4 ms·

If you or I lie to the court, it is perjury. When it is the FBI, who are granted an additional level of professional authority and trust in their testimony 'bec

If you or I lie to the court, it is perjury. When it is the FBI, who are granted an additional level of professional authority and trust in their testimony 'because reasons' (even though no testimony should automatically be elevated over other) it's just harmless 'errors made in statements by FBI examiners' as phrased in this article. Having gone through the system, it's all lies. Let's start with plea agreements. You have to agree in your plea that you were not coerced or threatened into taking your plea, yet everyone know that the prosecutor threatens you with taking the plea or facing an extra 10-30 years as the 'trial tax' (google it) that get's applied if you dare exercise your constitutional right to trial. But the judge, prosecutor, everyone looks the other way and ignores that blatant threat made against you. The judge knows that the prosecutor placing that clause in the plea is being disingenuous, the prosecutor knows they are. If justice is served by a five year sentence in a plea, how is that same justice served and applied fairly when adding 15 years simply for going to trial? Either a crime warrants a 5 year sentence, or a 15 year sentence. But sentencing is based not on your crime, but on the prosecutor and judge being annoyed if you exercise your constitutional rights. There is a reason that plea agreements were considered unconstitutional up until the 60s when the police/judicial state started undermining constitutional rights. Acceptability of forensic evidence such as lie detector tests is not based on science but on precedence. If a court has accepted it as science before, then it is extremely hard for you to challenge it, even when it was complete garbage like lie detector tests. The current language is 'you can't be convicted solely based on lie detector tests' after a lot of people paid a lot of experts and took a lot of 'trial tax' to try and get lie detectors removed completely.

