6 ms·

True crime stories are influencing the real-life justice system

36 points by colinprince 2y ago

zehaeva 2y ago
I can't imagine that this is unexpected, nor that surprising. I served on a jury nearly 20 years ago for a criminal case. And the biggest thing at the time, if you recall that long ago, was the biggest shows in TV were CSI and Law & Order. I certainly watched them a fair amount. Both, and the myriad of spin off and other shows in the same vein, presented a flashy and scientifically certain view of law enforcement. I bring up my time on that jury because the lawyers both spent a _huge_ amount of time preempting everyone's questions about why there wasn't any conclusive "scientific" evidence. No finger prints, no weapons marks, no expert testimony, etc. It turns out real life is far more messy than a 30-60 minute tv drama. So as CSI, et. al. gave us these unrealistic fever dreams about how crime is solved in the real world, so too do "True Crime" stories give us an unrealistic view of what happens out there in the real world.
- potato3732842 2y ago
  Exactly. They're just whining that the "police can do no wrong" sentiment born out of CSI/NCIS/Law and Order and post-9/11 first responder worship is coming to a close. And of course the public deference to them over that period enabled a bunch of shoddy work and that shoddy work is what underpins the current generation of "ignored X" and "framed Y" type true crime and so the pendulum of public perception swings back toward where it was in the 1990s when the public was becoming aware that police had, roughly speaking, spent the prior decades framing a bunch of black guys because that was easier than solving crimes. Edit: Now that I think about it it's kind of a condemnation of the industry how quickly the pendulum swung.
  - recursivecaveat 2y ago
    I have been watching a little of daytime TV cop stuff while spending time with my older family. In one particular 44 minute episode the 4 plot lines are: solving a hate-crime by deceiving a suspect during interrogation into confessing; an object lesson that you shouldn't film cops lest you make them too nervous to arrest people, with tragic consequences; a 3 layered defense against the idea of an old boys club, in which even the would-be racist cop is bait-N-switched into being color-blind; and a Medicare fraud investigation. I felt like I was having an out-of-body experience it was so surreal in its overtness.
- bee_rider 2y ago
  We probably need better k-12 epistemology lessons, so every adult could reasonably be expected to understand different levels of doubt and scrutiny, evidentiary requirements. That said, juries should be skeptical of the story they are being sold, right? Maybe we should not lock up very many people for whom there isn’t any hard evidence of their guilt.
  - michaelt 2y ago
    > Maybe we should not lock up very many people for whom there isn’t any hard evidence of their guilt. Would you consider eyewitness testimony to be 'hard evidence'? I don't have any CCTV in my house, so if a guest visiting my house beats me up, although my face is indisputable evidence that someone attacked me, the only evidence they did it is my eyewitness testimony. Would our society be a better place if my attacker was convicted, or if he wasn't?
    - HeyLaughingBoy 2y ago
      What if you had two guests but you lied about which one beat you up while the other one was out? What if they were twins? What if the person was wearing a mask that you knew your guest owned, but it wasn't actually him? You're entering into this with the assumption that you know who beat you up. The police don't have anything other than your assertion. That's why corroborating evidence is needed.
      - lazide 2y ago
        Don’t forget the chance that they beat themselves up to get the other person in trouble and/or try to extort them. (I wish this was that fantastical a scenario)
      - bee_rider 2y ago
        I mean, these are sort of fanciful soap opera scenarios, haha. More likely, if a guest beats you up, there will be some other witnesses and some motives. Anyway, police can get search warrants and work it out, or like… maybe the guest will feel guilty and admit what they did, perhaps after a stern talking-to along with the implication that they’ll probably be found out after some investigation anyway.
- like_any_other 2y ago
  > It turns out real life is far more messy than a 30-60 minute tv drama. But at the end of the day, they jury is asked to decide if an accusation is true "beyond a reasonable doubt".
- matwood 2y ago
  Most criminal convictions are based on circumstantial evidence. True crime podcasts and shows have made the general population expect a higher level of evidence. I can't say I disagree.
  - scarface_74 2y ago
