FBI Doesn't Tell Courts About Bogus Evidence

dprovine writes "According to a joint investigation by The Washington Post and 60 Minutes, a forensic test used by the FBI for decades is known to be invalid. The National Academy of Science issued a report in 2004 that FBI investigators had given "problematic" testimony to juries. The FBI later stopped using "bullet lead analysis", but sent a letter to law enforcement officials saying that they still fully supported the science behind it. Hundreds of criminal defendants — some already convicted in part on the testimony of FBI experts — were not informed about the problems with the evidence used against them in court."

Comments

WHAT?!?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Those BASTARDS!

How could they?

Re:WHAT?!?!

[trolltalk.com]

Those BASTARDS!

How could they?

Simple - follow the money. There are two things that corrupt - power and money. You do bogus "bullet lead analysis", and you get more funding, a bigger staff, more power ... rinse, lather, and repeat.

Welcome to faith-based criminology - where nobody bothers to test basic assumptions because in Soviet Amerika, the FBI trolls YOU! And no, its not just a problem for the US.

What's particularly galling is that nobody in government feels a need to review all the cases where the FBI basically LIED. Again, power and money. Is it a coincidence that the first case this was used on was the Kennedy Assassination, and that it supposedly tied the "magic bullet" to a box of bullets Oswald had? Or was this the FBI "inventing junk science" for a political agenda, and then it got out of hand?

Re:WHAT?!?!

[Vengance Daemon]

He must be guilty or he wouldn't be here.

Re:WHAT?!?!

[caramelcarrot]

I'm pretty sure this method of composition analysis was accused of being totally inaccurate in New Scientist years ago. Surely it's a failure of expert witnesses if they don't even know their own science?

Re:WHAT?!?!

[ciscoguy01]

I saw the 60 minutes piece.

For those that didn't the test purported to prove that the bullet fragments found at a crime scene came from the same box found in the accused perpetrator's possession by matching the lead content. One would wonder what would happen if the accused perpetrator had only a full, unused box and had only bought one box?

Why anyone in the world would think that type of test would be valid I can't imagine. Those bullets are made by an automated machine, it seems very likely the machine could make 1 or a million boxes of bullets and they would all be the same, or so close to the same that it wouldn't be usable for any sort of legal evidence.

What's incredible about this is that the defense lawyers let this go on so long. It seems you could refute the whole principle with a few declarations from bullet manufacturers.

That's the failure here

First Post for Jesus!

[Anonymous Coward]

keepin it real

does the article state

[zappepcs]

why the evidence presented was not questioned as to its scientific veracity? From what I read and hear, there is valid reason for questioning every technology that is used against you, whether that is a radar gun, camera, eye witness, anything. Your lawyer should never accept anything as fact, and should attempt to prove in court that it is not valid. For instance, the breathalyzer tests have been shown to read higher than actual in more than 25% of tests. Can't remember the story lead or I'd link it.

It's things like this that ensure that the party with the most money will win...

Re:does the article state

[Derekloffin]

As good as some lawyers are, most are not experts in every scientific technique, and those that aren't frequently don't have the funds to hunt down and procure the testimony of someone who is both familiar with the technique and willing to talk about it's short comings in their client's favor.

Re:does the article state

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Your lawyer should never accept anything as fact, and should attempt to prove in court that it is not valid.

A lawyer I know once described public defenders as always falling into one of two categories:

• Young, altruistic, energetic, and so inexperienced and incompetent they don't know how to file a motion, let alone properly get evidence examined.
• Older guys, there for a paycheck, who do as little as possible, even choosing unnecessary plea bargains just so they have less paperwork to do.

I'd like to think he's being cynical, but I haven't seen much evidence that contradicts his claim. I saw a true crime special the other day about a woman who spent four years in jail after being convicted of murder. The supposed method was LSD poisoning, even though there has never been a human fatality attributed directly to LSD. The test they used to convict her was a preliminary test that was only supposed to show if there was reason to do the more expensive test. The test was run on tissue from a exhumed cadaver, when the test was only useful applied to fresh urine from a living person. The state did perform the follow up test, but it showed up as negative, so they pretended they had not performed it. Somehow, her defendant did not question any of this evidence, at all despite it being scientifically unsound to pretty much any pathologist you could consult. That lawyer is still a practicing public defender.

