I worked at The Innocence Project for 2 years. When I was working there, our exoneration rate for cases that made it to DNA testing was 50%. Imagine that - 50%. This kind of failure rate is unacceptable. This is a compounded by the fact that the majority of cases we saw never made it to DNA testing because evidence was so old that it was typically lost.
The Innocence Project still has a huge backlog of cases. Legal cases are incredibly long and expensive. A single DNA test costs thousands of dollars. Donations mean everything here. Thank you.
Wow. This leave me think two different things - 1. How much can I donate to help and 2. What can I do to help with getting DNA evidence out of old samples. How many people are languishing in jail because we have not using the best science available?
I think what goes on in plea bargains is more of an issue. If I am arrested for a minor crime and the prosecutor decides to pile on dozens of parallel charges such that I am now facing 50 years to life if convicted, but offers me 3 month if I plead guilty, then no matter how innocent I am I am going to take the plea. Unless you can prove beyond reasonable doubt that you are innocent what rational person can afford to take the risk of going to trial.
It annoys me that people keep saying in such cases "yeah, but you won't really get 50 years, even if they succeed".
Imagine yourself talking to those prosecutors and being threatened with 50 years, and then given that 3 months deal. What would you do? Would you think "yeah, I'm not really going to get 50 years" - or would you be scared as hell about spending the rest of your life in prison?
So yeah, I think such threats absolutely do matter, and the system should be changed so this doesn't happen anymore. I've also recently heard that something like 98 percent of people charged take the plea deal (I think it was from some documentary). That's INSANE. That's not how the justice system is supposed to work.
Everyone should be getting a fair trial, regardless. I mean, even if the guy is guilty - wouldn't you rather have him in a fair trial to make sure he gets what he deserves, rather than have the prosecutors offer him a much smaller prison time?
>It annoys me that people keep saying in such cases "yeah, but you won't really get 50 years, even if they succeed".
If convicted you can certainly get 50 years because the of minimum sentencing rules. This is where you get juries saying after the trial "I had no idea he would be sentenced to 50 years - I thought he would only get a couple of months".
As a defendant your lawyer can't tell the jury the sentence you face if convicted - apparently if the jury knows you face a minimum of 50 years for a minor crime they might not be so keen to convict you!
That's why jury members shouldn't be the average, possibly dim, possibly outright stupid, possibly just apathetic person, but actually be required to posses at least a modicum of intelligence, so as to be able to research minimum sentences etc.
Yes, but if we make it easy for anyone who can fog a mirror to get out of serving in combination with throwing anyone off who the prosecution thinks might be able fog a mirror, then we can expect that who ever is left will have few problems.
My feeling is serving on a jury it is a bit like voting. I know it is unlikely that I am doing any good, but it is my duty to do my best in both circumstances.
Prosecutors know they all won't stick, but some of them will. So maybe not 50. But with minimum sentences for the ones that do, 15 years.
How about if someone takes a plea, that there still has to be a trial with corroborating evidence besides the person taking that plea that shows their guilt. The defendant can assist the prosecution, but cannot testify against themselves since they would no longer be a credible witness.
The government does everything it can to avoid having a jury trial, and when a jury trial does happen, the government does everything it can to prevent the jurors from being educated about their role and abilities as jurors.
This is why I never try to get out of jury duty even when I could. Everyone willing to go to trial deserves at least one person on the jury smart enough to at least be able to get off.
Of course, demonstrating intelligence, knowledge and willingness to do the research is one of the primary ways to get yourself excluded, as the prosecution wants room temperature IQs who will say 'guilty' when prompted. If you want to get out of it, all you really need to even do is say the words "jury nullification".
Myself, I've never been asked yet, but if I was, I think I'd do it for most cases as someone has to be there who understands the powers a jury actually has, but get out if it was something really bad or one that's likely to last for months and months.
It certainly is. If you wanted to design a system for getting innocent people to plead guilt you would be hard pressed to come up with a better system.
