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>Because Woods continued to insist, throughout the judicial process, that he was William Woods and not Matthew Kierans, a judge ruled in February 2020 that he w

>Because Woods continued to insist, throughout the judicial process, that he was William Woods and not Matthew Kierans, a judge ruled in February 2020 that he was not mentally competent to stand trial and he was sent to a mental hospital in California, where he received psychotropic medication and other mental health treatment. That's the stuff of nightmares. I hope the real Woods sues the system that put him through this.

Ekaros 3y ago
Sadly the system never gets punished. I think these judges and prosecutors would do much better if there was ever present risk of either life in prison or even death penalty.
- BartjeD 3y ago
  Do you think you yourself would do better? Are crime rates significantly lower in US States that have the death penalty? Are crime rates lower in States that punish more severely compared to States that punish less severely? The state of art in preventing crime is to focus on rehabilation and education, not punishment. So it would be novel if the statistics prove that punishment works better.
- fwipsy 3y ago
  Nobody would take that job. If they did they would be hyper-cautious and never prosecute or sentence anyone. Better to just abolish the judicial system. Maybe you disagree, but I think that would be worse than the status quo. There's always room to improve the system, but the way to do that is to make it resilient to individual failures, not by placing more pressure on the individual not to make mistakes.
  - Ekaros 3y ago
    So it would be better. No innocent would go to prison. Abolishing system is valid option. If it is clearly failing it is not worth keeping.
    - slt2021 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - HeatrayEnjoyer 3y ago
        Do you think no one reading this hasn't grown up there? Think before you speak.
        kortilla 3y ago
        Nobody said that. Any the people who did grow up in unsafe areas generally don’t recommend it. It’s not a hot take.
      - ruined 3y ago
        why do you say it's abolished there? it's my understanding that those areas are acutely suffering under the existing system.
    - lo_zamoyski 3y ago
      The perfect is the enemy of the good. The notion that if something isn't perfect, it must be abolished is, simply put, ridiculous. Trivially, if you have no criminal justice system, no innocent person would go to prison; it's as foolish as claiming there would be no poverty if there were no human beings. But crime would increase. The bulwark against those who do not live according to moral principles, who do not respect the law, would be removed, as such people respond only to the fear of punishment. And the law and the justice system are also instructive. Part of their purpose is to teach. You will not teach justice without being just, and that entails punishment. The severity of the punishment is proportionate to the severity of the crime precisely because it signals and communicates to the perp that severity. It is feedback, hence instructive. A just person already accepts such punishment as just. It is far better to focus on reform, but in order to do that, you first have to have a good understanding of what the law is all about. And I admit: our criminal justice system does need improvement and reform.
    - fwipsy 3y ago
      I believe that the system is currently working, in that it does less harm through wrongful/excessive punishments than would be done by criminals against innocent people in its absence. There's room for improvement, of course.
  - Aerroon 3y ago
    People from other jobs are potentially in jeopardy for negligence though. If a truck driver makes a mistake driving a truck they could very well go to prison. Also, judges can be malicious too.
    - michaelt 3y ago
      Right but truck drivers aren't constantly dealing with people who are lying to get themselves out of trouble. And while all jobs include at least some element of dealing with people trying to deceive you, if I'm an embedded engineer dealing with a vendor overstating the low-temperature performance of their embedded compute module, the stakes are a lot lower.
      - interactivecode 3y ago
        The point is that when your job has an "larger than normal" impact on the course of someone's life you should not be able to ignore that responsibility. Responsibility should be matched with equal sized accountability. I'd rather have a system that occasionally let someone go free because of insufficient proof than occasionally have people be imprisoned when they are actually innocent.
      - tacocataco 2y ago
        "Right but truck drivers aren't constantly dealing with people who are lying to get themselves out of trouble." What do you think the dash cams are for?
  - eastbound 3y ago
    People always apply for jobs. Even airplane pilot, where the pay isn’t as high as software developers, and where giant door-losing corporations put millions into making every accident pass as a pilot error, incurring a dozen years in jail. Heck, people even apply for the army, where, out of no fault of your own, you can die. They do this for the proper function of the society. And therefore, for proper function of society: - Judges should be exposed to penal jail sentences if an innocent goes to jail, - Judges should also be exposed to penal jail sentences in case they release a criminal sooner than the maximum sentence and they commit a new crime. When a criminal is released 18 times by judges, and they slaughter a dozen people on the 19th time, you know you’re in France. And that’s somewhere you don’t want to be.
