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This should be disturbing. If there is a true alibi exonerating someone, then there would have been no truthful evidence against him. And yet, a man without tr

This should be disturbing. If there is a true alibi exonerating someone, then there would have been no truthful evidence against him. And yet, a man without truthful evidence against him was almost put to death row. Why is that? Have we stopped caring about Blackstone's Formulation in our zeal to imprison everyone even possibly guilty?

will5421 2y ago
The quickest fix is to get rid of the death penalty
- nickff 2y ago
  How does getting rid of the death penalty address the parent’s concern about false imprisonment? I understand the philosophical and practical arguments against the death penalty, but getting rid of it won’t forestall zealous prosecutors.
  - atoav 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - unmanned6621 2y ago
      [flagged]
      - atoav 2y ago
        "What the news is force feeding you" — I have to admit my feeling purely based on your phrasings is that you are the one who probably lives on a diet of social media "news", but that is besides the point. I am not German, I took German police killing statistics because Germany is the biggest EU nation with the most migration, to make it a fair comparison. The statistics for both US/Germany are from wikipedia and I averaged the numbers for the past decade to avoid the noise a little. If you can't handle these facts I am deeply sorry, but maybe you should reflect on how you rejecting reality might in fact make the problem worse for your country. > No one sane believes that I didn't claim they are sane. You have a major TV "news" station whose now disgraced former host used the defence of "no reasonable person would take this serious" in a court of law. And this is the most widely watched news station in the US. Just saying.
        unmanned6621 2y ago
        [dead]
      - cluckindan 2y ago
        ”No one sane believes that.” That is a fallacious argument of the ”no true scotsman” variety.
        spauldo 2y ago
        It's not. Think about it. The Scotsman fallacy is when you claim that no member of a group meets a certain criteria that is not a defining criteria for that group. "No true Scotsman wears green shoes" is a fallacy. "No true Scotsman is born and spends their entire life in Singapore" is not a fallacy, because someone born in and spending their entire life in Singapore would not meet the defining criteria of being a Scotsman in the first place. "No one sane believes that" implies that the belief that cops should be able to execute people on the spot is incompatible with the definition of sanity. Given that sanity is ill-defined, it's a reasonable (if slightly hyperbolic) statement.
    - watwut 2y ago
      You can release someone from prison, but it generally does not happen. And legal system does NOT care about your guilt or innocence after you have been sentenced. Even if there is clear and unambiguous proof that you was factually innocent, legal system is setup to ignore it. There is no innocence pathway out of prison once you was sentenced.
      - Timon3 2y ago
        That's the state of the system right now, but it doesn't have to stay this way. It doesn't look like there's much hope for it given the current political direction, but it's possible that the system will improve over the coming decades. An innocent person sentenced to prison today can still be released at that point, but an innocent person murdered by the state can't be unmurdered. And while I can't imagine what it would be like to be locked up for such a long time while innocent, I doubt every such innocent prisoner would prefer being dead.
    - pmarreck 2y ago
      Even a 20x multiple of such a number is still a relatively tiny number. You can consider this the cost of the Second Amendment today. The difference is that when new technology comes along that will let you incapacitate someone without killing them, we will always already have the Second Amendment in place, and Germany will not suddenly give this weapon-right back to the people just because technology has progressed to the point that it is safer. A right that is given away to the state is 10 times harder to reclaim (and usually costs bloodshed). So, be smug for now about the temporary illusion of safety you have created. Enjoy the fact that your “Bulle” are mostly unarmed. I’m sure the terrorists you’re letting into your country every day who will happily use knives and bombs (and, ahem, runaway vehicles) instead of guns will “pay off” one day, because all of those people can at least hypothetically be stopped by a single armed citizen. (And this does happen, by the way.)
  - bryanrasmussen 2y ago
    well it will help to forestall the person being dead if exonerating evidence comes along, although anticipating the next question - yes, they can of course die for other reasons in prison, but not having any stats to back it up I will just state my very strong suspicion that most people on death row who die in prison do so because the death penalty was applied.
1659447091 2y ago
He was not "almost put to death row". There was no trial for that to even be a possibility. Instead, a man without truthful evidence against him had the charges dismissed.
- atoav 2y ago
  Aren't there cases whose innocence has been discovered after they have been on death row?
  - 7bit 2y ago
    And that's relevant how?
    - atoav 2y ago
      I wonder how the fact that many innocent people do land in death row is relevant in the discussion about one case where someone didn't. Seriously tho, of course this is relevant. Either your authorities have extremely high confidence, beyond even unreasonable doubt proof or they don't. These are cases where people who didn't do it came close to the danger of being wrongfully executed by the state. If anything, this is a damning data point on how bad the executive and the judicial system are at only prosecuting when they have the proof. In fact it looks a lot like they will just take anybody who is remotely likely to have done it.
  - 1659447091 2y ago
    Yes, but that is not this case.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - pmarreck 2y ago
    Yes. And full disclosure, I have donated to The Innocence Project
- mixdup 2y ago
tjwebbnorfolk 2y ago
The innocence project has an interest in showing the justice system to be more capricious and random than it really is. The guy was exculpated by the evidence, and the system worked as intended. Yes it has problems but the headline and story are obscuring what really happened here. The guy was nowhere near death row.
- RevEng 2y ago
  But only because of a pure fluke. If not for that extraordinary evidence, would they have been exonerated? I'm not saying justice is useless and broken (at least not in this way), but innocent people being found guilty on insufficient evidence does happen and far more often than people would think. It's a serious problem that needs to be addressed, but the people it happens to are usually the kind of people who others are already biased against and are unlikely to want to help, e.g the poor, drug addicts, and minorities.
  - 1659447091 2y ago
    Cellphone location data is not extraordinary evidence, he was not cleared based on walking into frame of the show as it was taped and hour and 22 minutes before the murder; giving him time to still do it. It was his girlfriend calling him 20 minutes before the murder placing him at the stadium. He also had a strong motive as the victim testified against his brother in an unrelated gang murder in which he attended and his brother is serving time for. He also had a record and an eye witness (found later to be wrong) giving a description that could have been him. Add it all together and it was not about a poor minority being targeted by the system. The due process worked here. There is nothing extraordinary about this particular case--except--as promotion for a Netflix documentary that was promoted in the NYPost article: "As covered in the Netflix documentary “Long Shot,” out Friday, Juan’s innocence would ultimately rest on a near brush with fame — more specifically, with Larry David and “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” The real injustice is how “Curb Your Enthusiasm" is taking the spot light from a very real problem that was exposed here. The "clerical error" that had him sit in jail for 2 weeks after being cleared of charges. He won a settlement, but it never should have happened and is a larger problem facing the poor, drug addicts, and minorities, wrt the system. I am somewhat surprised so many are skipping over this very real issue present in this very story for virtue signaling over death row that has nothing to do with this story other than unfounded speculation.
like_any_other 2y ago
> If there is a true alibi exonerating someone, then there would have been no truthful evidence against him. You mistake evidence for proof. Evidence is stuff like a witness that saw someone similar at the crime scene, a motive, the accused's DNA at the crime scene (left there before the crime, e.g. during a benign visit), an injury that could have been sustained during the struggle that led to a murder (but was actually sustained in an unrelated bar fight..), owned the same kind of unusual knife the victim was stabbed with (but lost it the night of the murder), etc. It suggests guilt, but leaves room for doubt. If 'truthful evidence' only existed against the guilty, then the single tiniest bit of evidence would be enough to convict.