Re:does the article state

[NetDanzr]

At a time when the prosecution can purchase expert testimony in their favor, it can be quite difficult for the defense to challenge the science behind the evidence.

Re:does the article state

[tinkerghost]

Scientific testing is required to be peer reviewed and 'generally accepted as valid'. However, sometimes things get peer reviewed and approved which are then shown to be inaccurate. Sometimes they just get dumped into play regardless of the rules..

Bullet Lead analysis is accurate to a point. The problem is that after decades of review, that point appears to be to vague to match the bullet with a specific batch of bullets. It might however be able to exclude bullets of similar caliber from different manufacturers.

Another case in point is the silicone breast implant debacle. The test used to 'prove' that the silicone from breast implants was causing health problems was unable to statistically show who actually had breast implants - IE. healthy women without breast implants came back positive in the same statistical numbers as ill women with breast implants. Yet, Dow Corning lost the case even though it was shown in court that the test was worthless. (these women are suffering & someone has to pay don't you know)

Re:does the article state

[nomadic]

Older guys, there for a paycheck, who do as little as possible, even choosing unnecessary plea bargains just so they have less paperwork to do.

The thing is, around here if a public defender just wants a paycheck they're a lot better off going into private practice, and a few years in the PD's office looks good on your resume.

Re:does the article state

[$RANDOMLUSER]

• Young, altruistic, energetic, and so inexperienced and incompetent they don't know how to file a motion, let alone properly get evidence examined.
• Older guys, there for a paycheck, who do as little as possible, even choosing unnecessary plea bargains just so they have less paperwork to do.

Sounds like a lot of programmers (and project managers) I know, too.

Re:does the article state

[sumdumass]

Around here the public defenders are all in private practice and do a rotation of so many cases depending on their specialty or line of practice.

You are just as likely to get the same guy you would have hired as your lawyer, for a public defender. OF course this goes along the lines of who is accepting cases at the time too. I don't know if it is a better system or not. I think there is a flat fee for each case though. I'm not sure if the city/county/state picks up tabs for stuff like expert witnesses though.

Re:does the article state

[sumdumass]

I think this problem became more troublesome over the years as manufacturing techniques and processes became more consistent.

There was something else a few years back that they were claiming changed like this. Maybe it is the same thing, I don't remember what it was. It was that they used to be able to tell specific batch numbers from samples collect during manufacturing and it became more and more difficult as everything in the processes got better and the quality peaked or leveled out.

Re:does the article state

[Znork]

"the breathalyzer tests have been shown to read higher than actual in more than 25% of tests"

Heck, DNA labs have had 10% error rates. There have been cases where they run first the DNA sample from the suspect, then run the comparison with the crimescene sample in the same batch, insufficiently cleaning equipment between so the suspects sample is actually transferred into the crimescene sample during the testing procedure. And labs that refuse to change such flawed procedures due to cost.

There was a case in the UK where a man with advanced Parkinsons who couldnt drive and who could barely dress himself became a suspect in a burglary 200 miles away, after a DNA database search popped his name out as a match. He put in jail for several months, until his lawyer demanded a test on more loci and they noticed that, ooops, DNA isnt really that accurate, and seeing as human beings do not vary in size and form between flatworm through elephant, they can have quite a lot of matching loci without actually being the same person.

Forensic science isnt questioned anywhere near as much as it should be. Which gives us idiotic ideas like fingerprint and dna databases that will be so diluted by irrelevant false positives they can only either waste resources and slow down police work or provide a whole host of scapegoats to throw in jail even when there's not the slightest chance they could actually be guilty.

Re:does the article state

[nasor]

Sure, if you can afford to pay thousands of dollars to bring in your own qualified expert witness to testify that the police's forensic analysis was flawed. People with advanced degrees in forensics and/or analytical chemistry usually don't donate their time for free. If you're poor, good luck trying to concince someone to help you out of the goodness of their heart.

Re:does the article state

[boris111]

Right some people get stuck with this lawyer.

Re:does the article state

[PitaBred]

Yeah, they'd be better off. But that would take ambition and competence. There are a LOT of people who are perfectly comfortable (if not happy) to just work only within what they know, and keep things from changing as much as possible. Change is bad. The old guys would stay there as long as they knew they'd get their regular pay increases, and know exactly what's expected of them, and don't have to do much work.

Re:does the article state

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

For instance, the breathalyzer tests have been shown to read higher than actual in more than 25% of tests.