    And how many people are wrongfully convicted?
    - matwood 2y ago
      Hard to know an exact number, since we only know of ones who crossed the huge hurdles to reverse a conviction. And those require a very high bar of exacting evidence like DNA. But, the system should bend towards letting guilty people go free rather putting innocent people in jail.
- ikiris 2y ago
  And I say it should be. If the entire argument is “these cops say so and also this one guy who may hate the defendant”, that should probably get dismissed. Make them submit body cam footage showing evidence and amazingly a lot of bad stuff gets less bad.
- scarface_74 2y ago
  What evidence did they have?
euroderf 2y ago
Adam 12. Dragnet. Jack Webb. You can trust me, I'm a policeman.
jvanderbot 2y ago
I've said before, and I'll repeat here: After serving on a jury I have only the following advice: Stay away from the criminal justice system as much as you can. Once you are in a courtroom on a jury trial, you are effectively a coin toss from prison. The amount of uninformed opinions and plain old charisma involved in deciding a case is just mind boggling. There are no certainties, just people reliving their trauma and deciding whether or not the person they see in the courtroom looks like a person that would cause that trauma.
- Spivak 2y ago
  This is true even before you land in the court room. The best advice is to put as much distance you can between yourself and the entire criminal justice system. Folks make fun of "justice involved person" but it's capturing a real thing that it's a black hole (heh) that is impossible to escape from completely. Even when you're the victim. You are at your safest when the police have no idea who you are.
  - Taek 2y ago
    I've received professional advice from lawyers multiple times (related to SEC, related to FBI, related to local police, related to international police): "Every time you talk to an entity with enforcement capabilities, you significantly increase your chances of receiving an enforcement action. My clients that maintain a strict policy of never engaging with [regulators, police, justice] all have significantly less enforcement actions than clients who agree to be witnesses, report potential crimes, or otherwise take steps to be a good citizen." (Paraphrased, but I've received advice like that across many areas of justice/regulation)
    - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
      Yup. I’ve come across frauds in my work that my lawyers plead with me not to report. I didn’t listen to them once and learned my lesson.
      - 2y ago
ceejayoz 2y ago
> When it comes to the courtroom, she says she has seen a shift in day-to-day proceedings with a "healthy skepticism" toward police and prosecutors, which she attributes to the popularity of true crime content. I'm more inclined to attribute this to the fact that when everyone got a high-resolution video camera in their pocket, we got no new compelling evidence for UFOs but lots of it for police brutality. They primed the pump, now they're complaining they're wet.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
alsetmusic 2y ago
True crime is about real life. Of course true crime stories affect real life. A more unexpected and interesting headline would be if fictional crime stories were affecting real life (which they do by giving people unrealistic expectations of detectives and crime labs and witness testimony etc). This is liking saying that water affects moisture.
incomingpain 2y ago
First time i've seen cbc lite. I do like. 'true crime is somehow creating more crime for the justice system?' Is this the violent video games argument? The problem in Canada, we have insanely risen violent crime; tons of viral cases where people are out on bail less than 24 hours, were caught again committing more crime and being right back out on bail. Literally multiple holy wars occurring in the streets. South of us, the vast majority of the US states have now adopted constitutional carry. Conceal carry a handgun for your safety. Resulting in significantly less violent crime. Very easy choice to make as a politician. Canada did the opposite. There are hold outs in the usa trying to prevent guns being carried. They like Canada have similar violent crime problems. CBC's take on this issue, 'true crime is somehow creating more crime for the justice system?'
- ceejayoz 2y ago
  > Resulting in significantly less violent crime. Citation needed, because the numbers I'm aware of say the opposite; the US has one of the highest murder rates of all the high-income OECD nations, all of which have substantially stricter limits on concealed carry. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/murder-rate-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/murder-ra...
