[deleted]
How an ex-FBI profiler helped put an innocent man behind bars
41–50 of 91 posts
Re: How an ex-FBI profiler helped put an innocent man behind bars
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
Basically all we have is camera recordings because 'eye-witness' testimony is notoriously bad.
Machine Learning will put a stop to that there are several project right now working completely fabricate audio and video in realistic ways...
we can already do video (pretty well, anyway) : http://www.graphics.stanford.edu/~niessner/thies2016face.htm...
Re: How an ex-FBI profiler helped put an innocent man behind bars
#43Worth noting that the submitter of this story, user ClintEhrlich, played a main role in freeing the wrongly-convicted man. He posted about it on HN a couple years back, in a highly upvoted and discussed thread (500+ upvotes, 200+ comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12010760 Edit: it's an ironic coincidence that this follow-up feature was published on the same day of the news of O.J. Simpson's parole: http…
For jury, imagine a bunch of people who fall for every rhetorical and statistical fallacy in the book, love a good story and are led by emotions and prejudices rather than facts and reasoning.
Re: How an ex-FBI profiler helped put an innocent man behind bars
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is also the problem of multiple comparisons when they check DNA against a database the probability of randomly finding a match goes up.
It's one version of the epidemiological fallacy. My impression, which may be wishful thinking, is that prosecutors are better educated about these things now and that this kind of thing is less common.
AFAIK prosecutors are motivated by convictions, not justice.
Re: How an ex-FBI profiler helped put an innocent man behind bars
#45Worth noting that the submitter of this story, user ClintEhrlich, played a main role in freeing the wrongly-convicted man. He posted about it on HN a couple years back, in a highly upvoted and discussed thread (500+ upvotes, 200+ comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12010760 Edit: it's an ironic coincidence that this follow-up feature was published on the same day of the news of O.J. Simpson's parole: http…
Thank you for your thoughtful comments, Prof Nguyen.
There is plenty of blame to go around for the cascade of errors that led to Ray Jennings spending 11 years behind bars for a murder he didn't commit. But most of the institutions responsible for the tragedy — from the D.A.'s office to the judiciary — have owned up to their mistakes.
Not so for Mark Safarik. Despite retracting his opinion in court, he is now publicly insinuating that Ray may actually have been guilty, repeating the very falsities that my father and I debunked in order to overturn the false conviction.
Everything that Safarik says in the article — from the supposed evidence of sexual assault, to the fact that Ray should have been able to see the killer — is addressed and refuted in our initial 34-page letter to the Conviction Review Unit. The truth is available for anyone who cares to read it: http://www.ehrlichfirm.com/jennings/Ray-Jennings-Letter-to-C...
I note that, before we even hired a profiling expert, I was able to point out gross errors in Safarik's work merely by contrasting his testimony to the standards listed in the behavioral-profiling "bible" that he contributed to at the FBI. (See Letter, pp. 20-22.) This is supposed to be the profiling equivalent of the DSM, but Safarik blew off the numerous criteria that contravened his thesis.
Safarik's attempt to shift all the blame to the local detectives is unpersuasive. Their failure to interview everyone at the crime scene was obvious from the investigative materials that Safarik was provided by the Sheriff's Department's. Indeed, Safarik was specifically cross-examined about that failure when he took the stand, yet he clung to his opinion, and thereby allowed an innocent man to be convicted of murder.
Only Safarik himself is responsible for basing his analysis on the false premise that Ray was the only person present who could have committed the crime. When he presented his "expert" opinion, Safarik acknowledged the presence of other individuals in the parking lot around the time of the murder, but inexplicably brushed that fact aside because it did not fit his desired conclusion.
If Safarik is the best that the "science" of profiling can offer, it has no place in our courts.
Re: How an ex-FBI profiler helped put an innocent man behind bars
#46Worth noting that the submitter of this story, user ClintEhrlich, played a main role in freeing the wrongly-convicted man. He posted about it on HN a couple years back, in a highly upvoted and discussed thread (500+ upvotes, 200+ comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12010760 Edit: it's an ironic coincidence that this follow-up feature was published on the same day of the news of O.J. Simpson's parole: http…
It seems the jury was basing their faith in the profiler on another famous crime drama, namely Sherlock Holmes.
>The driver’s-side window of the victim’s car had been lowered several inches, suggesting to the profiler that the teen had rolled it down when someone who looked trustworthy approached. And her tube top was askew — a sign, the profiler said, of a botched sexual assault.
In Sherlock Holmes stories, that is a fairly reasonable inference. Here, for example, is an exert from the story "The Hound of the Baskervilles":
>The address, you observe is printed in rough characters. But the Times is a paper which is seldom found in any hands but those of the highly educated. We may take it, therefore, that the letter was composed by an educated man who wished to pose as an uneducated one, and his effort to conceal his own writing suggests that that writing might be known, or come to be known, by you.
The issue is in real life, this sort of inference is absolutely absurd. There are a dozen other possible explanations that fit the evidence, and to make such wild speculations gets you nowhere except chasing dead ends and accusing innocent men. It works in Holmes' stories because, and this is very important, they are fictitious. Doyle can have Sherlock spout any kind of insane gibberish, and still have him be right in the end.
