
I was falsely arrested - ohyo
http://iwasfalselyarrested.com
======
ncallaway
The state needs to financially make whole persons who are wrongly arrested.
There needs to be a standard set of damages that get paid out to someone who
is in jail wrongfully.

I would propose that the state owes you double the highest paid salary that
you have earned in your career for the duration of your stay in prison. This
is to both make a person whole for their missed earnings, and to repair the
damages that having an arrest on your record does to your future earning
potential. Further, there should be a minimum cap of $5,000 / month, and a
maximum cap of $1M / year. Finally, I would propose that this value goes up by
10% each year to account for potential career growth over that time.

Not only does this attempt to make someone whole for the time that they lost,
but it puts a _real_ financial burden on the state for making these kinds of
errors. Right now, the state faces almost no downsides other than the cost of
housing someone in a prison.

Edit: as noted in a comment below "Wrongfully arrested" may be more
appropriate read as "Wrongfully jailed". This program or policy would be
targeted at affecting _prosecutorial misconduct_ and not police misconduct.
While police misconduct is still a massive issue I think there are different
policies that should be used to address police misconduct.

~~~
nickff
> _" a real financial burden on the state for making these kinds of errors"_

I agree with everything in your post except this; the state does not care
whether it is burdened or not, it simply taxes the citizenry to cover these
expenses. At least a portion of this compensation should come from the
responsible parties if this type of problem is to be discouraged. Imagine that
you are a prosecutor or police officer set on obtaining a conviction for
moral, corruption, or career reasons; will the possibility of future costs to
the state give you any pause, or make you reconsider your actions?

~~~
ncallaway
These numbers need to be tied directly to the prosecutor who put them in jail.
I am not willing to go so far as to say the prosecutor needs to _pay_ for the
cost, but it should absolutely be a part of their record. I think it would be
acceptable to come out of the prosecuting office's budget. They are a part of
a prosecutors performance evaluation.

So, when a prosecutor says: "I put away 300 people, with a 97% conviction
rate" their supervisor can say: "Yes, but you also cost this office $250,000
with your 2 wrongful convictions. We're passing on you and giving the
promotion to Janice who put away 260 people on a 95% conviction rate, but only
cost the office $10,000."

------
celticninja
There really seems to be a disparity between perceived and actual justice in
the United States. I bet 95‰ of the population of the US thinks all people in
prison deserve to be there and the miscarriages they hear about are the only
ones that occur. I dread to think how many innocent people are actually in US
jails.

~~~
rhino369
There is probably a 3-5% error rate in the justice system. At least that is
the academic consensus currently. 3-5% of 2.3 million prisoners is 70~115
thousand people.

~~~
thatswrong0
If there is a 4% error rate with prisoners on death row, I'd imagine that it's
even higher in the general prison population (because they're subject to less
scrutiny?).

~~~
Nadya
So long as the majority population deems an error rate to be preferable to
letting the more extreme criminals (rapists, murderers, arsonists, blah) 'walk
free', there will be an error rate.

I'd sooner let ten all-but-certain criminals walk free than convict even a
single innocent person. But I am not most people. Furthermore, there is not a
good demonstration that decreasing the error rate (which would require
imprisoning less _actual criminals_ whom lack certain evidence, etc.) is
_beneficial_ for society as a whole. I mean, there's no studies showing it is
any worse off either, but I digress.

It's not an argument you can make to most people - they'd rather "keep their
family safe from potential murderers" than "not be sentenced to 20 years in
prison for a crime they didn't do" because _they cannot imagine themselves
being sentenced for 20 years for a crime they didn 't do_ but they _can_
imagine a criminal harming their family.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
How many guilty people would you set free to avoid imprisoning an innocent
person? You said 10.

But probably some of those 10 will be repeat offenders. So how many innocent
people will you see murdered in order to avoid imprisoning an innocent person?
That's a different question, isn't it?

I think this gets to the question of "beneficial for society as a whole". If
you stick some plausible values on this (say we're talking about people
accused of major crimes, recidivism rate = X%, some weighted values assigned
to harm for false imprisonment, being raped, being murdered, etc., and some
plausible relationship between false conviction rate and non-conviction of
those who are actually guilty), then it should be possible to calculate an
optimum rate of convicting people.

(Two notes: First, as the rate of false convictions goes up, the rate of non-
conviction of the guilty goes down. Second, calculating the optimum is going
to depend on the exact values chosen for all those parameters, but it still
could be an interesting exercise.)

