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"You are making the fallacious argument that "China is bad, therefore China is worse". That is not a logical conclusion."

No I'm not, I've literally pointed out what is worse about the Chinese justice system multiple times to you in multiple posts. In fact, this is a perfect case of the pot calling the kettle black as what you are doing is in fact what you are claiming I am doing.

This is the second time in this thread that you have falsely miss-characterized what I have been saying.

"Americans, and especially innocent Americans, are more likely to be unjustly imprisoned even when accounting for the Xinjiang camps."

Well for starters you're attempting to shape this debate into the context of a single metric which wouldn't be accurate at all but let's play your game for a moment. Show me some comparative statistics to support what you've just said. Oh wait, you can't because China doesn't release that info. Well then let's reason some things out here...

For starters, the Innocence Project (a group that is certainly sympathetic to our country's problems in this area) lists an estimate that 1 percent of the US prison population is unjustly imprisoned, or about 20k people ( https://www.innocenceproject.o... ). That is certainly bad.

Now let's try our best to compare that to China. So we don't have any proper data on their regular prison system which makes compairson in that context impossible (one of many reasons our system isn't as bad as theirs) but we do have a pretty good idea that there are, at a minimum, several hundred thousand Uighur that have suddenly ended up in specially built prisons almost over night. I feel safe in the assumption that the majority of these people have done little to nothing wrong by any reasonable set of standards

Which is worse, hundreds of thousands falsely imprisoned or tens of thousands? By your own single metric China's system is much worse than ours.

Even before the Uigher's mass imprisonment our system was better though. It has always been possible in China for this type of unjust, mass incarceration to happen with virtually no challenge.

After that, please revisit my other posts where I bring up things like the fact that American's have actual, functional legal recourse to being unjustly imprisoned (and the people who represent them in this context never end up in prison as a result of representing them), are never made to disappear (which functionally eliminates all rights), never have their verdict decided prior to going to court, and never have their verdict decided outside the courts by politicians.

No, it's because the US actually punishes its criminals.

Not many people fully understand the Innocence Project. Most people think that it's a specific example of correcting some historic malpractice. The project re-examines old cases and finds those where there is biological evidence such as blood or semen which pre-dated DNA testing. They then re-test that evidence to see if the right person was convicted. The assumption these people have is that in the modern world the innocent victims of the US court system would have been let off.

In fact, what the innocence project does is takes a random sample (the ones where Genetic evidence happens to accidentally survive from the original crime but wasn't able to be used at the time) of US court judgements and identifies whether there was a false conviction. The people were not convicted because of a mistake, normally they were fitted up by the police. Nowadys, US cops know about DNA evidence and fix that too. It turns out that in a minimum of 60% of US cases where a person was incarcerated for murder that person was the wrong person.

In other words. The US punishes random, innocent people for crimes whilst letting the actual criminals go free. The UK is bad, but it's nowhere as bad as the USA.

When DNA evidence was first available, many old cases were reexamined. In about 10% of the cases, the person convicted could not possibly have committed the crime. Many of them had pled guilty, usually to get lighter sentences.

Plea bargaining should be abolished. Nobody should be punished for exercising their right to a fair trial.

Law enforcement would never rely upon unproven methods to improve conviction rates.

That are good points. Law enforcement are supposed to use each of those evidence as leads. However, they tend to fixate on the what fits most to the case instead of thoroughly check out those leads. Once they have a suspect, they will try to fit as much evidence to the suspect as they can. They also eliminate the parts that don't fit (or not admit them to the court). As a result, it causes an innocent to be convicted.

I don't know why they want to close the case ASAP. Possibly, it is like a trophy for how many cases they can solve, so that they would get promoted? I have no idea...

Law enforcement would never rely upon unproven methods to improve conviction rates.

I'm sure Julian will honor this....

Being in near-solitary confinement breaks people. Assange probably cracked under the pressure and just wants it to be over - 1 out of 4 people who have been cleared through DNA evidence were made to give a false confession, in a semi-related example.

Thirdly, because many of the people in jail or prison weren't actually guilty http://www.innocenceproject.or... , or were there because of behavior that shouldn't be a crime in the first place.

Put them in jail instead.

