The various Innocence Projects across the US are full of absolute heroes. The number of innocent people currently serving time in US jails is tragic and scary.
Prosecutors and judges should be held more accountable for malpractice. This man lost his life when the facts were in his favor. Someone should be punished for this injustice.
Even worse, lots of states won't even compensate the wrongly convicted for taking their lives from them.
One of the many problematic things about criminal justice in the United States is this:
Many prosecutors and police officers feel that, even if you weren't guilty of this crime, you were probably guilty of something, the law just "caught up with you." so if a plausible case can be made against you they'll do it. And it's important to understand this isn't merely a cynical view held by these people: it's a strongly held conviction. Had Mr. Dixon been thoroughly exonerated at his original hearing, I can assure you both the arresting officer and prosecutor involved would be absolutely furious that he "got away with it"
Attempts to curtail this behavior are met with endless concern-trolling and belly-aching from DA and police departments, claiming it lets criminals roam free because they use these laws (civil liberties) to "cheat the system".
They are gas-lighting you, and don't want you to ask: how are a bunch of impoverished teens, who never completed high school, and likely never left a 6 block radius of where they grew up, somehow out-maneuvering politically powerful DAs with well-educated prosecutors backed up by well-funded militarized police departments? The constitution is powerful, but it's not that powerful.
> Many prosecutors and police officers feel that, even if you weren't guilty of this crime, you were probably guilty of something
You are right, the prosecutors feel that way. From the article:
But despite Mr Dixon's exoneration, prosecutors say he did provide the murder weapon, which they described as a machine gun.
They also said he was an "up-and-coming drug dealer" in Buffalo at the time of his arrest.
"Mr Dixon is innocent of the shooting and of the murder for what he was found guilty of, but Mr Dixon brought the gun to the fight," said the district attorney.
Dixon's conviction on the fourth charge, criminal possession of the murder weapon, was not overturned, and the DA is stating the reason for that. Dixon was, in fact, guilty of something.
Not only that, but Dixon's status as a drug dealer is a materially relevant fact of the relationship between himself and Scott, who in fact committed the murder. (See quote below).
This DA has been in the job for less than a year and he is the person who ordered the review. He has pointed out that there was no physical evidence of any kind used in the trial to convict Dixon, among other statements he has made in support of overturning the murder conviction.
"There was a fight. Shots were fired. I grabbed the gun from under the bench, switched it to automatic, all the bullets shot out. Unfortunately, Torriano ended up dying," Lamarr Scott, who has been in prison for 25 years for an unrelated attempted murder, told the court. "I dropped the gun and ran and it was over and done with."
Scott said he had gotten the gun, a Tec-9 semi-automatic, from Dixon and the two men had driven together to the crowded corner where the fighting broke out. Scott was given a sentence of 8 1/3 to 25 years in prison, concurrent with his current term.
Judge Susan Eagan let stand a count of criminal possession of a weapon against Dixon, and its 5- to 15-year sentence, which she said he had satisfied.
"You are eligible for release today," the judge said, igniting applause and shouts from courtroom supporters.
"Mr. Dixon is not an innocent man. Don't be misguided in that at all," Erie County District Attorney John Flynn told reporters after the hearing. He described Dixon as "an up-and-coming drug dealer in the city of Buffalo" at the time of the shooting and said Scott was Dixon's bodyguard.
"Mr. Dixon is innocent of the shooting and of the murder for what he was found guilty of," he said, "but Mr. Dixon brought the gun to the fight. It was Mr. Dixon's gun."
There are more people commiting crimes than people investigating crimes. The system is so log jammed that if everyone took a trial rather than a plea deal, no one would ever see a court date for years.
In this condition its easy to see resources allocated to high profile cases which impoverished, uneducated teenagers are not.
So a DA can believe someone is guilty, but also that there is unlikely to get enough resources to investigate and prove it.
Now personally I believe the solution is to be more lax on crime, till the numbers improve but thats another topic.
Ive just listened to the first two episodes of the new Serial season which tackles the justice system from inside a courthouse. Coming from another justice system, it sounds absolutely insane to me.
Honestly, I think watching Dirty Harry would provide a window into the heads of a lot of law-and-order people, who otherwise can be kind of difficult to understand. It seems like a cartoon, but it's really how people think of the justice system.
This principle isn't just a matter of protecting the innocent. It's about protecting democracy. The power of the judiciary is potent, and millennia of history can show us how corrupt governments can abuse false accusations to oppress the populace. A society that gives up due process and the presumption of innocence is one that is giving the keys over to oppressors.
should be considered 'cruel and unusual' on an innocent man in light of the circumstances. Unfortunately, the founders didn't specifically spell out how to handle a 21th century for-profit prison system in the Constitution, so no go with 'Originalist' judges.
>Unfortunately, the founders didn't specifically spell out how to handle a 21th century for-profit prison system in the Constitution, so no go with 'Originalist' judges.
The founding fathers would not have granted the inmate in question Constitutional rights to begin with... so the question is moot. The premise of "originalist" judges in the modern day is more a political fantasy than fact, and would be unacceptable in modern society if taken seriously, even to most conservatives.
Like most days, I had no intention of comment on HN today, but whenever I'm reminded of the Innocence Project[1] I'm reminded by one of the most mind-blowing moments in my life. This was in college, I had a PoliSci professor (Political Science) that stated, 'I believe that O.J. Simpson was innocent.' To add context, this professor was an older, white male, however that's not the mind-blowing bit. That bit comes later. Let's face it, in the US, one's opinion on the OJ Simpson verdict varies greatly by one's ethnicity. As a (much) younger, white male, I held the stereotypical view point that he was guilty, so the professor's statement rapt my attention. I can't remember his arguments specifically, but it was enough for me to doubt my own assumptions and read about the trial myself. My "mind-blowing" moment came when I switched my opinion from "clearly guilty" to "I think OJ Simpson was guilty, but I'm not confident enough to convict him."
While the details of that case are fascinating, that's not the purpose of this comment. The tie-in to OP's comment is this, the Innocence Project was started by Barry Scheck[2] and Peter Neufeld[3] in 1992. Both Scheck and Neufeld were instrumental members on Simpon's "Dream Team"[4] responsible for discrediting the DNA evidence. If you remember the constant media coverage of the trial, Scheck was the attorney responsible for questioning forensic experts and the LAPDs collection practices. Again, I don't want to get into particulars of the case, but their arguments are very convincing (to me).
Obviously, the project was started prior to the OJ Simpson trial (in 1995) and regardless of one's opinion of Simpson's innocence, I think that most people will agree that single case led to increased scrutiny of forensic evidence and a reduction of importance placed on unreliable eyewitness testimony are a net positive to the world.
>Prosecutors had omitted to reveal to Mr Dixon's defence attorney that a gunpowder test on his client's clothes had come back negative.
>Perhaps even more egregiously, another man, Lamarr Scott, admitted to local media only days after the murder that he shot Torriano Jackson. According to the Buffalo News, prosecutors conceded that Scott had been admitting his guilt in the case for a long time.
What kind of person sends an innocent man to prison just to score a win in a case? They should face some kind of repercussion, a good start would be an audit of all their cases looking for similar behavior. Of course that isn't practical, maybe a "strike" system where you would be suspended after x cases of unethical behavior.
> ...maybe a "strike" system where you would be suspended after x cases of unethical behavior.
-If by 'suspended' you mean 'being sentenced to X years in prison', I'm all for it.
In my book, wilfully torpedoing someone's life to further one's own career is a much more cold-blooded and premeditated crime than most crimes people are convicted of.
If we have a problem that too many people are getting sent to prison on too little evidence, I don't think we should try to solve it by sending even more people to prison.
-I guess the key here is "too little evidence". The courts would need to establish that the prosecutor either withheld evidence, knowing it would strengthen his case or at the very least through gross negligence caused evidence to not be presented to the court.
Considering the at times terrible information flow in my office (engineering Co.), I do not think it neither feasible nor fair to lock up prosecutors for any mishap - though I expect the possibility of prison time would work wonders to improve information flow!
What kind of person sends an innocent man to prison just to score a win in a case?
Someone ground down and dehumanized by a corrupt bureaucracy. The modern judicial systems largely use adversarial processes as a proxy or as an approximation of truth. There are no oracles of truth. No one is your friend. There are only people trying to win, and this will inevitably include gaming the system. The DA is no one's friend, even if you are the victim. The cops aren't your friend. Everyone just wants to win. This is why there is the presumption of innocence and the 5th amendment.
EDIT: This sort of adversarial judicial system is akin to Democracy, in that it's the worst system of its type, except for every other system we've tried.
>This sort of adversarial judicial system is akin to Democracy, in that it's the worst system of its type, except for every other system we've tried.
Except that's not really true. Democracies are split between highly adversarial common law systems, and civil law systems where judges take a stronger role in the process. People living under civil law, with less adversarial systems and more inquisitorial judges, don't seem notably more or less happy with their justice systems than those with adversarial systems.
I figured, before I looked at the article, that Mr. Dixon was black. I guessed that while reading the article, he was going to be accused of being involved with drugs. The DA in the article did so without proof. The statement is alarming, as it is suggesting that although he didn't do the crime that they convicted him of, he was certainly guilty of something, regardless of the lack of evidence presented. Based on statistics of people in prison by race, the differences in prison sentencing by race, and the amount of actual crime committed by race, I'm assuming that this is not an uncommon occurrence in the United States.
"The New Jim Crow" should probably just be required reading at this point.
They did so without proof in the article, but not necessarily without proof in the trial. They obviously can’t fit the full testimonies and arguments made during trial.
”What kind of person sends an innocent man to prison just to score a win in a case?”
Most of them likely think of it as ”taking a criminal of the street, even though the evidence doesn’t add up or even makes sense at all”.
If your boss was elected on being tough on crime, there’s the added benefit that it’s better for your career, as long as the ‘criminals’ you pick aren’t from the same social circles as your boss.
I would think that he has a strong civil case against the DA from a government perspective and from a personal perspective. Maybe if the DA could lose his house and job in the future they wouldn't cheat like this. To be fair, all sides cheat in lots of other ways too.
District attorneys in New York state are elected, so prosecutors' KPIs are likely weighted towards convictions, especially if the AG ran on the ever-reliable "I'm tough on crime" platform. Voters will hear about the numbers of people jailed. Whether they were actually guilty of the crime is less important.
I’ve gotta agree. I’m morally OK with the death penalty for certain crimes, not so much for punishment or deterrence but for the same reasons you’d put down a rabid dog. But when prosecutorial misbehavior comes out in the news so often, I couldn’t abide sentencing someone today unless there was overwhelming objective proof that it was actually them.