I wish that some prosecutor would "go rogue" and start applying all these tactics on nice middle class people. The outcry after a couple of weeks would be so great that something might be done about changing things.
Why would any prosecutor do that. They're as smart as you are, and they know they'd kill the golden goose by doing that. There is a never ending supply of poor black men to add to a prosecutor's career tally; no need to rock the boat.
>Why would any prosecutor do that. They're as smart as you are, and they know they'd kill the golden goose by doing that.
I know :(
In my heart I always hope there are people out there that will put doing the right thing ahead of their material comfort and status. Right or wrong Snowden did show there are some people who do.
Could I raise a somewhat academic question? The idea of conviction is binary: either you're convinced beyond reasonable doubt of guilt or you let the man go. In a way this is good, but in a way, because of it, prosecutors end up putting a lot of innocent people behind bars while defense attorneys get a lot of guilty people off the hook.
What if there is a slight -- repeat slight -- spectrum? Personally, I would not mind being theoretically "conditionally detained/penalized/sentenced" provided:
1. The penalty is low -- police surveillance, fine that will be returned if exonerated
2. You're compensated if exonerated
3. These penalties carry no more stigma than jury duty
A scheme like this might allow the criminal justice system to move a bit faster. Or does this sound completely outrageous?
No it is not a bad idea. The Scottish legal system has something along this lines with the "not proven" verdict [0]. You are not proven guilty, but at the same time the jury doesn't think you are innocent. It is something I would like to see used outside of Scotland.
Well, either you did it or not. If it's not proven beyond reasonable doubt, we decide you didn't. What you're proposing is essentially 'you might have done it so we're going to slap you a bit'. But if we can't prove somebody did it beyond reasonable doubt, we should just aquit.
Isn't that the point of a misdemeanor vs felony? Probation ("police surveillance") and fines are usual punishments, as opposed to prison time. Traffic violations are also an example of a more "agile" system.
Among other injustices: prosecutors have an incentive to go after those who cannot mount a strong defense (and many tools to further reduce the ability of individuals to defend themselves via asset seizures, gag orders, and similar mechanisms).
This means that there's a great deal of prosecution of petty and minor crimes, including a huge number of convictions for drug offenses and for what amounts to "being poor". I'll add child support payments to this list: if the state sees a benefit in raising a child, why make that a burden on one specific individual, to the point of incarceration, particularly where circumstances may be less than clear (family law is like that). It's another area where decriminalization could very well have better results for all involved: less acrimonious court cases, better welfare for the child, and a lack of oppression on the alleged father.
Meantime: large and complex cases against those with means, whether drug kingpins, organized crime lords, or Wall Street bankers and traders (but I repeat myself) go under-prosecuted. The cases are more complex, yes, but the social harm presented also, IMO, greatly outweighs that of most petty crime.
Add in the psychological aspects of much crime, violent, white-collar, or otherwise, and there's a lot found wanting in the present US criminal and penal system.
Many moons ago one of the more interesting college courses I took was, of all things, a breadth-requirement literature class covering concepts of penal law. The reading included Michel Foucault[1], his book I, Pierre Riviere, Having Slaughtered my Mother, my Sister and my Brother[3], and Panopticon by Jeremy Bentham[4]. It's proven to be one of the more serendipitously fascinating and relevant courses in my entire college career.
The 4.1% wrongful conviction rate mentioned in this article is interesting, but doesn't come close to displaying the gross injustices perpetrated by our "justice" system. First, prosecutors routinely overcharge defendants in an effort to extort guilty pleas. Second, 3 Strikes and other anti-recidivism laws have produced barbaric sentencing results for relatively minor crimes. Examples: In California, 30.1 percent of inmates are serving life sentences. Utah, 29.2 percent; Nevada, 21.5; Massachusetts, 19.4; New York, 18.8; Alabama, 16.6, and Washington, 15.4.
