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>I wonder what other type of crap is putting innocent people in jail? Rhetorical question? It's polygraph, drug sniffing dogs and breathalyzer. There was a cou
by A_COMPUTER 12y ago
>I wonder what other type of crap is putting innocent people in jail?
Rhetorical question? It's polygraph, drug sniffing dogs and breathalyzer. There was a court case a while back about drug sniffing dogs that presented the empirically demonstrated fact that the dogs present false positives all the time; but the judges concluded that it resulted in so many convictions that it would be a disaster to prevent their being evidence in court (analogous to witch dunkings, I suppose.) And breathalyzers are electronic devices whose source code is not auditable because the it is a "trade secret." Convicted by breathalyzer result? Can't challenge the black box's findings.
- dobbsbob 12y agoPolice also use questionable blood splatter pattern 'science' they draw sweeping conclusions from
- stephen_g 12y agoDo they convict based on a breathalyser reading alone in the US? I'm fairly sure that in my country/state, the breathalyser can only provide probable cause for them to do a blood test. Also, how could sniffer dogs provide evidence for court? Surely they couldn't convict without actually finding drugs?
- judk 12y agoDogs are used to (fraudulently) excuse otherwise-illegal searches, but otherwise evidence is same as otherwise.