How did they test that, out of curiosity?

Re:does the article state

[lucifuge31337]

The state did perform the follow up test, but it showed up as negative, so they pretended they had not performed it.

Not disputing anything at all that you said, but if that is the case, it's highly illegal and grounds for disbarment of the prosecutor. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exculpatory_evidence

Re:does the article state

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

That was the grounds for the retrial, but according to the report, the original prosecutor had been dead several years and the original defender refused interviews.

Re:does the article state

[smartfart]

And why are we bothering to listen to anything 60 Minutes has to say? Remember Rathergate? These guys are about the last source for information that I'd ever turn to.

Re:does the article state

[OhHellWithIt]

why the evidence presented was not questioned as to its scientific veracity?

From what I remember of my jury service on a criminal trial a decade ago, the judge was very specific that we were supposed to consider only the evidence presented in the courtroom, and not to make decisions about whether the evidence was flawed. And I'll have to say that in the matter of the metallurgical analyses in the Post article, I'd have had to take it on faith that the FBI expert was telling the truth, because I didn't know the first thing about the variations in metallurgy that occur when mass-producing bullets.

The thing I took away from the article is that a jury shouldn't convict anyone on the basis of one thing, particularly when it's in a subject area one knows nothing about.

Re:does the article state

[zappepcs]

I'm trying hard to remember verbatim, but the gist is that the major manufacturer was sued and had to show their testing procedures, which when independently verified, showed that they did a decimal place typo and left it uncorrected in their math... leading to 25% rather than 2.5. A rather big difference. Again, don't quote me, I'm sure Google has it written down.

Re:does the article state

[jet_silver]

This is why juries exist, to provide the skepticism required during a trial. If the prosecution says we did a drimblefratz match, the jury should ignore that evidence unless drimblefratz matching is demonstrated to be a reasonable technique. "DNA evidence" sounds great, for example, but it should be particularly worrying if the difference between mitochondrial DNA and genetic DNA isn't explained or if the evidence is the result of mitochondrial DNA matching.

The scandal is that the linkage between a test result and a conclusion is so very frequently glossed over in trials. Any lawyer worth his salt will bring this stuff up explicitly as the parent points out.

In any case where a test result was offered in evidence whose criteria were not explained, an intelligent juror would maintain the reasonable doubt that is the boundary between proven guilt and innocence.

Re:does the article state

[belmolis]

For several reasons. First, "60 Minutes" is reporting information from a National Academy of Sciences report and other sources that can be independently verified. You don't have to take their word for it. Second, "60 Minutes" is done by different teams of reporters at different times. Just because one reporter or one team may screw up doesn't mean that the others will. Third, the reporters probably felt under much greater pressure to make the story in the Bush National Guard case than in most others. It was a very hot issue. Finally, remember that although the documents that provided the most direct evidence were shown to be forgeries, the story was essentially correct: Bush did use political influence to get a cushy, essentially risk-free National Guard job. He did explicitly decline to make himself available for transfer to the war zone in SE Asia. He clearly did not complete his National Guard obligation. And finally, the former secretary of the officer who would have issued the forged documents testified that such documents had in fact existed. So, yes, "60 Minutes" was overly eager and did not investigate the documents carefully enough, but the story was basically accurate.

Re:does the article state

[tinkerghost]

I think this problem became more troublesome over the years as manufacturing techniques and processes became more consistent.

I will agree that this problem has probably become exacerbated by improved manufacturing techniques - I have done FTIR and GCMS analysis as an industrial chemist, and archived samples are much easier to differentiate than more current samples. However, this and DNA both share the same problem, they were designed as exclusionary tests, but have been used as definitive tests.

Re:does the article state

[DeadChobi]

You should question the cop in your speeding ticket hearing about how the radar gun works, because you can often reveal him as a non-expert as to the use of that item. This, in turn, makes it easy to argue that he was in error in giving you a ticket. If he doesn't know how the radar gun works, how does he know that it was you he measured? Furthermore, how does he know the gun wasn't functioning erroneously?

Re:does the article state

[Anonymous Coward]

IIRC, there's a series of breathalizer that didn't properly recalibrate after each blow. So there was a cumulatively higher result.

Testing that one would be easy: have someone take a drink, and half an hour later, have them do like 20 blows on the same breathalizer. If it keeps going UP obviously there's something wrong.