Sadly, there is no relief in sight. The Supreme Court has ruled that "the Eighth Amendment's prohibition of 'cruel and unusual punishments' was aimed at excluding only certain modes [or types] of punishment, and was not a 'guarantee against disproportionate sentences." This ruling came down in a case where they upheld the life prison sentence of a California man convicted of shoplifting three golf clubs priced at $399.
In short: the US justice system is out of control, and the Supreme Court has no intention of stopping it.
Your math is all wrong: if at a given moment in time 30% of inmates are serving life sentences, it really doesn't mean 30% of prison sentences are life sentences! Look at the population of inmates in a year ago and now, and the subset of life prisoners is probably mostly the same people (they don't get out much), while a much larger percentage of the rest of the inmate population isn't the same people.
I edited the comment and removed my confusing commentary, but I wasn't suggesting that 30% of all sentences are life sentences. I just said that if you are in prison in California, you have a 30% chance of dying there (which is in fact mathematically correct). Regardless, the numbers are off the charts vs. the rest of the world.
People with shorter sentences are less likely to make it to the statistics, so 30% of current inmates does not mean you have 30% of getting life sentence if you are sentenced.
What is outrageous, but unfortunately not shocking, is those responsible for such a critical process are not rigorously measuring its accuracy. Android app developers know more about their success rate. It's from a pre-scientific age, where something that seems philosophically correct (a defense lawyer and a jury of your peers, an independent judge, dehydrating and bleeding sick people, the function of the pineal gland) is assumed to obtain correct outcomes. QED.
What is shocking is that the public, especially the great many who have interacted with the law enforcement system, continues to have faith in it. As long there is no political pressure from the public, the judiciary won't change.
Off the top of my head, two methods might better measure accuracy:
METHOD A
1) Take a random sample of prisoners
2) Re-examine the evidence in their cases in a highly rigorous way (the judicial system does not do this unless the defendant can afford it).
3) Most cases will be inconclusive (I think). From the conclusive cases, you can infer something about the accuracy of the judicial "method"
METHOD B
1) Identify kinds of evidence that meets scientific levels of accuracy, such as DNA
2) Start with the population in jail for which that evidence is available. Because most cases are settled by plea bargains, I expect it will be most cases.
3) Again, most cases will be inconclusive (I think). From the conclusive cases, you can infer something about the accuracy of the judicial "method"
> Rarely, at least according to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. In a 2006 opinion he cited an approximate error rate of 0.027 percent, based on [...]
I laughed out loud. 1 mistake per 3700 cases. The software industry averages 1 bug every 50 lines of code [1]. Microsoft hits ~1/2000. The space shuttle achieved ~1/20000, but that takes serious dedication and cost [2].
Doesn't matter what the "based on" is. Deciding court cases is not easier than writing a line of code. That estimate is off by at least two orders of magnitude. Which is funny until the fact that it was a supreme court justice who repeated it sinks in.
(The article itself gives a false positive rate of 4.1%, which is much more reasonable.)
While that number also seems low to me, comparing the failure rate of a court case with a single line of code is a ludicrous analogy. I, a distracted and harried developer, will write hundreds of lines of code a day and not think twice about them, whereas each criminal trial is, for some period of time, the subject of undivided attention of at least one judge, two lawyers and a jury.
Errors certainly happen, but they're almost certain not to be dominated by errors of simple oversight, which explain the vast majority of bugs.
undivided attention? being in the courtroom doesn't make you any less distracted or harried. the lawyers are handling multiple cases at the same time. the judge is probably doing crosswords up on the bench. some of the jurors are probably thinking about where to eat for lunch, others decided the case soon as they saw the defendant walk in the courtroom wearing jailhouse orange. and That's just for the 10% of cases that actually make it to trial.
I agree that the style of the typical errors differs, although there are definitely cases decided by some stupid mistake made when collecting evidence.