It's cheaper and a wrongful conviction can be reversed.

The majority of countries no longer have the death penalty.

Well, some powerful legal scholars and the court cases they describe disagree and state that in this exact predicament the 5th does apply. The so called Fischer test fails on point 3 and the burden is on the government. They warn that if this were not the case one could be jailed for contempt, and that is exactly what happened in this case. Likely the incarcerated lawyer did not push this hard enough, or the judge chose to ignore it. But without all the details we may fall short of the understanding needed to make an argument one way or the other. But understanding this person may not know, may have forgotten, or some other individual may have applied the FileVault passphrase, or may just be such a willful person (and two years makes that self evident) that he will never reveal the passphrase if he knows it; he should be released. The current zeal the courts are using to make encryption a worthless technology is unwarranted. Least people think this is a new problem, read the paper from the above link. Thomas Jefferson invented an encryption for mailed messages that was not broken for 100 years apparently. this problem is not modern at all and has been tested in courts since the beginnings of the U.S.A.

Consider if this hard drive contains emails between this defendant and his lawyer, thus privileged communications. Or contains material related to confidential informants. Disclosure in open court could be disastrous ... and in the former would violate the defendants rights in yet another way.

We have lost sight of the American concept that it is better to let a dozen guilty people go free that to jail one innocent man. Our prisons have uncounted numbers of innocents, some lucky enough to have people interested in freeing them to preserver until they are vindicated. Some innocents die having exhausted all appeals and they are executed. It is very sobering to look at The Innocence Project and understand many of these people lost decades behind bars while innocent.

Put them in jail instead.

It's cheaper and a wrongful conviction can be reversed.

The majority of countries no longer have the death penalty.

The reason, not excuse, to execute someone is simple, they've executed someone else themselves. This isn't a difficult concept really. Just because you don't agree doesn't mean you are right or more advanced. You may be, you may not be, but you are not in the position to make that determination.

If America wants to execute people, THEY WILL. Not having the drug sold to them will not change that, as clearly demonstrated by finding alternate methods.

You're right -- people are eager to see justice done for an unjust killing. Unfortunately, that justice is far to often wreaked upon the innocent. Here in Canada, we gave up the death penalty after a 14 year old boy was almost executed for the rape and murder of his classmate. -- He was acquitted 48 years later.

But here's my offer: I'm willing to help you develop a method of execution that appears humane and can't be blocked by sissies in other countries... but if anybody is executed by that method who is later proved innocent, I get to 'test' it on you to prove that the innocent person died in the most humane way possible.

You willing to take me up on the offer? I would consider it Darwinism in action.

http://www.innocenceproject.or...

Someone's never heard of the Innocent Project and what they've proven where a proper chain of genetic evidence even allowed.

You missed one huge point. His face was matched against an arrest record. Finger prints were taken during the booking and so was his photo. It is exactly like fingerprints in this case.

Because far too many have already surrendered to the idea that “public” space means the government can watch you,

There was nothing to surrender. The government could always watch you in a public place.

An image with a likeness and couple of witnesses who agree it looks like him is far more tangible to a jury

I guess you don't understand the rules around a photo lineup. A photo lineup done wrong can get thrown out of court along will all evidence subsequently found.

When combined with data mining, the government will have the perfect capability to track and essentially know all peoples movements, anywhere, anytime.

Sorry but "Person of Interest" is not reality and won't be for quite some time.

suggesting huge numbers of the many people on Death Row are innocent is unrealistic and detrimental you your argument.

Most of the time this is is impossible to prove; in the bad cases the evidence has just been manipulated until it prooves what the police wanted to prove. What is really interesting about the innocence project is that there is a fairly random sample of people who were convicted and then their guilt was able to be measured because tests became available which were not available at the time of their conviction. It turns out that more than 4% of those on death row are innocent. That is pretty close to 10%.

No amount of science will change this percentage becuase the mechanism is about people lying and cheating.

Please don't criticise things without having actually done some investigation around that. The numbers are horrendous.

There is a long list of people who have been wrongfully convicted because jurors were won over on fancy sounding but faulty DNA evidence.

http://www.innocenceproject.or...