ldoughty 4y ago
Firstly, I'm sorry you went through the system and had to face these kinds of issues. I generally agree with you. The fact some of these citizens people were likely incorrectly executed, and others died in prison, based on bad science makes this depressing to read. However, I would factor in intent and knowledge on the part of lab workers and experts when demanding penalties for their action. If they intentionally lied to support a case, 100% they should have a sentence at least equal to and preferably greater than the person they are essentially framing. However, if they are just using equipment as trained, reading results as trained, and had no I'll intent? I don't think it makes the world better to throw them in jail.
- hedora 4y ago
  It's the explicit job of prosecutors to get guilty verdicts regardless of the defendant's guilt. This is the core of the US's adversarial justice system. (In the same way it is the defense attorney's job to get a not guilty ruling.) I think this should be changed, so that false convictions are treated with the same level of seriousness as police officers shooting unarmed civilians on camera. Patterns of prosecutorial misconduct should lead to prison time that is the sum of the false convictions, in the worst environment the falsely convicted parties ended up in. (So, probably not the country club minimal security white collar prison.) Also, the people in charge of this should be untouchable by the currently elected politicians they would likely be investigating. Fixed-term appointments with mandatory recusal rules probably make sense.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - thaumasiotes 4y ago
    > It's the explicit job of prosecutors to get guilty verdicts regardless of the defendant's guilt. This is not correct; they're supposed to e.g. dismiss charges if they learn they've charged the wrong guy. The problem isn't that the system calls for them to convict innocent people. The problem is that they're evaluated by their conviction rate.
  - jessaustin 4y ago
    ...the same level of seriousness as police officers shooting unarmed civilians on camera. Police officers in USA are almost never convicted of murder in these or any other circumstances. https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/20/us/police-convicted-murder-rare-chauvin/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/20/us/police-convicted-murder-ra...
- ROTMetro 4y ago
  '90 percent of trial transcripts the Bureau analyzed as part of its Microscopic Hair Comparison Analysis Review contained erroneous statements'. Would you be OK with a hospital having this level 'innocent mistake' rate? How about if 90% of a medicines studies had erroneous statements made by the same group of professionals? Would you be OK with an amusement park having a 90% failure rate when they attest to the safety of their equipment? Should not repeated failures that have a severe impact on people's lives be held to a higher standard than 'oops, my bad bro'? A doctor wouldn't get away with 90% erroneous statements, why do these professionals?
brnaftr361 4y ago
Any recommended reading?
- adhesive_wombat 4y ago
  Black Box Thinking has a few examples of law enforcement doubling down on obviously wrong conclusions when presented with new exculpatory evidence.
- ROTMetro 4y ago
  https://www.lexisnexis.com/en-us/products/lexis.page https://www.lexisnexis.com/en-us/products/lexis.page Start reading cases and judgements. I think you will find discomfort in how things really work.
  - ROTMetro 4y ago
    Haha. Just kidding. Of course that sort of insight into the courts is paywalled. Why should people have free access to what is going on in the courts?
ok_dad 4y ago
Man, that’s fucking shitty. I hate how CSI and Law and Order have trained the general population to trust this stuff so much. The culture around criminal justice in America needs to be reset completely. It’s clearly still poisoned by the prejudices and power structures from a few hundred years ago.
akira2501 4y ago
> Either a crime warrants a 5 year sentence, or a 15 year sentence Then why is there a difference between first degree murder and second degree murder? Murder warrants a particular sentence, and circumstances should not matter? > But sentencing is based not on your crime The court is taking into consideration your behavior and your reticence over your own actions. Taking the plea deal shows reticence as it immediately requires an admission of guilt. Demanding a trial, particularly when you actually have committed the offense, in an effort to "get out" of the time you must serve or to merely publish your side of the story is not viewed favorably by the court. Why should it be? You're tying up immense resources simply to parse the details of your crime in an effort to convince a judge that maybe you're actually not that bad of a guy. The court knows it is not a perfect arbiter of the truth, and that it's application of process inherently deprives, in some way, the rights of everyone involved. Every witness you call is subpoenaed to court under penalty if they don't comply. Victims are never actually made whole by the trial, and offenders run the risk of incriminating themselves further. They're there because they're necessary, not because they are an ideal or preferred solution. Courts aim for settlements in civil trials, and they aim for pleas in criminal trials. > were considered unconstitutional up until the 60s when the police/judicial state started undermining constitutional rights. The means under which they were offered was unconstitutional, why should it be against the constitution for you to negotiate your own settlement in a criminal matter with the state? Is it really a better outcome that you must go to trial without any option? > even when it was complete garbage like lie detector tests. Lie detector tests actually _do_ measure physiological responses, though. The problem is that's not all they measure, and the results are too polluted by the reviewer to be useful. That a human beings heart rate increases when they intentionally try to deceive another is an actual fact. So are they really "complete garbage?" Or are they just not as pure of a datapoint as we thought they were? Perhaps this is why some courts still allow them to be admitted when all parties agree to it's use.
- BLKNSLVR 4y ago
  > Taking the plea deal shows reticence as it immediately requires an admission of guilt. Or it shows a preference for 5 years over the risk of 15 years out of pure fear or knowledge that the jury will be manipulated with pseudo-scientific "evidence". Taking a plea deal can be totally separate from guilt or innocence. > You're tying up immense resources simply to parse the details of your crime in an effort to convince a judge that maybe you're actually not that bad of a guy. You seem to be ignoring that someone may actually be innocent in some cases. You're sounding like an ambitious prosecutor yourself, or you just have too much faith that the system would never bring the wrong person to court. > Courts aim for settlements in civil trials, and they aim for pleas in criminal trials. Which, over time, turn into a perverse incentive structure because court time gets increasingly valued over justice and so plea deals become threats rather than offers. Fundamentally, when presenting prosecutorial evidence that's not what it appears, my reaction, if I ever need to defend myself against such things, world be to further tie up the courts time by presenting evidence against the evidence and / or demanding a thorough explanation of the implications of what is being described as evidence. This could add literal weeks to every single case that goes to trial. The method of evidence collection would be on trial because there's so much trust lost due to, basically, lies on the part of law enforcement and prosecution in their pursuit of conviction as metric for success and promotion.
ROTMetro 4y ago
Just to post an interesting jailhouse lawyer observation, the number one group of innocent men in prison are dad's that took the fall for their kids. Our system doesn't handle that well. If there is a crime and someone who will plea out to it, the system doesn't have a mechanism to account for that.

ldoughty 4y ago

Firstly, I'm sorry you went through the system and had to face these kinds of issues. I generally agree with you. The fact some of these citizens people were likely incorrectly executed, and others died in prison, based on bad science makes this depressing to read. However, I would factor in intent and knowledge on the part of lab workers and experts when demanding penalties for their action. If they intentionally lied to support a case, 100% they should have a sentence at least equal to and preferably greater than the person they are essentially framing. However, if they are just using equipment as trained, reading results as trained, and had no I'll intent? I don't think it makes the world better to throw them in jail.

hedora 4y ago
It's the explicit job of prosecutors to get guilty verdicts regardless of the defendant's guilt. This is the core of the US's adversarial justice system. (In the same way it is the defense attorney's job to get a not guilty ruling.) I think this should be changed, so that false convictions are treated with the same level of seriousness as police officers shooting unarmed civilians on camera. Patterns of prosecutorial misconduct should lead to prison time that is the sum of the false convictions, in the worst environment the falsely convicted parties ended up in. (So, probably not the country club minimal security white collar prison.) Also, the people in charge of this should be untouchable by the currently elected politicians they would likely be investigating. Fixed-term appointments with mandatory recusal rules probably make sense.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- thaumasiotes 4y ago
  > It's the explicit job of prosecutors to get guilty verdicts regardless of the defendant's guilt. This is not correct; they're supposed to e.g. dismiss charges if they learn they've charged the wrong guy. The problem isn't that the system calls for them to convict innocent people. The problem is that they're evaluated by their conviction rate.
- jessaustin 4y ago
  ...the same level of seriousness as police officers shooting unarmed civilians on camera. Police officers in USA are almost never convicted of murder in these or any other circumstances. https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/20/us/police-convicted-murder-rare-chauvin/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/20/us/police-convicted-murder-ra...
ROTMetro 4y ago
'90 percent of trial transcripts the Bureau analyzed as part of its Microscopic Hair Comparison Analysis Review contained erroneous statements'. Would you be OK with a hospital having this level 'innocent mistake' rate? How about if 90% of a medicines studies had erroneous statements made by the same group of professionals? Would you be OK with an amusement park having a 90% failure rate when they attest to the safety of their equipment? Should not repeated failures that have a severe impact on people's lives be held to a higher standard than 'oops, my bad bro'? A doctor wouldn't get away with 90% erroneous statements, why do these professionals?

