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Four years after a man was executed, someone else’s DNA found on murder weapon

cnn.com

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Re: Four years after a man was executed, someone else’s DNA found on murder weapon

#141

Post by Turing_Machine »

causality0 wrote: post #77
rhino369 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know anything about the specific case, but often DNA from someone else would be totally irrelevant. If I murder someone with my kitchen knife, my wife and her fathers DNA will be on the murder weapon. If you buy a gun from someone and then go shoot someone with it, it might have the sellers DNA on it. So it’s sometimes the case that DNA can’t really create reasonable doubt.

Not just the seller, workers at the manufacturing plant, and any person who walked in the shop and asked to hold it.

Right. There was an incident in Europe, I believe, where law enforcement thought they'd identified an individual responsible for a massive international crime spree.

What they'd actually identified was the factory worker who packaged the DNA collection swabs.

Re: Four years after a man was executed, someone else’s DNA found on murder weapon

#142

Post by beerandt »

scrps wrote: post #22

Death is an immutable punishment, that really should be all the logic needed to dissuade people from supporting the death penalty. Locking an innocent person up for n number of years is a massive injustice but at least the person can be freed and compensated.

>Locking an innocent person up for n number of years

Until we invent time travel, incarceration for n number of years is also immutable.

Almost any form of justice is going to be immutable in some way, but it's not a reason to abandon the justice system.

Re: Four years after a man was executed, someone else’s DNA found on murder weapon

#143

Post by coldtea »

teachingassist wrote: post #40
coldtea wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Law is a process, punishing people who do their duty for the errors in the process when they have not been involved in misconduct would not be justice. There are tons of ways to perform badly without misconduct. Companies punish/fire/demote/etc employees who underperform all the time, for example. Or who make bad decisions consistently. Or even a single costly bad decision. Why should "life of death judging" offici…

The judge's job is to make a decision based on the evidence in front of them. The judge has to weigh the evidence based on their training and knowledge. That decision might prove in hindsight to be incorrect , based on new information or a fresh perspective. The judge cannot be held accountable for that. We accept this as part of the job, that difficult decisions cannot always be made perfectly within any legal frame…

>The judge's job is to make a decision based on the evidence in front of them. The judge has to weigh the evidence based on their training and knowledge. That decision might prove in hindsight to be incorrect, based on new information or a fresh perspective. The judge cannot be held accountable for that.

Well, I already covered that in another comment: we could still hold them accountable for decisions deemed later to be incorrect with the same data available at the time.

Re: Four years after a man was executed, someone else’s DNA found on murder weapon

#144

Post by coldtea »

nabla9 wrote: post #61
coldtea wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Law is a process, punishing people who do their duty for the errors in the process when they have not been involved in misconduct would not be justice. There are tons of ways to perform badly without misconduct. Companies punish/fire/demote/etc employees who underperform all the time, for example. Or who make bad decisions consistently. Or even a single costly bad decision. Why should "life of death judging" offici…

Because their 'performance' is to perform their part best they can. In common law systems (US, UK for example) the trial proceedings is adversarial system. If someone should lose money because the innocent is convicted, it should be the defense lawyer. The trial is a game. In civil law jurisdictions (like in Continental Europe) the trial is fact-finding public inquiry. The court is more actively involved in investiga…

>Because their 'performance' is to perform their part best they can.

Well, this "best" should be judged and rewarded or punished too.

Re: Four years after a man was executed, someone else’s DNA found on murder weapon

#145

Post by ceejayoz »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #134
pixl97 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heh, I love how courts still accept eye witness testimony as reliable in the first place.

Every court system in the world accepts eye witnesses testimony. Reliability is evaluated on a case by case basis.

Its reliability is consistently over-estimated versus what studies tell us about its utility.

Re: Four years after a man was executed, someone else’s DNA found on murder weapon

#146

Post by coldtea »

frosted-flakes wrote: post #121
coldtea wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could punishes judges even for harsh senteces (of people later exonerated), doesn't have to be just about the death penalty. And to make it more balanced, you could also punish them for exonerating someone later found guilty (with the available evicence at the first trial re-examined). Just rough ideas, which might not work at all, but still, as it is judges have no skin in the game (not even their reputation, so…

No one would ever want to be a judge then. And your second paragraph is very much in conflict with the tenet that everyone is innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

>No one would ever want to be a judge then.

I doubt that. People can be punished if they fail badly, or even die if they make a mistake in all kinds of jobs, and they still do them.

>And your second paragraph is very much in conflict with the tenet that everyone is innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

Well, if there really wasn't a "reasonable doubt" (as deemed on a second look) and the first judge decided it was, then it's on them...

Re: Four years after a man was executed, someone else’s DNA found on murder weapon

#147

Post by tomatotomato37 »

reducesuffering wrote: post #78
scrps wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do all states have compensation statutes? The federal government, the District of Columbia, and 36 states have compensation statutes of some form. The following 14 states do not: Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Delaware, Georgia, Kentucky, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Wyoming. https://innocenceproject.org/compensating-wrongly-convicted/

Anyone want to summarize the argument of these 14 states that isn't "Yes, we as a society locked up an innocent for 30 years, but now that they're free we don't owe them anything"..?

Status quo and a governance which would rather work on "sexier" political issues. I'm sure if you polled the citizens of those respective states you'd fine overwhelming support for compensation, but that doesn't bring in the votes the same way [hot political issue] does

Re: Four years after a man was executed, someone else’s DNA found on murder weapon

#148

Post by beerandt »

kingsuper20 wrote: post #65
ta988 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how this argument would be applied to police murders of innocents. How do we deal with that?

> I wonder how this argument would be applied to police murders of innocents. How do we deal with that? Realistically I think you'd have to drastically lower the perceived risk of a public interaction to the police. As long as they think they are going to get hurt, they'll feel the need to get in front of the problem.

This angle always amuses me, because while there's some truth to it, it means that raising "public awareness" of the issue is, in fact, making the issue worse. Which might be true, but that also lays at least some blame on the activists/ fear mongers.

But also, it's just a different type of victim blaming. Anytime perception is allowed to be blamed, logic goes out the window.

The same excuse was (is) used against minorites for years: if they don't want me to feel threatened by them, then they shouldn't be (perceived as being) so threatening.

It's why any type of "thought crime" is so dangerous. It doesn't matter what you (the accused) actually think; it matters what someone else thinks/perceives what you thought.

Which means that what someone else thinks of you can make you actually guilty of a crime.

Re: Four years after a man was executed, someone else’s DNA found on murder weapon

#150

Post by [deleted] »

themgt wrote: post #38

This case has been so poorly reported by the mainstream media. Just going to quote a couple other sources about the case and Ledell Lee. AK Supreme Court[1]: At approximately 10:50 a.m. on the morning of the murder, Katherine Williams, the victim's mother, received a phone call from her daughter, who lived some four or five houses away. A man had just knocked on the victim's door, asked if her husband was home, and i…

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