Though I can't fault lay persons for not understanding why this technique is faulty, both because pop culture treats it as valid and because it's a classic instance of sampling bias: Say 100 profilers failed spectacularly, and 10 succeed and produce perfect profiles. The 100 failures aren't interesting or worth talking about, some stranger not being correct one time is not a good story. The 10 successes get talked about endlessly at conferences, at the local bar, when people give advice to each other. Old veteran cops 20 years later still talk about that one time a profiler solved a cold case in a snap. So, over years, a mythology is built up and the objective abysmal quality of profiling is hidden by the fact everyone everywhere has heard of the 10 successes while the 100 failures are lost to the dustbin of history. Rather, appropriately, like Doyle's own real life attempts to play detective - the dozens of times he was humiliated are (mostly) forgotten, while the handful of successes are the stuff of (nerdy) legend.
Re: How an ex-FBI profiler helped put an innocent man behind bars
#47Worth noting that the submitter of this story, user ClintEhrlich, played a main role in freeing the wrongly-convicted man. He posted about it on HN a couple years back, in a highly upvoted and discussed thread (500+ upvotes, 200+ comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12010760 Edit: it's an ironic coincidence that this follow-up feature was published on the same day of the news of O.J. Simpson's parole: http…
My feeling has always been that we should reengineer our jury system. Jurists should be professionals, not a random nobody pulled from the community. They should be independent, private employees with a code of ethics and training in skepticism and the sciences of statistics and evidence. Also, they could specialize in fields relevant to certain cases. In our current system, we look for the most ignorant juries so that the lawyers can fill their heads with whatever knowledge they please, unencumbered by facts.
In the new system, professional jurists would be paid for by the courts, but not directly employed by them or the government. The prosecution and defense could have their pick that they must agree on just like now, but they would be basing their pick on the professional reputation of the jurist, not exploitable characteristics or ignorance.
Re: How an ex-FBI profiler helped put an innocent man behind bars
#48Worth noting that the submitter of this story, user ClintEhrlich, played a main role in freeing the wrongly-convicted man. He posted about it on HN a couple years back, in a highly upvoted and discussed thread (500+ upvotes, 200+ comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12010760 Edit: it's an ironic coincidence that this follow-up feature was published on the same day of the news of O.J. Simpson's parole: http…
My feeling has always been that we should reengineer our jury system. Jurists should be professionals, not a random nobody pulled from the community. They should be independent, private employees with a code of ethics and training in skepticism and the sciences of statistics and evidence. Also, they could specialize in fields relevant to certain cases. In our current system, we look for the most ignorant juries so th…
I have heard that the intent of the term "trial by peers" was that the jury should be full of people with understanding and similarly experienced to the accused, so they would be well-versed in the specific nuance and details around the accusations. Like if a banker was on trial for financial crimes, the jury should be randomly selected bankers.
Jury selection today specifically selects against "peers" of the accused. (and as you also mentioned, against "peers" of anything in general :-P )
Re: How an ex-FBI profiler helped put an innocent man behind bars
#49Worth noting that the submitter of this story, user ClintEhrlich, played a main role in freeing the wrongly-convicted man. He posted about it on HN a couple years back, in a highly upvoted and discussed thread (500+ upvotes, 200+ comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12010760 Edit: it's an ironic coincidence that this follow-up feature was published on the same day of the news of O.J. Simpson's parole: http…
My feeling has always been that we should reengineer our jury system. Jurists should be professionals, not a random nobody pulled from the community. They should be independent, private employees with a code of ethics and training in skepticism and the sciences of statistics and evidence. Also, they could specialize in fields relevant to certain cases. In our current system, we look for the most ignorant juries so th…
[deleted]
Re: How an ex-FBI profiler helped put an innocent man behind bars
#50Worth noting that the submitter of this story, user ClintEhrlich, played a main role in freeing the wrongly-convicted man. He posted about it on HN a couple years back, in a highly upvoted and discussed thread (500+ upvotes, 200+ comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12010760 Edit: it's an ironic coincidence that this follow-up feature was published on the same day of the news of O.J. Simpson's parole: http…
My feeling has always been that we should reengineer our jury system. Jurists should be professionals, not a random nobody pulled from the community. They should be independent, private employees with a code of ethics and training in skepticism and the sciences of statistics and evidence. Also, they could specialize in fields relevant to certain cases. In our current system, we look for the most ignorant juries so th…
>Jurists should be professionals, not a random nobody pulled from the community.
[...]
In the new system, professional jurists would be paid for by the courts, but not directly employed by them or the government.
Jurist are as impartial as you can get. Making someone a paid professional jurist doesn't magically strip them of all their biases. Courts are intimately familiar with this, precisely when they ask jurists "Do you think Police are less likely to lie under oath than a normal person" in voir dire because judges know that police are just as corruptible as the rest of us.
Your proposal is basically creating a system by which a lawyer cannot ensure that your are judged by a jury of your peers. The problems with the judicial system are people based /not/ jury based.
Jury duty is the one chance that citizens can make a direct action in the power of the state and you are proposing changing that and some how having the government to pay that person but also simultaneously not being paid by the government.