  - incomingpain 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - ceejayoz 2y ago
      > Your source... I still await yours! > 1/3rd of the country are foreign born. Roughly the same for Canada. That's a challenge for your argument, considering their respective murder rate. > Making enemies with everyone, encouraging them to attack the usa domestically... ... can only explain a vanishingly small number of violent crimes in the US.
    - tptacek 2y ago
      "Gun control" has nothing whatsoever to do with the reason there's so much murder in Chicago.
thorum 2y ago
Law enforcement is treated with more skepticism, and judges are more worried about being held to account for their decisions. It’s hard to see either of these developments as anything but positive. The rise of amateur sleuthing is less clear. I can’t actually think of a single case where the true crime community actually solved a case that the police couldn’t. But you regularly see a mob of weirdos going after innocent people and trying to ruin their lives.
- hollerith 2y ago
  >I can’t actually think of a single case where the true crime community actually solved a case that the police couldn’t. See the video "don't mess with cats" for an example. Also, the identification of the murderer Luca Magnotta IIRC.
  - ceejayoz 2y ago
    Even more clearly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jinx_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jinx_(TV_series) > After the interview, Durst goes to the bathroom. Apparently unaware that his microphone is still recording, he rambles at length, ending with, "What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course." > On March 14, 2015, the eve of the final episode's airing, the FBI arrested Durst in New Orleans on a first-degree murder warrant the LAPD obtained in connection to Berman's death. They had undertaken an investigation based on new evidence presented in the miniseries.
spondylosaurus 2y ago
This article mentions the podcast Serial several times, then later says this: > He says the genre focuses on outlier situations — cases that feature the "unresolved nature of the crime," the "grisly or more so shocking nature of the criminal conduct" and "extensive media coverage." The first season of Serial, which I assume is what they mean since that's the famous one everyone listened to, is about an unsolved and reasonably grisly murder case. (Never mind the fact that it's a really story about the legal proceedings surrounding the case and our criminal justice system as a whole, not a voyeuristic slasherfest like so many true crime stories are.) But there have been several more seasons of Serial since then, including the third season, which focuses on a number of completely ordinary, mundane cases from a single courthouse in Ohio—except what turns out to be shocking is how even these ordinary cases, run-of-the-mill trials and sentencings that never would've been on anyone's radar, are subject to the whims of random judges and cops with no oversight. It's not that the original murder story is remarkable for having a questionable trial with so many unanswered questions; so many people's experiences with our justice system are equally arbitrary and confusing, and for much smaller charges. What's remarkable about the season one case is its degree, not its kind. (As an aside, people who are REALLY into the "is he innocent/guilty" posturing for the season one case, and are otherwise a fan of those voyeuristic slasherfest-type stories, didn't seem to like season three. Which is a shame since I thought it was fascinating, and arguably more horrifying, since your odds of being arrested under dubious charges and sentenced by an untouchable judge seem a lot higher than your odds of being randomly murdered in the woods.)
- Hilift 2y ago
  I thought the Oland murder was even more fascinating. Strange it wasn't mentioned, it was a CBC documentary. "According to Maclean's, the officers' "controversially—and almost comically—sloppy sleuths helped to explain the lack of evidence. While working on the crime scene, officers used the bathroom for two days before it could be tested for blood or fingerprints, and they could not always remember what they had touched around the office with bloodied gloves. The blood spatter expert did not arrive from Halifax until four days after the homicide, by which time the body had been removed and spatter had dried and flaked. Officers touched the back door before testing it for fingerprints, did not interview some witnesses for 18 months, and did not photograph the back alleyway until three years after the crime"." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Richard_Oland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Richard_Oland
true_cime 2y ago
[dead]

