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Martha Stewart went to prison on some of the most questionable process charges ever - she was accused of lying to prosecutors by denying that she had committed insider trading! When, in fact, the prosecutor couldn't manage to even charge with insider trading. He tried, though - he attempted to convince a judge that publicly stating that she was innocent impacted *her* company's stock price, and was thus a new case of insider trading.

That's right. The prosecutor used a declaration of innocence as 'perjury' without even charging, much less convicting, Stewart of the crime she correctly declared herself innocent of.

That prosecutor's name? James Comey.

And if you actually are innocent, a good lawyer will tell you to refuse the deal and take it to court.

And what if the deal is for time served? All you have to do is lie under oath and say you committed a crime you didn't commit. Your integrity, or your freedom, which will it be?

And yes, this has happened.

except the bit about implicating others with close fingerprint profiles.

That's actually entirely possible with finger prints, they are not unique.

http://truthinjustice.org/fingerprint-myth.htm

In 1998, in Delaware County, Pa., Richard Jackson was sentenced to life in prison for murder based largely on a fingerprint match to which three experts had testified. The defense argued, unsuccessfully, that it was a bad match. But after Jackson spent more than two years in prison the prosecution conceded the error, and he was freed. In Scotland a murder case was upended when detectives found a fingerprint at the scene of the crime that belonged to a police officer -- who claimed she'd never been there in the first place. To verify her claim, she brought in two fingerprint analysts who attested that not only had her fingerprint been misidentified, but so had the print, found on a tin at the home of the accused, originally attributed to the victim.

As these cases suggest, the relevant question isn't whether fingerprints could ever be exactly alike -- it's whether they are ever similar enough to fool a fingerprint examiner. And the answer, it's increasingly, unnervingly clear, is a resounding yes. A recent proficiency test found that as many as one out of five fingerprint examiners misidentified fingerprint samples./quote

First of all, I don't agree with how you were moderated as a troll for bringing in your point of view.

No, its not. You go right ahead and live on the block where 10 guilty guys went free.

Try telling that to the guy who lost 26 years of his life rotting in prison for a crime that he didn't commit. A study in 2004 suspects thousands of more cases based on 328 criminal cases where the defendant was exonerated. A quote from the study:

The study identified 199 murder exonerations, 73 of them in capital cases. It also found 120 rape exonerations. Only nine cases involved other crimes. In more than half of the cases, the defendants had been in prison for more than 10 years.

I put the word "suspects" in bold because I'm trying to be realistic; there is no way to tell the exact number and the study only looked at 328 cases.

The way to deal with police mistakes is with sanctions and fines. This is the way it was before the 1960s.

I completely respect your view of how we should deal with this, but I do have to disagree. I'm all for the pre-1960's method of sanctions and fines if there was some way to guarantee that an innocent person didn't have to spend an extended period of time behind bars until proven innocent. Hell, we can't even guarantee that right now.

I may be wrong, but I think that you're under the assumption that with the pre-1960's method, the mistake is quickly caught and the defendant only spends a short period of time in the slammer before released. Unfortunately, they can be in there for decades, and even after the mistake is caught, it may take even more years for paperwork unless they get an immediate pardon.

bceause the "gubmint" is in a conspiracy to frame you

Uh, after enough police scandals, prosecutors knowingly prosecuting innocent people (withholding exculpatory evidence showing that the person did not commit the crime) and D.A.s declaring that they only believe in DNA evidence when it claims a man is guilty but not when it shows that the accused was either of the two men who raped a woman... I think its fair to say that the people in government are more than happy to frame anyone they wish.

Don't forget the "War" on drugs and child pornography. Police can confiscate the property of anyone they suspect of a drug crime. No substantial evidence (habeas corpus) required. It is called the "war" on drugs to justify this lowered standard of evidence, since a similar lowering of the standard has taken place in wartime since Abraham Lincoln.

Anyone accused of child pornography is automatically a pariah, and remains on sex offender lists (not necessarily government endorsed ones), even when the accusation is proved to be baseless. "It is the serious charge. A serious charge indeed." Since real child pornography today often involves downloads via the internet, it is very easy for a sexual predator to use your home internet connection while you are out of the country, and clueless officials blame you for it. You lose your job, marriage prospects, and social life for the rest of your life.

Now the RIAA is using the same suspension of habeas corpus, without even the pretension of "war". Or maybe that is why they insist on calling copyright violators (real or imagined) "pirates".