~~~
Nadya
_> How many guilty people would you set free to avoid imprisoning an innocent
person? You said 10._

All of them. With the difference in terminology: They are not being "set free"
after being "knowingly guilty" but "remaining free" after "uncertain
evidence".

 _> But probably some of those 10 will be repeat offenders. So how many
innocent people will you see murdered in order to avoid imprisoning an
innocent person? That's a different question, isn't it?_

I'm well aware of the entire argument you are trying to make. Which is why I
said the false conviction rate exists. People are willing to trade security
from potential repeat offenders at _someone else 's_ expense, while never
imagining _themselves_ as that someone else.

Let me ask you this:

Would you serve a lifetime prison sentence for a crime you did not commit?

If you are not willing to serve one yourself - you have _absolutely no right_
to ask someone else to do so for your or societies' security. That is my
stance on this. People are only okay with this because they never imagine
themselves becoming a part of that statistic. Likewise, nobody ever thinks
_they 'll_ be the one to die in a car accident and even less that _they 'd_ be
at fault for the accident. But it happens.

~~~
Shaanie
>Would you serve a lifetime prison sentence for a crime you did not commit?

The thing is, if you let a serial killer off the hook because you didn't
actually catch him red-handed (though the other evidence is very reliable)
then you're killing innocents by inaction.

Therefore, we can reframe your question as: "Would you let you and your family
get murdered by a repeat offender to ensure that no innocents are imprisoned?"

As long as there are prisoners, there will be some amount of innocents
imprisoned, simply because it's almost impossible (entire impossible?) to
prove that someone did something to a 100% certainty. By setting such insane
standards you're killing way more innocents than the amount you'd falsely
imprison.

------
mcherm
It sounds to me like there was only one mis-step in this story. The mis-
identification was resolved quite quickly once the accused had a competent
private lawyer. So it seems to me that this case is not an indictment of our
legal system as a whole so much as it is an indictment of underfunded and/or
incompetent public defenders.

What if we tried funding the public defender's office with the same average
amount of money per case handled as the prosecutor's office as? What effect
would that have on both justice and people's perception of justice? And is
this a simple enough test to be run with either public or private funds in a
few sample municipalities as an experiment?

~~~
chrismcb
The mis=identification was not resolved quite quickly, and notice how they
still think he did it. But why did it take a competent private lawyer to deal
with the mis-identification?

------
downandout
The state wouldn't admit their mistake because they have potential civil
liability for imprisoning someone that clearly couldn't have been the
perpetrator. The DA's refusal to drop the charges even after the obvious
differences between perpetrator and the defendant were pointed out was
outrageous and almost certainly constitutes willful misconduct. This guy can
and should sue.

The larger issue is that prosecutors do this kind of thing routinely. Since
most of them take jobs as prosecutors with an eye toward obtaining higher-
paying jobs at prestigious law firms, perhaps the best way to combat this type
of behavior would be a name-and-shame website. Every DA insisting on
outlandish sentences for minor crimes, or that refuses to drop charges in the
face of clear evidence that the someone is innocent, should be named and their
record of inhumanity should haunt them at the top of Google search results for
the remainder of their career.

------
DanielBMarkham
I'm happy that this guy finally got out of jail. Here's hoping he doesn't let
this terrible tragedy hurt him the rest of his life.

I support any reasonable thing the public can do to help folks like him out.
We live in a security state, and video cameras everywhere are beginning to
show how rotten it is in places.

Having said all of that, I do not want to see us become self-indulgent with
pity. There are 300 million people in the U.S. There are tens of thousands of
cops. You could run a video like this everyday and statistically there still
wouldn't be much incompetence or corruption going on.

It presents us with an interesting problem, which I'm seeing in not just
police incompetence/corruption cases, but all across the political spectrum:
when you have large numbers of people, even if an extremely small percentage
of them do bad things, it's easy to paint a picture of them all doing bad
things. That's true whether it's cops, members of political party X, members
of group Y, or so on.