36 points by colinprince 2y ago

I can't imagine that this is unexpected, nor that surprising. I served on a jury nearly 20 years ago for a criminal case. And the biggest thing at the time, if you recall that long ago, was the biggest shows in TV were CSI and Law & Order. I certainly watched them a fair amount. Both, and the myriad of spin off and other shows in the same vein, presented a flashy and scientifically certain view of law enforcement. I bring up my time on that jury because the lawyers both spent a _huge_ amount of time preempting everyone's questions about why there wasn't any conclusive "scientific" evidence. No finger prints, no weapons marks, no expert testimony, etc. It turns out real life is far more messy than a 30-60 minute tv drama. So as CSI, et. al. gave us these unrealistic fever dreams about how crime is solved in the real world, so too do "True Crime" stories give us an unrealistic view of what happens out there in the real world.

potato3732842 2y ago
Exactly. They're just whining that the "police can do no wrong" sentiment born out of CSI/NCIS/Law and Order and post-9/11 first responder worship is coming to a close. And of course the public deference to them over that period enabled a bunch of shoddy work and that shoddy work is what underpins the current generation of "ignored X" and "framed Y" type true crime and so the pendulum of public perception swings back toward where it was in the 1990s when the public was becoming aware that police had, roughly speaking, spent the prior decades framing a bunch of black guys because that was easier than solving crimes. Edit: Now that I think about it it's kind of a condemnation of the industry how quickly the pendulum swung.
- recursivecaveat 2y ago
  I have been watching a little of daytime TV cop stuff while spending time with my older family. In one particular 44 minute episode the 4 plot lines are: solving a hate-crime by deceiving a suspect during interrogation into confessing; an object lesson that you shouldn't film cops lest you make them too nervous to arrest people, with tragic consequences; a 3 layered defense against the idea of an old boys club, in which even the would-be racist cop is bait-N-switched into being color-blind; and a Medicare fraud investigation. I felt like I was having an out-of-body experience it was so surreal in its overtness.
bee_rider 2y ago
We probably need better k-12 epistemology lessons, so every adult could reasonably be expected to understand different levels of doubt and scrutiny, evidentiary requirements. That said, juries should be skeptical of the story they are being sold, right? Maybe we should not lock up very many people for whom there isn’t any hard evidence of their guilt.
- michaelt 2y ago
  > Maybe we should not lock up very many people for whom there isn’t any hard evidence of their guilt. Would you consider eyewitness testimony to be 'hard evidence'? I don't have any CCTV in my house, so if a guest visiting my house beats me up, although my face is indisputable evidence that someone attacked me, the only evidence they did it is my eyewitness testimony. Would our society be a better place if my attacker was convicted, or if he wasn't?
  - HeyLaughingBoy 2y ago
    What if you had two guests but you lied about which one beat you up while the other one was out? What if they were twins? What if the person was wearing a mask that you knew your guest owned, but it wasn't actually him? You're entering into this with the assumption that you know who beat you up. The police don't have anything other than your assertion. That's why corroborating evidence is needed.
    - lazide 2y ago
      Don’t forget the chance that they beat themselves up to get the other person in trouble and/or try to extort them. (I wish this was that fantastical a scenario)
    - bee_rider 2y ago
      I mean, these are sort of fanciful soap opera scenarios, haha. More likely, if a guest beats you up, there will be some other witnesses and some motives. Anyway, police can get search warrants and work it out, or like… maybe the guest will feel guilty and admit what they did, perhaps after a stern talking-to along with the implication that they’ll probably be found out after some investigation anyway.
like_any_other 2y ago
> It turns out real life is far more messy than a 30-60 minute tv drama. But at the end of the day, they jury is asked to decide if an accusation is true "beyond a reasonable doubt".
matwood 2y ago
Most criminal convictions are based on circumstantial evidence. True crime podcasts and shows have made the general population expect a higher level of evidence. I can't say I disagree.
- scarface_74 2y ago
  And how many people are wrongfully convicted?
  - matwood 2y ago
    Hard to know an exact number, since we only know of ones who crossed the huge hurdles to reverse a conviction. And those require a very high bar of exacting evidence like DNA. But, the system should bend towards letting guilty people go free rather putting innocent people in jail.
ikiris 2y ago
And I say it should be. If the entire argument is “these cops say so and also this one guy who may hate the defendant”, that should probably get dismissed. Make them submit body cam footage showing evidence and amazingly a lot of bad stuff gets less bad.
scarface_74 2y ago
What evidence did they have?

euroderf 2y ago

Adam 12. Dragnet. Jack Webb. You can trust me, I'm a policeman.

jvanderbot 2y ago

I've said before, and I'll repeat here: After serving on a jury I have only the following advice: Stay away from the criminal justice system as much as you can. Once you are in a courtroom on a jury trial, you are effectively a coin toss from prison. The amount of uninformed opinions and plain old charisma involved in deciding a case is just mind boggling. There are no certainties, just people reliving their trauma and deciding whether or not the person they see in the courtroom looks like a person that would cause that trauma.

Spivak 2y ago
This is true even before you land in the court room. The best advice is to put as much distance you can between yourself and the entire criminal justice system. Folks make fun of "justice involved person" but it's capturing a real thing that it's a black hole (heh) that is impossible to escape from completely. Even when you're the victim. You are at your safest when the police have no idea who you are.
- Taek 2y ago
  I've received professional advice from lawyers multiple times (related to SEC, related to FBI, related to local police, related to international police): "Every time you talk to an entity with enforcement capabilities, you significantly increase your chances of receiving an enforcement action. My clients that maintain a strict policy of never engaging with [regulators, police, justice] all have significantly less enforcement actions than clients who agree to be witnesses, report potential crimes, or otherwise take steps to be a good citizen." (Paraphrased, but I've received advice like that across many areas of justice/regulation)
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    Yup. I’ve come across frauds in my work that my lawyers plead with me not to report. I didn’t listen to them once and learned my lesson.
    - 2y ago

ceejayoz 2y ago

> When it comes to the courtroom, she says she has seen a shift in day-to-day proceedings with a "healthy skepticism" toward police and prosecutors, which she attributes to the popularity of true crime content. I'm more inclined to attribute this to the fact that when everyone got a high-resolution video camera in their pocket, we got no new compelling evidence for UFOs but lots of it for police brutality. They primed the pump, now they're complaining they're wet.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

alsetmusic 2y ago

True crime is about real life. Of course true crime stories affect real life. A more unexpected and interesting headline would be if fictional crime stories were affecting real life (which they do by giving people unrealistic expectations of detectives and crime labs and witness testimony etc). This is liking saying that water affects moisture.

