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Man, every time a prosecutor gets a case overturned, they themselves need to be put on trial. Was was their motive? Did they ignore evidence? Dig deep into why

Man, every time a prosecutor gets a case overturned, they themselves need to be put on trial. Was was their motive? Did they ignore evidence? Dig deep into why they tried so hard to get an innocent person behind bars.

irishloop 4y ago
It is literally their job
- zoklet-enjoyer 4y ago
  Just following orders?
- jonny_eh 4y ago
  Choosing to not press a case is also part of their job.
- lelanthran 4y ago
  > It is literally their job A job which also includes prosecutorial discretion. IOW, it's also literally their job to decide which cases to pursue and which to drop.
_fat_santa 4y ago
The rabbit hole of wrongful convictions goes deep but long story short there are a number of reasons, most of which is "tunnel vision", that is when a prosecutor or detective gets a lead, they will often ignore other evidence in favor of that lead. It's less about dirty prosecutors and more about how psychology and our brains work. I would highly suggest listening to a couple of episodes of Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom[1] and check out the Innocence Project[2], both are fantastic for getting into the world of wrongful convictions. [1]: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/wrongful-conviction/id1151670380 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/wrongful-conviction/id... [2]: https://innocenceproject.org https://innocenceproject.org
- adgjlsfhk1 4y ago
  That's ignoring a lot of evidence we have of police officers planting fake evidence. See for example https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/melissasegura/josh-tepfer-mass-exonerations-wrongfully-convicted https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/melissasegura/josh-tepf... where about 300 people in Chicago alone have been exonerated due to cops faking evidence.
  - lazyasciiart 4y ago
    Do those intrinsically include dirty prosecutors though?
  - jonny_eh 4y ago
    Police are not prosecutors.
- tunesmith 4y ago
  The well-known version that seems susceptible is "Well, when a girlfriend gets murdered, it's the boyfriend x% of the time, so we should focus on the boyfriend." That's a great way to increase the value of x over time.
GavinMcG 4y ago
One would imagine that a significant portion of the time they tried to put the person behind bars because they believed the person to be guilty. I’m curious what your “Blackstone number” is. The Blackstone principle is that it is better for ten guilty men to go free than one innocent one to be imprisoned. It seems you might go higher than ten—but how high? Should we be so concerned about wrongful convictions that we allow 1000 guilty men to go free for each one? 10,000? Then, turn that around. Given how often prosecutors have good motives and adequate grounds for moving forward with a conviction, how many innocent prosecutors would you put through the wringer just to catch one guilty one?
- thaumasiotes 4y ago
  > I’m curious what your “Blackstone number” is. The Blackstone principle is that it is better for ten guilty men to go free than one innocent one to be imprisoned. This is incoherent; it is obvious that you'd want to set this differently for different crimes.
  - s1artibartfast 4y ago
    Which do you think would require more certainty: crimes with severe punishments, or crimes with low impact of the victims?
    - thaumasiotes 4y ago
      What kind of certainty? All else equal, (1) when the punishment for the crime is severe, you'd want to be more certain that the convicted criminal is actually guilty ("It's bad when innocent men are punished."); (2) when the crime is not very serious, you don't really care whether the convict is guilty or not (because we assume the punishment is not very severe). So we want more certainty-of-guilt in case 1 and less certainty-of-guilt in case 2. We can also ask for certainty that people who are guilty in fact get convicted. ("It's bad when guilty men go free.") This is the opposite of the other kind of certainty. Here, we'd want a lot of that type of certainty for crimes with severe punishments (we assume that such crimes are very serious), and we don't really care about this for crimes with no particular impact on victims. So we want more certainty-of-conviction in case 1 and less certainty-of-conviction in case 2. Certainty-of-conviction and certainty-of-guilt are, in the general case, directly in conflict with each other. We don't want either (in a relative sense) for trivial crimes, so it doesn't really matter what happens. We want lots of both for serious crimes, so what happens matters, but we can't actually achieve both goals. In conclusion, when setting your policy, you need to look at other aspects of the crime than the one(s) you mention here, which are not informative as to this question. (Though they are informative as to the question you literally asked; we want more certainty of every type on serious crimes.) Perhaps the punishment for a particular crime is out of proportion to how serious that crime is. If the punishment is too heavy, we'd want more certainty-of-guilt; if it's too light, we'd want more certainty-of-conviction. Perhaps it's much easier than usual to reliably determine guilt-in-fact for a particular crime. Then we'd want more certainty-of-conviction.
AnimalMuppet 4y ago
Woah there. Neither a "not guilty" verdict nor a case overturned on appeal means that the person was actually innocent. It means that there is not enough evidence that was judged admissible to convict. (This is a consequence of "innocent if not proven guilty" - or at least, not jailed if not proven guilty.) Putting prosecutors on trial for something less than clear prosecutorial over-reach is, in my view, a major mistake. Perhaps the bar should be lower than it is, but there's no way it should be as low as "didn't get a conviction" or "overturned on appeal".
- lazyasciiart 4y ago
  There are multiple instances where someone has been exonerated, which is certainly a high enough bar to require a serious investigation.
- erosenbe0 4y ago
  Yep, for example, lots of cases with coerced confessions or just confessions obtained from individuals with developmental disabilities. The investigator would be the one who overdid it, not the prosecutor, who is often obliged to pursue the case if someone says they did the crime. Whether the confession is any good is up to the justice system. This applies to many semisciences or pseudoscience or expert witnesses or shoddy statistics. The prosecutor should look at the case in good faith [not tunnel vision] and rely on the courts to be fair arbiters. Then you have technical boondoggles like Bill Cosby where the prosecutors view the matters of law one way and eventually the appeals courts view it differently--whether he committed some crimes wasn't really the first order matter.
  - harimau777 4y ago
    If the prosecutor is obliged to pursue the case couldn't they still say in court "this confession was coerced, please do not find them guilty"? If they don't, then it seems to me that the prosecutor is just as guilty.
    - AnimalMuppet 4y ago
roxgib 4y ago
On these sort of cases I'm a little less inclined to blame the justice system. Often there were statisticians or other experts who should have known better advising or testifying to the likelihood of guilt. People shouldn't be convicted of improbability alone, but statistics is hard even for statisticians. Of course they should have tried to correct the mistake once pointed out, but the justice seems doesn't seem to like doing that.
woodruffw 4y ago
Malfeasance is one thing, but I don't think you want this kind of general liability for prosecutors: they're executing legal motions based on the evidence and information presented to them. Unless there's some evidence that they're actually ignoring or hiding evidence, punishing them for playing their role in the justice system is likely to do more harm than good. (This is distinct from the problem of qualified immunity for the police, who (1) regularly kill people under dubious at best circumstances, and (2) regularly launder falsified or coerced evidence into the legal system. It makes sense, in my opinion, to introduce personal liability there.)