Note that I'm not saying it's an insignificant problem. I'm saying that this
type of presentation, while powerful, provides us with zero context to gauge
the size of the problem at all. When we consume such content, especially when
it's highly emotionally manipulative, we should remember this.

~~~
erikpukinskis
Why are you bringing it up if you don't think it applies in this situation?

I always get nervous when people say stuff like this because it's like... he
says he doesn't think it's a small problem, but then the only thing he's
talking about is how we have to be careful making claims about scale... Why
would he bring that up except to question the scale of the problem?

But I must be missing something, because you explicitly said you're not
doubting the scale of the problem. Maybe you can help me understand what you
are trying to say about this story.

~~~
beat
Reflexive defense of authority is a pretty common pattern. People doing it
don't realize they're doing it, or they wouldn't. That's one of the
fundamental mechanisms of racism, among other unpleasant things. Hardly anyone
_thinks_ of themselves as racist, so when they make a racist argument (not
saying this one is, just making a broader point), they don't think it's racist
- they think it's all about the equality.

The classic example of that is the "All lives matter" response to "black lives
matter". Saying black lives matter is a response to the daily bigotry and
institutional racism that black people in America suffer, every day.
Responding to that with "all lives matter" is a way of disempowering even the
acknowledgement of institutional racism, of denying the unique (and uniquely
negative) experience of being black. But it _sounds_ like equality. People who
say it don't say it to be racist - quite the opposite. Being racist by acting
not-racist. It's ironic and strange-loopy, but that's how it works.

Take it back to the post you're responding to. It's a reflexive defense of
authority, the "few bad apples" argument. The first response to obvious
institutional racism (really, this case boils down to "all blacks look alike")
is to shout "Hey, the System isn't broken!" It's _not_ broken if you're white,
and you don't recognize how it treats people who aren't like you. It
disacknowledges the experience of the individual at the hands of the System,
by making sure defending the System comes first.

Thinking about this stuff is hard. Just watch... this comment will get a _lot_
of downvotes, for even saying this stuff out loud.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
You know, I'm perfectly capable of explaining why I do things.

Look at what you've done here: you've taken away my agency. Instead of letting
me engage in a conversation, you've pronounced some over-arching reason for my
comment, thereby not only eliminating anything I might have to offer, but
wiping aside any category of comment that is similar to mine.

Gotta watch that. It's perfect fine for an internal dialog. After all, we
can't take a year to figure out what everybody we run into is thinking, but in
an open conversation, well, the important thing is to _converse_. Who knows,
each of us might learn something.

 _"...Thinking about this stuff is hard...."_ \-- It hurts, but somehow I'll
manage.

~~~
beat
1\. My point was that you _can 't_ always explain why you do things. That
"you" isn't personal, btw. It's true of everyone, myself included. We all
respond according to our social conditioning. Thinking we're so smart that
social conditioning doesn't apply is stupid.

2\. I haven't taken away your agency, or rejected you from conversation. We're
conversing right now, aren't we?

And yes, we might learn something. Are you learning, or just reacting to
perceived criticism? In the first paragraph of my original comment, I
_explicitly_ excluded you from the broad discussion of racism I went into. I
shouldn't have to do that, it should be obvious. But one thing I've learned in
these discussions is that people take things personally when they shouldn't,
then immediately make the rest of the discussion _all about themselves_. Which
is exactly what you did here. We're not talking about either the "few bad
apples" you raised, or the problems of social conditioning that I raised.
We're talking about how offended you are that I spoke up at all.

If you can learn _anything_ from this, learn to be aware of the risk of doing
that. It's an incredibly frustrating thing for those on the other end. It's a
major reason why women and minorities are very wary of discussing sexism and
racism with white men. (And no, I'm not accusing you of being sexist or
racist, so stop right there.)

~~~
DanielBMarkham
Thank you.

I'm leaving my comment in place. It shows a nice example of not paying careful
attention to the conversation. Too much of that on the net already.

------
dpratt
This man was clearly and obviously wronged by law enforcement and the justice
system, and it's nice to know that at the very least he won in the end.

With that said, I can't agree with the statement "If the cops had done their
job, two people wouldn't be dead." That line of reasoning, when extended, can
be applied to pretty much anything.

