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

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

#81

Post by dragonwriter »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #80
michaelmrose wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

No, it absolutely does not, because neither the phrase nor any alternative phrase on the subject incorporating a reference to “peers” appears in the Constitution, which instead provides (in the Sixth Amendment) for an “impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law”. (It is a common rephrasing of a guarantee—“the lawful judgment of his peers”—in Magna Carta which unmistakably was an product of the barons’ insistence that members of their formal social station should render verdicts against them.)

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

#82

Post by gaius »

syshum wrote: post #39
matwood wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically all we have is camera recordings because 'eye-witness' testimony is notoriously bad.

Machine Learning will put a stop to that there are several project right now working completely fabricate audio and video in realistic ways...

Yep check these guys out: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/04/24/voice_stealing_lyre...

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

#83

Post by dragonwriter »

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…

> 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

You have heard wrong. The term is a rephrasing of a guarantee in Magna Carta [0], and refers to the right to be judged by others of the same formal social station.

[0] in one English translation, “No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land.”

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

#84

Post by vacri »

j9461701 wrote: post #46
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…

It seems the jury was basing their faith in the profiler on another famous crime drama, namely Sherlock Holmes. >The driver’s-side window of the victim’s car had been lowered several inches, suggesting to the profiler that the teen had rolled it down when someone who looked trustworthy approached. And her tube top was askew — a sign, the profiler said, of a botched sexual assault. In Sherlock Holmes stories, that is…

My favourite Sherlockian inference was determining that a woman was a typist because 'she had spatulate fingers'...

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

#85

Post by arkh »

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…

It should depend on age: 10 year behind bars for a 18yo destroys more than 10 years for a 65yo.

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

#86

Post by darepublic »

rufusroflpunch wrote: post #47
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…

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…

The court should not permit speculative testimony of this nature to be counted as evidence in the same way that lie detector tests are inadmissible or hearsay.

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

#87

Post by balabaster »

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'…

> When is the last time an episode of CSI didn't end with the guy getting caught and convicted? Have they ever made a mistake in CSI? Made an ambiguous decision?

Actually there was one episode where they knowingly sent down an innocent man in CSI:Miami. A mentally challenged man had been unwittingly framed by his brother for a murder he didn't commit. The piece of evidence that sends him to jail if I recall correctly was a tie used in the crime that the brother asked his mentally challenged brother to retrieve from the back of the truck putting his DNA or fingerprint on it. The team know the kid they're sending down is innocent, but the evidence is the evidence and their hands are tied.

I can't for the life of me find a link to the episode. Perhaps someone with more Google-fu than me could assist.

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

#88

Post by inimino »

rufusroflpunch wrote: post #47
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…

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…

This is a better argument for the importance of public education than it is for creating a new profession.

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

#89

Post by rayiner »

leephillips wrote: post #59
barrkel wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Viewing it "good ones" versus "bad ones" terms is misleading. Prosecutors work in situations where (1) they constantly view the worst aspects of society; (2) the bulk of their job involves people who are obviously guilty.[1] There's some prosecutors who are just downright unethical. But for the most part, within the model of "better to let X guilty people go free than to put Y innocent people in prison," prosecutors are people who select different numbers for X and Y than other people.

I think juries should be clearly educated on the limitations of DNA testing, and other kinds of forensic evidence should be banned. Then again, I recognize that for every person unjustly convicted based on lab error, there are a dozen who just want to throw that possibility out there hoping to confuse the jury enough to get an acquittal.

[1] Courtrooms are open to the public, and I'd encourage everyone to go to your local federal courthouse and sit in on a dozen sentencing proceedings.

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

#90

Post by krylon »

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…

Thank you! That same thought had been sitting at the back of my head, but I could not quite put it into words.

If I had made a mistake - even an honest mistake, the kind where one could not have done any better - that caused somebody to be falsely convicted - not even of murder: any kind of crime that is serious enough to end up in court! - I strongly think that I would feel absolutely terrible about it and at the very least apologize to that person. Beg for forgiveness, actually.

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