

Junk science is putting innocent people in jail - RachelF
http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21615622-junk-science-putting-innocent-people-jail-two-towers

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greenyoda
The defense lawyer was pretty incompetent. Even if the defendant was in the
same park as the victim at the time of the murder, that's hardly proof beyond
a reasonable doubt that she committed the murder.

And there's no excuse for a prosecutor trying to pressure an innocent victim
into pleading guilty - they sent an innocent person to prison and possibly
allowed the real murderer to keep on killing people. Unfortunately, this
happens all the time.

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VikingCoder
The prosecutor doesn't know if the person is guilty or not. They believe they
have enough evidence to prosecute. At that point, they're minimizing the
public expense of prosecuting, by getting a guilty plea.

The problem is when the junk science makes everyone convinced of guilt. Once
that happens, nothing good is going to happen.

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nroose
I think the fault is in the whole idea of giving reduced sentence for
confessing. I understand that a confession is easier and there should be some
incentive to make one, but it seems like the police coerce defendants into
making confessions by threatening the longer sentence if there is no
confession. While this may result in true confessions sometimes, it also
inevitably results in some false confessions. It is just too easy for a
prosecutor to make their evidence sound very strong in the absence of a judge
and jury to scare the defendant into a confession.

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empressplay
The sadder thing is that the accused typically has so little faith in the
justice system that they'll accept a "deal" rather than take their chances
with a judge / jury.

That cynicism translates back into broader society and causes antipathy if not
hostility in the general public towards the police. The whole thing creates
much more harm than good.

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todd8
I have been called for Jury duty probably seven times. The prosecution and the
defense both have a limited number of potential jurers that can be rejected,
and each time I ended up being passed over. Once, just after my company was
sold, I was called while unemployeed and was selected to be on the jury.

We were instructed to not speak to the other jurors during the trial, but I
had already decided that a stern looking oil and gas attorney on the jury
would end up being a law-and-order throw-the-book-at-them type. Once we got
into the jury room to decide the sentence I realized how wrong I was. Our
first vote was 2 for acquittal (me and the attorney) and the rest leaning
towards guilty.

The trial wasn't complicated, but I was alarmed that most of the jury had a
very poor understanding of the evidence presented. I heard reasoning such as
the following: "Well, I'm a Mom and I'm just very very against drunk driving."
OK, but what the hell has that got to do with the evidence we heard? There
were serious problems with the evidence presented and it took a couple of
hours of discussion before it we eventually settled on not guilty.

Years later a lawyer here explained to me why the compositions of the juries
is so frightening. The juror pool used to come from local property tax
records. This was decided to be unrepresentative of the population and they
moved to pools based on driving license records. Anyone with a driving license
can end up as a juror. Many of the people that don't come up with excuses for
why they shouldn't take a week away from work are those that you wouldn't
trust with any kind of important decision.

I don't know how to fix this.

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dragonwriter
> The prosecution and the defense both have a limited number of potential
> jurers that can be rejected

Well, an unlimited number can be dismissed for cause, and the prosecution and
the defense have, on top of that, a limited number that each can unilaterally
dismiss without cause (peremptory challenges.)

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blueskin_
Sounds like the blame is on the defence there for not challenging obviously
flawed conclusions that any expert witness could have debunked TBFH - not to
mention that being near a murder isn't enough for a conviction either.

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bruceb
This very issue came up in this case: [http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/friends-
for-life/](http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/friends-for-life/)

Worth watching

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hellbanner
Not paywalled for me. Running disconnect and ghostery?

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blueskin_
Not paywalled for me either, and I _am_ running Disconnect, ABE, Privacy
Badger, etc.

Edit: I think it's because I blocked cookies from them a while back when I got
paywalled before.

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lutusp
Paywall. Please consider only linking to accessible content.

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th0br0
as with all of these: google the link + access the page that way.

~~~
deciplex
Opening in a private window also works for me.

