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MythBusters Helped a Wrongly Convicted Man Prove His Innocence

innocenceproject.org

41–50 of 184 posts

Re: MythBusters Helped a Wrongly Convicted Man Prove His Innocence

#41

Curb Your Enthusiasm was filming an episode during a baseball game. A man accused of killing someone walked into frame as part of the crowd and that was proof of his location at the time of the crime. YouTube video of 60 Minutes Australia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3V5Cj8d43Yw

There's a short documentary "Long Shot" about this on Netflix that is pretty good: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Shot_(2017_film)

Re: MythBusters Helped a Wrongly Convicted Man Prove His Innocence

#42

So if it’s impossible to light a pool of gasoline with a match, what is being used in movies when this appears to happen?

I would think any fire on film is either CG or, if real, is lit by a hidden fuse being controlled by a pyrotechnician. It would probably be too dangerous to have an actor directly light a fire using a match.

Re: MythBusters Helped a Wrongly Convicted Man Prove His Innocence

#43
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Expanse is one of the TV series that I was thinking of actually when I wrote that comment. It'd be too long to write down here but I feel like while The Expanse got many things right it also portrayed all sorts of fundamental things that were completely off. For example even in the first season things that are fundamentally off that result in very different futures: * The idea that we would actively intentionally…

Utopia makes for very boring television. Dystopian megacorporations make the future interesting to watch. There's a reason why there's a Chinese curse: "May you live in interesting time."

Utopia doesn't mean that there are no more challenges, it just means they are different. You can have space travel in a utopia - same with time travel. There are lots of ways to get into dangerous situations. The drama is just centered around different things than it is with dystopias.

Re: MythBusters Helped a Wrongly Convicted Man Prove His Innocence

#44

What scares me about US legal system is; Elected prosectutors are motivated by high conviction rate for obvious reasons (re-election and politics of it all). Add the fact that their line of work requires competitive personalities and you become just but a number, especially if you don't have competent cousel. I'm not saying ALL public defendors are incompetent, but we see to many cases of ineffective representation w…

False positives are rare in the US [0]: estimated at only 1% of incarcerations according to the Innocence Project (mentioned in HN article) and go even lower depending on who does the analysis. Are you aware of legal systems in other countries with lower false positives? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miscarriage_of_justice#United_...

If every time you enter the legal system and you have a 1% chance of being falsely convicted, that is a broken and dangerous system regardless of how other countries fare at that metric. Especially if you consider that certain underprivileged demographics are already at a higher risk of having more run-ins with the police regardless of their criminal state.

Re: MythBusters Helped a Wrongly Convicted Man Prove His Innocence

#45

What kind of compensation do these people typically get? I can't imagine what compensation would be enough for losing 35 years of your life, especially the years 18-53. There goes almost all dreams of becoming famous, meeting your soulmate, starting a family, etc.

Here's info for wrongful incarceration compensation at the federal and state level [0].

[0] https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Documents/Key-...

Re: MythBusters Helped a Wrongly Convicted Man Prove His Innocence

#46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

False positives are rare in the US [0]: estimated at only 1% of incarcerations according to the Innocence Project (mentioned in HN article) and go even lower depending on who does the analysis. Are you aware of legal systems in other countries with lower false positives? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miscarriage_of_justice#United_...

If every time you enter the legal system and you have a 1% chance of being falsely convicted, that is a broken and dangerous system regardless of how other countries fare at that metric. Especially if you consider that certain underprivileged demographics are already at a higher risk of having more run-ins with the police regardless of their criminal state.

> that is a broken and dangerous system regardless of how other countries fare at that metric.

No. It's on topic because the parent singled out the US, and I'm curious if other countries are taking procedures that could be adopted in the US to reduce false positives and ALSO false negatives.

Re: MythBusters Helped a Wrongly Convicted Man Prove His Innocence

#47

So if it’s impossible to light a pool of gasoline with a match, what is being used in movies when this appears to happen?

I've lit a pool of gasoline with a match before. Screwing around in junior high melting our plastic toys in the driveway - not something we should have been doing.

Re: MythBusters Helped a Wrongly Convicted Man Prove His Innocence

#48

What scares me about US legal system is; Elected prosectutors are motivated by high conviction rate for obvious reasons (re-election and politics of it all). Add the fact that their line of work requires competitive personalities and you become just but a number, especially if you don't have competent cousel. I'm not saying ALL public defendors are incompetent, but we see to many cases of ineffective representation w…

False positives are rare in the US [0]: estimated at only 1% of incarcerations according to the Innocence Project (mentioned in HN article) and go even lower depending on who does the analysis. Are you aware of legal systems in other countries with lower false positives? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miscarriage_of_justice#United_...

More like 2-10%. And that's only for the incarcerated. There are many more that take deals to avoid prison time and rotting in jail for 2 years just to get a trial, etc.

https://thehighcourt.co/wrongful-convictions-statistics/

Edit: can't find the actual article. Child commenter goes into great detail about this being a rather solid range though.

Re: MythBusters Helped a Wrongly Convicted Man Prove His Innocence

#49

What scares me about US legal system is; Elected prosectutors are motivated by high conviction rate for obvious reasons (re-election and politics of it all). Add the fact that their line of work requires competitive personalities and you become just but a number, especially if you don't have competent cousel. I'm not saying ALL public defendors are incompetent, but we see to many cases of ineffective representation w…

False positives are rare in the US [0]: estimated at only 1% of incarcerations according to the Innocence Project (mentioned in HN article) and go even lower depending on who does the analysis. Are you aware of legal systems in other countries with lower false positives? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miscarriage_of_justice#United_...

The actual source mentions the 1% being 'conservative'. Considering the Duluth model rules in many DV cases and there is an obvious bias towards not admitting false positives, I'd be surprised if that conservative measure was a maximum.

Re: MythBusters Helped a Wrongly Convicted Man Prove His Innocence

#50
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Utopia makes for very boring television. Dystopian megacorporations make the future interesting to watch. There's a reason why there's a Chinese curse: "May you live in interesting time."

> There's a reason why there's a Chinese curse: "May you live in interesting time." This cannot be true, because there is no such curse.

Another myth busted: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_you_live_in_interesting_ti...
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