How an ex-FBI profiler helped put an innocent man behind bars • Hacker News Board

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

#71

Post by sixothree » Fri, Jul 21, 2017, 3:28 AM UTC

IIAOPSW wrote: post #69

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…

You know the saying "if you like sausages never go to the sausage factory"? Well I've got some bad news for you about the justice system. We like to think of courts and juries in the idealistic view given to us in school. Its just like "12 Angry Men". Everyone gets their fair shake in court. Even if 11 people want to convict and go home the 12th one will stand up right? After all, you're a reasonable person. You can'…

12 Angry Men would never play out in my state where you can be convicted for murder by 10 of the 12 jurors voting guilty.

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

#72

Post by icelancer » Fri, Jul 21, 2017, 3:32 AM UTC

What is fair compensation for innocent victims put behind bars?

When wrongly convicted inmates are freed from prison, I think it reasonable to remunerate them per year of jail time, with accelerating penalties (as more years are lost to jail, opportunity is taken away at an accelerating rate; 20 years lost to prison is far more than 10 times worse than 2 years lost to prison, for example).

The base rate of $550,000 tax-free per year for lost work/family/life opportunity and pain/suffering seems eminently fair to me, with escalating amounts per year, as stated before. Probably could get behind a permanent waiver of personal income tax for life on any income under $200,000/year as well.

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

#73

Post by goodells » Fri, Jul 21, 2017, 3:38 AM UTC

icelancer wrote: post #72

What is fair compensation for innocent victims put behind bars? When wrongly convicted inmates are freed from prison, I think it reasonable to remunerate them per year of jail time, with accelerating penalties (as more years are lost to jail, opportunity is taken away at an accelerating rate; 20 years lost to prison is far more than 10 times worse than 2 years lost to prison, for example). The base rate of $550,000 t…

I agree that the victims of false imprisonment deserve a heck of a lot more than they get now, but one thing to consider is that mandating things like this may lead to fewer convictions being overturned due to the costs it would incur. It wouldn't help at all if the requirements just keep more innocent people in prison longer.

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

#74

Post by ScottBurson » Fri, Jul 21, 2017, 3:59 AM UTC

ClintEhrlich wrote: post #45

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…

Thank you for your thoughtful comments, Prof Nguyen. There is plenty of blame to go around for the cascade of errors that led to Ray Jennings spending 11 years behind bars for a murder he didn't commit. But most of the institutions responsible for the tragedy — from the D.A.'s office to the judiciary — have owned up to their mistakes. Not so for Mark Safarik. Despite retracting his opinion in court, he is now publicl…

We all owe you thanks for your work on this case.

I can imagine that profiling might have a use in generating leads for investigators to follow, perhaps leading them to actual evidence. But it can't be considered evidence itself.

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

#75

Post by NumberSix » Fri, Jul 21, 2017, 4:35 AM UTC

mncharity wrote: post #64

NumberSix wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding fingerprints, in the wake of the Brandon Mayfield case which raised serious questions about the accuracy of fingerprint identification by the FBI, the National Academy of Sciences was asked to perform a scientific assessment. Initial results were published in: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) Bradford T. Ulery, 7733–7738, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1018707108 Accuracy and reliability of forensi…

Fingerprint identification: advances since the 2009 National Research Council report https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4581003/ has a recent summary.

Just a comment, whether a 0.1 percent false positive rate is "small" is a subjective value judgement. Would you drive across a bridge that had a 1 in 1000 (0.1 percent) chance of collapsing and killing you as you drove across it? No, probably not.

In addition, the 0.1 percent false positive rate is based on a small sample of around 1000 cases. The Federal fingerprint databases such as the ones used in the Brandon Mayfield case have millions of people in them and may eventually have all US citizens (over 300 million people) in them. How does this "small" rate extrapolate when a fingerprint is compared to every fingerprint in the US or the world?

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

#76

Post by WalterBright » Fri, Jul 21, 2017, 4:37 AM UTC

IIAOPSW wrote: post #69

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…

You know the saying "if you like sausages never go to the sausage factory"? Well I've got some bad news for you about the justice system. We like to think of courts and juries in the idealistic view given to us in school. Its just like "12 Angry Men". Everyone gets their fair shake in court. Even if 11 people want to convict and go home the 12th one will stand up right? After all, you're a reasonable person. You can'…

I heard that "Perry Mason" was a response to inept prosecutions (the defendant always looks hopelessly guilty, and Mason always proves him innocent).

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

#77

Post by michaelmrose » Fri, Jul 21, 2017, 5:07 AM UTC

white-flame wrote: post #48

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…

I have heard that the intent of the term "trial by peers" was that the jury should be full of people with understanding and similarly experienced to the accused, so they would be well-versed in the specific nuance and details around the accusations. Like if a banker was on trial for financial crimes, the jury should be randomly selected bankers. Jury selection today specifically selects against "peers" of the accused…

Peers in context are your fellow citizens nothing more.

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

#78

Post by bryanrasmussen » Fri, Jul 21, 2017, 5:23 AM UTC

sixothree wrote: post #71

IIAOPSW wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know the saying "if you like sausages never go to the sausage factory"? Well I've got some bad news for you about the justice system. We like to think of courts and juries in the idealistic view given to us in school. Its just like "12 Angry Men". Everyone gets their fair shake in court. Even if 11 people want to convict and go home the 12th one will stand up right? After all, you're a reasonable person. You can'…

12 Angry Men would never play out in my state where you can be convicted for murder by 10 of the 12 jurors voting guilty.

which state is that?

Does it have a beyond a reasonable doubt standard, because if it does this implies a validation of the 28% crazification of the population theory.

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

#79

Post by peterburkimsher » Fri, Jul 21, 2017, 5:34 AM UTC

"Safarik spent more than a decade studying serial killings, sexual assaults and stalking cases."

no history of gang crime, "didn't have a boyfriend or a criminal record", "wallet left", "Mustang wasn’t taken", "parking lot was lighted and patrolled", Her tube top was pulled down exposing her breasts." -> "sexual assault”. "wipes his hand over his brow" -> guilty.

Imagine Safarik was a Machine Learning algorithm. More than a decade's worth of training data led to a model that predicted Jennings to be guilty.

The counter-evidence (phone missing, no scratch marks) wasn't part of the model.

In his defence, Safarik denies "assigning too much weight to [evidence]. It was the totality of things that shaped his finding."

Likewise, it is difficult to fix errors in a Machine Learning model once it is trained. The "totality of things" is the history of other crimes the model has investigated.

Can Deep Learning do the same job as criminal profilers? Are they as accurate? Should their predictions be trusted, when the consequence of failure is 11 years of prison for an innocent man?

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

#80

Post by bryanrasmussen » Fri, Jul 21, 2017, 5:34 AM UTC

michaelmrose wrote: post #77

white-flame wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have heard that the intent of the term "trial by peers" was that the jury should be full of people with understanding and similarly experienced to the accused, so they would be well-versed in the specific nuance and details around the accusations. Like if a banker was on trial for financial crimes, the jury should be randomly selected bankers. Jury selection today specifically selects against "peers" of the accused…

Peers in context are your fellow citizens nothing more.

Peers is a word that could be unpacked to mean more than just fellow citizens though, and to prove that it originally meant only fellow citizens runs into all the problems inherent in authorial intent multiplied by the number of people who worked on the constitution. Hence the need for supreme court interpretation.

Peers in context have been interpreted to mean your fellow citizens, nothing more.

Although I'd like to note that letting a jury of bankers sit on a financial crime might mean no banker ever got convicted. So the whole more exacting definition of peers argument has some definite problems.