Re:does the article state

[sumdumass]

Oh, I see the big difference now. And I guess I could say the big problem too.

I didn't really think about that part of the logic until you pointed it out.

Re:does the article state

[Foobar of Borg]

Right some people get stuck with this lawyer.

Well, it certainly beats having this lawyer.

Re:does the article state

[zerkon]

You are relying on a jury of your peers to understand the difference between mitochondrial DNA and genetic DNA?

You understand that by definition, half of the population has an IQ of less than 100 right?

(going for funny here, not flamebait)

Re:does the article state

[blitziod]

wow why go through the trouble here in housto,tx the crime lab justs ask the DA what results they want ..then fabricates them...of course they got busted but hardly anybody went to jail...

Re:does the article state

[Lost Engineer]

Testing that one would be easy: have someone take a drink, and half an hour later, have them do like 20 blows on the same breathalizer. If it keeps going UP obviously there's something wrong. Or this person just pounded a stomach full of booze which is taking time to absorb. This is the same thing that causes the blood/urine tests currently used to be inaccurate. They extrapolate as if there's nothing in your stomach, which is pretty unreasonable for someone who has been drinking. Combine that with the ridiculously low "drunk" driving thresholds in America (not sure about other places -- I once dared a friend drink 3 beers which, according to the chart made him too drunk to drive, then do a standing back flip) makes your every day punter watching a football game (does it matter which kind?) guilty.

All that said, the "I would've been sober-er driving if I'd gotten home quick enough", doesn't seem to do well with juries.

Re:does the article state

[captainwisdom]

What's really known to be invalid is the WaPo and 60 minutes investigative journalism. :)

Re:does the article state

[codegen]

For instance, the breathalyzer tests have been shown to read higher than actual in more than 25% of tests.

How did they test that, out of curiosity?

It has been a while since I saw the original article (like the original poster). As I recall they compared the breathalyzer to blood samples taken at the same time in a controlled situation.

Re:does the article state

[Anonymous Coward]

9/11 Truth

Re:does the article state

[pat mcguire]

I think he has a bit of a skewed view of public defenders, and places a lot of the blame at their feet that should more properly go at the feet of the state. I've known several personally, and the basic pattern of their job is as follows:

1. Assigned to case. Overwhelming evidence against them.
2. Try to convince their client to take a plea bargain so they don't wind up in jail for 40 years. Fail.
3. Rack their brains for some preposterous theory that can get their client off the hook. Loose.

The problem isn't the public defenders, the problem is the state isn't moderating to find the truth, they're prosecuting. All evidence is gathered with conviction in mind. One of the public defender's I've dealt with had a case where a great deal of evidence (namely, witnesses directly contradicting the prosecution's account of events) wasn't even mentioned to him until after the trial. The prosecution and evidence gatherers are the same department, and they have and use the ability to just discount evidence they don't feel is credible, which tends to be the evidence that pokes the most holes in their stories.

Re:does the article state

[AmiMoJo]

Unfortunately this sort of thing keeps happening over and over again here (UK).

Barry George has just won the right to a re-trial because the gunpowder evidence (a single particle in the pocket of a jacket that was contaminated by police anyway) had been show (by TV programs!) to be unreliable. A few years ago BBC Scotland reported on problems with fingerprint evidence which put two innocent people in jail, one for three years and one for five. Fingerprint matching is not an exact science.

DNA is by far the worst offender. The police and CPS claim it is basically infallible, but that's pretty far from the truth. The only suspect in the Omagh bombing looks likely to be found not guilty because the DNA evidence is very weak, based on very small samples that need to be "amplified" for testing. This method is highly unreliable and also managed to turn up matches for a schoolboy living in Nottingham, as well as the suspect.

Then there is the fact that the presence of DNA is hardly damning. Say you brushed against someone in the street and the next day they were murdered. Your hair follicles and DNA are found on their clothes. Maybe you handled the knife a criminal used at some point (shop assistant etc). It doesn't even place you at the crime scene half the time, because objects and DNA can be moved around easily.

The problem is that, rather than admitting these deficiencies, the police and Crown Prosecution Service are so desperate to get convictions and good publicity they will lie just to get a conviction. Barry George was the only suspect in the high profile Jill Dando murder case, and wasn't arrested until 18 months after the incident by which time people were starting to wonder if it would ever be solved and the police were looking incompetent.

