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I was falsely arrested

iwasfalselyarrested.com

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Re: I was falsely arrested

#61

Post by golergka »

throw_this_away wrote: post #45
dogma1138 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is this being downvoted? The 34s video they released has 3 offenders, and you can't see any of their faces. While this could be not the only surveillance video in this case it doesn't really collaborates anything said in the post.

Because...innocent until proven guilty. But according to the parent comment, guilty until proven innocent. The author of the story doesn't need to prove anything to you. His experience and the fact that he was ultimately released from prison should be enough.

> But according to the parent comment, guilty until proven innocent

Where did I state something even remotely close to this?

Re: I was falsely arrested

#63

Post by [deleted] »

brazzledazzle wrote: post #49
golergka wrote: post #24

Everybody here in the comments seem to take the story on face value. Meanwhile, the only video attached to the post is pixelated to the highest degree, and you certainly can't see facial features on it. Am I missing something here?

If that shot of the person's face is from a video of the incident that person is not him. Yes, there's lossy compression applied but that don't make someone's nose into a completely different nose. Healthy skepticism is good but the only thing worth questioning here is if that shot is in fact real–something that could only be evaluated if they released the tape. But since they're not exactly going out of their way to…

[deleted]

Re: I was falsely arrested

#64

Post by downandout »

The state wouldn't admit their mistake because they have potential civil liability for imprisoning someone that clearly couldn't have been the perpetrator. The DA's refusal to drop the charges even after the obvious differences between perpetrator and the defendant were pointed out was outrageous and almost certainly constitutes willful misconduct. This guy can and should sue.

The larger issue is that prosecutors do this kind of thing routinely. Since most of them take jobs as prosecutors with an eye toward obtaining higher-paying jobs at prestigious law firms, perhaps the best way to combat this type of behavior would be a name-and-shame website. Every DA insisting on outlandish sentences for minor crimes, or that refuses to drop charges in the face of clear evidence that the someone is innocent, should be named and their record of inhumanity should haunt them at the top of Google search results for the remainder of their career.

Re: I was falsely arrested

#65

Post by mcherm »

It sounds to me like there was only one mis-step in this story. The mis-identification was resolved quite quickly once the accused had a competent private lawyer. So it seems to me that this case is not an indictment of our legal system as a whole so much as it is an indictment of underfunded and/or incompetent public defenders.

What if we tried funding the public defender's office with the same average amount of money per case handled as the prosecutor's office as? What effect would that have on both justice and people's perception of justice? And is this a simple enough test to be run with either public or private funds in a few sample municipalities as an experiment?

Re: I was falsely arrested

#66

Post by coldtea »

justathrow2k wrote: post #14
x0x0 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

95% of white people maybe black people have no alternative to understanding how the world really works

This is an incredibly racist way to look at the issue.

There's absolutely nothing racist about that statement.

It's actually a very accurate description of how a group that historically is facing systematic injustices and racism get to have fewer illusions than the comfortable majority.

If anything, it's ANTI-racist.

Not being racist is not the same as believing that racial minorities have absolutely the same experiences and outlooks as the majority.

A group of who had the cops enforce Jim Crow and segregation on them, or arrest, harass and shot them far more often than another group, has a different outlook on this "justice" thing.

Re: I was falsely arrested

#67

Post by golergka »

brazzledazzle wrote: post #49
golergka wrote: post #24

Everybody here in the comments seem to take the story on face value. Meanwhile, the only video attached to the post is pixelated to the highest degree, and you certainly can't see facial features on it. Am I missing something here?

If that shot of the person's face is from a video of the incident that person is not him. Yes, there's lossy compression applied but that don't make someone's nose into a completely different nose. Healthy skepticism is good but the only thing worth questioning here is if that shot is in fact real–something that could only be evaluated if they released the tape. But since they're not exactly going out of their way to…

> If that shot of the person's face is from a video of the incident that person is not him.

Yes, but as far as we know, it's just a picture on the internet.

Re: I was falsely arrested

#68

Post by benbenolson »

apercu wrote: post #47
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #6

I'm happy that this guy finally got out of jail. Here's hoping he doesn't let this terrible tragedy hurt him the rest of his life. I support any reasonable thing the public can do to help folks like him out. We live in a security state, and video cameras everywhere are beginning to show how rotten it is in places. Having said all of that, I do not want to see us become self-indulgent with pity. There are 300 million…

Just curious... are you American? "Having said all of that, I do not want to see us become self-indulgent with pity. There are 300 million people in the U.S. There are tens of thousands of cops. You could run a video like this everyday and statistically there still wouldn't be much incompetence or corruption going on." Because it's mind-boggling to me that you don't think there is incompetence and corruption.

He wasn't saying that there is no incompetence or corruption; he said that it's not statistically probable for you to run across a case like this if considering all cases in the U.S.

The United States is a very large country, and I've seen a lot of people give it flak for incidents like this that happen here. Each and every state has different laws about incarceration, and the cultures of each of the states varies very widely. Pushing a stereotype on someone from the United States is like doing the same for someone from Europe-- not only are there many different subdivisions of Europe with completely different laws and cultures, but the United States is also a larger landmass than Europe, and lends itself to a lot of diversity.

Re: I was falsely arrested

#69

Post by beat »

integraton wrote: post #36
dragonwriter wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recognizing that, in practice, racial identity in the US has a significant correlation to various differences in life experience is not racism.

It is when it ignores class and takes people of different ethnic and economic groups and treats them as homogeneous based on skin color alone.

Racism generally does ignore class. One of my best friends is a very successful man who happens to be black - and large, and very dark-skinned. He's a doctor and hospital administrator with strong financial expertise, definitely a one-percenter. How safe do you think he is if he gets pulled over by the cops? If he's walking down the street toward a white person, do you think they get that twinge of fear, or do they think "Actually, he probably makes about ten times what I do, so why would I be afraid he'd mug me?"

Class isn't immediately visible. Skin is.

Re: I was falsely arrested

#70

Post by dragonwriter »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #38
thatswrong0 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there is a 4% error rate with prisoners on death row, I'd imagine that it's even higher in the general prison population (because they're subject to less scrutiny?).

The general prison population is subject to less post-conviction scrutiny. However, it's subject to more pre-conviction scrutiny; that is to say, the people tried for capital crimes were likely charged under a lot of pressure from the public to charge someone so as to show that Something Is Being Done. People charged with petty drug possession get more vetting before being charged.

> The general prison population is subject to less post-conviction scrutiny. However, it's subject to more pre-conviction scrutiny

No, its subject to less pre-conviction scrutiny than those charged with murders; at least, from the public defenders I've talked to, PDs assigned to homicides tend to be:

(1) the more experienced, skilled attorneys in the PDs office, and

(2) have the lowest caseloads, and thus the most time and resources to devote to each case.

That means that -- at least as regards those defendants relying on public defenders -- those charged with homicides have more effective representation to subject the prosecution to pre-conviction scrutiny. (For those not relying on public defenders, things may be different, but I suspect even there you'd find that the consequences faced means that more resources of those available to the defendant are devoted to the defense when the charge is murder, thus still subjecting the charges to greater pre-conviction scrutiny.)

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