Same here. I'm not opposed to the death penalty in principle, but it's impossible to put enough protections in place to prevent executing innocent people. Plus, there really isn't a safety issue when someone could be put into supermax. Of course, there's the issue that supermax borders (at least) on cruel and unusual punishment, but that's another issue that needs to addressed separately.
It's not the only reason, in my opinion. My philosophy is that no human has the right to take the life of another, for any reason (outside of direct self-defense). It's basically an expansion on Blackstone's formulation - "it is better to let 10 guilty persons live than that one innocent be murdered"
Well it felt that way, and it seems like a show of good reputation. But I would be really happy to learn from more trustful sources! Care to share some or your experience?
It is mostly correct, but fails to elaborate on the culture of prosecutors leading to these kinds of results, instead painting them as "prosecutors suck".
If they hid evidence, that, by definition wasn’t neglect, but a willful action (to hide.)
That should result in the loss of one’s license to practice at minimum and ideally, a referral to a special prosecutor for possible indictment. Contempt of court with jail time also should be on the table.
"He acknowledged being at the crime scene, but said he was at a nearby shop buying beer when the gunshots rang out."
#1 proof that you should never ever talk to the police or confess to literally anything. Even saying something that is true and innocent can land you in jail with a 38-to-life sentence.
Sad thing is, a lot of people see it as an admission of guilt if you ask for a lawyer to be present if you're ever questioned by the police. This is crazy. The average person doesn't have a full understanding of the law. You need a lawyer to make sure you're being asked questions that can be legally asked. Having someone there to interpret the law for you is not a bad thing.
I've never had any issues respectfully refusing to play along.
'Do you know why I pulled you over?'
'Good morning, officer. I'd rather not answer any questions. Am I being ticketed?'
Interestingly even that innocent lead question is a trick one. Yes obviously implies guilty. But no implies a lack of awareness of your own actions, which can just as well end up being used against you.
That seems like it's going to increase your odds of being ticketed. Having been pulled over twice and not ticketed that seems like a significant sacrifice.
Not really. When I was younger, I owned a fast car and was pulled over several times in small southern towns as I drove between university and my parents house. Being young black man in dixie country, you would expect that this would lead to lots of tickets and poor relations with the police?
No.
I was polite, respectful, and the such, but when asked if I knew why I was pulled over I would simply shrug.
I got 2 tickets, but many more warnings, and even the tickets had leniency.
In my view, the police are not out to get you. Sure, they want to make ticket quota, but thats just the job... nothing personal.
This is useful anecdotally. I also am polite and cordial with police during traffic stops. Pull over promptly and make sure they have room to safely approach your car. Stay professional. I never know why they pulled me over, even if I was speeding, but that doesn't have to be confrontational. 5/6 the result is a warning. But I figured that was just because I'm white.
> Good morning, officer. I'd rather not answer any questions. Am I being ticketed?
Interestingly, that sounds different from:
> I won't talk until my lawyer is present.
I was wrong. "Never talk to the police without a lawyer present," means something completely different from what I read. It means talking to the police but pretending you don't talk to them when you talk about it on the internet. I'm sorry, I didn't realize this.
I just say "no, sir" or "no, officer" and let them tell me. I make very sure to be quite polite. Never argue. Take the ticket. Anything worse is not worth the satisfaction of trying to argue. Then, sometimes, if they're not a jerk, they just give a warning, but if not, a ticket is a golden certification that you did not get asaulted or kidnapped by the government agent with the gun.
I didn’t say don’t talk to police at all, and there are plenty questions you must answer, especially in a traffic stop context. There no need to ad-lib, though: if you’re pulled over for speeding, you don’t have to give them your whole life story.
Depends on the officer. Overall (from law school and friends from law school who practice in that area), my understanding is that your chance of getting a ticket is slightly (if at all) higher, but your chance of getting out of the ticket increases drastically. There's a reason "tell your clients not to speak to the police, period" was one of the very few practical pieces of client advice that regularly gets taught in law school.
Agree you shouldn't talk, but if you talk you should probably tell the truth. If they ask if you were at the crime scene and you say no, and they find you actually were there, they'll consider your lying evidence of your guilt.
Not quite the same thing, but Nick Yarris spent 21 years on death row [1] because he was (unjustly) facing life in prison for an unrelated offense and thought he could maybe be released if he lied about knowing information about a murder. When they found out his information was wrong, they charged him with the murder and convicted him. He was exonerated based on DNA evidence.
So, yeah. If you tell the truth, you might be considered guilty, and if you lie, you might be considered guilty. The best option is to say nothing.
This is easy to say before you've been kidnapped. A bit harder to stick to, especially if you see no representation on the horizon, and think you can avoid escalating the situation.
You should of course still watch this video and follow its advice. Just don't let it preclude you from having empathy for the people who haven't.
The irony in their logic is that if you're innocent, they believe you'll go to the ends of the earth to prove it, and if you say nothing or ask for a lawyer, then you're hiding your guilt.
This is just disturbing for me, I live in a country where more than 80% of people fully trust the police, one of the highest trusted occupations in our country.
I can't even imagine the mindset that talking to the police is dangerous to me.
It's fascinating to read the original 2012 Golf Digest article, which has a subhed of "Golf Saved My Life [0]. But he didn't know at the time that the Golf Digest profile would lead to new interest in his case, just that it gave him psychological resolve. This is an excerpt in which he describes being in the same prison as the man who was actually responsible for the murder:
> I now see LaMarr regularly. One year after I was convicted, LaMarr shot a teenager in the face after an armed robbery and made him a quadriplegic. I choose not to hold a grudge against LaMarr because psychologically, it would kill my spirit. LaMarr's eligible for parole in 2018; I'm not up until 2030.
More than 3/4 of the Golf Digest article is about the details of Dixon's case. According to the new story [1] (which should probably be the URL for this submission, rather than the BBC recap), GD seems to have gotten interested because of Dixon's drawings first, and then became even more interested when they heard about the details of the case. Kudos to them for investigating it.
It's crazy to me how often these kind of stories come out of the US. It just shouldn't happen that often that someone is convicted of murder on weak evidence. The number of prisoners per capita seems to indicate that it's not just anecdotes. I can't help but feel that the US simply doesn't have a proper functioning justice system.
>It just shouldn't happen that often that someone is convicted of murder on weak evidence.
And the prosecution withholding exonerating evidence to get a conviction should never happen, or if it does they should face some punishment. In many states, that is essentially murder.
That would be interesting; I wonder how courts would treat a voluntary sworn statement vs. absolute immunity. (A bit of an academic question; getting judges to do this would never happen in the US.)
As far as I can tell from the relevant (I believe) 18USC §1621 [0], the failure to volunteer information is not perjury; it requires actively providing information you do not believe to be true.
That would, in my non-lawyer eyes, make it incredibly hard to convict anyone of perjury as it seems you'd need to prove what was going on in the mind of the accused at the time, and good luck with that.
Is perjury actively lying or also withholding exonerating evidence?
Rather than just if it results in execution, you'd think perjury resulting in jail time should mean the person lying should face the same jail term as the defendant.
In California, the Sherif is often the coroner and can issue or revise the medical examiner's cause of death. This represents a conflict of interest. The governor has decided to leave these matters to county governments.
Not sure if you meant to exclude this, this was established by a 1963 Supreme Court decision, but to date I believe only one prosecutor has ever been imprisoned for it.
Knowing something of some of these cases and things like the Innocence Project, it is actually much more frightening that you don't hear these stories coming out of other countries. Wikipedia has a page on this [1], and picking France, there are six examples listed, including Joan of Arc and the Dreyfus affair. I find it almost inconceivable that outside of those six cases there have not been any other wrongful convictions.
The most generous interpretation is that the French penal system is more humane than the US, and sentences shorter, so that wrongful convictions don't necessarily destroy lives, and thus overturning convictions is not a priority either for activist groups, politicians, or law enforcement.
On the other extreme is the idea that challenging verdicts and the appeals process for introducing new exculpatory evidence after convictions is either too difficult or inaccessible.
It's similar to how racism is presented. Many people talk about how "racist" the US is, and of course there is still a lot of racism in the US.
But there is racism everywhere. I've lived in several countries, including Switzerland. I've never heard anyone except people that have lived in CH talk about how racist it is (very).
The difference, I think, is that the US is the country most likely to admit fault when they are racist. Americans themselves will say "yes, we're racist", while Swiss, Germans, Brits, etc. all seem to still be in that denial stage.
I think things like Brexit are starting to get people to think long and hard about their actual views on race / immigration. America just got to the party first.
I have a friend from Japan. I was attempting to explain to him how racism in the U.S. operates—how it comes in subtle forms, how you can be racist and not even intend to be, how social power can sometimes be so abstract and diffuse that it no individuals can be blamed. After our 3 hour long conversation, I brought up Korea. He explained to me how Koreans are loud, rude, and dirty. I told him, yes, racism in the US sometimes takes a similar form, to which he replied: "No! It's not racism! It's Koreans!"
Yes, this is tremendously accurate. I don't think racism is worse in the US, I think we have more heterogeneity which makes it more visible.
Yeah, I don’t think racism is an American issue. I think racist attitudes can result wherever people have low exposure to people of different races. For example, I feel that India has a lot of racism (just from my personal experience visiting a few times).
Part of what makes US unique is that it’s minority groups are much larger than most other countries. I feel that this means racist attitudes get acted upon more frequently, and that victims have a stronger voice here.
The US is also a very heterogeneous society, so race issues come up a lot. Some (but not all) of the countries you’ve listed have a more homogeneous population, which means race problems are less likely to flare up in big messy ways.
It’s a lot easier to spot a racist when the target of their ire is nearby, as compared to the one that Just mutters obscenities about foreigners while reading the newspaper.
So you are saying other countries are "just as bad" when it comes to imprisoning innocents? I don't see how that is even possible given that the incarceration rate in the US is so much higher.
However, I think you might be conflating two issues. A country can have a very high incarceration rate without imprisoning a single innocent: that country could have a very high crime rate, or the bar for "crime" could be lower and more aggressively pursued. I think the vast majority of the US' "over-incarceration" can be attributed to those two factors, not to the US just throwing randoms in prison.
Do we also sometimes imprison innocent people? Absolutely. But so does every country. As far as I am aware, there is nothing unique to the US justice system that would cause a higher incidence of actually innocent people going to jail. But we do send more people to jail. But the vast majority of them are guilty of their crimes, the question is really "should smoking pot be an imprisonable offense?", or similar.
What about the privatization of prisons? It makes sense to lobby for setting the bar lower if you happen to run a prison. It also makes sense that you don't have any interest in helping your prisoners to have good chances of reintegrating, getting a job after release, but rather have them commit the next crime and come right back.