    - K0balt 3y ago
      Mmmmmmmmm idk. I’m with you on some liability for the conviction of innocent people, but that liability should also extend to juries. As far as being penalised for not predicting the future actions of an individual person, not so much. That would effectively mean that every person would be sentenced and required to serve the maximum penalty for any violation, even though those maximums were intended to be doled out to only the most egregious offenders. Perhaps much more granular and specific sentencing guidelines with objective qualifiers so that sentencing was more predictable?
      - lo_zamoyski 3y ago
        > I’m with you on some liability for the conviction of innocent people, but that liability should also extend to juries. You have to be careful here. Doing so can create perverse incentives that undermine justice. If a judge or a jury face such penalties, they will be inclined to reduce the penalty or feel compelled to find the defendant not guilty as a fearful precaution, even in cut and dry cases. And would you punish innocent jurors where unanimity is not required?
    - LargeWu 3y ago
      I think a better way to phrase this is that judges should be punished in instances of gross negligence or malfeasance. An innocent person going to prison or early release in which a criminal commits another crime, on its own, does not necessarily imply this.
  - omgwtfbyobbq 3y ago
    I agree and disagree. We should improve the system to make it resilient to individual failures, and we should place more pressure on individuals in positions of power to not make mistakes. I think a judge making a mistake this egregious should not be allowed to continue being a judge.
    - lo_zamoyski 3y ago
      > We should improve the system to make it resilient to individual failures This isn't a solution. It is a wish. Obviously, we all would like it to be the case that innocent people are never punished. But first, is the rate of false convictions of the innocent actually egregiously high? This article gives an example of one case, but it does not follow that we are facing high rates of false convictions, especially for serious crimes that carry serious penalties. Second, is there a way to reduce false convictions, especially in a way that doesn't comprise the system in some serious way? > I think a judge making a mistake this egregious should not be allowed to continue being a judge. Perhaps, perhaps not. You risk incentivizing behavior among judges that subverts the justice system.
      - TheCleric 3y ago
        I think the best data we have of this in the US is the exoneration rate of death penalty convictions, which is startlingly high. A study from 2014 found it to be around 4% (https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1306417111 https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1306417111). 4% may sound low to some, but when people's live are on the line that's terribly high. If a plane had a 4% failure rate it would be considered a colossal failure.
      - wholinator2 3y ago
        I know i have seen more stories lately about innocent people being freed after newly analyzed DNA evidence. I think a good question is, how would we know if someone were wrongly convicted? What tells are there that the person the judge and lawyers said was guilty, that's now in prison, what could tell us they are innocent. Presumably there are tons of guilty people proclaim innocence every day to try to get out of their consequences. What separates them? There could be catastrophically high rates of innocent convictions and I'm not confident we would be aware of that
  - HenryBemis 3y ago
    Going through the guy's 'CV' from the article, I guess one of the reasons the authorities never went "all the way to 11" to catch him, is that the harm he did was relatively 'small' - meaning of financial nature - he didn't physically hurt/murdered anyone. (I am not OK-ing what he did, I just think that if you got 100 killers out and about please catch them and the $200k guy will be caught sooner or later by some bureaucratic control).
    - michaelmrose 3y ago
      His actions caused the real person to go to jail for 2 years.
  - Repulsion9513 3y ago
    > would be hyper-cautious That's a desirable effect. Your argument is the very reason the 5th amendment exists. Making it easier to find someone guilty is a BAD thing, not a good thing.
    - kenjackson 3y ago
      The goal should be truth. Otherwise the easiest way to make it hard to find someone guilty is to make it only confessions under no duress are admissible. And the hyper-cautious effect isn’t because of fear of getting it wrong. It’s fear of retaliation whether right or wrong.
    - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
      No one would take the job first. Being a public servant is already pretty thankless and doesn’t pay very well. Second, if they did take the job, they wouldn’t do anything, since the consequences of being wrong are so high, why take the chance? Public opinion would then flip the other way, and they are either a wheat stalk flowing with the wind or they quit.
    - fwipsy 3y ago
      I agree! I don't want it to be easier. But I think parent comment's proposal would result in almost no convictions, even in crystal clear cases. Please read my comment more carefully instead of assuming I'm saying something I'm not.
  - vintermann 3y ago
    How about we bring back juries, big and truly random ones (at least 12 people, not haggled over, not filtered). Then give the jury some options to sanction judges and lawyers for blatant bullshit. It doesn't have to be harsher than firing them. All legitimate government power is supposed to come from the people, I feel like that's often forgotten, especially when it comes to the least accountable branch of government.