But even when I try and test I don't hit 1 bug per 2000 lines of code. For example, I wrote a collapsing futures library for obj-c [1]. It only has about 1000 lines of non-test non-header code. The code is tested, I've used it in projects, and I re-read it now and then trying to come up with ways to break it. Is it reasonable for me to lay 50:50 odds on a bug being present? I don't think so.
(Are you the owner of the github repo statsd.net [2]? `someGraphiteLine.Equals(null)` returns false but `someGraphiteLine.Equals((GraphiteLine)null)` throws an exception.)
A public defender may have in excess of 200 cases. Some defendants spend fewer than five minutes with their attorney. Some counties bid out public defense at fixed prices; in 2007 Virginia capped public defense for 20-to-life felonies at $2085. Bach[1] documents a defender who was paid $42,150; in four years he took fourteen cases to trial, out of 1493; on one day he represented 89 defendants, all of whom plead guilty or had their trials deferred.
These numbers compare unfavorably with the cost of software contracts, the typical pay of software developers, and the amount of time that a line of code gets to spend with its developer[2].
[1] Amy Bach, _Ordinary Injustice: How America Holds Court_
[2] Steve McConnell, _Software Estimation_
This 4% error rate (which doesn't necessarily translate to other kinds of cases, particularly ones with plea bargains) would mean the US had approximately 91,000 people incarcerated who were innocent (using 2011 numbers). If you count in people on probation and parole, the number raises to 290,000 people (using 2008 numbers).
I don't know what the error rate actually is in these cases, but the numbers are staggering if even approximately correct - an entire city of innocent people are tied up in the criminal justice system.
* much less likely to be participating in a lengthy appeals process
* subject to corrupting influences such as for-profit prisons
* vastly dominated by "plea agreements" in which people are convicted via coercive influence rather than any evidentiary process (and far worse if socioeconomically disadvantaged or non-white).
If 4% only refers to death row errors, the overall error rate for wrongful convictions is likely in the double digits.
Also, the error rate probably goes up again for non-incarceration results which let the system "slap people on the wrist" since that is seen as less serious (despite high incidental cost to life, career, mental & physical health). It's the legal system's equivalent of closing a support ticket.
And this is only classifying "correct judgement" vs. "wrongfully convicted." It fails to model cases where a criminal conviction was a really stupid way to deal with the problem, which could have been addressed via non-criminal means.
I agree w/ the stupidity of treating certain issues as criminal. This is, I think, where the bulk of the problem really lies. The judicial system is overstressed and trying cases is very expensive, leading to lower quality investigations and the plea situation you mention.
I guess what bugs me about this is that the wrongful conviction issue is always presented alongside the capital punishment issue. They are separate issues and, I think, related only in that both deal with the criminal justice system. Wrongful conviction is awful no matter what the sentence.
Yes, the study found that on for death row inmates, but there are many reasons to suspect that it's likely not significantly lower in other populations.
I commented on this in my original comment, but ran the numbers to get a sense of the potential scale of the problem.
If there's even a potential for 100,000 innocent Americans to be subjected to prison, I think that justifies a serious inquiry in to the criminal justice system be made.
Yes and that is the lowest possible rate because death rows are the most scrutinized cases.
And if we stretch innocent as "No jury would find this person guilty if it gets to trial and they knew the real size of the mallet the DA was swinging" then you probably could get to above 80% in some cases of war on drugs.
I honestly find the idea of spending decades of my life in a prison facing daily verbal and physical abuse from guards and inmates to be far more terrifying than death.
No, you can't un-execute somebody, but you can't give someone years of their life back, either.
I remember reading that some prisoners get upset when they are not given a death penalty, but instead life without parole. The reason why is that there are lots of high quality lawyers that will work pro bono on your case if you are on death row, but if you are just another lifer then nobody wants to know you.
If I was poor, innocent and convicted of murder I would want to be given a death sentence for exactly this reason. Crazy system.
So is the US sentencing system, which dishes out decades in prison to irresponsible teenagers and non-violent drug offenders, effectively ensuring they can never re-integrate to society.
