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People can be convinced they committed a crime that never happened (2015)

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Re: People can be convinced they committed a crime that never happened (2015)

#181

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft »

emodendroket wrote: post #134
SamoyedFurFluff wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There actually have been cases where public defenders have used this to organize and demand better treatment for themselves and the defendants. Where public defenders all convince their defendants not to plea, simultaneously, thereby forcing the court into a situation where they cannot avoid violating the constitutional right to a reasonably speedy trial due to all of the cases. I wished more civil resistance like th…

I think a bigger issue in this case might be there public defenders are oversubscribed and sometimes not acting with all the vigor one might wish.

I think there is a worse problem still... I could tolerate exhausted public defenders putting up a weak fight. After all, even a weak effort is still effort.

But who do these public defenders identify with? They went to law school too, they passed the bar too. Their careers 15 years from now will look much like the prosecutors' careers. Hell, they might be sitting behind a bench, they're on the right career track.

If they identify with the other lawyers and the judges, then they might not be putting any effort into it at all. They might instead be in the business of conducting their "clients" through the plea bargain pipeline, and act as if their duties primarily revolve around making certain that pipeline doesn't get clogged up.

This wouldn't be all public defenders, mind you. But even a minor fraction of public defenders acting in this way would be horrific.

Re: People can be convinced they committed a crime that never happened (2015)

#182

Post by emodendroket »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #181
emodendroket wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a bigger issue in this case might be there public defenders are oversubscribed and sometimes not acting with all the vigor one might wish.

I think there is a worse problem still... I could tolerate exhausted public defenders putting up a weak fight. After all, even a weak effort is still effort. But who do these public defenders identify with? They went to law school too, they passed the bar too. Their careers 15 years from now will look much like the prosecutors' careers. Hell, they might be sitting behind a bench, they're on the right career track. If…

Yeah, I was being somewhat polite with the way I stated it... A PD who meets you at the last minute and just shepherds you through plea bargaining wouldn't be a surprise, and horror stories of them dozing off in court and the like abound.

Re: People can be convinced they committed a crime that never happened (2015)

#183

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft »

cat_plus_plus wrote: post #101

That's why confession obtained in unrestricted police interrogation can't be the only part of justice process. There first has to be evidence to detain and interrogate someone in the first place. The suspect must be informed of the right to remain silent and consequences of saying anything, and given an option to consult with a lawyer. Judges and juries should demand that collaborating evidence is presented to show t…

If there was the political will for it, nothing about our legal system makes it impossible to prohibit admitting confessions as evidence in court. We could just say "those are never evidence, the prosecution isn't allowed to introduce them or even hint that they have occurred".

Police could still use them as a lead, to track down real evidence. If the culprit claims to have disposed of the murder weapon and they discover the weapon where he said it was, that's real evidence.

But more generally, eyewitness testimony itself (of which confessions are just a special variant of) should be inadmissible. Professionals giving professional testimony from notes and reports they have compiled should be the whole of it.

Re: People can be convinced they committed a crime that never happened (2015)

#184

Post by anonymouskimmer »

Timon3 wrote: post #180
anonymouskimmer wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How would you propose we differentiate between students "playing along" and students really having false memories? Remove the incentive for the student to fabulate. Have another, supposedly (to the students) 'independent' researcher ask them questions about it days or weeks later. A potential way of doing this would be to have a member of the Institutional Review Board (or supposed member of said board) following u…

Thank you for an actual proposal! It makes a lot of sense to me, but there is one reason it probably wouldn't be allowed: the study "implanted" false memories (in the sense that participants stated they believed false memories). I don't think the study would pass ethical review if you were only to follow up days or weeks later (after the supposed end of the study), since that would also be the earliest point you woul…

It could probably be tailored to a shorter time period.

A possible great way to do it is have the students originally questioned by grad students, and then the professor themself 'follow up' shortly afterward as a 'check' on their grad student's process. The problem with that is that some of the students may feel incentivized to make the grad student look good.

Re: People can be convinced they committed a crime that never happened (2015)

#185

Post by tstrimple »

splendor_spoon wrote: post #90
emodendroket wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think trying to do apply this finding to an ongoing injustice is more urgent than cataloguing the failings of a defunct state.

You are welcome to add those points to the discussion but right now all we have a statement of, ‘but… but… they do it too!’. I appreciate the downvote though.

Somehow your call for them to add more points to the discussion adds even less to the discussion. Maybe that's the cause of your down votes.