will5421 2y ago

The quickest fix is to get rid of the death penalty

nickff 2y ago
How does getting rid of the death penalty address the parent’s concern about false imprisonment? I understand the philosophical and practical arguments against the death penalty, but getting rid of it won’t forestall zealous prosecutors.
- atoav 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - unmanned6621 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - atoav 2y ago
      "What the news is force feeding you" — I have to admit my feeling purely based on your phrasings is that you are the one who probably lives on a diet of social media "news", but that is besides the point. I am not German, I took German police killing statistics because Germany is the biggest EU nation with the most migration, to make it a fair comparison. The statistics for both US/Germany are from wikipedia and I averaged the numbers for the past decade to avoid the noise a little. If you can't handle these facts I am deeply sorry, but maybe you should reflect on how you rejecting reality might in fact make the problem worse for your country. > No one sane believes that I didn't claim they are sane. You have a major TV "news" station whose now disgraced former host used the defence of "no reasonable person would take this serious" in a court of law. And this is the most widely watched news station in the US. Just saying.
      - unmanned6621 2y ago
        [dead]
    - cluckindan 2y ago
      ”No one sane believes that.” That is a fallacious argument of the ”no true scotsman” variety.
      - spauldo 2y ago
        It's not. Think about it. The Scotsman fallacy is when you claim that no member of a group meets a certain criteria that is not a defining criteria for that group. "No true Scotsman wears green shoes" is a fallacy. "No true Scotsman is born and spends their entire life in Singapore" is not a fallacy, because someone born in and spending their entire life in Singapore would not meet the defining criteria of being a Scotsman in the first place. "No one sane believes that" implies that the belief that cops should be able to execute people on the spot is incompatible with the definition of sanity. Given that sanity is ill-defined, it's a reasonable (if slightly hyperbolic) statement.
  - watwut 2y ago
    You can release someone from prison, but it generally does not happen. And legal system does NOT care about your guilt or innocence after you have been sentenced. Even if there is clear and unambiguous proof that you was factually innocent, legal system is setup to ignore it. There is no innocence pathway out of prison once you was sentenced.
    - Timon3 2y ago
      That's the state of the system right now, but it doesn't have to stay this way. It doesn't look like there's much hope for it given the current political direction, but it's possible that the system will improve over the coming decades. An innocent person sentenced to prison today can still be released at that point, but an innocent person murdered by the state can't be unmurdered. And while I can't imagine what it would be like to be locked up for such a long time while innocent, I doubt every such innocent prisoner would prefer being dead.
  - pmarreck 2y ago
    Even a 20x multiple of such a number is still a relatively tiny number. You can consider this the cost of the Second Amendment today. The difference is that when new technology comes along that will let you incapacitate someone without killing them, we will always already have the Second Amendment in place, and Germany will not suddenly give this weapon-right back to the people just because technology has progressed to the point that it is safer. A right that is given away to the state is 10 times harder to reclaim (and usually costs bloodshed). So, be smug for now about the temporary illusion of safety you have created. Enjoy the fact that your “Bulle” are mostly unarmed. I’m sure the terrorists you’re letting into your country every day who will happily use knives and bombs (and, ahem, runaway vehicles) instead of guns will “pay off” one day, because all of those people can at least hypothetically be stopped by a single armed citizen. (And this does happen, by the way.)
- bryanrasmussen 2y ago
  well it will help to forestall the person being dead if exonerating evidence comes along, although anticipating the next question - yes, they can of course die for other reasons in prison, but not having any stats to back it up I will just state my very strong suspicion that most people on death row who die in prison do so because the death penalty was applied.