Your reference is the exact opposite of what you claim. It is not about people wrongly convicted by DNA evidence. It is about people wrongly convicted with other evendice, that were supsequently exonerated with DNA evidence.

And I have a hard time believing any reasonable court of law would render judgement based on a DNA sketch without other concrete evidence.

Why? Are you ignorant of history? There is a long list of people who have been wrongfully convicted because jurors were won over on fancy sounding but faulty DNA evidence.

http://www.innocenceproject.or...

Man down, Little bitch, and stop beating your bitch tits, like we didn't notice. The Innocence Project greatly disagrees, and even just femnazis alone are making it easier all the time. The Blue Line of Just-Us is also in high form, nowadays.

No. Murderer dead implies murderer not able to murder again. Plain & simple logic.

Or an innocent person executed.

http://www.innocenceproject.org/Content/DNA_Exonerations_Nationwide.php

Perhaps your emotions have overcome your logic.

You kill a pregnant woman intentionally, you die. F***, I'll do it myself. Not out of a sense of a blood thirsty desire for vengeance but because I no longer consider you a member of the human race and you should be destroyed the same way I would kill a mosquito.

Ever think about all those people who were sent to jail for decades for committing rape (and sometimes murder), who were exonerated by DNA testing? http://www.innocenceproject.org/

http://www.innocenceproject.org/Content/DNA_Exonerations_Nationwide.php

DNA Exonerations Nationwide

There have been 312 post-conviction DNA exonerations in the United States.

  The first DNA exoneration took place in 1989. Exonerations have been won in 36 states; since 2000, there have been 245 exonerations.

  18 of the 312 people exonerated through DNA served time on death row. Another 16 were charged with capital crimes but not sentenced to death.

  The average length of time served by exonerees is 13.5 years. The total number of years served is approximately 4,162.

  The average age of exonerees at the time of their wrongful convictions was 27.

Races of the 312 exonerees:

194 African Americans
94 Caucasians
22 Latinos
2 Asian American

You kill a pregnant woman intentionally, you die. F***, I'll do it myself. Not out of a sense of a blood thirsty desire for vengeance but because I no longer consider you a member of the human race and you should be destroyed the same way I would kill a mosquito.

Ever think about all those people who were sent to jail for decades for committing rape (and sometimes murder), who were exonerated by DNA testing? http://www.innocenceproject.org/

http://www.innocenceproject.org/Content/DNA_Exonerations_Nationwide.php

DNA Exonerations Nationwide

There have been 312 post-conviction DNA exonerations in the United States.

  The first DNA exoneration took place in 1989. Exonerations have been won in 36 states; since 2000, there have been 245 exonerations.

  18 of the 312 people exonerated through DNA served time on death row. Another 16 were charged with capital crimes but not sentenced to death.

  The average length of time served by exonerees is 13.5 years. The total number of years served is approximately 4,162.

  The average age of exonerees at the time of their wrongful convictions was 27.

Races of the 312 exonerees:

194 African Americans
94 Caucasians
22 Latinos
2 Asian American

The moment guilt is obvious, what's the point of spending 15 years on death row and cost millions in tax dollars?

I won't comment on North Korea, but in the USA there have been at least 311 cases where "guilt was obvious" but in fact the person had not committed the crime they were convicted of.

If you're willing to accept that your proposal would cause the state-sponsored killing of hundreds of innocent people, okay, but you should say so explicitly.

that argument no longer holds water, now that we have the DNA testing and other advanced forensics that set those people free.

except that in some cases, such new evidence is not allowed. The courts have a set of procedures, and if the evidence comes to light after such procedures are followed, you are stuck. There was a recent protest walk about access courts when further evidence is found.

The problem with your argument is that there are a number of people sentenced to death that are completely innocent. It also costs more to sentence someone to death in the US than life imprisonment.

Buyers are not much at risk. It is the sellers they are after.

Bullshit, they're after everyone. My friend's brother spent five years in Federal prison, as well as half his high school graduating class. His crime? A guy he'd gone to high school with called him needing $1000 so he could get a lawyer -- he'd been busted for selling cocaine. He said he'd pay him back double in a week.

Mike's brother and twenty or more other people were convicted for "conspiracy to distribute cocaine." All of them spent five years in prison, except that guy who was actually selling drugs who spent only two for helping the feds prosecute innocent men, and few if any of them had anything whatever to do with drugs.