I think Germany is at the other end of the extreme; if it's your first conviction and it wasn't exactly cold blooded murder you almost always get away with probation, or a couple months tops. There were cases of people abusing children and only getting a year or two, which makes me furious.
And there have been cases in Germany where people were innocent too, of course. This is actually the most important argument for me against the death penalty. Since we know for sure that we make mistakes every now and then we should not carry out a sentence we cannot undo. Sure we cannot give the wrongfully imprisoned back their youth; but we can give them the rest of their life at least.
Yes, I think privatization of prisons is generally a bad idea, for exactly the reason you stipulate, which is also what I suggested: the US has a mass incarceration problem, because we've set the bar way too low on far too many crimes.
But those people aren't innocent. If your state/country makes smoking weed an imprisonable offense, and you smoke weed, you're not innocent. Is that a ridiculous thing to imprison someone for? Absolutely. But you're not innocent. So yes, we either need to reduce privatization of prisons, or we need to remove their ability to have a conflict-of-interest in this regard. Either way, it's a problem that needs solving.
But again, I think this flows more into the "mass incarceration" problem/rate than it does into the "imprisoning innocents" problem/rate.
Some of them certainly are; we get “beyond a reasonable doubt” wrong often enough with murder that there are fairly regularly news articles about exonerations after lots of resources from public interest groups dug out the truth.
Just because no one is spending the same resources—and even if they were no one would treat the results as newsworthy—on lesser offeses doesn't mean people aren't imprisoned wrongly for them (perhaps far more often, largely on plea deals, then is the cases for wrongful murder cobvictions.)
> But again, I think this flows more into the "mass incarceration" problem/rate than it does into the "imprisoning innocents" problem/rate.
Mass incarceration is a product of mass criminalization plus high imprisonment penalties on the books. That also produces a volume of criminal cases too high to handle without expedited process, and a heavy pressure tool in terms of high potential penalties that can be traded far down for guilty pleas. With many of the accused unable to afford more than the barest defense, that also creates a huge likelihood of significant imprisonment of the factually innocent on top of that which comes more directly from mass imprisonment plus the failure rate of even ideal criminal process.
That is, mass incarceration causes, rather than being a separate unrelated problem from, imprisonment of innocents.
Which "expedited processes" would you be referring to? Are there particular processes you have in mind? As far as I'm aware, we've become more and more of a police state, but the actual system has remained the same: we require a trial by jury and sentencing by a judge, except in the case of a guilty plea, which a judge can still invalidate. In my opinion, that is still better than what other western countries have (in the UK / Denmark / others, there are many instances where a jury trial is not involved, even without a guilty plea).
I hadn't considered the pressure from heavy penalties on the potential for innocents to plead guilty, that's a good point. While I'll admit that's definitely a possibility, I'm not sure you can really claim that is actually happening without some sort of backing evidence? I'd love to see some numbers if you have them, even some good case-studies.
If the incarceration rate is higher then more innocent people will be in jail, even given the same quality of justice. Many more innocent Americans are in prison than innocent Frenchmen (even adjusting for population size). Now you may argue this is not a bad thing since the US also have a lot more guilty prisoners, so overall it is worth it. But it should not be surprising we hear more stories of innocent prisoners from the US compared to countries with lower incarceration rates.
> A country can have a very high incarceration rate without imprisoning a single innocent
No. Unless you are talking imaginary scenarios like Star Trek.
Again, you're conflating the two issues. Your initial comment implied that you think the US has an "imprisoning innocent people" problem, i.e. our rate of imprisoning innocent people is higher. But now you seem to be saying that the rate is probably the same, but the total number is greater because our rate of incarceration is greater. Pick one, and then we can discuss it.
Those are two different problems, with different solutions.
And yes, I was talking about imaginary scenarios. That was a statement about what is logically possible. Another way of saying it would be "you can bring down the rate of incarceration without bringing down the rate of innocent incarcertation, and vice versa".
The US does have an "imprisoning innocent people" problem, as witnesses by this story and by the Innocence Project.
The problem is the horrifyingly large number of people who are imprisoned for years, some times decades, even though they are innocent.
Do you not find that a problem? Innocent people being imprisoned happen in any country of course, but the problem is much larger in the US than in other first-world countries, both in absolute number and relative to population size.
France does not have similar numbers of innocent people in prison, even when adjusted for the countries size. Unless you will argue that the French police and judicial system is more than six times worse.
This was all in response to the comment questioning why we don't hear as many stories about innocent prisoners in France.
I think the French police and judicial system are about the same. They just aren't discovering the innocents they've put in prison because they don't have wide-spread, well-funded initiatives like the Innocence Project to do that work.
Remember, you can't really "look at the stats" when it comes to how many innocent people you've imprisoned until after the fact. You only know the count once you've actually put in the time to find innocent people in prison. My claim is that France is not doing this, so you can't really say they're 6x better. Unless countries are exerting the same effort to root out innocent prisoners, it's impossible to tell if a lower rate is due to an actually lower occurrence, or if it's due to a lower rate of discovery.
My original point was that I think all countries have an "imprisoning innocents" problem, and all countries have a racism problem. It just looks worse in the US because we're actually bothering to do the due diligence.
No, I do not believe that it is an "entirely independent" statistics/rate. I believe they are very closely related. But if you sincerely believe they are entirely independent statistics then I kind of understand the logic of your argument.
Given that the the incarceration rate in the US is more than six time the rate in France (https://www.statista.com/statistics/300986/incarceration-rat...), and the US population is much larger in absolute number, you wouldn't expect to hear as many stories, even assuming the French system is just as bad.
> The most generous interpretation is that the French penal system is more humane than the US
That is indeed generous. French prisons are notoriously awful. A bit of a catalogue of official condemnations is available at the Wikipedia page[1], but more telling are the many, many anecdotes of people who have done time in them.
Of course nasty prisons doesn't mean that the administration of the courts isn't impeccable, and I am hardly an expert, but I rather doubt it.
For a more recent case than Joan of Arc (which was hardly a trial by nowadays' standards), have a look at the infamous "Affaire d'Outreau" which was really a huge scandal at the time.
I personally think we just talk more about the USA because:
- everything the USA does or says is heavily scrutinized anyway,
- many more people can read English than French or Russian so news about cases like this one are more shared on social networks, including among foreign people.
A far more generous interpretation would be that Wikipedia and the English internet are very far from comprehensive reports on non-English speaking countries. With a little more effort you could have found many more wrongful convictions in France that were even reported on in English ( http://www.medilljusticeproject.org/wrongful-convictions) and if you searched in French I am sure you would find even more.
We have no justice system, but we do have a Department of Justice and a legal system.
Our problem is how federated the authorities of individual districts are within each state. There can't be a sweeping national reform that fixes everything, because most of this comes down to district-local decisions in each state.
Some people believe the POTUS holds all the power, but your locally elected DA is a lot more likely to have a direct impact on your life than anyone in DC.
Things discussed at my borough's (pop. ~1800) council meeting this past Monday:
- Evicting tenants because their landlord can't follow the law (didn't do required inspections, obtain required licenses, etc)
- Existing arrest warrants for said landlord
- New liens against properties
- Tax increases in the neighborhood of $80-300/yr, which is considerable when the median income is roughly $2250/mo gross.
These are councilors that are elected in unopposed races the vast majority of the time, and when they are opposed the margin may only be a dozen votes. Because they're in off years you're looking at maybe 8-10% total turnout (~45 or so per voting district), and there may only be 25 or 30 total votes in even opposed elections. For folks given the power to evict, halt property sales, etc. I'd argue the power given per vote require is on par with state executives and higher than a freshman member of Congress.
I'm still unclear on why there hasn't been a mass movement that tells people who are interested in affecting political change, but who live in enclaves where everyone already shares their political views, to instead move to a city/town where their views are radical, and then run for city council there, giving like-minded but disenfranchised voters of that district someone to vote for.
I recently heard a podcast - forgive me I cannot recall the name atm - about Jeffrey Pyne and his conviction for the absolutely horrific murder of his mother Ruth. The prosecutions case was 100% circumstantial; it consisted entirely of "here's what we think happened... therefore this man is a murderer".
In my naivety I didn't think conviction based on that kind of "evidence" was allowed in the US justice system. At one point when the prosecution didn't think the charge of 1st degree murder would stick they added a charge of 2nd degree murder. In the end the jury found him guilty of the latter.
1) Jeffrey had motive. His mother had been abusing him for years.
2) Jeffrey was the last person to see his mother alive. The crime scene evidence also pointed to an “insider” who would’ve felt comfortable sticking around to clean up the crime scene (blood was found in the sink, there was no blood in exit paths).
3) Jeffrey had blisters on his hands consistent with weilding a bludgeoning weapon.
4) Jeffrey’s alibi was that he had been planting flowers at his teacher’s house. But the teacher testified that he had done that four days before.
The second degree murder charge was proper. If the jury believed he killed his mothef because of the abuse, first degree murder might not stick. Second degree, “heat of the moment/emotional disturbance” murder would be the correct charge.
Honestly, it seems to me that—given a hypothetical ideal jury with encyclopedic knowledge of the criminal code—it doesn't even make sense to have a trial that is "about" a particular crime. Rather, wouldn't it make more sense (again, given a jury that knows what the requirements are for every crime in the book) for the trial to just present the evidence in the case to the jury, and then the jury to come back with a list of zero or more crimes that they've decided that the defendant has committed?
It seems to me that the only reason we do things any other way, is that juries don't have encyclopedic knowledge of the criminal code, and so you have to teach them about what the requirements are for guilt in the particular case.
Given that the court system doesn't like jury nullification, and wants juries to be deciding solely on whether the facts presented to them match the legal requirements for the definition of a particular crime—why would it matter whether they know which crime they'll be asked to evaluate the facts against, before they know the facts? They can learn the facts first, or the law first. Either way, the last step is just matching one to the other. (In the Supreme Court's opinion, at least.)
> It seems to me that the only reason we do things any other way, is that juries don't have encyclopedic knowledge of the criminal code, and so you have to teach them about what the requirements are for guilt in the particular case.
The reason is more involved, because:
(1) law, like facts, is subject to question and answering those questions is out of scope of the jury, which is the trier of fact alone. Your model would necessarily transfer the judge's responsibility to the jury.
(2) The law creates permission for prosecution (bit civil and criminal , though only the latter is relevant here), but that permission is not a mandate. Judgement of the cake of prosecution is given to the offended party (in criminal law, the executive on behalf of the government). Your model would necessarily transfer the executives authority largely to the jury (though prosecutors could withhold inculpatory evidence to avoid undesired charges being triggered.)
(3) But, most critically, your model would provide the defendant with a vast surface to defend against, and require the defense to provide evidence against any offense the jury might infer from the evidence. The use of specific charges and specifications putd the defense on notice of the specific charges they must defend against.
