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I was falsely arrested

iwasfalselyarrested.com

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Re: I was falsely arrested

#51

Post by brazzledazzle »

benbenolson wrote: post #48
golergka wrote: post #24

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

If you're missing something, I must be missing it, too. He said that the person in the video is "lighter", and has a "hooked nose with a dent in it". I'm certain that there's another video that's not shown on the site, because there is no possible way that you could determine those details from the 20 pixels that make up the thief's face.

That video is from the other robbery where the robber was shot and killed by the clerk. The video from which the snapshot was taken hasn't been released and has only been shown to the suspect and his attorney and it was during that viewing that the attorney took the picture. hth

Re: I was falsely arrested

#52

Post by DanielBMarkham »

beat wrote: post #39
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, I'm perfectly capable of explaining why I do things. Look at what you've done here: you've taken away my agency. Instead of letting me engage in a conversation, you've pronounced some over-arching reason for my comment, thereby not only eliminating anything I might have to offer, but wiping aside any category of comment that is similar to mine. Gotta watch that. It's perfect fine for an internal dialog. Aft…

1. My point was that you can't always explain why you do things. That "you" isn't personal, btw. It's true of everyone, myself included. We all respond according to our social conditioning. Thinking we're so smart that social conditioning doesn't apply is stupid. 2. I haven't taken away your agency, or rejected you from conversation. We're conversing right now, aren't we? And yes, we might learn something. Are you le…

Thank you.

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

Re: I was falsely arrested

#53

Post by beat »

vezzy-fnord wrote: post #40
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whenever I read something that emotionally moves me, it sets off my bullshit detector. That's especially true when it's something I'm predisposed to believing. There is no context here, just a sad story. You can post a thousand of these stories. It all adds to to a bunch of "There's a bunch of sad stories in the world" without any other data. It's odd, because I always get nervous about making comments like I did. Pe…

You're assuming that a collective (e.g. cops) can be neatly reduced to the sum of individual action without loss of information. This is not the case. Individual cops need not be bad for the police as an institution to be an intrinsically hazardous one.

That's a really good way of putting it.

I live in Minneapolis, so I'm uncomfortably close to the current protests. There are plenty of nice, well-meaning cops out there spraying mace at people in my city for exercising their right to free speech and assembly. The Minneapolis police, as an institution have down a terrible job of handling the protests. (and please, people, don't turn this into a meta-discussion of the protesters or the original shooting. I'm just observing some facts here.)

Re: I was falsely arrested

#54

Post by lyschoening »

golergka wrote: post #24

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

> Am I missing something here?

Yes. The video at the bottom is a video of the second robbery—the robbery that occurred after he was arrested and where the actual robbers got shot. It is not the video that was used to identify him.

This is explained in the second paragraph on the page.

Re: I was falsely arrested

#55

Post by beat »

ncallaway wrote: post #37
beat wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Following on, it would be far more effective to just radically reduce the obscene rates of arrest and incarceration in this country, make sure bail is fair so unaffordable bail isn't used to force guilty pleas, make sure we have sufficient public defenders (easy to do if we could lighten their case load by 80% or so), and in general radically reduce the chances of someone getting arrested/charged in the first place.…

I absolutely agree with the reforms that you've proposed. I think these are another important reform that can bend the curve on prosecutorial misconduct. Prosecutorial misconduct and irresponsibility is a big reason why we have obscene rates of incarceration. I totally agree that we should radically reduce the rates of incarceration, but how do you do that? Do you tell prosecutors to incarcerate fewer people? Do you…

Certainly, this particular case is prosecutorial misconduct. There was probably probable cause for the initial arrest, but not to keep it going. Sometimes I wonder how much of this is prosecutors not wanting to admit they were wrong and they did an awful thing to an innocent person?

Re: I was falsely arrested

#56

Post by russell_h »

thatswrong0 wrote: post #13
rhino369 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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

Especially because prisoners on death row aren't likely to have accepted a plea bargain.

It seems reasonable to expect that plea bargains at least slightly increase the rate of imprisonment of innocent persons.

Re: I was falsely arrested

#57

Post by coldtea »

rhino369 wrote: post #9
celticninja wrote: post #4

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

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

Even that conservative error rate come from academics "in the system" is about "guilty/not guilty" style errors.

Whether the guilty deserve the punishment they got (what with BS like "three strikes", "zero tolerance" etc) it's another matter altogether.

Re: I was falsely arrested

#58

Post by brazzledazzle »

dogma1138 wrote: post #31
golergka wrote: post #24

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

Why is this being downvoted? The 34s video they released has 3 offenders, and you can't see any of their faces. While this could be not the only surveillance video in this case it doesn't really collaborates anything said in the post.

I'm starting to wonder if the site was updated between when you three read it and when I read it. Different video, different robbery. The video in evidence for his case hasn't been released. The attorney had to take a picture (which is the one you see at the top). The video at the bottom is the video of the robbery in which the person he suspects of being the real robber in his case is killed.

Re: I was falsely arrested

#59

Post by golergka »

lyschoening wrote: post #54
golergka wrote: post #24

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

> Am I missing something here? Yes. The video at the bottom is a video of the second robbery—the robbery that occurred after he was arrested and where the actual robbers got shot. It is not the video that was used to identify him. This is explained in the second paragraph on the page.

I should have make myself more clear. You see, I understand that.

What I also understand is that it is the _only_ video we actually have chance to see.

Re: I was falsely arrested

#60

Post by AnimalMuppet »

Nadya wrote: post #20
thatswrong0 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

So long as the majority population deems an error rate to be preferable to letting the more extreme criminals (rapists, murderers, arsonists, blah) 'walk free', there will be an error rate. I'd sooner let ten all-but-certain criminals walk free than convict even a single innocent person. But I am not most people. Furthermore, there is not a good demonstration that decreasing the error rate (which would require impris…

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

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

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

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

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