They don't care that you're innocent, they want you in prison. You don't even have to be a buyer to go to prison for dope, just loan the wrong person money.

Here's an example of why we should not be as trusting as Bennett: http://www.innocenceproject.org/understand/False-Confessions.php

--AC

Indeed, eyewitness misidentification plays a role in a large number of erroneous convictions.

http://www.innocenceproject.org/understand/Eyewitness-Misidentification.php

Eyewitness misidentification is the single greatest cause of wrongful convictions nationwide, playing a role in nearly 75% of convictions overturned through DNA testing.

While eyewitness testimony can be persuasive evidence before a judge or jury, 30 years of strong social science research has proven that eyewitness identification is often unreliable. Research shows that the human mind is not like a tape recorder; we neither record events exactly as we see them, nor recall them like a tape that has been rewound. Instead, witness memory is like any other evidence at a crime scene; it must be preserved carefully and retrieved methodically, or it can be contaminated.

Those aren't wrongful imprisonment lawsuits, they are legislatively-defined reparations for certain types of exonerations. Only about half of the states have anything like that and the ones that do have very strict rules behind them. For example, if you had a prior conviction or you pleaded guilty to the charge to avoid the death penalty, you won't get anything.

For more information (as posted somewhere else on this thread), see: http://www.innocenceproject.org/Content/Compensating_The_Wrongly_Convicted.php

Maybe my google-fu isn't as good as yours, but I certainly can't find many cases at all where any government entity was found guilty of false imprisonment. There are plenty of civil actions against people for submitting false evidence to get someone locked up, but the police and prosecutors are not at fault there.

OK, 27 states do provide varying levels of compensation.
Source: Innocence Project Fact Sheet.
I live in one of the 23 states that do not provide any compensation for the wrongly convicted.

Unless a person is being framed, an innocent person has no reason to flee law enforcement because they are suspected of a crime.

False.

http://www.innocenceproject.org/

Except that the total amount of proof of anything Manning has done at the moment, is ZERO.

You mean, except for the thing about him pleading guilty to charges? You know, described in that thing at the top of this page we call a summary?

http://www.innocenceproject.org/Content/When_the_Innocent_Plead_Guilty.php is one list of people who pled guilty to crimes of which they were later proven innocent in courts of law. Between them they served 150 years before the actual criminals were identified.

Pleading guilty, let alone just offering to plead guilty is not "proof" that someone committed any crimes.

Are you making the point that the MAIN PURPOSE of the device, to prevent truancy, is an absolute failure out of the gate, because someone will appoint a "designated driver" to carry their IDs -- or are you saying that Cops really are able to figure out what 95% of anyone on SlashDot could figure out to do; "Check the Alibi"?

Other than having a useless CSI situation, which would require video tape backups and man hours to look at them, I also don't see this happening unless the charge is murder. Police have the CAPABILITY to do a lot of things, but they don't. And if someone uses Genetic evidence, they probably don't realize a false positive is really, really easy because your DNA can travel across the country on a dollar bill (or so I've read -- not an expert). There just doesn't seem to be the resources or interest to look past the most obvious suspects, and after looking at the error rate on convictions with Barry Scheck http://www.innocenceproject.org/ -- I have to say that the "Confidence" of police far outweighs their actual performance. Since it's really, really expensive to defend and a Prosecutor has a lot of power, coupled with the "Confidence" of police sometimes fudging their testimony -- poor people are pretty easy to convict of most anything. Rich people nearly impossible.

We have 2.4 million people in prison -- mostly poor. 25% of black males will go through this system and lose their right to vote. Crack cocaine now has only 18 times the severity on punishment when it used to have 100 X while being about the same thing as Cocaine.

I'm just saying I'd much prefer schools deal with the social problems of kids, and spend money to MAKE THEM WANT TO BE AT SCHOOL, or maybe, just maybe, we level the playing field and hope that more job opportunity and higher wages means that mom and dad aren't so stressed out.

This school looks like a training ground for a future in a Police State. It's a symptom of the illness and not the cure. I don't want government or private industry to EVER have 100% fool proof tracking of humans -- they don't deserve that right and it's only going to be abused.

