"[Out] of 268 cases where agents used microscopic hair analysis to link a defendant to a crime, the agents’ testimony was scientifically invalid in 257 or 96% of the cases."
That seems impossibly, mind-bogglingly incompetent.
We have prosecutors actively saying on record that we should not retry obviously innocent men because of the pain this would cause the families. There's your mens rea.
People convicted in part based on flawed science are not obviously innocent. At minimum, you'd need to assess how important that particular evidence was to determining guilt. It's possible they'd have been found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt even if that evidence was never found. I assume this is the prosecutors' position, unless you have evidence otherwise.
One is assumed to be innocent, thus if the trail they were convicted under it tainted, then until such time they are retried and found guilty using untainted testimony or actual science then yes these people are in fact "obviously innocent"
I made the statement about you wanting a Legal System because based on the comments you seem to be more focused on the procedure and technical aspects of the law than on the miscarriage of justice that the FBI and their Fake Hair Science has caused. You want to leave it to Judges and Prosecutors to guess at the state of mind of the Jurors to figure out how much the jury may have considered the Hair Analysis, Only a person looking for a Legal system would make that comment.
If you want justice you understand that there is no way to figure out how much that testimony factored into the jury, thus EVERY case it was offered in should be vacated.. TODAY. and everyone person convicted should be released. TODAY. then they can figure out who can be retried using actual evidence and attempt to get convictions with new juries
Further any Plea Bargains that were reached by threatening to use FBI Hair Analysis should also be Vacated, how many people where extorted into pleading guilty by prosecutors because they threaten this "scientific evidence"?
>> People convicted in part based on flawed science are not obviously innocent.
People convicted in part based on flawed science are also not obviously guilty. It is difficult to impossible to weigh how the jury weighed the evidence. So at the least they should be afforded another trial excluding the flawed evidence.
There is a whole body of fraudulent pseudoscience that kept this practice looking all sciency. Once you show they knew it was bogus, that's not just being wrong, that's a criminal conspiracy. I'm surprised nobody has called out the fake science behind "polygraph," too.
Polygraph is, however, fraudulent pseudoscience. There are journals and conferences. The Homeland Security Administration funds universities to train people in this fraudulent practice. These people need to be called out as frauds, and it is an outrage to be openly training frauds in accredited universities.
There is a lot to be said against the idea of mens rea and for strict liability. It's an impossibility to accurately gauge someone's intent, on the contrary it's easy to evaluate someone's actions and see if they amount to criminal conduct. Just tick boxes in the criminal code. No thought-reading required.
The conspiracy theory goes that the concept of criminal intent makes it easy for reckless prosecutors and (especially) bankers to escape justly deserved punishment. After all, who can read a prosecutor's thoughts and prove that they were not incompetent when they relied on a phrenologist to give evidence but actively malicious?
Strict liability has its place, but so does mens rea. I once bought a motorbike. The man sold it to me from his front porch for going market price. He gave me the keys, he signed over the authentic title. I took it to the DMV to register. The desk worker called the police and had it confiscated; it was stolen property. Under strict liability, I would be a felon.
The police officer said to me, 'I have no idea how this happened, I would have been fooled too, he even had the title!?' (paraphrasing)
I gather you're arguing that convicting people like me is a worthwhile price to pay for convicting truly guilty people, but I disagree.
The problem with strict liability is the same problem with thing like mandatory minimum sentences. It ties judges hands to address the actual circumstances of an event, and without exception forces at least equal penalties on people who frankly, don't deserve it. There is no balancing point in this equation either. politicians always wanna be "tough on crime", and the latest case where some horrible monster gets a lighter penalty for nuanced reasons the public isn't interested in understanding is sure to result in a push for mandatory minimums and strict liability.
Consider the case of something like a child porn thumbnail on your pc. Where did it come from? Might have come from a Google image search, and you are totally unaware of it. However because child pornography possession is a strict liability crime you could be looking at years of jail time.
A law without exceptions is tyrannical no matter what its form.
The answer to perceived "bad guys getting away with it" isn't always to force harsher penalties regardless of circumstance.
The law is not, and never could be a fixed computer program you run that evaluates the fact, and spits out a just resolution.
The premise of a Western justice system revolves around protecting society by deterring crime, or punishing bad people, or rehabilitating bad people so that they will not commit more crimes. If someone didn't have an criminal intent to begin with, though, then they cannot be deterred by the law, they're not bad people, and they don't need rehabilitation.