- szundi 3y ago
  GPT-6 is up to the task! No bad ruling just before lunch! Also it’ll be just as secure as the Diebold voting machines! /s
- capybara_2020 3y ago
  I am curious, what could have been done differently? This started more than 30 years ago. The internet as we thinking about it did not exist. Computers were just going around. Most it was physical copies which could not be centralized/shared at scale till the internet came around. I am just trying to think about what kind of system would account for all the changes that have happened and prevented this while also accounting for the reverse where the real person suddenly had someone trying to steal their identity also accounting for the fact this system has to be valid for the future. Maybe it is a failure of my imagination, but I can only think of ways to do it for the current state of the world, assuming the world never changes.
- perihelions 3y ago
  Take a glance at US news today. US politics would be far more likely to punish judges for a Type II error—for failing to convict or institutionalize a person who goes on to commit a crime—than for the Type I error of violating the rights of an innocent person. The system you've proposed, if you step back from the heated emotions for a moment, would the exact opposite effect of the righteous justice you seek. Any system you'd build in this mold, the criminal justice mold, would be the same or a clone of the current one, inheriting the same flaws. The prosecuting agency would be lenient towards Type I errors, because few people care; and I think in the net it'd increase their occurrence, by severely penalizing Type II errors. edit: (And to the point out the obvious in plain sight—look at the very newspaper story we're discussing. The "criminal that got away with it" is in the headline/title. The "innocent person horribly abused by indifferent criminal justice" is mentioned in passing about 21 paragraphs down).
  - Repulsion9513 3y ago
    You do realize that when you're making new laws you can make those laws say anything you want, right?
    - actionfromafar 3y ago
      But you can't make them do anything you want.
      - spacecadet 3y ago
        You can, its called a tank.
        actionfromafar 3y ago
        Even that, can't make them do anything you want. It makes them die.
        dmoy 3y ago
        Tanks can't go door to door on enough of the populace. If it's a law that's unpopular enough, it's not enforceable pretty much anywhere. Even less so in the US, because of the staggering number of civilian owned guns.
- euroderf 3y ago
  Prosecutors get away with murder. Literally. Suggesting that reining in prosecutorial immunity would create overly timid prosecutors is a false choice.
- Lanolderen 3y ago
  If I had life in prison or a death penalty hanging over my head at work after getting all the prerequisites to be a judge I better be getting paid seven figures or I'm either becoming a scrum master or a defence attorney trying to abuse the guillotine to ensure client satisfaction.
- RecycledEle 3y ago
  > Sadly the system never gets punished. I think these judges and prosecutors would do much better if there was ever present risk of either life in prison or even death penalty. The first step is transparency. Put every bit of evidence for every case on the public record so everyone can see it online. Sadly, The System will not allow that. Truth is the enemy of The System.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
cqqxo4zV46cp 3y ago
My (non-American) reaction to this was immediately “that’s so American”. It’s just absurd. I would not put the actual thief at the top of the list if who’s to blame there. That is clearly a cultural / systems issue, through and through.
- ipsum2 3y ago
  Where do you live where these things don't happen?
  - bryanrasmussen 3y ago
    they're saying that blaming the thief for the result instead of the systemic flaws is American.
  - marcyb5st 3y ago
    Not sure about parent comment, but I am in Europe and identity theft is basically non-existent. And I'm not sure why is that. Also document forgeries are not a thing (when I see TV shows where teenagers try to buy alcohol using a fake driving license that really feels "American"). Really, I am not sure why this kind of illegal things are unheard of in EU, but there might be some sort of systematic reason.
    - elhudy 3y ago
      The ease of making your way across the US into different jurisdictions is probably a contributing factor. I imagine the geographical equivalent of this story would be a person from portugal driving their way across europe and landing in poland where they live out the rest of their lives under a different identity. It’s a lot tougher to do that when you’re crossing into a new country, culture, language entirely. And portugal is small enough that it would be very difficult to pull off within the confines of the country.
    - beAbU 3y ago
      Perhaps its because most have passports, and a passport is often used as the proof of ID? In my home country every citizen gets an identity card with some important details on it. ID theft is basically non-existent there.
ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
From what I read (in the Ars Technica story on this), the real Woods seems to be in fairly bad shape. At least homeless, maybe mentally challenged. It seems that may have happened, even if his identity had not been stolen, but I am not aware enough of the story's details, to render any kind of semi-authoritative judgment. It's highly likely that at least one lawyer is already salivating over this, and will help him to sue, but I’m not confident that the real Woods will benefit. This was a nightmare story, and I would hope that the fake Woods gets real jail time.