(4) Related to (3), without specific charges, any trial is essentially a trial for all potential criminal conduct occurring before that point, which creates double jeopardy problems if concealed evidence of an early crime comes to light, as distinguishing between a trial addressing other charges (which would not foreclose a new trial for double jeopardy reasons) and a trial addressing the offense indicated by the new evidence but which merely failed to convict (which would foreclose a new trial) is impossible. Meaningful protection against double jeopardy while permitting trials for newly discovered offenses requires something like the current specific-charge model.
> Given that the court system doesn't like jury nullification,
The court system may not like it, but it has repeatedly been found to be part of the Constitutional order of government. By the court system, I might add, so obviously they like it enough to keep protecting it.
> law, like facts, is subject to question and answering those questions is out of scope of the jury, which is the trier of fact alone.
Like I said, I was presuming an ideal jury. (Picture a land where everyone has the legal experience and character of a Supreme Court justice—a land that makes Plato's Republic look populist.)
A real jury is, of course, Not Good at the law.
> Your model would necessarily transfer the executives authority largely to the jury (though prosecutors could withhold inculpatory evidence to avoid undesired charges being triggered.)
Not necessarily. The jury could return a list of crimes that have been proven (in Scottish justice-system terminology), and then the aggrieved could decide which crimes they want the defendant to be sentenced for.
Basically, extend the judge's ability to issue a "judgement notwithstanding" verdict, to be something done in cooperation with the aggrieved party.
Or, to put that another way... take a jury trial, and split it into two pieces:
• a jury-empanelled inquest—a truth-finding procedure—where the jury is there to be a truth-finding oracle, consuming 1. a criminal code and 2. a ream of testimony, and then outputting 3. a set of "proven" / "not proven" decisions for every crime in the criminal code, as they apply to the testimony.
• then, a bench trial, where the judge also has access to the testimony from the inquest, but where the law directs the judge to make their decision the same way they do in a jury trial: by—unless their reading of the transcript reveals that something has gone terribly wrong in the execution of justice—treating "the decision reached by the jury" as the only valid testimony. The judge then assigns a "guilty" / "not guilty" verdict for particular crimes that were being pursued, based on that testimony, and does sentencing.
I think this approach addresses most of your other points. Please poke holes in it :)
> By the court system, I might add, so obviously they like it enough to keep protecting it.
Jury nullification isn't really upheld by the court system (it's been repeatedly found that jurors have no right to it); its existence just comes down to the fact that criminalizing a juror's voting in one direction or the other would kind of break the justice system.
In a justice system that separated the "we declare that you screwed up" and the "so we will punish you" parts, I believe that jurors found to have "voted their conscience" would likely be found to have done something wrong in the eyes of the justice system—just something that cannot, necessarily, be criminalized.
About half of states require a grand jury to screen criminal indictments.
Your suggestion seems to be to coalesce the grand jury with the petit jury, and have the jury decide first that a criminal court should convene to conduct a trial, and then decide only later if the facts proved in that trial correspond to any particular crime or crimes.
The prosecutors could still press for a specific crime, but the defense would also be able to argue directly to the jury that "even if X and Y were true (which they aren't), that would only be a class N crime, because the prosecution hasn't proved Z, which is necessary for it to be a class M crime."
I understand the points of the case, I wasn't trying to include or omit details. My comment was about circumstantial evidence being a valid basis for conviction, I never realized it was. Has that always been the case? (no pun intended)
Yes, it has. Folks hundreds of years ago could not articulate the rules of evidence in Bayesian terms, but intuitively understood that it is probabalistic. The question is, what are the odds that all these facts are true and the accused is not the killed. If that is below the threshold for reasonable doubt (1-10%) then a conviction is in order. Circumstantial evidence like “direct” evidence narrows that probability. Knowing the killer stayed at the same hotel as the victim on the night of the murder is circumstantial evidence, but dramatically narrows the probability that the accused is innocent compared to the prior odds ratio. Any given piece of circumstantial evidence may not be enough, but together it can narrow the odds sufficiently to achieve a conviction. (He was in the same hotel, had an insurance policy on the victim’s life, and had recently purchased a gun, which cannot be found.)
What is "circumstantial" evidence? Scientifically, really, isn't all evidence cicumstantial, and "circumstantial" just means evidence with some unspecified (low) level of Bayesian weight or something?
If it weren't, it would absolutely cripple the justice system. Any crime committed with no other people or recording devices present would be literally immune to conviction, no matter how strong the rest of the evidence.
Consider: a closed-room murder mystery. For example, there are five people on an island, and in the night one of them is murdered.
To prove who committed the murder (after proving that the person's death was a homicide at all), all you need is to exculpate two of the three remaining people (by e.g. having them supply air-tight alibis.)
Then, by process of elimination, the last one must be the murderer. Even though that's entirely "circumstantial evidence", it really is a proof, in the deductive sense.
Jeffrey committing the murder doesn't follow from 1) 2) and 3)
Regarding 4) its still hazy as every one's recovery time could be different. Granted it won't be 100 days or something like that, but four days is still touch and go.
Law et al aside. How do Judges rule in this case? There is huge chance of getting this wrong, and how do you live with this thing on our conscious that you would have sent an innocent man to the gallows?
Evidence doesn’t need to inexorably lead to the conclusion of guilt. The evidence taken together must establish probability of guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
Having motive to kill someone doesn’t prove you did it. But statistically, those with motive are much more likely to be the killer than a random person. That narrows the probability. Likewise, lying about where you were at the time of the murder (which is what #4 is about) doesn’t prove you committed it, but makes it more likely. Those compund—each additional fact narrows the probability that the accused is not guilty.
If you take a random sampling of 100 situations where there exists facts similar to this case, I think you’d find that 95%+ of the time the accused really did commit the murder. That’s all that’s required.
>>If you take a random sampling of 100 situations where there exists facts similar to this case, I think you’d find that 95%+ of the time the accused really did commit the murder.
That's 5 innocent people sentenced per hundred people to death/prison for a crime they didn't commit.
That is a lot.
In many cases for the innocent, the trial itself is a big punishment.
Re #4, didn't she also say she left her door unlocked when she went to work that morning and when she came home it was locked, and that Jeff was the only person who locks her door when he's finished his work for her?
Recovery from what? He claimed to be planting flowers during the murder, but the teacher testified that we was planting flowers 4 days before the murder.
One thing I've learned about the US justice system from watching a lot of criminology dramas (not that this is valid source of inferences, but it causes me to look things up for real):
You can choose to prosecute a case with basically any evidence (including "no evidence.") In a jury trial, it's up to the jury to decide whether the suspect is guilty—i.e. jury nullification goes both ways, and a jury can return a "guilty" vote despite a complete absence of a case, just because they feel like it. (A judge does have the ability to overrule any guilty verdict they feel was reached unjustly, but in the sorts of situations you'd expect a community biased enough to return a guilty verdict in absence of evidence, you'd also expect the judge—if they're a member of the same community—to be biased as well.)
Usually, though, because juries are almost never that biased (and are not aware of jury nullification), prosecutors just "decline to prosecute" cases that they don't think have enough evidence to sway a jury.
The biggest issue is the whole jury system - I don't understand how being judged by 12 people with no formal law education is considered a working or fair justice system.
Anything other than random citizens would necessitate a full time profession of juror and would thus render members of this profession employees of the state in some capacity. This violates the idea of an independent judiciary.
Furthermore a jury of your peers is at least as good as the society around it. A jury of self selecting professionals is almost certainly worse. How many people would choose to join the jury profession so they can enact their own personal bullying by voting guilty on everyone? How many people become small town cops because they like having a gun and barking orders?
Furthermore any bias in a juror gets averaged over 12 and affects at most one trial.
Furthermore prosecution and defense get to cross examine and dismiss jurors as part of the selection process. If you want a generally well educated jury you can get one. Ask your trial lawyer which jury is right for you!
Furthermore it only takes one of the 12 to stop a miscarriage of justice.
Furthermore in the US everyone is at least somewhat indoctrinated with an understanding of what a jury is and a respect for executing jury duty faithfully. You have a pretty good shot of getting at least one person on the jury that won't vote guilty instantly so they can still make the baseball game latter that day.
Finally, a jury doesn't need law education. Their job is to judge the facts. They are informed of the definitions of the crime, and the evidence, and must reach a verdict of yes he did this or no he did not. Upon rendering a guilty verdict, the actual law part of the law is executed by the judge.
Furthermore prosecution and defense get to cross examine and dismiss jurors as part of the selection process. If you want a generally well educated jury you can get one. Ask your trial lawyer which jury is right for you!
And if the prosecutor gets to dismiss jurors that are least likely to convict?
Furthermore it only takes one of the 12 to stop a miscarriage of justice.
Furthermore in the US everyone is at least somewhat indoctrinated with an understanding of what a jury is and a respect for executing jury duty faithfully. You have a pretty good shot of getting at least one person on the jury that won't vote guilty instantly so they can still make the baseball game latter that daY
You’re completely ignoring the social pressure of being the one holdout that you would get from the other 11 jurors to go home and the judge to not have a hung juror.
You’re also ignoring the very real psychology of how many people don’t care about the fate of someone who they can’t relate to - someone who is not of thier same race/economic background/upbringing.
They are informed of the definitions of the crime, and the evidence, and must reach a verdict of yes he did this or no he did not. Upon rendering a guilty verdict, the actual law part of the law is executed by the judge.
That’s all well and good unless the “facts” are being withheld by the prosecutor and not being argued effectively by an underpaid, overworked public defender.
The prosecutor is no more powerful in this respect than the defense. Defense attorneys also try to get jurors that they think are demographically inclined to acquit their client and then find post hoc causes to dismiss.
>You’re completely ignoring the social pressure of being the one holdout that you would get from the other 11 jurors to go home and the judge to not have a hung juror.
>You’re also ignoring the very real psychology of how many people don’t care about the fate of someone who they can’t relate to - someone who is not of thier same race/economic background/upbringing.
No You're ignoring what I wrote.
"Furthermore in the US everyone is at least somewhat indoctrinated with an understanding of what a jury is and a respect for executing jury duty faithfully. You have a pretty good shot of getting at least one person on the jury that won't vote guilty instantly so they can still make the baseball game latter that day"
I specifically wrote this as an allusion to the movie 12 angry men.
Yes a random group of people, with no training and no one to judge them, will sentence a man to death for the trivial convenience of going home early. But we aren't selecting from a group with no training. We are selecting from a population that embeds the sanctity of a trial into its childhood education and into its national identity. You have a fairly reasonable shot of at least someone on the jury willing to be the one angry man.