The only people culpable for the deaths of the two people robbing the gas
station are the individuals themsevles - they chose to rob a store, and
suffered the consequences.

~~~
klodolph
I get what you're trying to say, but you're wrong. Culpability is not the same
as cause and effect. Either you are conflating the two concepts, or you are
assuming that someone else is conflating the two concepts.

"If those cops had done their job, two people wouldn't be dead." This is a
statement of cause and effect. It is not a statement of culpability.

Imagine that I said, "If you had remembered to lock your car, your backpack
wouldn't have been stolen out of the trunk." You can accuse me of "victim-
blaming" or you can realize that I'm not stupid and I actually do understand
that the thief is to blame for the theft.

------
chris_wot
Four genuine questions:

1\. Isn't there something called prosecutorial misconduct? Surely that would
apply now.

2\. Isn't it defamation to say someone committed a crime when they clearly
didn't?

3\. Being incarcerated must be awful, _especially_ if you are falsely
imprisoned. There must be legally available remedies for false arrest and
miscarriage of justice?

4\. His defender was manifestly inadequate. What sort of liability is there
for deliberately not defending your client properly?

~~~
brazzledazzle
When you can (barely) afford an attorney after rotting in county with a shit
waffle public attorney begging you to take a deal you're not exactly a threat.

Public defenders are notoriously shitty. I have an acquaintance who gets into
legal trouble every now and then that is quite smart despite being so stupid.
He uses a public defender most of the time and has to actively micro-manage
them. This includes what motions to file and who to contact. If he is in jail
this can also require reaching out to friends to visit the defender in person
so they can't just ignore him. If he doesn't do this they just ask him to take
a deal.

They are underpaid, overworked and they deal with actual shitty evil people
every day and sometimes the only way to tell the difference between them and
the innocent is simply their word. Attorneys you hire can overcome the last
issue by being paid enough to offset it.

I think the public defender system needs a complete overhaul. I can't think of
any solutions that don't have their own downsides but everyone deserves a fair
trial and an attorney whose interests are aligned with their own. The best
outcome you can hope for right now if you're poor and subject to prosecution
is either a rare defender who cares but is also not overworked or a bright
eyed and bushy tailed grad who's out to change their world.

------
kitwalker12
this is so depressing. I hope Janeil brings a suit to the state for their
blatant disregard and misconduct

------
vinceguidry
My takeaway is that public defenders seem to be practically worthless.

I wonder if the problem can't be fixed with a bit of self-help. Black
communities could contribute to a fund that would be used to keep a law firm
on retainer to deal with criminal accusations on any of their members.

------
eCa
John Oliver (Last Week) on public defenders:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USkEzLuzmZ4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USkEzLuzmZ4)

------
troynuman
How can eu still claim that they think it was Janeil? That's fucked up

------
golergka
Everybody here in the comments seem to take the story on face value.
Meanwhile, the only video attached to the post is pixelated to the highest
degree, and you certainly can't see facial features on it.

Am I missing something here?

~~~
dogma1138
Why is this being downvoted? The 34s video they released has 3 offenders, and
you can't see any of their faces.

While this could be not the only surveillance video in this case it doesn't
really collaborates anything said in the post.

~~~
throw_this_away
Because...innocent until proven guilty. But according to the parent comment,
guilty until proven innocent. The author of the story doesn't need to prove
anything to you. His experience and the fact that he was ultimately released
from prison should be enough.

~~~
golergka
> But according to the parent comment, guilty until proven innocent

Where did I state something even remotely close to this?

~~~
throw_this_away
You said "Everybody here in the comments seem to take the story on face
value.".

You're implying that we shouldn't take the story at face value OR that the
author is being dishonest about his experience.

Then you say, "Meanwhile, the only video attached to the post is pixelated to
the highest degree, and you certainly can't see facial features on it. Am I
missing something here?"

A clear call for proof.

~~~
golergka
You are correct, this is call for proof.

It seems that in your worldview, one either believes the author, or calls him
a liar. But in real life, the third option is actually more optimal in
majority of cases. This third option is doubt.

~~~
throw_this_away
By definition, if you doubt someone's story, then you don't believe them. It's
fairly simple, but if you would prefer to pretend that you didn't say what you
said, that's certainly your right.