- shultays 3y ago
  I was wondering how there were no family members, old friends etc that could prove his word but that explains it. Quite sad, but also maybe a mental hospital is better than being homeless
  - ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
    > maybe a mental hospital is better than being homeless We seem to have come full circle. One of the big reasons for the enormous homeless population, is because all the mental hospitals were closed, in the 1980s and 90s. I think that news stories about [very real] abuses in these hospitals, along with the cost to maintain, were responsible. You can yell "Get a job!" at schizophrenics, all you want, but it won't make them employable, or even able to live on their own. There are a number of mental illnesses that can be treated, and recovery is possible, but that only accounts for a fairly small percentage of the severely mentally ill. I know a large number of folks that have done it, but for every one of them, there's a hundred more, that couldn't get it. It's just that treating mental illness is hugely unpopular with the vast majority of folks that don't have any family or associates with mental illness, and even more unpopular with folks that have undiagnosed mental illness (It's quite possible to have a long, productive life, with some forms of mental illness -it can even be helpful, in some careers).
    - david38 3y ago
      Hospitals were closed with the release of new drugs that promised to treat mental illnesses. They didn’t deliver, but the hospitals were closed anyway.
koolba 3y ago
> That's the stuff of nightmares. I hope the real Woods sues the system that put him through this. On the positive side, if he was using his social security number for 35 years, he’ll be fully paid up for the real Woods to draw at retirement.
- Vaslo 3y ago
  Really good point here - couldnt the fake woods claim he was indeed the one paying into it, and claim it after he’s released from jail? If the court has any credibility, they should first jail the fake one for a long time, then make things like his ss payments restitution for the real woods.
lupusreal 3y ago
Forcibly medicating a man for insisting on his innocence, even if his guilt seems certain, is another nightmarish aspect of this situation. By all means imprison the guy, but forcing him onto mind altering drugs because he refuses to admit his guilt is over the line.
op00to 3y ago
The real woods should reap all the benefits of the false woods’ misdeeds with none of the consequences. Get his house, car, job, even wife!
Cthulhu_ 3y ago
"I'm not crazy!" "That's what a crazy person would say!" Honestly once you're at the whims of an overzealous psychologist you're boned. Potentially. I hope the real Woods gets to sue everyone involved in declaring him mentally incompetent, that declaration took away his rights as a human being.
- ceejayoz 3y ago
  Reminds me of a case where someone got put in a mental hospital for eight days because they wouldn't admit Obama didn't follow them on Twitter. (He did. He follows me, too; it was back in the days of auto-follow-back scripts.) https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/03/24/this-woman-was-put-in-a-mental-hospital-because-she-said-obama-follows-her-on-twitter-she-was-kind-of-right/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/03/24/th...
  - catlikesshrimp 3y ago
    A sane smart person given the options of: persisting on a trivial truth OR not being sent to a psychiatric ward, must always pick the second one. Smart people know what a psychiatric ward is, a sane perso recognizes a serious threat when confronted with one.
    - RecycledEle 3y ago
      >A sane smart person given the options of: persisting on a trivial truth OR not being sent to a psychiatric ward, must always pick the second one. > Smart people know what a psychiatric ward is, a sane perso recognizes a serious threat when confronted with one. Lying is a mortal sin. I try to avoid sin, even if doing so seriously harms me. Plato said something like: "All sin is a form of mental illness that seems to make one or a few people better off in the short term but makes all humans poorer in the long run."
      - labawi 2y ago
        Is lying always a sin? A mortal one? I very much dislike lies, do not want to lie and would rather tell the truth even if it may harm me, but I'm not sure about the absoluteness of such an approach. A few days ago I was reading a book about a christian family helping Jews during WW II (Corrie ten Boom) and I was quite lost when Corrie marveled at the realization she doesn't have to do what the authorities say, or when she lied to the police. I would like to believe telling the truth would be better, but .. it seems suspect. Telling Nazi Jews are hiding in my house .. very much not sure what to think about that. Note for casual readers: We are not here to live a comfy life, so, even if saying the truth leads to bodily mortal consequences for another, I can't with 100% certainty say lying would be the right thing to do. It seems to me, there are cases when even God used / instructed Jews to use deception or something very close to it, to scare off attackers or make them kill eachother in a frenzy (different times), so I am dumbfounded on what is right. Even God puts Himself behind a veil, for our benefit, so going around pushing truth for the sake of truth can not be correct. That would be one extreme. But I'm not sure what the criteria is. Do you have any thoughts, or basis on criteria, when is volunteering truth / answering truthfully if asked / refusing to answer / deceiving / lying good or not. Or maybe even what is to be considered lying?