Your proposal is a pragmatic way of making it easier to convict people you're unwilling to presume innocent - which is why you identify "banksters" as your preferred bad guys, where you can presume guilt.
I was on a jury and I could not argue to the rest of the jury using knowledge I was literally trained as a Psych major about... because it was not presented as evidence in the trial. It literally brought me to tears
The belief that the current justice system is even close to being fair is a fallacy. Standards for evidence in law and science are almost completely different. Eyewitness testimony, for example, should basically be thrown out: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-the-eyes-have-i...
Science needs to take law out back and give it a good whuppin'
As my small contribution to the truth, I donate to innocenceproject.org every month.
What I would be curious to know is how many of these 268 samples do not have a matching DNA. "Scientifically invalid" is a bit vague. Does that mean that the samples were not a match or does that mean that the method used didn't provide a sufficient degree of confidence of a match?
This isn't about DNA analysis, it is about staring through a microscope, comparing hairs. Quote:
"At trial, the prosecution relied on the testimony of the three informants as well as the testimony of Elinos Whitlock III, an employee of the Charlotte Mecklenburg Police Department Crime Lab who had been trained by the FBI in how to conduct microscopic hair analysis. He claimed that he could make a “strong identification” that a hair recovered the crime scene was Bridges’s hair. He further stated that there was only a 1 in 1000 chance that two Caucasian people (Bridges is white) would have indistinguishable head hair."
I know the analysis isn't about DNA, but DNA gives us a way to validate the analysis. When a defense lawyer uses words like scientifically invalid, it is designed to make it look like the analysis is just bullocks, but most likely it is something much more subtile, like a different confidence interval, or something like that.
It doesn't matter if "scientifically invalid" is a vague because when the jury decides based on invalid hair sample analysis then justice is not served. Also some evidence collection might not yield DNA in the first place.
The state of forensic "science" today is similar to the state of medicine in the 18th century. Bloodletting wasn't an effective treatment, and but it's not like doctors--much less ordinary people--of the time knew any better.
Obviously those participating in hiding evidence should be prosecuted, but it's hard to blame everyone else who is going along with what forensic "scientists" tell them. The legitimate scientific establishment has done little to nothing to expose this field as the domain of charlatans. How are lay people supposed to understand the difference?
>How are lay people supposed to understand the difference?
Well first off lay people not to stop placing government agents on a God like pedestal where by everything a "forensic scientist" from the state utters in court is assumed to be truthful and beyond questioning.
This is how we get terrible science and convictions, the public watches a episode of CSI or NCIS where you have infinite zoom and enhance, where you can do facial recognition on a person in a ATM video from 25 miles away, where 2 people can hack all encryption by typing on the same keyboard really fast....
They see this shit, so then when a person from the FBI gets on the stands, says a bunch of big words, and points to the scary man or women at the table saying they did it... the case is over....
I mostly agree with you. It is however a serious flaw of the jury system. Forensic science is NOT in the terrible state that the OP makes it out to be.
I question even the validity of fingerprint matching one of the oldest "Forensic science" fields.
Almost nothing in "Forensic science" follows the actual scientific method. There is far far far far far too many assumptions, "intuitive leaps", and formation of a preconceived narrative round "science"
They make the evidence fit their story, vs allowing the evidence to tell a story.
And this goes to show that if you want a fair trial in any country (even relatively evolved western countries), you need to be rich enough to have a decent legal team. When you read some of the cases from the innocence project, the incompetence is mind boggling.
And don't get me started on countries like Japan with 99.7% conviction rate and antiquated laws regarding police arrest.
I think that until you have a significant sum of money that can be used to pay for a legal defense team, you are at risk of prison even if you're innocent (of course in most cases the risk is negligible but if you're part of a minority it might not be)...
The cases from the innocence project are bad, but they only see the cases in which the person pleaded innocent and was convicted by a jury...
Most cases end in a Plea, which innocent people with out proper legal representation, and many with proper legal representation take for a whole host of reason.
I agree but in my opinion the only one. I am not opposed to the principle but justice in pretty much every country has historically shown a remarkable incompetence and lack of rigor.
It helps that in probably 80% of the cases there is no real doubt on the identity of the killer (not all cases are a suspense movie scenario). But I wonder if the reliability of courts is even higher that whatever that percentage is.