incomingpain 2y ago

First time i've seen cbc lite. I do like. 'true crime is somehow creating more crime for the justice system?' Is this the violent video games argument? The problem in Canada, we have insanely risen violent crime; tons of viral cases where people are out on bail less than 24 hours, were caught again committing more crime and being right back out on bail. Literally multiple holy wars occurring in the streets. South of us, the vast majority of the US states have now adopted constitutional carry. Conceal carry a handgun for your safety. Resulting in significantly less violent crime. Very easy choice to make as a politician. Canada did the opposite. There are hold outs in the usa trying to prevent guns being carried. They like Canada have similar violent crime problems. CBC's take on this issue, 'true crime is somehow creating more crime for the justice system?'

ceejayoz 2y ago
> Resulting in significantly less violent crime. Citation needed, because the numbers I'm aware of say the opposite; the US has one of the highest murder rates of all the high-income OECD nations, all of which have substantially stricter limits on concealed carry. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/murder-rate-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/murder-ra...
- incomingpain 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - ceejayoz 2y ago
    > Your source... I still await yours! > 1/3rd of the country are foreign born. Roughly the same for Canada. That's a challenge for your argument, considering their respective murder rate. > Making enemies with everyone, encouraging them to attack the usa domestically... ... can only explain a vanishingly small number of violent crimes in the US.
  - tptacek 2y ago
    "Gun control" has nothing whatsoever to do with the reason there's so much murder in Chicago.

thorum 2y ago

Law enforcement is treated with more skepticism, and judges are more worried about being held to account for their decisions. It’s hard to see either of these developments as anything but positive. The rise of amateur sleuthing is less clear. I can’t actually think of a single case where the true crime community actually solved a case that the police couldn’t. But you regularly see a mob of weirdos going after innocent people and trying to ruin their lives.

hollerith 2y ago
>I can’t actually think of a single case where the true crime community actually solved a case that the police couldn’t. See the video "don't mess with cats" for an example. Also, the identification of the murderer Luca Magnotta IIRC.
- ceejayoz 2y ago
  Even more clearly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jinx_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jinx_(TV_series) > After the interview, Durst goes to the bathroom. Apparently unaware that his microphone is still recording, he rambles at length, ending with, "What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course." > On March 14, 2015, the eve of the final episode's airing, the FBI arrested Durst in New Orleans on a first-degree murder warrant the LAPD obtained in connection to Berman's death. They had undertaken an investigation based on new evidence presented in the miniseries.

spondylosaurus 2y ago

This article mentions the podcast Serial several times, then later says this: > He says the genre focuses on outlier situations — cases that feature the "unresolved nature of the crime," the "grisly or more so shocking nature of the criminal conduct" and "extensive media coverage." The first season of Serial, which I assume is what they mean since that's the famous one everyone listened to, is about an unsolved and reasonably grisly murder case. (Never mind the fact that it's a really story about the legal proceedings surrounding the case and our criminal justice system as a whole, not a voyeuristic slasherfest like so many true crime stories are.) But there have been several more seasons of Serial since then, including the third season, which focuses on a number of completely ordinary, mundane cases from a single courthouse in Ohio—except what turns out to be shocking is how even these ordinary cases, run-of-the-mill trials and sentencings that never would've been on anyone's radar, are subject to the whims of random judges and cops with no oversight. It's not that the original murder story is remarkable for having a questionable trial with so many unanswered questions; so many people's experiences with our justice system are equally arbitrary and confusing, and for much smaller charges. What's remarkable about the season one case is its degree, not its kind. (As an aside, people who are REALLY into the "is he innocent/guilty" posturing for the season one case, and are otherwise a fan of those voyeuristic slasherfest-type stories, didn't seem to like season three. Which is a shame since I thought it was fascinating, and arguably more horrifying, since your odds of being arrested under dubious charges and sentenced by an untouchable judge seem a lot higher than your odds of being randomly murdered in the woods.)

Hilift 2y ago
I thought the Oland murder was even more fascinating. Strange it wasn't mentioned, it was a CBC documentary. "According to Maclean's, the officers' "controversially—and almost comically—sloppy sleuths helped to explain the lack of evidence. While working on the crime scene, officers used the bathroom for two days before it could be tested for blood or fingerprints, and they could not always remember what they had touched around the office with bloodied gloves. The blood spatter expert did not arrive from Halifax until four days after the homicide, by which time the body had been removed and spatter had dried and flaked. Officers touched the back door before testing it for fingerprints, did not interview some witnesses for 18 months, and did not photograph the back alleyway until three years after the crime"." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Richard_Oland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Richard_Oland

true_cime 2y ago

[dead]