1659447091 2y ago

He was not "almost put to death row". There was no trial for that to even be a possibility. Instead, a man without truthful evidence against him had the charges dismissed.

atoav 2y ago
Aren't there cases whose innocence has been discovered after they have been on death row?
- 7bit 2y ago
  And that's relevant how?
  - atoav 2y ago
    I wonder how the fact that many innocent people do land in death row is relevant in the discussion about one case where someone didn't. Seriously tho, of course this is relevant. Either your authorities have extremely high confidence, beyond even unreasonable doubt proof or they don't. These are cases where people who didn't do it came close to the danger of being wrongfully executed by the state. If anything, this is a damning data point on how bad the executive and the judicial system are at only prosecuting when they have the proof. In fact it looks a lot like they will just take anybody who is remotely likely to have done it.
- 1659447091 2y ago
  Yes, but that is not this case.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- pmarreck 2y ago
  Yes. And full disclosure, I have donated to The Innocence Project
mixdup 2y ago

tjwebbnorfolk 2y ago

The innocence project has an interest in showing the justice system to be more capricious and random than it really is. The guy was exculpated by the evidence, and the system worked as intended. Yes it has problems but the headline and story are obscuring what really happened here. The guy was nowhere near death row.

RevEng 2y ago
But only because of a pure fluke. If not for that extraordinary evidence, would they have been exonerated? I'm not saying justice is useless and broken (at least not in this way), but innocent people being found guilty on insufficient evidence does happen and far more often than people would think. It's a serious problem that needs to be addressed, but the people it happens to are usually the kind of people who others are already biased against and are unlikely to want to help, e.g the poor, drug addicts, and minorities.
- 1659447091 2y ago
  Cellphone location data is not extraordinary evidence, he was not cleared based on walking into frame of the show as it was taped and hour and 22 minutes before the murder; giving him time to still do it. It was his girlfriend calling him 20 minutes before the murder placing him at the stadium. He also had a strong motive as the victim testified against his brother in an unrelated gang murder in which he attended and his brother is serving time for. He also had a record and an eye witness (found later to be wrong) giving a description that could have been him. Add it all together and it was not about a poor minority being targeted by the system. The due process worked here. There is nothing extraordinary about this particular case--except--as promotion for a Netflix documentary that was promoted in the NYPost article: "As covered in the Netflix documentary “Long Shot,” out Friday, Juan’s innocence would ultimately rest on a near brush with fame — more specifically, with Larry David and “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” The real injustice is how “Curb Your Enthusiasm" is taking the spot light from a very real problem that was exposed here. The "clerical error" that had him sit in jail for 2 weeks after being cleared of charges. He won a settlement, but it never should have happened and is a larger problem facing the poor, drug addicts, and minorities, wrt the system. I am somewhat surprised so many are skipping over this very real issue present in this very story for virtue signaling over death row that has nothing to do with this story other than unfounded speculation.

like_any_other 2y ago

> If there is a true alibi exonerating someone, then there would have been no truthful evidence against him. You mistake evidence for proof. Evidence is stuff like a witness that saw someone similar at the crime scene, a motive, the accused's DNA at the crime scene (left there before the crime, e.g. during a benign visit), an injury that could have been sustained during the struggle that led to a murder (but was actually sustained in an unrelated bar fight..), owned the same kind of unusual knife the victim was stabbed with (but lost it the night of the murder), etc. It suggests guilt, but leaves room for doubt. If 'truthful evidence' only existed against the guilty, then the single tiniest bit of evidence would be enough to convict.