Re: People can be convinced they committed a crime that never happened (2015)

#186

Post by George83728 »

getpost wrote: post #143
Nowado wrote: post #98

Anyone interested should just Google 'Elizabeth Loftus'. She convinced people of a bunch of things that never happened, some of them very quickly. Standard example is getting people to tell stories about meeting Bugs Bunny in Disneyland, but there was also some crime stuff, I think past trauma as well. Law enforcement has their quotas and they'll use any garbage they can to fill it, but it's kind of hilarious that pe…

Argh! The fact that false memories can be induced does not mean that all memories are false. Commentary: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/04/05/how-elizabeth-... Rebuttal: https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2021/04/25/the-new-yorkers-hi...

Wow, that New Yorker article really is something. She hires private investigators to obtain sealed court records about an allegation of child abuse and de-anonymized the child. Then when the university reprimands her for this and tells her to turn over the documents, she calls that an "Orwellian nightmare". Orwellian? Who's the one doing the spying, procuring documents they have no right to possess? Loftus herself was the Orwellian nightmare but she saw herself as the victim in this. Even if Loftus's hypothesis about the case is correct, she clearly caused a great deal of emotional anguish for this person but was more concerned with the university telling her to leave it alone. The whole of this article paints her as a narcissist if not a psychopath.

The whyevolutionistrue rebuttal is insubstantial, it doesn't address this at all.

Re: People can be convinced they committed a crime that never happened (2015)

#187

Post by madsbuch »

gweinberg wrote: post #153
madsbuch wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> as long as social order is maintained That would rely on the participants believing that truth is the major consideration, right? If I knew that I would have to prove my innocence, that would lead to a lot of overhead for self surveillance and documentation. Ie. If the custom of just accepting false confessions becomes a widely accepted practice it could potentially lead to reduction of social order.

Not really. Lots of societies have required accused criminals to be tortured until they confess. Presumably they would generally only torture people they believed were guilty, but there was no reason to be more confident the person was guilty after confession than before. The confession was purely of ritual significance.

> Presumably they would generally only torture people they believed were guilty,

so in their system of belief, they are truthfully guilty.

the question I am asking is whether you can divorce truth from confession.

if the society cannot believe that a confessing person is indeed guilty, then it will not uphold societal order.

Re: People can be convinced they committed a crime that never happened (2015)

#188

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft »

getpost wrote: post #143
Nowado wrote: post #98

Anyone interested should just Google 'Elizabeth Loftus'. She convinced people of a bunch of things that never happened, some of them very quickly. Standard example is getting people to tell stories about meeting Bugs Bunny in Disneyland, but there was also some crime stuff, I think past trauma as well. Law enforcement has their quotas and they'll use any garbage they can to fill it, but it's kind of hilarious that pe…

Argh! The fact that false memories can be induced does not mean that all memories are false. Commentary: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/04/05/how-elizabeth-... Rebuttal: https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2021/04/25/the-new-yorkers-hi...

> The fact that false memories can be induced does not mean that all memories are false.

How is this even slightly relevant?

If some memories are false, and other memories are true, and none of us can tell which is which, then according to our principles of justice we must act as if all memories are potentially false.

"Memory as evidence" crumbles at that point.

Re: People can be convinced they committed a crime that never happened (2015)

#189

Post by UncleMeat »

anonymouskimmer wrote: post #172
mbg721 wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument for this, as ugly as it is, is that admitting arguments of innocence at that point would clog up the court system and impede justice.

Here's a good article about it. Scalia's claim was in the dissent, so this isn't established legal doctrine in the US, and the Supreme Court has in fact ruled in favor of the convicted on more than one occasion, but as the article shows it has actually happened as practiced legal doctrine in at least one case. https://ohrh.law.ox.ac.uk/justice-antonin-scalias-rebuke-of-...

Scalia joined the majority in Herrera v. Collins, where innocence could not be used to justify a Habeas claim.

Re: People can be convinced they committed a crime that never happened (2015)

#190

Post by UncleMeat »

mbg721 wrote: post #167
UncleMeat wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, a claim of actual innocence based on new evidence is not sufficient to reopen a death penalty conviction, so long as the court case was performed fairly.

The argument for this, as ugly as it is, is that admitting arguments of innocence at that point would clog up the court system and impede justice.

That's not the only argument the majority made in Herrera. Habeas corpus is a specifically protected right by the Constitution. The argument wasn't just "this is impractical." The argument was "a guilty conviction that sentences a person to death is not a violation of habeas corpus even if you are actually innocent and we all agree that they are innocent".
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