In most of the world, sentences are measured in months, and it takes something on the level of murder to end up behind bars for over a decade.
In Denmark we have a bunch of problems with prisons costing too much. So much, in fact, that people from other countries comes to Denmark to get caught doing a crime. Or homeless people walk into a bank and use the "Pointy finger in pocket" tactic to go to jail through the winter.
We do, however, do a very good job at getting people into the "right" prison. We put hardened criminals into jails with other hardened criminals, which has many restrictions on your daily life, while keeping teenagers who just fucked up big time in prisons that are much less violent, and also keep the restrictions to a minimum. We even allow some of them to go out and to work together with normal employees at the end of their sentences.
We let everyone get an education or start an education while inside, too.
It costs a lot while the individuals are "locked up" but I'm very certain that it's doing a good job, at least compared to other systems, such as the US one.
We do fuck up, though, putting hardened criminals into low security prisons, which lets them escape. I also don't like having people coming from other countries come to Denmark to take an education in a Danish jail, paid for by my tax money. But I think that is the lesser of the two evils.
Compensation can never truly compensate somebody for lost time though. No billions of dollars could give you back your 20s, or whatever decade you lost due to wrongful imprisonment.
I fear that if executions were abolished in America, too many people would brush off their hands, declare the system well reformed, and not give further reform more thought. Execution is problematic because of wrongful convictions, not the other way around. I think too many people frame it as "wrongful conviction is problematic because of execution". Abolishing execution does not solve the problem, it merely marginally lessens the impact of the problem.
I might not get hacker news in prison, but I would probably get some books that I would enjoy even more. Prison can be really bad, but on average I think it is far better than death.
I agree that prison is better then death, but I do not think being in prison is like being in comfortable room happily reading books whole day.
You are subject to prison rules and have to live in society of other prisoners and guards. You can loose your reading privileges for some petty reason and I'm not sure how big prison library is. It is not like they would be determined to make you happy or at least leave you alone - the atmosphere can get very poisonous.
Most people that have been in prison do not report about it as about pleasant places where they learned a lot from books. They usually report it being very bad place and learning some street smarts (which I would happily pass).
I would agree with you. I've heard plenty of people say the death penalty would be preferred over life in prison, but I'll bet when faced with that choice, most people would choose life. It's just how we're wired.
Dunno about in the US, but at least here in the UK the Government has stopped allowing people to send prisoners books full stop as part of their campaign to get tough on prisoners.
The government's argument is that prisoners can still use prison libraries or buy books from approved suppliers using their earnings from work tasks. However, libraries are often very limited in the choice they offer, access can be arbitrarily restricted, and their earnings (average £9.60 in 2008 [1]) are likely to be insufficient for book purchases after paying for more essential items.
I agree that this is cruel. It's part of an effort by the government to make prison appear tougher to appeal to its core (right-wing) supporters.
I think there's (pychological?) research suggesting that the prospect of life in prison is a stronger crime deterrent than the death penalty (and hence that it makes sense for countries not to have the death penalty for preventative reasons). I haven't seen that research myself though, I'd welcome pointers. But it would match your sentiment.
Prison has three purposes. These are deterrent, rehabilitation, and protection of public.
In the UK, it has been recognised that the deterrent part of prison is actually quite weak. It is not effective for crimes of the moment, where the perpetrator is not thinking clearly. It is also not very effective for career criminals, because the proportion of crimes that are actually caught, prosecuted, convicted, and attract a sufficient sentence is quite low, and many criminals do not believe they will be caught. It is also not effective for those who commit crimes out of desperation, for instance to fuel a drug habit.
That leaves rehabilitation and protection of public. Truly dangerous criminals are sentenced to life for the protection of public.