Indeed. This isn't the first time William Tobin has blown the whistle by any stretch of the imagination. Tobin, who was formerly the chief metallurgist at the FBI, also called into question the investigative practices of individuals involved in the FBI's investigation of TWA Flight 800 and has testified as to various fraudulent activities that took place within various FBI investigations. Apparently this test was the same test used to convict Lee Harvey Oswald, and guess who called it into question? Yup. William A. Tobin.

Curiouser and curiouser, no?

We don't want "sophistication," we want reliability.

And since they are making the comparison... just how reliable are fingerprints, really?

True, a character in Mark Twain's 1893 novel Pudd'n'head Wilson tells a court

"Every human being carries with him from his cradle to his grave certain physical marks which do not change their character, and by which he can always be identified -- and that without shade of doubt or question. These marks are his signature, his physiological autograph, so to speak, and this autograph canImage available not be counterfeited, nor can he disguise it or hide it away, nor can it become illegible by the wear and mutations of time. This signature is not his face -- age can change that beyond recognition; it is not his hair, for that can fall out; it is not his height, for duplicates of that exist; it is not his form, for duplicates of that exist also, whereas this signature is each man's very own -- there is no duplicate of it among the swarming populations of the globe! This autograph consists of the delicate lines or corrugations with which Nature marks the insides of the hands and the soles of the feet."

and ever since Mark Twain said so everyone has believed it, but that doesn't necessarily make it true.

Yes, no doubt the FBI etc may have one in their labs, but they will take years to appraise it's use and wont trust it versus the lab with its scientific controls.

Because we all know how well the reliability of say, polygraphs or fingerprint analysis has been tested. People in general put far too much faith in these technological methods. A thin veneer of science and we forget all about false positives.

That would be Kenny Richey.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenny_Richey

http://www.truthinjustice.org/richey-reversed.htm

http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=409&id=131 1232006

You're up against crime labs who stand up under oath in court and lie through their teeth, and somehow, the prosecutors never get around to prosecuting them for perjury.

You're up against prosecutors who rely on things like the public's belief that DNA tests are 100% accurate and that only one person could possibly have "that DNA" when "that DNA" used to be actually just a match against the presence or absense of 16 or so genes... with only 65536 possible combinations (at 16 markers). While new tests can exactly match one DNA sample to another, DNA "fingerprints" as espoused by the government continue to focus only on a limited number of "markers" meaning that dozens, possibly hundreds of people in a large city will share the same "fingerprint".

You're up against district attourneys who think DNA testing is awesome, unless it's used to prove one of their convicts innocent. Clearly if two people raped the woman, and two people's DNA was retrieved, and the convicted person turned out to be neither of them, the woman must have forgotten the third rapist, rather than picked out the wrong person on a lineup.

As the other person said, "good luck with your absolute belief in the state", and may God help us all.

DNA match evidence is widely perceived as completely reliable by juries, public, judges, etc...and a less-reliable matching will erode that confidence.

Absolutely right! DNA tests are 100% accurate and foolproof. The prosecutors say so themselves. In fact, this new test is so easy, all you do is push a button, and the screen lights up "guilty".

Until the rest of them rip down this "blue wall" bullshit, the assholes make the whole office smell like shit.

Every time someone whines about how cops get no "respect" I ask them what the "straight" cops do to earn it when the crooked ones lose it. A cop gets crooked and the "straight" ones are all over it to make sure that "one of their own" gets away with it.

Take for instance the recent HPD crime lab scandal in Houston. Years of perjury and tainted evidence, and when a defense attourney finally discovers that they've been lying on the stand about their DNA tests (and possibly ballistics and other tests as well) all the cops and prosecutors have NO idea that they've been lying all the time. They are SHOCKED by the fact that they've put away 100s of people on bogus evidence. They just thought they were always SO lucky that the number one suspect always came back as a match and everyone could go home early, right?

But hey, the good news is that now, after a year of an internal investigation (since the PD couldn't scrape together the pennies for an external audit) everything is hunky dory again and the HPD crime lab is ready to ride again.

The only DNA analyst fired in the Houston Police Department crime lab scandal got her job back Tuesday. Whooo-eee what's that STANK?!

"It's getting innocent people out of prison and it's putting guilty people away."

A perfect example of how perceptions are almost always WRONG, is with FingerPrinting.

Here is a report on how the acuracy of FinerPrinting is finally being shown to be a technology filled with fallacy.

http://www.truthinjustice.org/fingerprints.htm

Following these error rates listed in that article, it is clear that they are not much different, if not WORSE than the troubles we see today, not using FingerPring technology to verify 'who we are' in normal everyday transactions!