irishloop 4y ago

It is literally their job

zoklet-enjoyer 4y ago
Just following orders?
jonny_eh 4y ago
Choosing to not press a case is also part of their job.
lelanthran 4y ago
> It is literally their job A job which also includes prosecutorial discretion. IOW, it's also literally their job to decide which cases to pursue and which to drop.

_fat_santa 4y ago

The rabbit hole of wrongful convictions goes deep but long story short there are a number of reasons, most of which is "tunnel vision", that is when a prosecutor or detective gets a lead, they will often ignore other evidence in favor of that lead. It's less about dirty prosecutors and more about how psychology and our brains work. I would highly suggest listening to a couple of episodes of Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom[1] and check out the Innocence Project[2], both are fantastic for getting into the world of wrongful convictions. [1]: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/wrongful-conviction/id1151670380 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/wrongful-conviction/id... [2]: https://innocenceproject.org https://innocenceproject.org

adgjlsfhk1 4y ago
That's ignoring a lot of evidence we have of police officers planting fake evidence. See for example https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/melissasegura/josh-tepfer-mass-exonerations-wrongfully-convicted https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/melissasegura/josh-tepf... where about 300 people in Chicago alone have been exonerated due to cops faking evidence.
- lazyasciiart 4y ago
  Do those intrinsically include dirty prosecutors though?
- jonny_eh 4y ago
  Police are not prosecutors.
tunesmith 4y ago
The well-known version that seems susceptible is "Well, when a girlfriend gets murdered, it's the boyfriend x% of the time, so we should focus on the boyfriend." That's a great way to increase the value of x over time.