Ekaros 3y ago

Sadly the system never gets punished. I think these judges and prosecutors would do much better if there was ever present risk of either life in prison or even death penalty.

BartjeD 3y ago
Do you think you yourself would do better? Are crime rates significantly lower in US States that have the death penalty? Are crime rates lower in States that punish more severely compared to States that punish less severely? The state of art in preventing crime is to focus on rehabilation and education, not punishment. So it would be novel if the statistics prove that punishment works better.
fwipsy 3y ago
Nobody would take that job. If they did they would be hyper-cautious and never prosecute or sentence anyone. Better to just abolish the judicial system. Maybe you disagree, but I think that would be worse than the status quo. There's always room to improve the system, but the way to do that is to make it resilient to individual failures, not by placing more pressure on the individual not to make mistakes.
- Ekaros 3y ago
  So it would be better. No innocent would go to prison. Abolishing system is valid option. If it is clearly failing it is not worth keeping.
  - slt2021 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - HeatrayEnjoyer 3y ago
      Do you think no one reading this hasn't grown up there? Think before you speak.
      - kortilla 3y ago
        Nobody said that. Any the people who did grow up in unsafe areas generally don’t recommend it. It’s not a hot take.
    - ruined 3y ago
      why do you say it's abolished there? it's my understanding that those areas are acutely suffering under the existing system.
  - lo_zamoyski 3y ago
    The perfect is the enemy of the good. The notion that if something isn't perfect, it must be abolished is, simply put, ridiculous. Trivially, if you have no criminal justice system, no innocent person would go to prison; it's as foolish as claiming there would be no poverty if there were no human beings. But crime would increase. The bulwark against those who do not live according to moral principles, who do not respect the law, would be removed, as such people respond only to the fear of punishment. And the law and the justice system are also instructive. Part of their purpose is to teach. You will not teach justice without being just, and that entails punishment. The severity of the punishment is proportionate to the severity of the crime precisely because it signals and communicates to the perp that severity. It is feedback, hence instructive. A just person already accepts such punishment as just. It is far better to focus on reform, but in order to do that, you first have to have a good understanding of what the law is all about. And I admit: our criminal justice system does need improvement and reform.
  - fwipsy 3y ago
    I believe that the system is currently working, in that it does less harm through wrongful/excessive punishments than would be done by criminals against innocent people in its absence. There's room for improvement, of course.
- Aerroon 3y ago
  People from other jobs are potentially in jeopardy for negligence though. If a truck driver makes a mistake driving a truck they could very well go to prison. Also, judges can be malicious too.
  - michaelt 3y ago
    Right but truck drivers aren't constantly dealing with people who are lying to get themselves out of trouble. And while all jobs include at least some element of dealing with people trying to deceive you, if I'm an embedded engineer dealing with a vendor overstating the low-temperature performance of their embedded compute module, the stakes are a lot lower.
    - interactivecode 3y ago
      The point is that when your job has an "larger than normal" impact on the course of someone's life you should not be able to ignore that responsibility. Responsibility should be matched with equal sized accountability. I'd rather have a system that occasionally let someone go free because of insufficient proof than occasionally have people be imprisoned when they are actually innocent.
    - tacocataco 2y ago
      "Right but truck drivers aren't constantly dealing with people who are lying to get themselves out of trouble." What do you think the dash cams are for?
- eastbound 3y ago
  People always apply for jobs. Even airplane pilot, where the pay isn’t as high as software developers, and where giant door-losing corporations put millions into making every accident pass as a pilot error, incurring a dozen years in jail. Heck, people even apply for the army, where, out of no fault of your own, you can die. They do this for the proper function of the society. And therefore, for proper function of society: - Judges should be exposed to penal jail sentences if an innocent goes to jail, - Judges should also be exposed to penal jail sentences in case they release a criminal sooner than the maximum sentence and they commit a new crime. When a criminal is released 18 times by judges, and they slaughter a dozen people on the 19th time, you know you’re in France. And that’s somewhere you don’t want to be.
  - K0balt 3y ago
    Mmmmmmmmm idk. I’m with you on some liability for the conviction of innocent people, but that liability should also extend to juries. As far as being penalised for not predicting the future actions of an individual person, not so much. That would effectively mean that every person would be sentenced and required to serve the maximum penalty for any violation, even though those maximums were intended to be doled out to only the most egregious offenders. Perhaps much more granular and specific sentencing guidelines with objective qualifiers so that sentencing was more predictable?
    - lo_zamoyski 3y ago
      > I’m with you on some liability for the conviction of innocent people, but that liability should also extend to juries. You have to be careful here. Doing so can create perverse incentives that undermine justice. If a judge or a jury face such penalties, they will be inclined to reduce the penalty or feel compelled to find the defendant not guilty as a fearful precaution, even in cut and dry cases. And would you punish innocent jurors where unanimity is not required?
  - LargeWu 3y ago
    I think a better way to phrase this is that judges should be punished in instances of gross negligence or malfeasance. An innocent person going to prison or early release in which a criminal commits another crime, on its own, does not necessarily imply this.
- omgwtfbyobbq 3y ago
  I agree and disagree. We should improve the system to make it resilient to individual failures, and we should place more pressure on individuals in positions of power to not make mistakes. I think a judge making a mistake this egregious should not be allowed to continue being a judge.
  - lo_zamoyski 3y ago