"Real life just doesn't always fit with people's idealistic views that all cops are stupid and/or lazy and/or corrupt." That doesn't seem idealistic to me, that seems cynical. But I figure that if I were an officer, and I was serving speeding tickets that did little to actually make roads safe from the "scared slow drivers", or busted drug abusers realizing that "people in affluent homes who NEVER get busted, go on from drugs and lead productive lives". Or that a lot of truancy is about stressed out families and broken neighborhoods -- because of the fat cats and the drug laws destroying them. I'd get pretty cynical. Being less "aware" is probably useful if you are an occupying army or cracking heads for a system that wants to fill more prison cells. Heck, I worked in financial services -- being blissfully ignorant of your role as a cog in the system is endemic to being a "success" in America. If you want to make the world a better place; get ready for a pay cut.

I don't think you are stupid or corrupt -- but I've seen the video of cops in flack jackets looking like future soldiers and spraying little old ladies with tear gas while nobody arrests Bankers who "misplaced" billions. A smart, honest cop seems an awful lot like a female abortion doctor voting Republican. More and more, we all choose between making a living and being part of a system that grinds people down.

Having some bastard in Texas propose such a system doesn't surprise me, but having it functioning, without a teacher who loves students and respects dignity not sabotage it at every opportunity DOES surprise me. Tracking people is probably a worse crime than what most of these kids are doing -- I consider it on the level of Gang Rape, and I don't trust people who are OK with it as a solution.

"we should have faith..." that the justice system works? And your signature talks about Orwell being an optimist. I'm positively flummoxed. Look here if you'd like some information about those "low numbers" of innocents: http://www.innocenceproject.org/

It already has. Eyewitness testimony can often trump scientific results. Scientific results come with a margin of error, eyewitness testimony does not.

http://www.innocenceproject.org/understand/Eyewitness-Misidentification.php

somehow (just speculating here), im guessing that does not come into play here.

it would be nice to see consistent rules being followed, regardless of what i actually think happened (knowing no facts). i tend to believe armstrong's characterization of the USADA's vendetta against him. it sorta reminds me of the RICO statute.

That's why nowadays you cannot assume that a large majority of those in jail are guilty. Given the way the system works, many innocent people can be convinced that it is in their best interests to plead guilty.

Heck in one case an innocent (but mentally ill) person was told that he was helping to find the real culprit by pleading guilty!
http://www.innocenceproject.org/Content/Eddie_Joe_Lloyd.php
At least there's a bunch going around trying to such people out.

Easy for you to say, Coward. In some places it's common to beat the confession out of suspects, sometimes to death.

Even in supposedly more civilized places, the innocent often get coerced to pleading guilty: http://www.innocenceproject.org/Content/When_the_Innocent_Plead_Guilty.php

Many people have actually plead guilty to crimes they didn't commit. http://www.innocenceproject.org/Content/When_the_Innocent_Plead_Guilty.php
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/plea/faqs/

There are many reasons why they would do so. Even you might do so if convinced that it's in your best interest to plead guilty even though innocent.

Imagine if you think by pleading guilty you had 100% chance of 2 years in prison and if you didn't you had a 90% chance of decades in prison, which would you pick? Did the chap have a lawyer helping him?

This is really not so hard. With the death penalty the person is guilty of a heinous crime.

I find your overabundance of faith disturbing.

This guy is in prison in Iran. This would not be the first time that a regime has coerced people to say things that aren't true and to sign false confessions. The US has in the last decade done it also. In the US, even when there is no torture, false confessions can be extracted even in murder cases- http://www.innocenceproject.org/understand/False-Confessions.php. It wouldn't surprise me at all if this sort of program really did exist, but the fact that someone in Iranian custody confessed to it isn't good evidence for the claim.

Good news, folks! If you live in Massachusetts, it'll soon be easier to find out if you got the right fish from Legal Seafood than it will be to find out whether the right man was convicted by the state legal system!

http://www.innocenceproject.org/Content/Access_To_PostConviction_DNA_Testing.php

I'm against the death penalty, only because I see how the rest of government performs and can't believe the judicial system is any better.