I'd guess that the legal expense associated with endless appeals and delaying tactics is incurred for the same reason I believe capital punishment is immoral on a personal level -- namely, that "guilty beyond reasonable doubt" is nowhere near a strong enough criterion to justify taking a life. It's just too subjective. We wouldn't need to build so much fault tolerance into the process if it weren't so badly flawed to begin with.
If the death penalty were reserved for use in cases that meet a higher standard -- say "guilty beyond any conceivable possibility of doubt" -- I wouldn't necessarily have a problem with it. To me, that's the difference between a Timothy McVeigh and a West Memphis Three. But I don't have any insight into how many cases would meet that criterion. It may be that the death penalty is simply not worth reserving as an option in those cases.
I'd think that it matters how many innocent people are executed vs how many lives are saved by deterring potential murderers, and my trouble is I don't know how to get those numbers.
Regarding just the second number - deterrence - here's a claim that the death penalty deters, saving between 3 and 18 lives per execution depending on the study you choose (quite the spread, BTW...):
...But here's a claim that the death penalty doesn't deter (though they cite, not direct statistical evidence, but the opinion of criminologists and the fact that some places without a death penalty have lower murder rates than places with it; but maybe if I dug deeper I'd find something more direct):
Perhaps someone who've looked into it more deeply can weigh in; all I'm saying is that it matters what the answer is.
(My own intuition would be that people aren't deterred by the death penalty very much, because they count on not getting caught, instead of multiplying the penalty by the probability or some such. But I could be wrong. Also I'm open to the opinion that you shouldn't do some things to people regardless of potential benefits to society, for instance I'm pretty sure torture would deter more than the death penalty because it's a very vivid picture a potential criminal would have in their mind, but it's great that nobody thinks we should go there. I just don't think that the capital punishment is "cruel and unusual" that way.)
I'd think that it matters how many innocent people are executed vs how many lives are saved by deterring potential murderers, and my trouble is I don't know how to get those numbers.
I could not disagree with you more! It should not matter how much total good it does if even one person is wrongly killed via the death penalty. It sounds like a logically sound thing until you find yourself being the one person society has decided to kill for the better good of the society.
You find yourself no worse off than the victim of an undeterred murder.
That said, I understand the deterrent effect to be often assumed to be far greater than reality bears out, and I think the death penalty is quite a poor practice on balance for a host of reasons.
Or you just put the blood on the prosecutors hands. If they wrongfully execute someone, then they are the ones to be executed. I guarantee there will be a lot less death penalty cases ;)
Franquin's Idées Noires is one of my all time favourite comics, and one of the one pagers dealt with the death penalty (France still had the death penalty at the time it was first published in Spirou in the last 70's), expressing a similarly effective approach to making it unpalatable.. [1].
A rough translation (my French is rusty - been a decade or two): "The law is clear: Anyone who intentionally kills another will lose their head. Let the executioner do his duty." "This way, my friend" "And so, a good deed done" "I'm sorry, but anyone who intentionally kills another..."
(Idées Noires is fantastic and macabre. Franquin kept "letting" people who causes suffering for other people - or animals - die horrible deaths in his panels, often with a solid dose of poetic justice in between other things, and coupled with rather caustic political commentary. Unfortunately, AFAIK I don't think there is an English translation (one was in the works), but even with quite modest French they're relatively easy to understand (many of them don't have much or any text))
"Or you just..." as opposed to what? I'm not sure how your comment is meant to relate to mine.
It's certainly true that threatening prosecutors with execution in the event of a wrongful execution would stop them from pursuing the death penalty in almost any case. The same is true of a threat of life in prison, and probably also true of substantially lesser sentences.
Let's entertain your idea for a second. If a person wrongfully executed for killing someone, why not continue that process by prosecuting the prosecutor or jury for the wrongful conviction?
I think the real reason that the death penalty is not effective as a deterrent is that the people that murder in general don't think things through. Very reactionary. Obviously there are plenty of cold blooded killers out there too but I doubt penalties have a ton of bearing on things. Most people just don't murder other people. I could be completely off base though and would love to see some evidence either way.
Also, I believe many people don't consider the punishment just the chance of being caught. If you are going to commit a planned murder then you are likely to plan on getting away with it. If it is spur of the moment then again you won't be thinking about being caught or about the punishment...
//how many lives are saved by deterring potential murderers
The death penalty isn't about deterrence. It's about vengeance. At least to the family and friends of the victim.