The whole system needs to be 'dumped', in exchange for one where individuals will control ALL access to their data, without the prying eyes of banks, credit card companies, etc., therebye relieving the possibility of 'someone' calling and requesting data, and the consumer mistakeningly 'giving' it up.

Until we as citizens form our own coalition of a money or bartering system, in lieu of what the Government and Corporations have offered us, we are doomed to succumb to the tyranncy of: The System (ie. The Beast, The Machine, etc.).

-- Someone has stolen my 'good' Karma-- please return it.

http://www.truthinjustice.org/inside-labs.htm

Picking up a fingerprint is fairly easy.

DNA samples have to be handled more carefully. That means more money.

If I was cynical, I'd say to follow the money to see which DNA labs out there are supporting this with campaign contributions to which officials.

>Lucky for us, at least in this country (US), the # of innocent people being convicted of crimes is remarkably low

I see. Does your universe have a state called Illinois where the previous governer imposed a moratorium on the death penalty because 119 people were wrongly sentanced to death? Please tell me how I can move to your Illinois since your justice system seems to be vastly superior to mine.

Heh.

That someone modded you funny for this shows that people are rather ignorant of what goes on in this country.

I say lets bake the fuckers. Lets set up tents in the hot Arizona sun, lets put up tents, lets make the inmates wear pink uniforms, and lets feed them hotdogs made with green dye. Lets stick black gang members with white supremasists in the same tent.

When I see people propose stuff like this, I'm just so glad that we have DNA testing that works every time and we have District Attorneys in charge that are always quick to make sure justice is served.

At least our country still has a few good citizens that still care and want to keep our justice system honest.

When you suggest torturing inmates remember that in a year it could be you standing there in those tents. It may be "good enough for our troops in Iraq", but every single person there made the choice to join the army.

Can you say the same for our justice system?

How is the number of people in the US relevant? What matters is the percentage of criminals who are black. I would expect the percentage of executed persons who are black to be roughly the same

IANTOP, but it's a pretty well established fact that juries convict innocent people all the time. DNA testing is helping a little nowadays, though. There is some good information here, here and here.

worry about juries that refuse to accept eyewitness accounts

Eyewitness accounts are notoriously innacurate and misleading. A number of studies have found that people who witness criminal situations (and hence are under stress) cannot remember (and can even "invent" specifics about) the incidents.

or even outright confessions,

Confessions are also not reliable. Once again, under stress, an individual can be suggested to confess to thing he or she has not done (which is why you should take advantage of your rights and stay silent until your lawyer is present). A number of the cases that have recently been overturned by DNA evidence involved confessions. Yet years later we can prove these people are innocent.

If these CSI-educated juries are prone to be more cautious in making decisions about guilt, then IMO it's probably a good thing.

This navy study

and here, and again.

Sheesh, what crap. This is only the first page of a google search of "bank robber caught surveillance camera":

And here are some stories where people were released after tapes showed they were innocent (an interesting twist I would say)...

http://www.truthinjustice.org/robber01.htm
http://www.thezephyr.com/archives/sornbergers.htm

Do you really think insurance companies are so stupid as to give a 15% discount for totally worthless equipment? I think their statistics on the subject are probably better than yours.

{sarcasm on}

Then I'm sure you'll have no problem handing over your social security number, street address and phone number, credit card numbers (with exp. dates, please) and bank account info, along with that for your kids. What? You're not going to? Why, then, you must have something to hide!

{sarcasm off}

That's the first problem with your stance - you do have an expecation of privacy, and I don't think you're a terrorist or a child pornographer.

The second problem is that parts of the government has historically shown an annoying tendency to violate privacy rights for no particular good reason. Watergate and other things Nixon is a classic example, particularly the 'enemies list'. (For those who don't remember, Nixon and his cronies ordered the FBI and the IRS to investigate and cause trouble for people who Nixon considered his political enemies - classic cases of misuse of power.) These reasons are enough for people to want to protect their privacy themselves, since we've already seen we can't rely on the government to do it.

Wake up people, there are some very evil people out there, and it is our duty as decent Christians to do everything we can to help stop them.

Many people, myself included, find it evil for the powers-that-be to trample all over the innocent in pursuit of the evil. And, given the recent track record of the government in the issue of things like wrongful convictions (remember that the gov. of Illinois has put all death sentences on hold, because of massive uncertainty in the process, or you can check here for organizations which track this sort of thing), many people are not sure the government is the best organization to give our absolute trust to.

Also note, while the vast majority are probably decent, there are a lot of people who are not christian. You're not calling their decency into question, are you?


...phil