Re:does the article state

[Anonymous Coward]

In computer or application testing, people see what they imagine or expect to see, and miss the blinding obvious. Lawyers, Judges and Law enforcement, suffer from the same affliction.

Old hat. So called 'fingerprint' experts have been getting it wrong for ages, and the examination board gets to see some 'shocker's too often.
DNA evidence is often suspect, as it is a known fact cost and speed is more important than quality.
As for not presenting evidence, asking a questing like' Is there anything else that the defendant should be aware of that may have a material bearing on this procecution' is never answered. Won't get to procecutor to admit things like 'yeah,we know from phone taps that he/she was 100 miles away' will never see the light of day. A bit like how IraqNam started - selective truthisms, selecting evidence, and political bias.

Re:does the article state

[rifter]

Finally, remember that although the documents that provided the most direct evidence were shown to be forgeries, the story was essentially correct:

Actually the documents were never shown to be forgeries. The accusation was made based on the claim that the fonts used on the documents were the same as those used on a computer, which is kind of a bogus argument in that some fonts must actually go back hundreds of years in usage. Once the accusation was made and Dan Rather got fired over it, the story died down and no one had to prove anything. And, yes, the story was correct, but just as in other cases the Republican side was able to shout down their accusers with their blustering and turn the whole case around so that their accusers became the accused.

Re:does the article state

[basingwerk]

There are two types of doubt - doubt of innocence and doubt of guilt (as well as their inverses - certainty of innocence and guilt!) When the judge says "beyond reasonable doubt", which type of doubt does he mean? "Beyond reasonable doubt" may vary depending on whether you are straining every sinew to convict a wastrel, or whether you are doing all in your power to find a reason to exonerate the chap. Perhaps it should be rephrased to say "plausible doubt". That way, "statistical convictions" would be eliminated. If circumstances suggest a chance of 1 in 6 billion, then it is almost certain to happen to one person at least. Yet using "beyond reasonable doubt" means you'll go to jail for something you haven't done, because 1 in 6 billion is pretty heavy. Using the "plausible doubt" is different. If circumstances suggest a chance of 1 in 6 billion, then it is almost certain to happen to one person, and a defense could be based on "plausible doubt" that would get you off. It is, after all, completely plausible, as all debuggers can attest! The problem is that more crooks would get off too.

Re:does the article state

[ciscoguy01]

The state did perform the follow up test, but it showed up as negative, so they pretended they had not performed it. Somehow, her defendant did not question any of this evidence, at all despite it being scientifically unsound to pretty much any pathologist you could consult. That lawyer is still a practicing public defender.

This brings question to the way the legal system is in the US. It's an advocacy based system. The state uses your tax money to advocate for your guilt, and often hides evidence to the contrary as mentioned in the parent post- or in the Duke rape case. Your defense lawyer has to advocate for your innocence, but without the unlimited funds the state has to use against you is largely handicapped, and this goes for either a private lawyer you are paying (unless you are very rich or OJ Simpson) or a public defender paid by the taxpayers.

I read somewhere that in some countries, France was mentioned, the judge is ultimately responsible for finding out what the actual truth is. If he has to leave the court and go out in the field to determine that, he is supposed to.

Anyone who knows how it is in other countries please jump in and post, I'd love to hear it.

I for one wish someone in the US legal system was responsible for truth. As it is, there's no relation between justice and the legal system in the US.

Re:does the article state

[jdjbuffalo]

Where is this? Is it across the whole state?

It sounds like a really good idea and I'd like to see this done across the board. It's a way to make sure people get competent legal advise and reduces the possibility of putting an innocent person in jail.

Re:does the article state

[AmiMoJo]

The point is that it's not a 1 in six billion chance. The police used to claim that there was only a 1 in 60,000,000 chance of matching the wrong person. That was a lie, DNA testing is no-where near that certain. There are different kinds of DNA testing, different circumstances, and disagreement between experts.

Under UK law, the prosecution must prove guilt beyond reasonable doubt. In the case of Barry George, they said he "must" have fired the gun because of the single particle of gunpowder evidence. Their expert said that there could be no doubt. That was a lie, the gunpowder evidence was actually worthless.

Re:does the article state

[sumdumass]

This is in central Ohio area and I don't know if it is state wide or just my county.

I don't really want to disclose my exact whereabouts or specific county.