Many in the US, for religious reasons, consider death to be the ultimate punishment. You know - "hell is that way".
But what if you don't believe in hell, or a judgement? Then death is an easy way out. Personally, I'd rather die than be thrown into a hole for 40 years.
So allow me to rephase:
//I'd think that it matters how many innocent people are executed vs how many people believe the criminal will suffer in hell.
That makes no sense. If hell is for eternity, why would any religious nut care whether the criminal is executed sooner rather than let to rot and die in prison later? The end result would be the same.
//That makes no sense. If hell is for eternity, why would any religious nut care whether the criminal is executed sooner rather than let to rot and die in prison later
Because they believe hell is more of a punishment. They'd rather see the criminal dead in hell, then sitting in a jail cell alive.
I think he/she meant it as a mathematical argument. Infinity + 20 = Infinity. So if Hell is eternal, it doesn't matter if you get there today or in 20 years.
The Emory study cited by that first article (http://cjlf.org/deathpenalty/DezRubShepDeterFinal.pdf) doesn't inspire me much. Show me an observational study which the researchers claim "eliminates the bias arising from unobserved heterogeneity", and I'll show you a study that was conducted by overconfident researchers who're overselling the strength of their evidence.
And no, after reading the paper I'm not personally convinced that they did deal with unobserved heterogeneity. I'm not even convinced that the authors fully understand what the unobserved heterogeneity problem's really about. They seem to think that it's something you can whisk away by just throwing a bunch of covariates at your data, which is not how it works. If they mentioned their conditional independence assumption, let alone attempted to defend it, I missed it.
I'll be sure to write, "if only the person that stabbed me in this dark alley had the deterrent of possibly being convicted and executed maybe I would still be alive" in blood before I lose consciousness or run out of blood.
The error in your attempt at utilitarianism is to only count deaths of innocent people as meaningful. It doesn't actually matter whether someone is guilty or innocent when executed, the effect on their family will be precisely the same.
Perhaps it would have been an error in my attempt at utilitarianism, if indeed it were an attempt at utilitarianism; to me however it does matter whether someone is guilty or innocent when executed, and I think it also matters to most people (attempting Rawlsianism?) objecting to my comment on the grounds of any execution of an innocent person being unacceptable. (Can I say that the error in their attempt at Rawlsianism is that they don't also oppose cars which regularly cause deaths of innocent people? I guess I can say it except for the part where I attribute opposition to cars to a philosophy that I never studied in depth.)
One gets the ridiculous situation where an innocent person in prison, keeps on maintaining that they are innocent and end up serving far longer sentences than guilty people, convicted of very similar crimes, that don't deny their guilt.
I am not sure if this applied in this case, but it may well have done.
No on the second, for good reason. There wasn't anything in the article that indicated that the prosecutors did anything wrong. They took the evidence they were given by the police, by informants, and by the crime lab employee and presented it at trial. That the police did not give the prosecutors all the evidence the police had, and that a forensic technique that was widely accepted at the time by the FBI and the state turned out to not be accurate is beyond the scope of the prosecutor's role.
I don't know about this case, but about a month ago I heard another wrongfully-convicted person discussing his case, including the fact that in the agreement that freed him, he waived the option to sue. His stated reason was that his alternative was to stay in jail for the process to work its way through, and in jail, 'accidental' death was just too easy. Paranoid? Given his circumstances, l don't think so.
The prosecutor's job is not to robotically, bureaucratically follow a fixed process. They have a lot of latitude and can choose to pursue a defendant for maximum prison time, minimum prison time, something in between, persuade them to take a plea, or drop the charges completely. Many options, really.
For this prosecutor's office to have put this fellow away for so many years on not even circumstantial evidence but merely the good faith acceptance of three unreliable sources with criminal records, and the hair which turned out to be erroneously identified, despite the bloody handprint that was not a match, and despite the victim's failure to identify the defendant, is almost obscene. Sadly, however, it's not unheard of at all; our criminal justice system is far from perfect, though it probably still ranks near the top in a world where justice is difficult to obtain in most countries outside of western Europe and North America.
Another reason why it's best just to close the blinds, turn on the computer, and lay low for the rest of your life, using video games and pornography to entertain and escape.
You'll be more likely to duck things like this if no one knows your name.
That seems impossibly, mind-bogglingly incompetent.