    > We should improve the system to make it resilient to individual failures This isn't a solution. It is a wish. Obviously, we all would like it to be the case that innocent people are never punished. But first, is the rate of false convictions of the innocent actually egregiously high? This article gives an example of one case, but it does not follow that we are facing high rates of false convictions, especially for serious crimes that carry serious penalties. Second, is there a way to reduce false convictions, especially in a way that doesn't comprise the system in some serious way? > I think a judge making a mistake this egregious should not be allowed to continue being a judge. Perhaps, perhaps not. You risk incentivizing behavior among judges that subverts the justice system.
    - TheCleric 3y ago
      I think the best data we have of this in the US is the exoneration rate of death penalty convictions, which is startlingly high. A study from 2014 found it to be around 4% (https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1306417111 https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1306417111). 4% may sound low to some, but when people's live are on the line that's terribly high. If a plane had a 4% failure rate it would be considered a colossal failure.
    - wholinator2 3y ago
      I know i have seen more stories lately about innocent people being freed after newly analyzed DNA evidence. I think a good question is, how would we know if someone were wrongly convicted? What tells are there that the person the judge and lawyers said was guilty, that's now in prison, what could tell us they are innocent. Presumably there are tons of guilty people proclaim innocence every day to try to get out of their consequences. What separates them? There could be catastrophically high rates of innocent convictions and I'm not confident we would be aware of that
- HenryBemis 3y ago
  Going through the guy's 'CV' from the article, I guess one of the reasons the authorities never went "all the way to 11" to catch him, is that the harm he did was relatively 'small' - meaning of financial nature - he didn't physically hurt/murdered anyone. (I am not OK-ing what he did, I just think that if you got 100 killers out and about please catch them and the $200k guy will be caught sooner or later by some bureaucratic control).
  - michaelmrose 3y ago
    His actions caused the real person to go to jail for 2 years.
- Repulsion9513 3y ago
  > would be hyper-cautious That's a desirable effect. Your argument is the very reason the 5th amendment exists. Making it easier to find someone guilty is a BAD thing, not a good thing.
  - kenjackson 3y ago
    The goal should be truth. Otherwise the easiest way to make it hard to find someone guilty is to make it only confessions under no duress are admissible. And the hyper-cautious effect isn’t because of fear of getting it wrong. It’s fear of retaliation whether right or wrong.
  - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
    No one would take the job first. Being a public servant is already pretty thankless and doesn’t pay very well. Second, if they did take the job, they wouldn’t do anything, since the consequences of being wrong are so high, why take the chance? Public opinion would then flip the other way, and they are either a wheat stalk flowing with the wind or they quit.
  - fwipsy 3y ago
    I agree! I don't want it to be easier. But I think parent comment's proposal would result in almost no convictions, even in crystal clear cases. Please read my comment more carefully instead of assuming I'm saying something I'm not.
- vintermann 3y ago
  How about we bring back juries, big and truly random ones (at least 12 people, not haggled over, not filtered). Then give the jury some options to sanction judges and lawyers for blatant bullshit. It doesn't have to be harsher than firing them. All legitimate government power is supposed to come from the people, I feel like that's often forgotten, especially when it comes to the least accountable branch of government.
szundi 3y ago
GPT-6 is up to the task! No bad ruling just before lunch! Also it’ll be just as secure as the Diebold voting machines! /s
capybara_2020 3y ago
I am curious, what could have been done differently? This started more than 30 years ago. The internet as we thinking about it did not exist. Computers were just going around. Most it was physical copies which could not be centralized/shared at scale till the internet came around. I am just trying to think about what kind of system would account for all the changes that have happened and prevented this while also accounting for the reverse where the real person suddenly had someone trying to steal their identity also accounting for the fact this system has to be valid for the future. Maybe it is a failure of my imagination, but I can only think of ways to do it for the current state of the world, assuming the world never changes.
perihelions 3y ago
Take a glance at US news today. US politics would be far more likely to punish judges for a Type II error—for failing to convict or institutionalize a person who goes on to commit a crime—than for the Type I error of violating the rights of an innocent person. The system you've proposed, if you step back from the heated emotions for a moment, would the exact opposite effect of the righteous justice you seek. Any system you'd build in this mold, the criminal justice mold, would be the same or a clone of the current one, inheriting the same flaws. The prosecuting agency would be lenient towards Type I errors, because few people care; and I think in the net it'd increase their occurrence, by severely penalizing Type II errors. edit: (And to the point out the obvious in plain sight—look at the very newspaper story we're discussing. The "criminal that got away with it" is in the headline/title. The "innocent person horribly abused by indifferent criminal justice" is mentioned in passing about 21 paragraphs down).
- Repulsion9513 3y ago
  You do realize that when you're making new laws you can make those laws say anything you want, right?
  - actionfromafar 3y ago
    But you can't make them do anything you want.
    - spacecadet 3y ago
      You can, its called a tank.
      - actionfromafar 3y ago
        Even that, can't make them do anything you want. It makes them die.
      - dmoy 3y ago
        Tanks can't go door to door on enough of the populace. If it's a law that's unpopular enough, it's not enforceable pretty much anywhere. Even less so in the US, because of the staggering number of civilian owned guns.
euroderf 3y ago
Prosecutors get away with murder. Literally. Suggesting that reining in prosecutorial immunity would create overly timid prosecutors is a false choice.
Lanolderen 3y ago
If I had life in prison or a death penalty hanging over my head at work after getting all the prerequisites to be a judge I better be getting paid seven figures or I'm either becoming a scrum master or a defence attorney trying to abuse the guillotine to ensure client satisfaction.
RecycledEle 3y ago
> Sadly the system never gets punished. I think these judges and prosecutors would do much better if there was ever present risk of either life in prison or even death penalty. The first step is transparency. Put every bit of evidence for every case on the public record so everyone can see it online. Sadly, The System will not allow that. Truth is the enemy of The System.