In terms of rehabilitation, officials regularly promise that this aspect will be made more effective, but there are very few prison schemes that actually improve the long-term behaviour of a criminal. Likewise, drug treatment often takes longer than the prison sentence that the typical drug user is given. The magistrate's blog at http://magistratesblog.blogspot.co.uk/ has regular grumblings about this. In the UK, some prisoners are effectively sentenced to prison for a certain time, but must show that they have attended a treatment programme before being released. There was some trouble recently when some prisoners complained that they had not been given the opportunity during their fixed sentence to attend such a programme.
So, of the three effects of prison, deterrence in the UK is seen as the least useful.
Do you have references about the deterrence aspect or the relative usefulness? Are these public beliefs or scientific analyses or projections?
The UK seems to have some odd relation to crime. Ubiquitous surveillance and fencing of just about anything (schools etc.) seem to hint that crime is believed to be everywhere or expected, daily TV broadcasts of police-vs-crime shows seem to indicate or enforce a public (morbid?) fascination for it. Perhaps it's a belief thing (similar to religions?) where one feels the need to feed oneself cues that one belongs to the positive part of society and not to the criminals so as not to feel bad? I don't know whether I'm understanding things right, but I'm also not confident that in such a setting public opinion about these matters represents truth.
(I'm a Swiss guy living in the UK, and comparing to Canada and my home country.)
Plug: I'm putting together a list of developers and data scientists who are interested in working with Measures for Justice to do something about this. If you're one of them, let me know.
Don't forget that the lunch break can have an impact on the outcome:
The [research] team found that, at the start of the day, the judges granted around two-thirds of the applications before them. As the hours passed, that number fell sharply (see chart), eventually reaching zero. But clemency returned after each of two daily breaks, during which the judges retired for food. The approval rate shot back up to near its original value, before falling again as the day wore on.
If something as simple as a lunch break can have this type of impact on judges, then imagine how other circumstances of their personal life can impact longer trials.
It's worth mentioning that prosecutorial immunity, a form of qualified immunity, is a relatively recent creation (20th century, possibly as recent as Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents[1], 1971), and not the eternal concept some portray it as.
I did jury service in the UK once. It would terrify me being in court for something I didn't do.
We were clearly instructed to base our decision on the evidence, which there was very little of - just one word against another. At the end the judge seemed to sum up, and it to me seemed that he was advising a non-guilty verdict, based on exactly that lack of evidence. Yet a large proportion of the jury still seemed to base their decision on tabloid headline style judgements and non-evidence.
"OK, the times didn't add up for that bit of the story, but maybe he should be found guilty of that other part, just in case."
Its not some sort of bargain, there is either evidence or there is not. In this case there was not any real evidence.
As I say I would be absolutely terrified to be in that position.
What I find most hideous about every single wrong conviction is that it could not just have prevented most of the time and that it was contrived by overeager prosecutors - for every one wrongfully convicted the real culprit is walking freely!
Just watch "West of Memphis" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2130321/) and see how the state solves the issue of three wrongfully convicted boys - with something as rediculous and stupid as the Alford plea (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alford_plea) - nothing more than a sophistry with the very practical effect of that the police doesn't even have to solve the crime anymore.
I am from Germany and we have a less extreme contemporary example of wrong conviction of Gustl Mollath - he was basically fucked over by a network of Bavarian judges, prosecutors, bankers and expert witnesses for denouncing the HypoVereinsbank of fiscal evasion.
So what is an acceptable percentage of false positives for criminal convictions resulting in incarcerations?
From "It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer" I'm guessing it's at most 10%, but that already seems unrealistically low.
It may work for death row, but extrapolating it to other convictions doesn't seem very rigorous. With such high stakes, could there be an unaccounted greater prevalence of framing someone else in capital crimes compared to lesser crimes? To put it another way, how much of the design of a crime comes down to making it look like an innocent person is guilty?
Or support this defense attorney (former NYC prosecutor) who is working to educate people about the justice system by drawing The Illustrated Guide to the Law: http://lawcomic.net/ http://www.patreon.com/nathanburney