The prosecutor is no more powerful in this respect than the defense. Defense attorneys also try to get jurors that they think are demographically inclined to acquit their client and then find post hoc causes to dismiss.
If you have a pool of 30 jurors and the prosecution has already chosen to dismiss the six that are most likely to not convict, it doesn’t leave the defense much to work with. The scenario is not theoretical, I linked to a case that went to the Supreme Court.
But ignoring that, the system is not suppose to be “equally weighted” for the prosecution and the defense. It should be weighted more heavily toward the defense in a criminal case. It is suppose to be harder to take someone’s freedom or life away than to convict.
Yes a random group of people, with no training and no one to judge them, will sentence a man to death for the trivial convenience of going home early. But we aren't selecting from a group with no training. We are selecting from a population that embeds the sanctity of a trial into its childhood education and into its national identity. You have a fairly reasonable shot of at least someone on the jury willing to be the one angry man.
We can talk theory of “indoctrination” or we can look at the facts both in the posted article and the one I cited about the prosecution explicitly excluding Black jurors. The lack of concern about anyone who doesn’t look like them runs much deeper than some type of theoretical sanctity of due process.
It is not the “shocking” exception that minorities get sentenced more harshly for the same crime. The article so linked to also stated that prosecutors had a convention and one of the sessions was basically how to exclude minorities without running afoul of the Supreme Court case that made race base selection illegal.
The very post we are commenting on is an example of where there was prosecutorial misconduct and a lousy defense.
The mundane reality is that court system and the entire justice system is weighted toward the state and thst there are systemic issues when it comes to equal treatment under the law for the poor and minorities.
My entire point is that juries, as they are currently selected, is the least bad system of rendering verdicts. I also stated quite clearly that a jury is at least no worse than the society it exists within. None of the imperfections you point out are absent in wider society.
I could care less whether someone in the wider society dislikes me because of the color of my skin. Heck, I don’t really care about the suspicious looks I got the first year when I drove into my neighborhood where I’m definitely a minority.
I do care that the state that has the power to take away my freedom is treating me fairly. I see first hand the difference in the reaction that people have to my step son now - when he is a teenager over 6 feet tall and big and the reaction they had when he was 9 years old and a short cute kid when I met him.
I very much worry about him getting caught up in the justice system and falsely accused and convicted for “fitting the description”.
And my son grew up in the burbs, attended top rated public schools in affluent areas of town, has a friendship circle that looks like the cast of a CW show and it took years before he realized that his mere statue combined with his race intimidated adults - not teenagers. It seems like the next generation is much smarter.
What exactly do you propose as an alternative to juries.
Its not about caring or not caring about wider society. My point is that a society can't produce a system better than itself. Problems that exist outside the justice system are virtually guaranteed to leak into the justice system.
btw you know that you can actually waive you're right to a jury trial and get a bench trial if you really want one. Of course you have no control over which judge is assigned to you. LMK if you seriously want to take that gamble.
- get rid of plea bargains for serious offenses. Right now, prosecutors pile on charges that could add years knowing that most people will plea. If every serious case has to go to trial, prosecutors will have to be more careful about when they bring charges.
- admit that the “war on drugs” has been a failure and stop locking people up for years for non violent crimes.
- get rid of prosecutors ability to dismiss jurors. Yes it will make it harder to convict, but it should be harder.
- stiffer penalties for prosecutors withholding exculpatory evidence.
> Anything other than random citizens would necessitate a full time profession of juror and would thus render members of this profession employees of the state in some capacity.
Why have jurors at all ? Over here in the Netherlands people are judged by ... judges (what's in a name).
There was a case in the US where two judges were getting kickbacks for sending kids to a specific detention center for offenses as trivial as mocking an assistant principal on Myspace or trespassing in a vacant building. There's no jury in a juvenile court anyway but this is a case of a judge using their position of power to line their pockets at the expense of the futures of those kids. Not every judge is a good person but at least your lawyer can help pick the jury for you so some of the jurors might be more understanding of your accused crime and the circumstances.
"Kids-for-Cash". "Judges Michael Conahan and Mark Ciavarella were accused of accepting money in return for imposing harsh adjudications on juveniles to increase occupancy at for-profit detention centers."
How do you guarantee a trial by jury, if an entire jury could be paid actors?
It's a bit silly to worry about that level of conspiracy.
But even if it weren't silly, there are easy answers. An oversight board, or revealing the jurors after the case is decided, or revealing the entire juror pool of 50 some-odd people, etc.
Just release the information afterwards, or notarize something. That's such a trivial problem to solve. How do you "prove" to the defendant that the jury in front of them right now isn't just the DA's extended family and friends?
It isn't just bribing 12, it is bribing them in a short period of time.
If I'm going to do something and want to bribe a judge I have years to research all the judges who might be at my trial (there are not very many). Each will have a different bribe that will work. (one doesn't want his wife to know about an affair; the next is in an open marriage and doesn't care but he has big gamboling debts that you can "take care of"...)
In practice, the police and prosecutor in the Netherlands are both rewarded financially and have an internal culture that glorifies getting convictions. Needless to say, this means they often successfully prosecute innocents, knowing full well what they're doing.
So I guess you can just decide for yourself. Do you trust the state ? People like to answer in the affirmative, even when boatloads of evidence is available that sometimes significant parts of the state, including the Dutch state, isn't even corrupt, but outright criminal for malevolent reasons (meaning police trying to get innocents convicted out of spite, or revenge, has happened more than a few times).
Jury trials provide some (imperfect) measure of protection against such abuses.
Because it limits the power of the state. The state, in the US, does not have absolute power to convict anyone of anything.
The state has for all intents and purposes unlimited resources to pile on charges, cover up exonerating evidence, they can legally lie to a suspect (“we found a witness you might as well confess”), they can strike jurors who would be more sympathetic to believing that police can be corrupt, etc.
The defense doesn’t have an unlimited budget to hire experts, get evidence independently tested, etc.
If you are poor and/or minority, the state can and will railroad you and the jury that holds your life in thier hands won’t be of your peers. Do you think that a cherry picked jury will really be that concerned if some poor Black kid gets locked up for life?
> If you are poor and/or minority, the state can and will railroad you and the jury that holds your life in thier hands won’t be of your peers. Do you think that a cherry picked jury will really be that concerned if some poor Black kid gets locked up for life?
I did say it's an imperfection measure of protection against that. But frankly, the court is just not going to take you seriously unless it's clear that you will appeal any decision you don't agree with it. Sorry but ... that's how the world works. Still, the alternative in force in Europe does not seem better, in fact it seems significantly worse.
If you watch videos of judges in the Netherlands I assure you, first, the prosecutor is essentially the same, and second the judges ... to say that they are arrogant, unsympathetic and frankly assholes is a serious understatement of reality. Prosecutors are rewarded based on convictions, like in the US.
I think this video, even though the source is a bit ... gmrbl (I DO NOT agree with 99% this website posts) ... But this is the reaction of Jaap Smit, judge and vicepresident of the Amsterdam "fast" court, to a camera:
Because at the time the US split from England, there were myriad concerns about judges being influenced by authorities to convict innocent people for political (or personal) reasons.
> Furthermore it only takes one of the 12 to stop a miscarriage of justice.
On the other hand, it only takes one of the 12 to stop justice from being served if they for whatever reason disagree with the other 11.
> inally, a jury doesn't need law education. Their job is to judge the facts. They are informed of the definitions of the crime, and the evidence, and must reach a verdict of yes he did this or no he did not. Upon rendering a guilty verdict, the actual law part of the law is executed by the judge.
Except they don't just judge facts. They judge based on the stories they're told. Even if the evidence (facts) is lacking, a good story can still sway people. This would be a lot less likely if the panel consisted of people educated on the law (eg. judges).
There's a reason the supreme court consists of judges, not 12 (or 9...) random people from your populace.
> it only takes one of the 12 to stop justice from being served
Blackstone's formulation applies there:
"It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer."
In a perfect world, we'd only convict the guilty. The revolutionaries that founded the U.S. decided that justice would be better served by minimizing false positives---the conviction of innocents---instead of minimizing false negatives---the release of criminals. In practice, we've still sent many innocent people to prison (or worse, to death) despite our various protections against false positives, which includes the right to trial by jury.
> This would be a lot less likely if the panel consisted of people educated on the law (eg. judges).
People educated in the law (e.g., judges) would disagree with you:
"Those who wrote our constitutions knew from history and experience that it was necessary to protect against unfounded criminal charges brought to eliminate enemies and against judges too responsive to the voice of higher authority. The framers of the constitutions strove to create an independent judiciary but insisted upon further protection against arbitrary action. Providing an accused with the right trial by a jury of his peers gave him an inestimable safeguard against the corrupt or overzealous prosecutor and against the compliant, biased, or eccentric judge."
I’ve served on 3 juries. Two acquitted, and in each case the facts made the case.
The hardest case was the one that was “not guilty”. The defendant was almost certainly guilty of manslaughter. But for reasons that don’t matter, aspects (time) of key evidence could not be evaluated, which created doubt.
> "I’ve served on 3 juries. Two acquitted, and in each case the facts made the case."
> "The hardest case was the one that was “not guilty”."
Would you clarify? I read the first paragraph as there was one guilty verdict, yet the second paragraph implies there was only one not guilty verdict. Did you perhaps intend two convicted, or alternatively, in the second paragraph, one of the cases that were not guilty?
As I read it, he means that one not guilty was correct. However the other he believes was guilty, but someone messed up the evidence. With the evidence messed up he was forced to vote not guilty on a guilty person.
I don’t think it’s true that it only takes one to stop justice from being served. If one juror disagrees with the other 11, the result is a hung jury and a mistrial, and the prosecution can retry the defendant.
I would be interested in knowing how often trials with a hung jury are retried. Presumably if it goes that long and is that contentious there is a fair amount of resources that have already gone into it, would the state look at it as a sunk cost? Are they more likely to retry a case hung on 11-1 as opposed to say 8-4?
>Anything other than random citizens would necessitate a full time profession of juror and would thus render members of this profession employees of the state in some capacity. This violates the idea of an independent judiciary.
What if we restricted jury duty to actively practicing lawyers? Who better to judge the work of a lawyer than another lawyer.
Aren't they supposed to be judging whether the prosecution has presented enough evidence for there to be no reasonable doubt that the defendant did commit the crime?
There are lots of ways to twist the language around to make it confusing, and that's all that this does. They are not evaluating the performance of one or more lawyers. They are evaluating all of the evidence before them (all of it that is admissible, anyway) to determine whether the defendant is guilty according to law (as opposed to according to their own feelings, etc.).
