161–170 of 184 posts
So why is deception wrong in an interrogation? I can see some of the other tactics as problematic, but not that directly.
the problem with false conviction is that both an innocent gets punished and the guilty goes unpunished. worst of both worlds.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wait, why do you think it's necessary to also reduce false negatives? Suppose there are five people who stole some candy, out of 100 people in the village. I claim that a system A in which three of the actual thieves are successfully convicted, but the others escape is better than a system B in which four people are successfully convicted, three of them are thieves but one is innocent. You seem to disagree, insisting…
If you don't care about reducing false negatives, then the ideal policy is simply to abolish prisons because that results in zero falsely imprisoned people.
So why is deception wrong in an interrogation? I can see some of the other tactics as problematic, but not that directly.
Huh? I've never been so saddened by a comment actually. "We have a video of you at the scene of the crime with indisputable evidence. It doesn't matter what you say, there are 10 policemen waiting to testify against you. It's your word against theirs. If you don't take this deal you will go away for life." You don't have money for a lawyer and you have no idea if there are actually 10 policemen waiting to testify aga…
Because that's an unrealistic scenario (based on my other points). You have access to a lawyer even if you don't have money. The confession can (and should) be verified. There are ways to do this with safeguards.
"Huh? I've never been so saddened by a comment actually."
It sounds like you already have your mind made up. Otherwise I strongly suggest looking into proper interrogation techniques (which avoid abuse but can leverage deception, and uses techniques to verify the confession is true/real).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The US used to solve the majority of murder cases, but now it’s solving less than half Closs the cases, not solve. It's good that police can't convict innocent people as easily anymore.
Even at the highest estimates of false imprisonments, it still means several thousands of murderers are walking free each year that wouldn’t have just 10 years ago.
Now, it's true that there is a class of person who meets this description, but we don't call them "murderers". We call them "serial killers", and they're incredibly rare.
Decades of propaganda (some subtle, some overt) has put this notion of "once a murderer, always a murderer" into our collective consciousness, but in the vast majority of cases, that's not true at all. Almost everyone who commits murder has some clear, specific reason to do it at the time, and we would be much better served as a society if we would push harder for addressing those reasons (which, from what I understand, almost all come back to either "proper therapy/anger management" or "providing proper support for every person's basic survival needs") rather than expecting punishment to make people better.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Deception leads to false convictions." How?
"We have video putting you at the scene and two eyewitness who picked your mugshot out of a line up. Now if you let this go to trial your looking at at least 15 years, but you seem like a good kid. If you work with me on this I'm sure I can talk to DA into reducing the charges. Probably have you out on parole in 5."
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People make plea deals and write confessions to reduce the punishment if they think they will be convicted. That motivation remains entirely the same even if they think they will be falsely convicted.
With access to a lawyer (one of the other issues) this shouldn't be a problem. And there are ways the police are supposed to verify the confession (changes to ensure that could be better).
a) understand that fully at the time of interrogation, especially if one is a minor or a foreigner
b) trust that a court-appointed lawyer will actually work for your best interests
c) actually get a court-appointed lawyer who does work for your best interests.
So your assumption that someone in this position necessarily has an effective lawyer present, absent other police misconduct, is clearly a flawed assumption.
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…
Most public defenders are competent at their job. Unfortunately, their job is to minimize the court's time spent spent dealing with their clients.
I think this is the unfortunate reality of them being obligated to take cases even if they don't really have enough defenders. This is an interesting read [1].
The TL;DR of that link is in Montana the head of the public defender's office was held in contempt and fined for refusing too many cases because they don't have the staffing. I don't know what the judge wants them to do, other than providing useless, token representation to clear constitutional requirements. I.e. someone technically has representation, even if that representation doesn't have time to actually form a legal case and can only serve as a liaison for whoever makes the plea deals.
1: https://www.aclu.org/news/criminal-law-reform/if-you-care-ab...
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_...
That number doesn't seem right to me so I followed the wikipedia citation. It cites "The Innocence Project", which actually says: > the few studies that have been done estimate that between 2.3% and 5% of all prisoners in the U.S. are innocent (for context, if just 1% of all prisoners are innocent, that would mean that more than 20,000 innocent people are in prison). https://innocenceproject.org/contact/#:~:text=How%…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even at the highest estimates of false imprisonments, it still means several thousands of murderers are walking free each year that wouldn’t have just 10 years ago.
“Several thousand murderers are walking free each year” probably needs some more commitment - the thought experiment isn’t just saying these free murderers are living a life with no repercussions for past crimes but that this represents some quantity of future murders that would otherwise not happen . Let’s say thousands of murderers going free that otherwise wouldn’t results in one person dying that otherwise wouldn…
This assumes 100% chance of being murdered in the first place which isn't true.
If you put an innocent person I'm prison, they definitely suffer for no reason. If a guilty person goes free, they might commit another crime.