Actually, I just found a map of Ohio counties that list counties with a public defenders office as opposed to a court appointed attorney. So it looks like it is county wide and somewhat common but not as common as it should be. I'm guessing the court appointed is the ones I described from my county being listed as that way.

Re:does the article state

[Anonymous Coward]

Just saying... being able to do a standing back flip doesn't require the same skills as driving, regardless of what Carl Edwards may try and tell you.

I'd have to be drunk to even attempt a standing back flip without practicing first.

Re:does the article state

[Anonymous Coward]

This doesn't work; the officer is assumed (and usually certified) to know how to use the equipment, and the reliablity of radar is typically "established in the state" already.

The only right way to fight a ticket is to hire a lawyer that will fight it for you.

Oh, and sign up with the NMA.

They were all guilty anyway!

[A beautiful mind]

They were all guilty! We know they were all guilty! How? We just know!

Besides, would you let a killer/terrorist/robber free?

Re:They were all guilty anyway!

[eln]

We know they were guilty because a jury said they were. These are very complex scientific arguments being presented. If you can't trust 12 people who were not smart enough to get out of jury duty to evaluate that evidence, then who can you trust?

Re:They were all guilty anyway!

[secPM_MS]

The fact that a jury found somebody guilty, does not mean that that person is guilty. While I suspect that the error rate is rather low, the large number of cases means that a substantial number of convicts are innocent of at least one of the charges upon which they were convicted.

The court system is all but paralyzed under the case burden they are suffering from. Consequentially, it has a very strong bias against reconsidering decided cases, even when evidence comes up that renders some of the evidence used to convict a person rather questionable.

The court system is typically not concerned with justice, but with "law". The application of "laws" as interpreted by appeals courts to the case at hand.

There are problems with many of the circumstantial evidence tools, but they are small indeed compared to the error rate of human witnesses and their memory.

Re:They were all guilty anyway!

[magarity]

If you can't trust 12 people who were not smart enough to get out of jury duty to evaluate that evidence
 
Such a finely developed sense of civic duty you have there. Jury duty may well be a pain in the arse but it's a hard won right for accused that people in trouble with the law in most other parts of the world would find an amazing gift.

Re:They were all guilty anyway!

[Anonymous Coward]

Enlighten me, please.
What is so bad about jury duty?
Are you merely an idiot modded insightful by fellow idiots?

Re:They were all guilty anyway!

[theodicey]

Actually according to the Supreme Court's Daubert decision, it's judges who are asked to be the "gatekeepers" who exclude unreliable and irrelevant science.

So don't blame the juries. If the science is really bad, it shouldn't be put in front of a jury in the first place. Blame the judges, the out of control prosecutors, and maybe the overworked public defenders.

Re:They were all guilty anyway!

[HiThere]

I'd say the only thing wrong with your post is that you need to remove the word "typically", but that would be cynical. (OTOH, you did say "the court system", so I think that I'd be correct. Only some individuals within the system are concerned with justice.)

Re:They were all guilty anyway!

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

They were all guilty! We know they were all guilty! How? We just know!

Let's be fair here. Even though the FBI may not be able to prove it beyond reasonable doubt in court, they may have a pretty damn good idea that the person is guilty. They may well see it as their duty to subvert the courts. I'm not saying by any means that I condone it, I just also don't condone making strawmen out of your opponents. It tends to weaken your side of the argument

Re:They were all guilty anyway!

[NeutronCowboy]

This is a bullshit argument. Personally, I think it ranks with "but everyone else is doing it!" in shittiness. Did you ever think that some people actually consider jury duty to be a civic duty for which you ought to be thankful? Yes, it isn't the greatest system. But not participating - because that is what you're advocating - is just making it worse.

Next thing you're gonna tell me is that no one should vote, because it is pointless. I'm sure you wouldn't mind to completely give up your right to vote and just accept everybody the American aristocracy and oligarchy throws at you.

Re:They were all guilty anyway!

[cayenne8]

"Did you ever think that some people actually consider jury duty to be a civic duty for which you ought to be thankful? Yes, it isn't the greatest system. But not participating - because that is what you're advocating - is just making it worse."

I agree...it IS a civic duty. However, it can be very difficult to do. I contract, and am paid hourly. I could lose a TON of money on a trial that is very long at all....if they could compensate better, it would help. I'd love to do some jury stuff, but, can't hardly afford to....

Re:They were all guilty anyway!