You can tell they aren't there to judge the prosecuting attorney's performance because not all of the evidence comes from the prosecuting attorney. Thankfully. If it did, you'd have a lot more false convictions. That's why we have defense attorneys even when we can't afford them ourselves. Likewise, you are not judging the defense attorney's performance, because that would require you to start with an assumption of guilt. Nor are you there to judge the combined performance of both of them. That doesn't even make sense. They are not a team working together. They are there to put evidence before the jury (or try to dismiss evidence in various ways) and try to convince them of a particular interpretation of that evidence. So their performance is affecting the outcome, but they are not the ones being judged.
The people who designed the jury system had all the formal law education you ask for.
The idea is that such decisions are not mere technical matters, and the law is not for some "supposedly" impartial technocrats to impose their opinion on, but to reflect what society thinks.
After all it's not some god given or mathematically derived laws that need to be applied, the law is the will of the sovereign people (with some intermediaries as they can't all just draft them together).
Besides the jury system works just fine in other countries.
It's the:
- systemic racism,
- bad incentives for DAs (and political careers associated with being one),
- strict adherence to the letter of the law when the spirit is clearly elsewhere (e.g. judges not freeing people for some technical BS despite full evidence that clears them)
- privatization of the prison system and large interests
- Old Testament-style vengefulness (e.g. death penalty? In 2018? Third world prison conditions? Long term torture-level isolation?)
is not obeyed in the trial. This principle says that a defendant can only be convicted if the evidence is clear that the respective person is guilty. If it is not clear, the defendant is to be let free (or rather: can only be punished for the punishable acts for which the evidence is clear).
As you can see in the Wikipedia article, this principle has been very central in German law for centuries.
The US ostensibly has this standard ("proof beyond a reasonable doubt").
I think the problem is related to trust of institutions and a learned blindness. Various participants in a trial all assume the others are working to ensure the correct outcome and don't make every personal effort to do the same.
To be fair, even a cursory examination of how much time and effort they get to put into these cases, they cannot.
I remember reading that a judge has, on average, spent 16 minutes or less on convictions for less than 1 year sentence.
The state makes it impossible for people to do that, even if they were so inclined in the first place. And, of course, they have to consider that they go against part of their own organization to make this happen (meaning some of your colleagues will want a conviction and you preventing them from getting that will have costs).
I think the main issue with this case is that the prosecution/court excluded evidence and didn't present the case correctly, even though someone else was _publicly_ admitting guilt in the case and there was plenty of evidence pointing the other way. The jury system could provide relief from this sort of court bias-- _if_ they had the information. So it appears that it is the _system_ that is so frenetic to convict that causes the issue; not the jury [prosecution attorneys tend to think everyone is guilty]. I would agree there is a cultural issue with wanting to convict a lot and firmly believing that everyone convicted by the system must be guilty, but that has very little to do with the jury system.
The point of the jury system is to prevent tyranny, especially that experienced in most European countries that had monarchies and oppressive parliaments where angering the government or monarch, being the wrong religion, or having a different ideology would get you convicted very quickly. At least with a jury of your peers you have a chance of getting let off from trumped up charges. Europe _might_ not have the same problems currently, but still nice to have a system that could prevent some egregious things... perhaps including this one.
You seem to assume all jurors are high school dropouts or something. They can come from all kinds of backgrounds and this means that specific jurors can be quite knowledgeable.
The idea is a "jury of your peers." Part of the point of this set-up is so that The Haves are not the only ones in positions to make life-altering decisions about people's lives.
Jury Nullification is a thing. There is some degree to which jurors, knowledgeable about how the system has consistently and intentionally screwed over "their people," decide to not go along with railroading yet another person of the wrong color or whatever.
Any time a government is overthrown, one of the first things that happens is they release all the prisoners on the assumption that, regardless of what their conviction is for, these are actually political prisoners. This is a not unreasonable conclusion in most cases.
Have you served on a jury? Frankly it gave me a good appreciation for the process and how well it actually works.
The “problem” is that few cases go to trial, and many of those lack competent counsel.
The other thing to keep in mind is that the law itself and rules of procedure creates many of the social issues that come up in these discussions. Jurors have the benefit of handicap of weighing evidence presented to them against statute as interpreted by a judge.
Other countries have juries. America is I think unique in having elected prosecutors, who have major incentives to commit whatever miscarriages of justice they think will help them get (re-)elected.
Actually, outside of the US, not many countries have juries for most crimes.
In most of Western Europe, juries are only possible for murder (or worse). For everything else, a judge decides without any recourse for the population. There, you do not have the right to a jury trial at all.
The jury shouldn't be deciding legal questions - that's for the judge. A jury is supposed to come to their verdict on a consideration of "matters of fact" (a term of art in the law).
For example, the definition of a particular offense (Grievous Bodily Harm, say) is a matter of law, and not up for debate by the jury. The jury's role is to decide whether or not the accused committed that particular crime; eg, does the evidence support ("beyond reasonable doubt") the conclusion that they throw the punch that the prosecution allege caused the injury to the accuser?
NOT true AT ALL. This is how it's presented to everyone but this is NOT true. A jury decides on the question if it is just/fair for this person to be convicted of that crime given the crime, the evidence, the state, and the expected punishment, or any other factor they care about. NOT just if they're guilty. A jury is perfectly free to declare someone not guilty even if they are convinced they are guilty.
Seriously, give this as an answer as a first year law student and you fail. No question. Of course, it's how prosecutors present it to the jury (you might ask yourself the question: given that they misrepresent this, how badly did they misrepresent the crime in the first place ?)
And, frankly, if you knew how the police and penal system worked internally, you would in nearly every last case vote not to convict. It does not fix the crime, it just creates one more victim, and the system is totally inhumane. Even if someone is a criminal and have stolen, or even raped they do not deserve to be subjected to that.
Furthermore, prosecutors lie in court to get people convicted, so how trustworthy is their case, really ? Listen to a few of the dirty tricks police pull to convince juries:
I've served on two juries, on trials 20 years apart and in different states, that involved child molestation.
We acquitted one defendant after a day's deliberation.
We sent the other to jail for a LONG time after spending half an hour talking about it, it was really crystal clear from the evidence (which included a videotaped confession . . . yet the goober insisted on a jury trial, go figure).
I sleep well at nights. Also, if cops seat you in front of a video camera and try to ask questions, don't say anything.
In this case the police did tell him he didn't have to say anything until he'd talked to a lawyer. Then the guy basically broke down, said "I was stupid, I don't know why I did it" and proceeded to tell his tale.
Stupid.
Really don't say anything to cops, especially if you've been placed under arrest.
Given the evidence at hand, we probably would have convicted him anyway. The video was the clincher. Early on the judge mentioned that the defendant had insisted on a jury trial, over the advice of his lawyer (and to some extent the judge, who was broadly hinting that sentencing from a guilty verdict by a jury was going to be a lot harsher than one he could reach with a deal of some kind).
I have to say that his lawyer (a public defender appointed to him, since he could not afford his own) was pretty bad, at least by my unpracticed eye.
Believe it or not, despite the police constantly exploiting people's (legal) stupidity, it should not be a crime.
> Given the evidence at hand, we probably would have convicted him anyway. The video was the clincher.
If the video of his confession, which you know has been edited by the police and prosecutor's office, I would have voted to let him go. You don't know the pressure that was on the guy during that video, you don't know what else the police left out (e.g. one thing is they do is refusing to help someone, or claiming to refuse, until a confession is extracted and signed, then edit out the part where they refused to help, or lied)
What if the person lied and confessed because the police threatened not to call an ambulance for someone ?
Ironically, this may very well be the reason the "goober" wanted a jury trial in the first place, as people do that thinking it will provide more opportunities for the truth to come out.
Come on, there are at least some cases where people deserve to be put in jail. Clear evidence of rape is definitely one of those. Do you actually want to release serial killers caught in the act, just because the penal system is too inhumane for them?
I fully put out that yes, there is probably some level of crime that would justify it. However, for a US state I'd say that there are maybe 1 or 2 individuals per year at most.
So in any case you're ever going to see in your life: no they don't deserve it. Even for most violent crimes, year-long torture (which is what generously describes the penal system) is not a reasonable outcome.
So in a jury you should always always always vote no.
worth pointing out because i don't know if this is also the case in other countries: if the jurors think the law is dumb, they can return a verdict of not guilty even if there is overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
The non-guilty verdict is final, even in the face of new evidence: “[N]or shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb” (Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution). Sometimes the government gets around this by inventing a new “offence” for the same crime, often at a different political level; for example, you may be acquitted of murder at the state level, but be charged with a “hate crime” at the federal level for the same act.
> the definition of a particular offense (Grievous Bodily Harm, say) is a matter of law
This isn't strictly true - s.18 (GBH) requires intent, which is a question for the jury. Furthermore, what constitutes "really serious" injury is a question for the jury. You can break in down into questions of fact (e.g. Did the defendant have intent? Did the defendant cause these injuries? Are these injuries "really serious"?), but it's not as clear cut as did the defendant throw the punch (they must judge if they consider the injuries to be "really serious", which isn't quite a question of fact).
In addition, juries are entitled to make a decision based on their conscience, per Bushel's case.
Because we, the people, are the law. And we are free to judge one another as we ought like to be judged. And this tends to be a very good thing. If a law is so absurd as to require a law degree to begin to be able to grasp it, then it's not one anybody should ever be prosecuted for not abiding.
A related issue is jury nullification [1]. Juries cannot be forced to convict, regardless of the weight of evidence against an individual. This gives juries the ability, whether defacto or dejure, to determine whether or not a law is just. So for instance in the early 18th century New York passed a law making it a crime to criticize public officials. But with juries being unwilling to hold up the law, it had no effect. In more recent times nullification has been invoked, even if not by name, countless times in statutory rape, drug charges, etc. As wiki mentions, the recent sharp rise in hung juries (going from ~5% to 20% in recent years) has also been seen as possible evidence of a rise in jurors considering the validity or fairness of the laws they're being asked to convict others under.
Trial by jury enables a nation to express its own value system, regardless of whether or not those who happen be on top agree.
Not only are you almost always free to waive your right to a jury trial and have a bench trial before a judge instead, the state strongly encourages you to do so, since jury trials are expensive and time consuming. I would not be surprised if they also had a lower conviction rate.
> The number of prisoners per capita seems to indicate that it's not just anecdotes.
Well, the sheer number of prisoners, and whether or not they are guilty are two totally separate issues. After all, someone committed the murder in this case, so you need to put that person in prison.
I have a strong feeling that you can mostly tell from the details of the crime itself, whether a given murderer would go on to be a serial killer, or whether this was just "a one-time thing."
It makes sense to me that people are desperate to put away serial killers (because the alternative is more deaths), insisting that the case must be pursued until someone is put away for the crime.
