Bad science and bad statistics in the courtroom convict innocent people • Hacker News Board

Re: Bad science and bad statistics in the courtroom convict innocent people

#61

Post by Lord-Jobo » Mon, Dec 11, 2023, 6:19 PM UTC

thfuran wrote: post #56

Lord-Jobo wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of the better litmus tests to see if the expert witness is knowledgeable in the field, and more importantly, up-to-date on the tech. some really smart but definitely older expert witnesses will fumble this very hard. Its not like those kinds of processes, the "enhancing" filters, are inherently bad or inadmissible, you just have to be clear with the judge and jury what the hell is actually happening.

>This is one of the better litmus tests to see if the expert witness is knowledgeable in the field, and more importantly, up-to-date on the tech It's an absolute travesty that it should fall to expert witnesses at all. Judges, police, and criminal trial lawyers should know how common forms of evidence work in general.

In my experience its just that technological ignorance muddies things so much that smart judges who otherwise understand evidence and admittance well will be silent when they arent sure, or worse, get actively bamboozled by shitters.

Re: Bad science and bad statistics in the courtroom convict innocent people

#62

Post by twisteriffic » Mon, Dec 11, 2023, 6:21 PM UTC

pc86 wrote: post #52

lkbm wrote: post #18

The first time I remember running across this was /Innumeracy/ (1988) by John Allen Paulos. It's been discussed for decades, and as best I can tell hasn't really been addressed at all. I don't know the solution. Ideally, everyone would be good at math, but I don't see that happening in the near future. My best answer is for us to provide every court have an on-call statistician, reviewing every case. I would hope big…

> My best answer is for us to provide every court have an on-call statistician, reviewing every case. Is this not the exact reason for expert witnesses?

Expert witnesses can be cripplingly expensive. Having a gratis sanity check sounds like a great idea, assuming you can find some way to insulate them from influence.

Re: Bad science and bad statistics in the courtroom convict innocent people

#63

Post by graphe » Mon, Dec 11, 2023, 6:22 PM UTC

andrewla wrote: post #55

graphe wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Innocent meaning they didn’t do the specific crime, or innocent as in someone with a clean record that was railroaded? If you’re looking for the criminal that killed a bunch of people but not that specific case it’s not that uncommon. If you’re looking for a squeaky clean guy that was there at the wrong place at the wrong time it’s very rare. Most criminals are repeat offenders.

This is frequently cited by law enforcement and criminal justice officials, but this is an impossible bar to set, because they have not been convicted of those other unspecified crimes. The excuse "he maybe didn't rob this store, but he did rob those other stores, so let's nudge the case a bit", even if done in good faith by law enforcement, is still fishy, because ... why not convict them instead for the other crime…

That definitely happens but lots of evidence is thrown out and they are looking at throwing the law at him. A famous case is Al Capone.

I’m not calling it right or wrong, it’s just what happens with the system in place. It’s also shown to the public to convict them. The jury has the ability to ‘throw’ the case as they did in the case of OJ.

Re: Bad science and bad statistics in the courtroom convict innocent people

#64

Post by pc86 » Mon, Dec 11, 2023, 6:22 PM UTC

Lord-Jobo wrote: post #19

causal wrote: post #5

It would be hard to really know, but I'm curious what percentage of the total US prison population is innocent. Per capita prison rate is still around 5 in 1000 according to Wikipedia, which is very high for the developed world.

This is an obviously tough subject to get precise data on, but dark figure analysis and innocence project data indicates that the CONVICTED innocent percentage is 1-3%, i have seen individual studies peak at 7% but those are outliers and not likely to be the real number. this seems really good until you realize its 20,000-140,000 people in prison right now. that are innocent. and it gets REALLY bleak when you look at…

I really don't think pretrial detention counts.

There is a long-standing and legitimate public interest in detaining some people while they await trial. A court can find you a flight risk, or a danger to society, during arraignment before your trial without violating your due process rights.

And I'm not sure "the proportion of individuals held in jail pending trial" increasing means anything. What are the number of cases this correlates to? Have the raw or per capita numbers increased? What are the other reasons you could be held in jail other than pending trial, which apparently decreased from 44% to 34%?

And not to be too overly pedantic, but the original question was about prison specifically which is distinctly different from jail.

Re: Bad science and bad statistics in the courtroom convict innocent people

#65

Post by eropple » Mon, Dec 11, 2023, 6:22 PM UTC

tiahura wrote: post #21

causal wrote: post #10

Note that proportionately few of our federal judges have spent any time as public defenders, and a disproportionately high number have served as prosecutors. Jackson is the first supreme court justice to have served as a public defender, whereas 3 other justices have been prosecutors. Prosecutors are incentivized to get convictions, and that slanted thinking could easily be carried on to the bench. [1] https://www.pb…

Being primarily a civil attorney, I'm well aware of the disproportionate number of former prosecutors on the bench. A couple of points: 1. Most prosecutors are liberals. It's not like right wing law students go looking for jobs in prosecutor's offices. I can't think of any from my class way back when. 2. The problem is more that judges and prosecutors are old colleagues. The slant is that they all know the defendants…

I think your point on #2 makes quite a lot of sense, but #1 rings hollow. Plenty of erstwhile liberals hoist the black flag when there's inconvenience in their own neighborhoods; no reason to think it isn't similarly situational with regards to people who are incentivized towards securing conviction.