brnaftr361 4y ago

Any recommended reading?

adhesive_wombat 4y ago
Black Box Thinking has a few examples of law enforcement doubling down on obviously wrong conclusions when presented with new exculpatory evidence.
ROTMetro 4y ago
https://www.lexisnexis.com/en-us/products/lexis.page https://www.lexisnexis.com/en-us/products/lexis.page Start reading cases and judgements. I think you will find discomfort in how things really work.
- ROTMetro 4y ago
  Haha. Just kidding. Of course that sort of insight into the courts is paywalled. Why should people have free access to what is going on in the courts?

ok_dad 4y ago

Man, that’s fucking shitty. I hate how CSI and Law and Order have trained the general population to trust this stuff so much. The culture around criminal justice in America needs to be reset completely. It’s clearly still poisoned by the prejudices and power structures from a few hundred years ago.

akira2501 4y ago

> Either a crime warrants a 5 year sentence, or a 15 year sentence Then why is there a difference between first degree murder and second degree murder? Murder warrants a particular sentence, and circumstances should not matter? > But sentencing is based not on your crime The court is taking into consideration your behavior and your reticence over your own actions. Taking the plea deal shows reticence as it immediately requires an admission of guilt. Demanding a trial, particularly when you actually have committed the offense, in an effort to "get out" of the time you must serve or to merely publish your side of the story is not viewed favorably by the court. Why should it be? You're tying up immense resources simply to parse the details of your crime in an effort to convince a judge that maybe you're actually not that bad of a guy. The court knows it is not a perfect arbiter of the truth, and that it's application of process inherently deprives, in some way, the rights of everyone involved. Every witness you call is subpoenaed to court under penalty if they don't comply. Victims are never actually made whole by the trial, and offenders run the risk of incriminating themselves further. They're there because they're necessary, not because they are an ideal or preferred solution. Courts aim for settlements in civil trials, and they aim for pleas in criminal trials. > were considered unconstitutional up until the 60s when the police/judicial state started undermining constitutional rights. The means under which they were offered was unconstitutional, why should it be against the constitution for you to negotiate your own settlement in a criminal matter with the state? Is it really a better outcome that you must go to trial without any option? > even when it was complete garbage like lie detector tests. Lie detector tests actually _do_ measure physiological responses, though. The problem is that's not all they measure, and the results are too polluted by the reviewer to be useful. That a human beings heart rate increases when they intentionally try to deceive another is an actual fact. So are they really "complete garbage?" Or are they just not as pure of a datapoint as we thought they were? Perhaps this is why some courts still allow them to be admitted when all parties agree to it's use.

BLKNSLVR 4y ago
> Taking the plea deal shows reticence as it immediately requires an admission of guilt. Or it shows a preference for 5 years over the risk of 15 years out of pure fear or knowledge that the jury will be manipulated with pseudo-scientific "evidence". Taking a plea deal can be totally separate from guilt or innocence. > You're tying up immense resources simply to parse the details of your crime in an effort to convince a judge that maybe you're actually not that bad of a guy. You seem to be ignoring that someone may actually be innocent in some cases. You're sounding like an ambitious prosecutor yourself, or you just have too much faith that the system would never bring the wrong person to court. > Courts aim for settlements in civil trials, and they aim for pleas in criminal trials. Which, over time, turn into a perverse incentive structure because court time gets increasingly valued over justice and so plea deals become threats rather than offers. Fundamentally, when presenting prosecutorial evidence that's not what it appears, my reaction, if I ever need to defend myself against such things, world be to further tie up the courts time by presenting evidence against the evidence and / or demanding a thorough explanation of the implications of what is being described as evidence. This could add literal weeks to every single case that goes to trial. The method of evidence collection would be on trial because there's so much trust lost due to, basically, lies on the part of law enforcement and prosecution in their pursuit of conviction as metric for success and promotion.

ROTMetro 4y ago

Just to post an interesting jailhouse lawyer observation, the number one group of innocent men in prison are dad's that took the fall for their kids. Our system doesn't handle that well. If there is a crime and someone who will plea out to it, the system doesn't have a mechanism to account for that.