But it doesn't make sense to me that people would rather an innocent person rot in prison with nonzero probability, than a killer who will likely never kill again go free. I feel there should be a very high standard of evidence to convict in cases where there's no likelihood of continued societal harm coming from the guilty party, whoever they are.
(Yes, from an anthropological viewpoint, prison exists not just for rehabilitation, but also partially because people just want revenge... but the whole point of centralizing and structuring this mechanism for societal vengeance, is to prevent that vengeance from being applied to the wrong person!)
Only if you wish to persist a violent system aiming to wreck lives. We could instead try to help everyone involved heal from the event(s) and initiate processes to uncover systemic issues leading to them. I'd rather the latter.
I think this makes sense for a lot of crimes, but not murder. If you take someone's life, you should be prepared to spend a long time in prison. That's a reasonable punishment for the crime.
This relates to a fundamental question of what the criminal justice system is for: Punishment, deterrent, undoing wrongs, etc.
I predict that I’m in the minority in believing what I’m about to say: In the unlikely event that it turned out the best way of minimising homicide was to promise every single convict £1 million and a 12 hour episode television show in their name, if that actually minimised homicide, I’d be in favour of that response to it. I will of course freely admit that the reason I can say something so shocking is because I don’t know anyone who’s been murdered.
I care about minimising the aggregate rate of all homicide, not punishment for it’s own sake.
Even if it did lower the aggregate homicide rate, would you want to live in a society where murdering someone was rewarded with £1 million and a tv show? I don't think the homicide rate is the only metric one can use to judge quality of life.
I understand that other people don’t think like me. For me this would be little different to the current status quo with gory horror films, which I abhor almost vitriolically.
The article even kinda touches on their fallback excuse “he was an up and coming drug dealer”. So the prosecutors use that to say well, he was a bad person anyways so no harm done!
I think it's a bit more nuanced then that. If you dig into this case a bit it seems pretty likely that this Scott guy "worked" for Dixon in some capacity and even if Dixon didn't pull the trigger he provided the weapon and was at the scene of the crime when it happened. I think the most likely explanation is that this killing was directly related to him being a drug dealer and him having one of his gang members kill someone else. Like doesn't it seem a bit odd that this other guy was so willing to take the fall? Sounds like a lackey trying to protect his boss.
Just saying, I don't think that was just an excuse. I think they had good reason to believe this guy was a bit of a low level crime boss/gang leader and they decided it'd be better to put him away even if he didn't technically pull the trigger. Yea it's an abuse of the justice system in a lot of ways and I don't condone it, but I don't think it's as easy as saying the DA just wanted to randomly pin the murder on someone else.
There are a lot of problems with the U.S. justice system, but these articles paint a misleading picture.
The article makes it seem like Dixon was just "at a nearby shop buying beer when the gunshots rang out." The police couldn't find the real shooter, so they just grabbed the nearest black guy and convicted him, right?
If you read the article further though, something seems off.
> Mr Dixon said multiple witnesses could have testified he did not fire the gun.
That's an odd formulation.
> "I grabbed the gun," Scott, now 46, told the courtroom in Erie County, New York.
Grabbed it from who?
The article never really explains it, but what actually happened is that Dixon and the real shooter, Scott, were involved in drug dealing. Dixon gave Scott the murder weapon, a semi-automatic Tec-9, and drove with him to the scene of the altercation: http://www.espn.com/golf/story/_/id/24736866/valentino-dixon...
> Scott said he had gotten the gun, a Tec-9 semi-automatic, from Dixon and the two men had driven together to the crowded corner where the fighting broke out. Scott was given a sentence of 8⅓ to 25 years in prison, concurrent with his current term.
This case is a lot more subtle than it seems: it was about figuring out who was the killer, the guy whose gun it was, or the alleged "bodyguard" (Scott).
Now, this is not to excuse the Brady violation or the other flaws in the prosecution. It's a travesty that Dixon was convicted based on that case. But from my first hand experience with the U.S. justice system, it's not random and capricious. If you see a story that makes it seem random and capricious, digging into it will almost always reveal that there was something more to it than the press releases let on.
For example, a few years ago I got an ACLU or Innocence Project email about a "kid" who was convicted for murder because he just "happened to be at the crime scene." In reality, a bunch of 16-17 year old young men robbed a pizza delivery driver, and shot him dead right in front of his wife and kid who were in the back seat. The convicted man "happened to be at the crime scene" in the sense that he was part of the group, but denied being the one that pulled the trigger. As a matter of legal technicality, that conviction was probably wrongful--you need evidence that the accused pulled the trigger, otherwise you just have accomplice liability. But it's a far cry from the press release implying that some jury just pinned the crime on a random kid who happened to be near by!
Also note two other things: 1) Most prosecutions and guilty please are supported by a mountain of evidence. Sometimes you'll look at the record and think "this shouldn't be a crime" (selling Ambien to yuppies) but at the same time you'll see that the guy tried to sell it directly to a cop or something where guilt was similarly unambiguous. 2) For every exoneration, U.S. civil liberties organizations turn away many cases where the prisoner who professes innocence is actually guilty.
At the end of the day, the US has 30-40,000 murders per year. Even if the rate of error is 1%, that’s hundreds of wrongful convictions each year. There are ways to improve, clearly, such as holding prosecutors accountable for Brady violations, getting rid of elected prosecutors, and combining prosecutors and public defenders’ offices. But if the current system is “not functioning” then I don’t think you can achieve a “functioning” system under that rubric. There isn’t a revolutionary amount improvement to be gained.
I've noticed that press releases often miss critical details like that and/or carefully craft the narrative to make the police seem more evil and the victim more innocent. Why is that? Are they paid to push that narrative by someone or some organization?
Would you read an article about a trial where what happened seems pretty reasonable considering the circumstances? Probably not.
So the media first figures out what the story will be (and it better be sensational or why bother), then selectively reports facts to support their story.
Everyone has an agenda, even the good guys. It wouldn’t be conducive to donorship if this story was pitched as freeing the drug dealer that brought the murder weapon to the crime scene on the basis that his associate was the one to pull the trigger. Legally that’s all it takes, but people aren’t going to donate money to achieve that result.
This should be the top comment. From the article you link: "Judge Susan Eagan let stand a count of criminal possession of a weapon against Dixon, and its 5- to 15-year sentence, which she said he had satisfied."
I agree that it's a big problem, and there were some egregious errors by both the prosecution and defense in this case, most notably that someone had been confessing to it for years to no avail.
That said, Dixon didn't make for a very sympathetic defendant; he brought the gun used in the murder to the scene, he was a known drug dealer, he was involved in a dispute with the victim, etc. It's not hard to see how he got convicted. He very likely would have been convicted of accessory to murder or other felonies.
Our justice system has major problems, and it's good that this wrong has been partially righted, but this isn't a case that I'd hold up as a prime example of injustice.
A man lost 27 years of his life for something he didn't do. Just because he wasn't an upstanding citizen doesn't make that any more right.
edit: To expand, if he were given a proper sentence for the things he actually did, he would have had a chance to reform and go on with his life. Being denied that is injustice.
What's your point? Supposing that he received the maximum sentence for that, he still lost 12 (!) more years than he was due. I don't think that changes much.
Well, apparently he gave the killer (his "body guard") the weapon and drove him to the scene of the crime. Yes, it sounds like there was some bad behavior on the part of the prosecutor, but it's not clear to me that someone who drove the murderer to the scene and gave them the weapon to kill someone wouldn't culpable in the murder as well.
we are primarily appalled that you (or people that say similar things) don't consider what the appropriate punishment for that would be
what it currently is legally in that jurisdiction, what it was in 1991, and if either of those punishments holistically help or harm a productive society
what you write suggests that you view the state as unquestionable - and that its acceptable enough that they did an "almost right" thing given the circumstances - when they do arbitrary things even our constitution tried to deter.
My point was that it's not clear to me that Dixon was really a victim in all this, even if there were problems with the case that justify vacating his conviction. I didn't suggest that the state is unquestionable -- but I don't think this case is a cut & dry illustration of the wrongs that the Innocence Project can help to right.
As far as what the appropriate punishment would be, I would think an appropriate punishment for driving your body guard to a crime scene and giving them a murder weapon should be the same as the punishment for murder. I'm no lawyer though, that's just my intuitive assessment.
> but I don't think this case is a cut & dry illustration of the wrongs that the Innocence Project can help to right.
And I don't think the 'Innocence Project' or any exoneration efforts should be based on how empathetic people are to the convict.
Let's continue highlighting the wide discretion the prosecutors are able to use even when technically prohibited, and the lack of incentives for the state to undermine its monopoly on authority and investigate itself.
Let's make these 'tiny administrative offenses' so intolerable and egregious that there is selective evolution towards better investigations and better evidence collection. Real consequences for operating outside of those bounds. Easier remedies for the people accused and convicted. THE ACTUAL MURDERER BEING OFF THE STREET if anyone's pooled resources are going to be used by this public entity at all, what a concept.
>it's not clear to me that Dixon was really a victim in all this
And that's where I think the perspective is messed up. Sentencing guidelines are codified in law. This man received and served a non-trivial portion of a sentence that he did not deserve. In my opinion, there is no ambiguity here: he is a victim of a failure of the legal system. As a victim his damages amount to at least 12 years of his life.
Note that this makes him less of a criminal for the crimes he did commit.
Not really relevant to our conversation, but where did you get this "body guard" quote?
""Mr. Dixon is not an innocent man. Don't be misguided in that at all,'' Erie County District Attorney John Flynn told reporters after the hearing. He described Dixon as "an up-and-coming drug dealer in the city of Buffalo'' at the time of the shooting and said Scott was Dixon's bodyguard."
I honestly have no idea what the first point was supposed to mean. Sorry.
Substantive points:
* Dixon is innocent of shooting Jackson.
* There was significant prosecutorial malfeasance in his prosecution, along with limited defense competence.
* According to Scott in the ESPN article, Dixon did supply the weapon and drove the two of them to the location.
* According to the prosecutor, Scott worked for Dixon, who was admittedly dealing drugs.
* Dixon was also convicted of supplying the illegal weapon with which Jackson was shot. He was not innocent.
"What kind of person sends an innocent man to prison just to score a win in a case?" -- fjcp
"The prosecutors will not face any real consequences for ruining an innocent man's life." -- gizmo
"They clearly knew that this guy wasn't guilty of murder since somebody else confessed to the murder yet they let the innocent guy behind bars probably thinking "i got no hard feelings, that guy would have ended up killing someone one day"." -- onemoresoop
This is not the case of someone saying "He's a bad guy, so he deserved to be in jail anyway".
The system seriously failed in this case. The actual killer confessed just days after the crime and repeatedly over the years. It wasn't even a mystery who did it.