GavinMcG 4y ago

One would imagine that a significant portion of the time they tried to put the person behind bars because they believed the person to be guilty. I’m curious what your “Blackstone number” is. The Blackstone principle is that it is better for ten guilty men to go free than one innocent one to be imprisoned. It seems you might go higher than ten—but how high? Should we be so concerned about wrongful convictions that we allow 1000 guilty men to go free for each one? 10,000? Then, turn that around. Given how often prosecutors have good motives and adequate grounds for moving forward with a conviction, how many innocent prosecutors would you put through the wringer just to catch one guilty one?

thaumasiotes 4y ago
> I’m curious what your “Blackstone number” is. The Blackstone principle is that it is better for ten guilty men to go free than one innocent one to be imprisoned. This is incoherent; it is obvious that you'd want to set this differently for different crimes.
- s1artibartfast 4y ago
  Which do you think would require more certainty: crimes with severe punishments, or crimes with low impact of the victims?
  - thaumasiotes 4y ago
    What kind of certainty? All else equal, (1) when the punishment for the crime is severe, you'd want to be more certain that the convicted criminal is actually guilty ("It's bad when innocent men are punished."); (2) when the crime is not very serious, you don't really care whether the convict is guilty or not (because we assume the punishment is not very severe). So we want more certainty-of-guilt in case 1 and less certainty-of-guilt in case 2. We can also ask for certainty that people who are guilty in fact get convicted. ("It's bad when guilty men go free.") This is the opposite of the other kind of certainty. Here, we'd want a lot of that type of certainty for crimes with severe punishments (we assume that such crimes are very serious), and we don't really care about this for crimes with no particular impact on victims. So we want more certainty-of-conviction in case 1 and less certainty-of-conviction in case 2. Certainty-of-conviction and certainty-of-guilt are, in the general case, directly in conflict with each other. We don't want either (in a relative sense) for trivial crimes, so it doesn't really matter what happens. We want lots of both for serious crimes, so what happens matters, but we can't actually achieve both goals. In conclusion, when setting your policy, you need to look at other aspects of the crime than the one(s) you mention here, which are not informative as to this question. (Though they are informative as to the question you literally asked; we want more certainty of every type on serious crimes.) Perhaps the punishment for a particular crime is out of proportion to how serious that crime is. If the punishment is too heavy, we'd want more certainty-of-guilt; if it's too light, we'd want more certainty-of-conviction. Perhaps it's much easier than usual to reliably determine guilt-in-fact for a particular crime. Then we'd want more certainty-of-conviction.

AnimalMuppet 4y ago

Woah there. Neither a "not guilty" verdict nor a case overturned on appeal means that the person was actually innocent. It means that there is not enough evidence that was judged admissible to convict. (This is a consequence of "innocent if not proven guilty" - or at least, not jailed if not proven guilty.) Putting prosecutors on trial for something less than clear prosecutorial over-reach is, in my view, a major mistake. Perhaps the bar should be lower than it is, but there's no way it should be as low as "didn't get a conviction" or "overturned on appeal".

lazyasciiart 4y ago
There are multiple instances where someone has been exonerated, which is certainly a high enough bar to require a serious investigation.
erosenbe0 4y ago
Yep, for example, lots of cases with coerced confessions or just confessions obtained from individuals with developmental disabilities. The investigator would be the one who overdid it, not the prosecutor, who is often obliged to pursue the case if someone says they did the crime. Whether the confession is any good is up to the justice system. This applies to many semisciences or pseudoscience or expert witnesses or shoddy statistics. The prosecutor should look at the case in good faith [not tunnel vision] and rely on the courts to be fair arbiters. Then you have technical boondoggles like Bill Cosby where the prosecutors view the matters of law one way and eventually the appeals courts view it differently--whether he committed some crimes wasn't really the first order matter.
- harimau777 4y ago
  If the prosecutor is obliged to pursue the case couldn't they still say in court "this confession was coerced, please do not find them guilty"? If they don't, then it seems to me that the prosecutor is just as guilty.
  - AnimalMuppet 4y ago

roxgib 4y ago

On these sort of cases I'm a little less inclined to blame the justice system. Often there were statisticians or other experts who should have known better advising or testifying to the likelihood of guilt. People shouldn't be convicted of improbability alone, but statistics is hard even for statisticians. Of course they should have tried to correct the mistake once pointed out, but the justice seems doesn't seem to like doing that.

woodruffw 4y ago

Malfeasance is one thing, but I don't think you want this kind of general liability for prosecutors: they're executing legal motions based on the evidence and information presented to them. Unless there's some evidence that they're actually ignoring or hiding evidence, punishing them for playing their role in the justice system is likely to do more harm than good. (This is distinct from the problem of qualified immunity for the police, who (1) regularly kill people under dubious at best circumstances, and (2) regularly launder falsified or coerced evidence into the legal system. It makes sense, in my opinion, to introduce personal liability there.)