It's not, and maybe worse. Donate to The Innocence Project - they're saving innocent people from imprisonment and execution.

Not true. Just read some of the stories at http://www.innocenceproject.org/ and see how in the last few years, 267 convicted felons have been exonerated of crimes they did not commit.

wow! stupid, a moron and an idiot! It's the insult trifecta! I would have been happy with just one insulting noun, three is just an embarrassment of riches.

I would submit to you that, your logical proof notwithstanding, the term "illegal alien" was chosen explicitly to deprive these people of their humanity. It's easy to demagogue and discriminate against "aliens", you don't have to worry that someone might point out how racist and hypocritical you are.

I salute you for not posting anonymously. So we can have a signature line face-off!

Without the Death Penalty there can be no justice

http://www.innocenceproject.org/

Since we rely on humans as judges, lawyers, witnesses, and juries, we have to accept that our justice system, no matter how well designed, is flawed. Innocent people get convicted, guilty people go free. But you cannot free a dead man. QED.

Were the people currently in Guantanamo US citizens or in US jurisdiction at the time of their "arrest"? "We don't like him" seems to be exactly the normal reason for being sent there. Let's face it, when was the last time the USA didn't take an opportunity to look as hypocritical as possible on the world stage?

While many of the people that ended up at Gitmo were Taliban and Al-Qaeda combatants quite a few of the poor bastards that got sent to Gitmo had actually done little or nothing at all. It was a case of the US screwing up and being unwilling to admit to having screwed up because careers were at stake so they kept people locked up and vegetating in prison for no good reason other than to protect the reputations of certain high profile political players and officials. This is not unique to Gitmo either. US prisons are full of victims of the US justice system who ended up there due to bad legal representation, racism, political pressure for conviction or bogus forensics and many of them still languish in jail because the people who put them there are now high ranking officials and/or big players in politics. Who gives a shit about innocence and wrongful incarceration... careers are at stake!?!

I hope he get's a break, if some nightmare of a third world country wants you dead, going to a (more) civilized place seems like a good idea!
I'm surprised more people from states like Florida or Texas haven't done the same, look at the number of people waiting to be killed that were exonerated http://www.innocenceproject.org/know/ through cutting edge science (makes you shudder at how many innocents died miserably before this was possible)

Interesting, violence is just fine, as long as it is meted out against those you've decided "disrupt orderly society"?

How very humanitarian of you.

Of course, we are infallible, and no innocent man has ever been sent to his death.

You'd have no problem with being on the firing squad of one of those executions, too, I get the feeling.

"An acceptable cost for an orderly society", most likely...

And remember if you haven't done anything wrong you have nothing to hide.

The Supreme Court of the United States would disagree with you (The assumption is that you are being serious). See Watts v. Indiana, 338 U.S. 49 59 (1949), ULLMANN V. UNITED STATES, 350 U. S. 422 (1956) and Ohio v. Reiner, 532 U.S. 17 (2001) just to list a few. There is the issue of confessing to something that you did not do. According to the Innocence Project, about 25% of cases exonerated do to new DNA evidence are of this type:

http://innocenceproject.org/understand/False-Confessions.php


I would point out the very basic discussion as to why, here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8z7NC5sgik


Don't miss part two which covers the rebuttal by Officer Bruch. He basically agrees and adds additional reasons why.

It is your brush, you are the one saying it.

I actually support capital punishment for the statistical lives saved,

What saved lived? Where is your scientific evidence capital punishment saves lives. And where's your evidence all of those executed were guilty of murder? The Innocence Project has cases where people were convicted of murder but were later proven innocent. Unfortunately they aren't able to save every innocent.

That's not the only reason I oppose, nor why Christians should oppose, capital punishment. Myself I also oppose it because you don't tell people isn't wrong to kill people then kill them yourself. And Christians, along with Jews and Muslim, should oppose it because it's one of the ten commandments.

Falcon

Oh, BTW I separated myself from Christians above because I am not one, I do not believe in any religion. I am agnostic, "a", without and "gnosis" knowledge. Or believe. Well I believe one thing, that if there is a supreme deity and it requires faith to be save, otherwise the unbeliever burns in hell for eternity, it is sadistic and deserves to be despised not worshiped.