51–60 of 173 posts
What about the prosecutors involved in requesting faked evidence? One would expect some long sentences.
Because of that, I suspect the 'up to 40,000' means there are 40,000 cases that she might have affected, not that she is known to have affected.
How hard would it have been to insert a random cross check in to the system? So every 300 tests, the sample is retested by another lab? There's no motivation or incentive whatsoever to structure the process to decrease convictions, that is one of the unspoken but defining features of our legal system. There is an ideal that two sides are arguing something in a neutral setting, but one side is the government, and lite…
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I have mixed feelings about jail terms in general, but I agree– this is precisely the sort of crime I would imagine carrying a life sentence. The number of cases affected & lives disrupted here is hardly fathomable.
I don't know how Massachusetts law -- or US Federal law -- swings, but here in the UK there's a specific crime, magnificently called Conspiracy to Pervert the Course of Justice, which covers everything from perjury to faking evidence. And while the average sentence is on the order of 2 years, there's no upper limit: a life sentence is possible in sufficiently extreme cases.
This kind of case is fascinating. The woman wasn't evil. But her actions really are. It's very easy, too easy, to say that she is evil because what she did was so bad. But that's lazy, and it misses the interesting stuff. How do people get caught up in performing such horrendous acts? There's a bunch of cognitive stuff going on, and some subtle manipulation. I suspect that something similar is how we end up with app…
No. It is simpler than you are making it out to be. If you say "I did the test that proves it is heroin" and you didn't, and you are smart enough to be a chemist, and you see some poor guy get put in jail, then you are evil.
But she didn't think she was being evil. She somehow persuaded herself that what she was doing was okay.
That's the interesting bit. Why do people go along with things that they know are wrong. She wasn't alone in this, there are a bunch of other people involved too. And it's similar for other frauds and deceptions.
She didn't wake up and think "Fuck it, I'm going to jail thousands of innocent people". So, what was she thinking?
Can we test for that kind of thinking in other people? How do we protect against is?
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For someone supposedly concerned about human life, you seem awfully eager to end one.
Superficially I have to agree with you that I look like a hypocrite. The government is the body which has a monopoly on violence. In other words, they're the only people who can legally do things to people that nobody would volunteer to have done to them, like going to prison. It's the government's job to provide courts through which disputes can be resolved, since you aren't supposed to take matters into your own ha…
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For someone supposedly concerned about human life, you seem awfully eager to end one.
Your argument is one of semantics. He is a defender of those who have not deprived others of their right to life. This is the reason why both the word murder and the word kill exist. There is a fundamental difference that you don't appreciate.
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For someone supposedly concerned about human life, you seem awfully eager to end one.
Superficially I have to agree with you that I look like a hypocrite. The government is the body which has a monopoly on violence. In other words, they're the only people who can legally do things to people that nobody would volunteer to have done to them, like going to prison. It's the government's job to provide courts through which disputes can be resolved, since you aren't supposed to take matters into your own ha…