deleted 3y ago

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cqqxo4zV46cp 3y ago

My (non-American) reaction to this was immediately “that’s so American”. It’s just absurd. I would not put the actual thief at the top of the list if who’s to blame there. That is clearly a cultural / systems issue, through and through.

ipsum2 3y ago
Where do you live where these things don't happen?
- bryanrasmussen 3y ago
  they're saying that blaming the thief for the result instead of the systemic flaws is American.
- marcyb5st 3y ago
  Not sure about parent comment, but I am in Europe and identity theft is basically non-existent. And I'm not sure why is that. Also document forgeries are not a thing (when I see TV shows where teenagers try to buy alcohol using a fake driving license that really feels "American"). Really, I am not sure why this kind of illegal things are unheard of in EU, but there might be some sort of systematic reason.
  - elhudy 3y ago
    The ease of making your way across the US into different jurisdictions is probably a contributing factor. I imagine the geographical equivalent of this story would be a person from portugal driving their way across europe and landing in poland where they live out the rest of their lives under a different identity. It’s a lot tougher to do that when you’re crossing into a new country, culture, language entirely. And portugal is small enough that it would be very difficult to pull off within the confines of the country.
  - beAbU 3y ago
    Perhaps its because most have passports, and a passport is often used as the proof of ID? In my home country every citizen gets an identity card with some important details on it. ID theft is basically non-existent there.

ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago

From what I read (in the Ars Technica story on this), the real Woods seems to be in fairly bad shape. At least homeless, maybe mentally challenged. It seems that may have happened, even if his identity had not been stolen, but I am not aware enough of the story's details, to render any kind of semi-authoritative judgment. It's highly likely that at least one lawyer is already salivating over this, and will help him to sue, but I’m not confident that the real Woods will benefit. This was a nightmare story, and I would hope that the fake Woods gets real jail time.

shultays 3y ago
I was wondering how there were no family members, old friends etc that could prove his word but that explains it. Quite sad, but also maybe a mental hospital is better than being homeless
- ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
  > maybe a mental hospital is better than being homeless We seem to have come full circle. One of the big reasons for the enormous homeless population, is because all the mental hospitals were closed, in the 1980s and 90s. I think that news stories about [very real] abuses in these hospitals, along with the cost to maintain, were responsible. You can yell "Get a job!" at schizophrenics, all you want, but it won't make them employable, or even able to live on their own. There are a number of mental illnesses that can be treated, and recovery is possible, but that only accounts for a fairly small percentage of the severely mentally ill. I know a large number of folks that have done it, but for every one of them, there's a hundred more, that couldn't get it. It's just that treating mental illness is hugely unpopular with the vast majority of folks that don't have any family or associates with mental illness, and even more unpopular with folks that have undiagnosed mental illness (It's quite possible to have a long, productive life, with some forms of mental illness -it can even be helpful, in some careers).
  - david38 3y ago
    Hospitals were closed with the release of new drugs that promised to treat mental illnesses. They didn’t deliver, but the hospitals were closed anyway.

koolba 3y ago

> That's the stuff of nightmares. I hope the real Woods sues the system that put him through this. On the positive side, if he was using his social security number for 35 years, he’ll be fully paid up for the real Woods to draw at retirement.

Vaslo 3y ago
Really good point here - couldnt the fake woods claim he was indeed the one paying into it, and claim it after he’s released from jail? If the court has any credibility, they should first jail the fake one for a long time, then make things like his ss payments restitution for the real woods.

lupusreal 3y ago

Forcibly medicating a man for insisting on his innocence, even if his guilt seems certain, is another nightmarish aspect of this situation. By all means imprison the guy, but forcing him onto mind altering drugs because he refuses to admit his guilt is over the line.

op00to 3y ago

The real woods should reap all the benefits of the false woods’ misdeeds with none of the consequences. Get his house, car, job, even wife!

Cthulhu_ 3y ago

"I'm not crazy!" "That's what a crazy person would say!" Honestly once you're at the whims of an overzealous psychologist you're boned. Potentially. I hope the real Woods gets to sue everyone involved in declaring him mentally incompetent, that declaration took away his rights as a human being.

ceejayoz 3y ago
Reminds me of a case where someone got put in a mental hospital for eight days because they wouldn't admit Obama didn't follow them on Twitter. (He did. He follows me, too; it was back in the days of auto-follow-back scripts.) https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/03/24/this-woman-was-put-in-a-mental-hospital-because-she-said-obama-follows-her-on-twitter-she-was-kind-of-right/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/03/24/th...
- catlikesshrimp 3y ago
  A sane smart person given the options of: persisting on a trivial truth OR not being sent to a psychiatric ward, must always pick the second one. Smart people know what a psychiatric ward is, a sane perso recognizes a serious threat when confronted with one.
  - RecycledEle 3y ago
    >A sane smart person given the options of: persisting on a trivial truth OR not being sent to a psychiatric ward, must always pick the second one. > Smart people know what a psychiatric ward is, a sane perso recognizes a serious threat when confronted with one. Lying is a mortal sin. I try to avoid sin, even if doing so seriously harms me. Plato said something like: "All sin is a form of mental illness that seems to make one or a few people better off in the short term but makes all humans poorer in the long run."
    - labawi 2y ago
      Is lying always a sin? A mortal one? I very much dislike lies, do not want to lie and would rather tell the truth even if it may harm me, but I'm not sure about the absoluteness of such an approach. A few days ago I was reading a book about a christian family helping Jews during WW II (Corrie ten Boom) and I was quite lost when Corrie marveled at the realization she doesn't have to do what the authorities say, or when she lied to the police. I would like to believe telling the truth would be better, but .. it seems suspect. Telling Nazi Jews are hiding in my house .. very much not sure what to think about that. Note for casual readers: We are not here to live a comfy life, so, even if saying the truth leads to bodily mortal consequences for another, I can't with 100% certainty say lying would be the right thing to do. It seems to me, there are cases when even God used / instructed Jews to use deception or something very close to it, to scare off attackers or make them kill eachother in a frenzy (different times), so I am dumbfounded on what is right. Even God puts Himself behind a veil, for our benefit, so going around pushing truth for the sake of truth can not be correct. That would be one extreme. But I'm not sure what the criteria is. Do you have any thoughts, or basis on criteria, when is volunteering truth / answering truthfully if asked / refusing to answer / deceiving / lying good or not. Or maybe even what is to be considered lying?