Re: Bad science and bad statistics in the courtroom convict innocent people

#66

Post by annexrichmond » Mon, Dec 11, 2023, 6:24 PM UTC

qingcharles wrote: post #50

Lord-Jobo wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an obviously tough subject to get precise data on, but dark figure analysis and innocence project data indicates that the CONVICTED innocent percentage is 1-3%, i have seen individual studies peak at 7% but those are outliers and not likely to be the real number. this seems really good until you realize its 20,000-140,000 people in prison right now. that are innocent. and it gets REALLY bleak when you look at…

And it completely depends on what you mean by innocent. A lot of cases are won by defendants, who after spending years in pretrial, find the prosecution did not have enough evidence to convict them. I've been witness to some far-out jury cases where the defendant was massively guilty but the jury acquitted for some reason. That's why I would often recommend a jury trial in a lot of cases simply because juries have su…

Hey hope you're doing well - have your charges have been fully dropped finally?

Re: Bad science and bad statistics in the courtroom convict innocent people

#67

Post by jandrese » Mon, Dec 11, 2023, 6:25 PM UTC

graphe wrote: post #36

WalterBright wrote: post #29

I read about a case once where a man was convicted of rape. The evidence was that the rape was done face-to-face with the victim, and the victim positively ID'd him. How could she not, when she was face-to-face with him? It was a slam dunk. After some years in prison, the convicted person managed to get a DNA test, which proved he was not the rapist. How could this be? It turns out the DNA matched a convicted sex off…

This indicates that the jury/judge also failed the innocent man. What would have saved him? Are these cases relics before dna? Would it happen again today?

This sort of thing happens all the time. The Innocence Project has a multi-year backlog. If you are a black man with a public defender the prosecution almost doesn't even have to show up to get a conviction. Death row is full of people who were railroaded by the system.

Re: Bad science and bad statistics in the courtroom convict innocent people

#68

Post by pc86 » Mon, Dec 11, 2023, 6:26 PM UTC

graphe wrote: post #63

andrewla wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is frequently cited by law enforcement and criminal justice officials, but this is an impossible bar to set, because they have not been convicted of those other unspecified crimes. The excuse "he maybe didn't rob this store, but he did rob those other stores, so let's nudge the case a bit", even if done in good faith by law enforcement, is still fishy, because ... why not convict them instead for the other crime…

That definitely happens but lots of evidence is thrown out and they are looking at throwing the law at him. A famous case is Al Capone. I’m not calling it right or wrong, it’s just what happens with the system in place. It’s also shown to the public to convict them. The jury has the ability to ‘throw’ the case as they did in the case of OJ.

Except Al Capone actually did what he went to prison for. Yeah he did a lot of other stuff nobody could prove to the standard of a courtroom, but what you're talking about is someone "knows" Al Capone is bad, so they fabricate crimes and evidence and frame him for those in order to send him to prison. That would still be wrong. This is a feature, not a bug.

Re: Bad science and bad statistics in the courtroom convict innocent people

#69

Post by graphe » Mon, Dec 11, 2023, 6:27 PM UTC

michaelt wrote: post #59

graphe wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This indicates that the jury/judge also failed the innocent man. What would have saved him? Are these cases relics before dna? Would it happen again today?

For better or worse, a huge amount of our justice system depends on eyewitness statements. For example, if my crazy neighbour knocked on my door, pushed their way into my home when I answered then beat me up - the only evidence of who did it would be my eyewitness testimony. There would be incontrovertible evidence that someone had assaulted me, in the form of my bruise-covered face and body. But only eyewitness test…

The manpower involved could also be an issue, they can gather dna and evidence but more likely it’ll be ignored over other cases.

For better or worst, we should accept that our justice system has holes and flaws, and we should do our best to avoid them. There isn’t much to help you and they might not have any suitable punishment or aid to give to the crazy person.

Re: Bad science and bad statistics in the courtroom convict innocent people

#70

Post by Lord-Jobo » Mon, Dec 11, 2023, 6:28 PM UTC

twisteriffic wrote: post #39

Lord-Jobo wrote: post #12

Wow, a hackernews topic thats actually directly related to my specialty. Anyway, this article is spot on and this is a really rampant specific issue. “expert witnesses have often overstated the probative value of their evidence, going far beyond what the relevant science can justify.” This is the absolute center of the issue. Experts are used by the prosecution AND defense, but the experts used by the prosecution are…

Wondering how you got in to that field? A few years back I was asked to informally provide a technical review the prosecution's evidence in a case involving a former colleague. The police expert's sole credentials were a 10 year old A+ certification and a few employer-sponsored day courses, but was confidently representing themselves as an expert in networking/computing/technology. Their theory of the case was brutal…

Stumbled aimlessly from biology to IT to philosophy to comp sci to criminology, got a lucky internship while working on data recovery and hardware repair. Lots of informal ways to break in right now because demand is very high but the overlap of legal/technological is still hard to find. So many private agencies will take anyone with decent creds right now. I would straight up cold call medium sized (Your story is sadly pretty common. networking might be the worst area for expert testimony right now because its so filled with proprietary tech and non-standardized jargon. ESPECIALLY the timezones, holy crap the amount of people who refuse to work in UTC. But that theme of 'ancient certs, terrible lazy theory' and zero pushback, is pretty much the norm outside of federal homicide cases. and even then.

Im not going to pretend that defense teams are immune to the kind of 'ends justify the means' wishful thinking, but ive never seen even 1/5th the lazy fabrications or insane ass-pulls.