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How an ex-FBI profiler helped put an innocent man behind bars

latimes.com

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Re: How an ex-FBI profiler helped put an innocent man behind bars

#51

Post by warent »

oh_sigh wrote: post #38

This Safarik guy sounds like a real piece of shit. Absolutely zero remorse for telling a tall tale in front of a judge and jury which led to a man spending 11 years in prison for something he didn't do. > “Like other killers I’ve known, he’s also arrogant and narcissistic — fatal traits that led to his demise,” Safarik says. “This was all his doing…. Ultimately, he was responsible for it.” I only see arrogance and na…

His ego does seem completely out of control. Safarik seems to take himself way too seriously while simultaneously treating other people with little regard

Re: How an ex-FBI profiler helped put an innocent man behind bars

#53

Post by kens »

I've been skeptical of FBI profilers ever since they declared that the Unabomber had attended college or trade school but not graduated. [1] It turned out that he had a PhD and had been a professor.

[1] http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Mixed-Success-for-FBI-Age...

Re: How an ex-FBI profiler helped put an innocent man behind bars

#54

Post by nerpderp83 »

Steeeve wrote: post #21

I remember this case from when it happened. I can't believe it's been that long. It seemed pretty obvious at the time that the parking lot guard was innocent. The DA was stuck on the idea that if he was doing his job he would have made her leave. And if he didn't make her leave, he must have murdered her. It just didn't pass the sniff test.

Does he float? If he sinks, he wasn't a witch.

Re: How an ex-FBI profiler helped put an innocent man behind bars

#55

Post by AngeloAnolin »

danso wrote: post #3

Worth noting that the submitter of this story, user ClintEhrlich, played a main role in freeing the wrongly-convicted man. He posted about it on HN a couple years back, in a highly upvoted and discussed thread (500+ upvotes, 200+ comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12010760 Edit: it's an ironic coincidence that this follow-up feature was published on the same day of the news of O.J. Simpson's parole: http…

The juries may have been watching a lot of "Lie To Me" type of series.

Re: How an ex-FBI profiler helped put an innocent man behind bars

#56

Post by vidarh »

danso wrote: post #3

Worth noting that the submitter of this story, user ClintEhrlich, played a main role in freeing the wrongly-convicted man. He posted about it on HN a couple years back, in a highly upvoted and discussed thread (500+ upvotes, 200+ comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12010760 Edit: it's an ironic coincidence that this follow-up feature was published on the same day of the news of O.J. Simpson's parole: http…

The moment in the story where I lost all respect for this profiler was the description of how he insisted a "tell" implied lying. There are no known generic reliable tells for lying and anyone claiming there is are basically disqualifying themselves from being an authority on behaviour.

There are reliable tells that imply "pacifying behaviours" for stress, and those can be useful to pay attention to in order to get people to trip up in interrogations, but there are many possible reasons for that kind of stress, including an interrogation itself being a stressor. But people who try to identify lies based on their theories of such tells without intimately knowing that person in advance generally do no better than chance.

(A good book on the subject, which gives a very sober assessment of what body language can actually reliably tell us vs. where you need to thread carefully is Joe Navarro's "What Every Body is Saying" - Navarro is a former FBI agent and trainer)

Re: How an ex-FBI profiler helped put an innocent man behind bars

#57

Post by wildmusings »

winter_blue wrote: post #37

Is there any possibility of this man Safarik being punished? Can Safarik be sued and held accountable for destroying eleven years of an innocent man's life? I feel like some sort punishment is due towards ruthless opportunistic people like these. (I would say the same about the people who pursued Swartz even after MIT & JSTOR dropped the case.)

>I feel like some sort punishment is due towards ruthless opportunistic people like these. (I would say the same about the people who pursued Swartz even after MIT & JSTOR dropped the case.)

How could you possibly prosecute people for the Swartz case? They were simply seeking the punishment that the law specifies. If you don't like the law, then lobby to have it changed. If you want it to be less vigorously enforced, then vote for a President/Governor/DA that will enforce it less vigorously. You can't put people in jail for following the law.

Re: How an ex-FBI profiler helped put an innocent man behind bars

#58

Post by rufusroflpunch »

DINKDINK wrote: post #50
rufusroflpunch wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My feeling has always been that we should reengineer our jury system. Jurists should be professionals, not a random nobody pulled from the community. They should be independent, private employees with a code of ethics and training in skepticism and the sciences of statistics and evidence. Also, they could specialize in fields relevant to certain cases. In our current system, we look for the most ignorant juries so th…

>Jurists should be professionals, not a random nobody pulled from the community. [...] In the new system, professional jurists would be paid for by the courts, but not directly employed by them or the government. Jurist are as impartial as you can get. Making someone a paid professional jurist doesn't magically strip them of all their biases. Courts are intimately familiar with this, precisely when they ask jurists "…

What I am proposing would certainly require a Constitutional amendment (in the US, at least). It is a departure from the "jury of your peers", which is the intention. The specificity of modern scientific evidence warrants rethinking the way we select juries. A jury of normal citizens is just not equipped, educationally, for the job. Specialists are required with intimate subject knowledge.

I am proposing that the expense of the jury be covered by the court (as it is now for citizen juries, and it is also is with public defenders), but that they not be employees of the court. Again, like public defenders.

It certainly wouldn't be a perfect system, but I believe it plugs some of the holes that have appeared in our current system of jury selection.

Re: How an ex-FBI profiler helped put an innocent man behind bars

#59

Post by leephillips »

barrkel wrote: post #44
leephillips wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's one version of the epidemiological fallacy. My impression, which may be wishful thinking, is that prosecutors are better educated about these things now and that this kind of thing is less common.

AFAIK prosecutors are motivated by convictions, not justice.

I've heard plenty of anecdotes that suggest that this is true of many prosecutors, but other anecdotes showing that there are also good ones out there.

Re: How an ex-FBI profiler helped put an innocent man behind bars

#60

Post by mncharity »

gumby wrote: post #5

The big crime is how little epistemological support there is for some of the big forensic tools (fingerprints, DNA, bite marks, arson spread, etc), how little interest there is in researching these areas, and how trusted they are. But I am curious: apart from TV shows, how important is this kind of evidence in most trials? Is it actually uncommon?

> how little epistemological support

An introduction with links (caveat Frontline): http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/forensic-tools-wha...

Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: A Path Forward (2009), Summary: https://www.nap.edu/read/12589/chapter/2 This https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4581003/ puts it in more recent context.

> arson spread

For example: "Progress" In Fire Investigation: Moving from Witchcraft and Folklore to the Misuse of Models and the Abuse of Science[2](PDF; not as good as the title; depressing) from [3].

> how little interest there is

One challenge is the forensic expert "system" is extremely heterogeneous. In funding, honesty and integrity, professionalism, research, oversight and regulation.

> how important is this kind of evidence in most trials

And since most "trials" are plea bargains, how important in pleas?

And the US plea bargain system is its own pit of systemic dysfunction.

[2] http://www.firescientist.com/Documents/PROGRESSIN%20FIRE%20I... [3] http://www.firescientist.com/publications.php

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