  This happens "all the time". Taking responsibility is not 'in vogue' nowadays. (Prime examples are the lasts president. Obama was big on cracking down on whistleblowers. Orange explicitly claimed many times that managing stuff is not his responsibility, he has people for that.)
5y ago