This seems to be a common rationalization from prosecutors and police. What they fail to realize is that falsely imprisoning even a 'bad guy' undermines the whole system. It has led us to the point where no one should ever speak to the police. A cycle that makes it even harder for police do properly do their job.
There may be a bit more to this case: "Scott said he had gotten the gun, a Tec-9 semi-automatic, from Dixon and the two men had driven together to the crowded corner where the fighting broke out." (http://www.espn.com/golf/story/_/id/24736866/valentino-dixon...)
This type of statement is highly infuriating. This has no bearing on the fact that the original prosecution withheld evidence and he was not the shooter in this case.
He was an accomplice to the murder, having supplied the illegal murder weapon - a TEC-9 semi-automatic pistol - and having arrived at the area of the crime in the same vehicle.
So yes he was in fact a bad guy and yes he did deserve to be in jail for aiding the crime - he shouldn't have been convicted as the shooter and his prison sentence should not have been nearly so long as it was.
A lot of people assume it's "evil people" that are responsible for this stuff. Evil people can't hold a candle to the damage done by normal people rationalizing bad behavior as good.
Here's a quote from Dixon himself in the Golf Digest article:
> I started dating a girl whose brothers were drug dealers, and before long I was in it, too. It's no excuse. It was what you did in my neighborhood if you wanted to make money. I became a mid-level cocaine dealer and pulled in enough to drive flashy cars and cover friends, but not much else. I rode with a weapon, same as everybody.
Yeah, but that's not the point. This person sold a plant derivative to willing buyers; the state locked him in a cage for 27 years. Both are obviously illegal, but wildly different proportionally.
And yet the latter, when finally made to acknowledge their mistake, pulls this "up and coming drug dealer" thing out as their excuse?
> prosecutors say he did provide the murder weapon
I get that it's not fashionable to defend police and prosecutors in this zeitgeist, but this sure seems like it's more complicated than a simple frame job. If you don't technically pull the trigger but your friend does while you go next door to pick up a six pack and an alibi, are you really not guilty?
Where is the evidence that he provided the weapon?
These are the questions we should remain focused on when trying to ascertain guilt or innocence. Not what the prosecutor said. (Prosecutors have in-built incentives to persuade you to one side.) Nor, indeed, should we even focus too much on what the defendant said. (He could have been tortured, or he could just be lying.)
Do you have evidence or not? If not, gtfo.
Now in this case, the prosecutor hid evidence. And that's what complicates everything. When the prosecutors are willing to go to those lengths to cover their untruths, then there is little that can be done to check that lack of integrity given the structure of the current system. That's certainly a problem. But the idea is that if we focus on evidence we won't go wrong.
You’re not guilty of murder, you’re guilty of supplying a weapon. Perhaps you could be convicted on something related to the murder if you knew in advance that the murder was going to take place with the weapon you provided. But that’s almost impossible to prove if your bar is as high as it should be for a murder conviction.
What I don't get is this line, "But despite Mr Dixon's exoneration, prosecutors say he did provide the murder weapon, which they described as a machine gun."
So he was at the store buying beer, and the other guy used his gun? So at most he is guilty of owning an illegal firearm, or automatic weapon?
I am not questioning that what I presented is unbelievable; I am trying to confirm that the gun was indeed his. Who admitted it was his gun? It's obviously illegal, and the other guy confessed to the crime soon after. Did the shooter say it was the other guy's gun?
Whether he was an up and coming drug dealer, or not, or had possession of an illegal firearm, he didn't deserve to be incarcerated for that many years if he didn't pull the trigger. I wonder if he had a relationship to the victim or a vendetta of some sort as well. There was mention it was over a dispute about a girl.
At most he was convicted of owning an illegal firearm. I have no strong information on the relationships between Dixon, Jackson, and Scott, but Dixon did give Scott the weapon and drove himself and Scott to the location (according to Scott), and Scott worked for Dixon's drug enterprise (according to the prosecutor).
Further, first degree murder in New York includes, "(vi) the defendant committed the killing or procured commission of the killing pursuant to an agreement with a person other than the intended victim to commit the same for the receipt, or in expectation of the receipt, of anything of pecuniary value from a party to the agreement or from a person other than the intended victim acting at the direction of a party to such agreement".
A few observations:
1) This man, by all accounts, is free only because he has an extraordinary talent. It's not that his case for innocence was stronger than any specific other inmate's. It's that his talent attracted the attention of people that could work for his release. How many people without artistic talent are nonetheless languishing unjustly in prison?
2) Bureaucracies where the individual cogs (here the prosecutors) have no skin in the game, will always tend towards inhumane outcomes. They don't even need to hold the power of life and death over citizens for this to be the case. Prosecutors face no consequences for wrongly incarcerating people, so naturally, they tend to be overly aggressive in prosecutions.
When designing government agencies in the future, citizens should first figure out how to make sure the bureaucrats have skin in the game before they empower them. Once the bureaucrats are given power, they become petty tyrants. It's just human nature.
> Mr Dixon, 48, had maintained his innocence during 27 years behind bars for a shooting in Buffalo, New York.
> Mr Dixon had served nearly two decades at a notorious prison in upstate New York when his artistic flair attracted the notice of correctional authorities.
Isn't 27 years closer to three decades than two...
I interpret that as: nearly two decades in, his artwork was noticed. 27 years is the total time he spent in prison. So about years would have passed while he appealed his case.
He might have been in a different prison before then. It's another dehumanizing tactic of our prison system to move people around, often away from their families.
The police in this country are absolutely savage. Someone I know was in a major US city this week and saw a police cruiser rev its engine, drive onto the sidewalk and intentionally hit an unarmed man on a bicycle, head on at high speed. The power of that impact and sound of snapping bones was something which will stay in my friend's head forever. There was blood everywhere. My friend was sure the man was dead, although evidently he somehow survived. The cop was white and he's still on active duty. No investigation was made. The man on the bicycle was black. The police department issued a statement stating that it was the bicycle that hit the cruiser. This is America.
Because the person called me, shaking and described what they just saw. The car was half on, half off the curb, after the collision. The cop definitely goosed the gas right before the collision. It was the indiana story. Everyone on the scene was sure he was dead. The exact words my friend used: "I just saw someone die".
What's really shocking is hearing the police department issue flat out lies about what happened.
Edit: after I wrote the original post, due to the fact that somebody caught it on camera it looks like there will be an investigation after all- I'm glad.
I certainly didn't realize this stuff really happened, until my friend saw it firsthand. It's unbelievable. Now I get why black people are so furious. I can't believe that it was a cop who did that.
An attempted homicide by a police officer in a major city which was almost certainly caught on dashcam and has at least one eye witness isn't reported on anywhere? The only thing I could find on Google and Google News that was this:
Prosecutors don't seek justice, they just want to lock up as many of what they perceive as bad guys, and a black man fits their stereotype. They clearly knew that this guy wasn't guilty of murder since somebody else confessed to the murder yet they let the innocent guy behind bars probably thinking "i got no hard feelings, that guy would have ended up killing someone one day". I sometimes wonder how these people sleep at night.
You know how often I watch "Live PD" and believe the guy (or girl) that got pulled over, only to find out that once the K9 arrives, they had pounds of individually-packaged drugs and guns in their vehicle.
re: American Justice System. I recently had to explain to a Chinese coworker of mine how in the U.S you can be held in jail for years pending trial because you can't afford to post bail. He was legit blown away and had no idea how that was possible. Apparently in China they have a couple of days to present evidence from the numerous CCTV cameras in the country or they must release you.
Mechanisms like cash bail and these numerous wrongful conviction stories really highlight how the "land of the free" is anything but.
Did you ask him how he felt about secret trials in China against political opponents or made up evidence that results in execution because they are an "enemy of the people"?
I questioned the high conviction rates, but I think that is a sensitive topic for him as he often says U.S news of what's going on in China is misleading.
We seems fine with a future where AI becomes integrated into our legal system. Here is an excellent opportunity for AI to identify potential innocent people.
I have seen no evidence that supervised or unsupervised ML or "AI" has led to any more accurate application of justice.
I'm not fine with integrating it into the legal system, not while it's vulnerable to the current biases of law enforcement and the justice system. And it would be worse, because once those biases are codified in the machine, there will be a bias toward trusting the evaluation of the machine over a human.
I’d assume it should have less bias on any given case and we’d hope cases like this would be flagged by that system somehow.
However, completely unbiased machine learning seems like something as hard to achieve as being completely unbiased ourselves.
The AI would still have to make use of the data that is given to it. The prosecutors hid that data. Are you saying the AI should spy on prosecutors, too?
"But despite Mr Dixon's exoneration, prosecutors say he did provide the murder weapon, which they described as a machine gun.They also said he was an 'up-and-coming drug dealer' in Buffalo at the time of his arrest."
You can partially thank the media for this. They like to sway opinion on issues for profit. Look at all the cartoons and TV shows and movies from the 80's and 90's demonizing Arabs to make way for the endless middle east wars.
The endless stream of crime dramas that make it clear the police never do wrong and if you make it to a trial you are certainly guilty. We have a prison industry in this country that is predatory to everyone but especially the poorer uneducated classes, and crime dramas are their commercials.
>> The endless stream of crime dramas that make it clear the police never do wrong and if you make it to a trial you are certainly guilty.
I've been watching "The Good Wife" seasons 1 and 2 recently. The show deals with people in private law firms, government prosecuting agencies, law enforcement, and random folks caught up in the legal process. The seasons are set in Chicago during the post-2008-crash time frame, so there's a lot of financial pressure all around.
The show depicts well the financial and political game, the skewed incentives, and deal-making, the disregard for truth, racial and economic biases, how law enforcement often actually "does wrong". I'm sure the show's not very realistic, but it's fun, it paints almost no one in good light, and exposes the double-dealing and back-stabbing up and down the stack.
Yeah, I'm not buying the whole "crime dramas portray cops as infallible" argument. Every cop show I've ever watched shows the police regularly bending the rules or otherwise being shitty at their jobs. If there wasn't controversy in the plot it wouldn't be entertaining. Saying crime dramas cause failures in our legal system is like saying violent video games cause mass shootings.
That is called manufacturing consent. How often do police get in trouble for bending or outright breaking the rules... that behavior is normalized in media, which normalizes it in reality.
In this case at least, we can thank the media for the acquittal -- if you count the magazine among the media.
It's a little less dramatic than it might have been, since his artwork as the catalyst had nothing particularly to do with the case. But certainly the magazine's participation here was constructive to the right outcome.
The local news station, on the other hand, was perhaps a bit less helpful.
Prosecutors and judges should be held more accountable for malpractice. This man lost his life when the facts were in his favor. Someone should be punished for this injustice.
Even worse, lots of states won't even compensate the wrongly convicted for taking their lives from them.