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For a very similar case see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cameron_Todd_Willingham https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cameron_Todd_Willingham, He was executed in Texa
by StillBored 3y ago
For a very similar case see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cameron_Todd_Willingham https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cameron_Todd_Willingham, He was executed in Texas despite there being real concern that he was innocent (which he claimed from day one) and the majority of the evidence used to convict him was arson patterns that have been widely considered to be junk science for decades now too.
And after listening to Josh Dubin on Joe Rogan a few years back (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROU7G0d4iyE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROU7G0d4iyE) its pretty clear the US has a fairly high error rate for death row.
(Also I'm not a big fan of joe rogan, but this might be one of his better podcasts)
- rossant 3y agoYes, there are similar forensic unreliability issues between arson and shaken baby syndrome. Look up "negative corpus" [1]: it's not because you could not find any explanation for a fire or a death that it's necessarily a crime. [1] https://www.nafi.org/blog/negative-corpus/ https://www.nafi.org/blog/negative-corpus/
- cyanydeez 3y agoYou think it's just for death row?
- asadotzler 3y agoNo, no one thinks it's just for death row, only that executions are final and there's no undoing them, and so the expectations among the general public are that we're much more careful in those cases. We can release a falsely jailed person and even pay restitution or the time lost, but we can't do the same for an executed person so the stakes are higher and one would expect a lower false positive rate as a result.
- zackees 3y ago[dead]