[NeutronCowboy]

If you're losing a ton of money over jury duty, you're making a metric-ton load more during all the other times you're not at jury duty. Consider it a small price to pay for the right to have a jury of your peers. If you're actually so deep in debt that you need the money you'd earn during jury duty... I can't help you, and would merely point out that you might want to readjust your lifestyle expectations.

Re:They were all guilty anyway!

[belmolis]

If you're talking about jury duty of a few days, that shouldn't be a problem. But if you're talking about a major case that lasts weeks or months, that's a pretty big cut. Serving on a jury for three months is equivalent to taking a pay cut of 25%. Many people can't afford that.

Re:They were all guilty anyway!

[Anonymous Coward]

You know your argument is not helping FBI, right?

Re:They were all guilty anyway!

[Monsuco]

Such a finely developed sense of civic duty you have there. Jury duty may well be a pain in the arse but it's a hard won right for accused that people in trouble with the law in most other parts of the world would find an amazing gift.

I doubt the jury feels that way.

Re:They were all guilty anyway!

[Anonymous Coward]

Jury duty may well be a pain in the arse but it's a hard won right for accused that people in trouble with the law in most other parts of the world would find an amazing gift.

And pray tell, how do you arrive at that conclusion? Have you interviewed accused in "most other parts of the world"? Have you read research that has interviewed "most other parts of the world"? Or are you just assuming that since you think it's great, other people too must see it as an "amazing gift"?

Wikipedia says:

The positive belief about jury trials in the UK and the U.S. contrasts with popular belief in many other nations, in which it is considered bizarre and risky for a person's fate to be put into the hands of untrained laymen.

Which is a lot more in tune with my experience, being a continental European.

Re:They were all guilty anyway!

[shilly]

I can't speak for all juries, but I can say that I felt privileged to serve as a juror, took my responsibilities seriously, and shared that in common with my fellow jurors.

Re:They were all guilty anyway!

[rifter]

"They were all guilty! We know they were all guilty! How? We just know!"

Let's be fair here. Even though the FBI may not be able to prove it beyond reasonable doubt in court, they may have a pretty damn good idea that the person is guilty. They may well see it as their duty to subvert the courts. I'm not saying by any means that I condone it, I just also don't condone making strawmen out of your opponents. It tends to weaken your side of the argument

But that is exactly the point. If the evidence does not point to the defendant, how is your assertion that you know he is guilty valid at all? The whole point of forcing the police and prosecution to gather proper evidence goes back to the idea that they were supposed to use evidence to determine who committed a crime, not pick someone at random and make things up to railroad them into jail. It's a lot easier to do the latter, which is the lazy route, and unfortunately this seems to be the MO of police and prosecutors everywhere. It's worse when they invent crimes that never even happened, as in cases where the police plant drug evidence (and if you are in Dallas they don't even bother to use real drugs as sheetrock will do just fine if you call it crack cocaine).

You could throw a rock and find a great example, but for instance there was a case which IIRC was profiled on CourtTV in which a man was murdered in his apartment and the police could find no motive for the killing. So they found someone who fit the description of a person a witness said they saw that night (young black male) and tried to force a confession out of him. When that did not work, they tried to railroad him on evidence that did not actually prove anything at all. The only thing that saved this guy was the fact there turned out to be much more concrete evidence (which the police were ignoring) that proved he could never have committed the crime. Meanwhile the real killer, who was a wanted criminal, a violent drug dealer and burglar who had been desperately in need of money at the time, had left a full backpack with his name on it at the crime scene. The police did not even bother to type that name (which had been a mystery since none of the victim's friends seemed to know anyone by that name) into their computer and discover that he was a fugitive. On the night in question he had been run off by the landlord and had been trying to break into apartments in the complex where both he and the victim lived. In this case, the police eventually found what was probably the right guy. But they had not done even the most basic detective work in the beginning because they were so intent on railroading someone else that they already could easily lay hands on. Why look for the real killer when you can just make up things to get the case closed? If the original defendant had caved and pled out or had not been able to prove with concrete evidence that he was no where near the crime scene, he would be the one in jail and the case would never have been on CourtTV.

Re:They were all guilty anyway!

[lpq]

Actually -- they were all guilty...how do we know? Um -- they wouldn't have been arrested if they weren't guilty! Isn't that how our legal system works [sic[k]]? Assumption of guilt upon getting an arrest warrant?

Re:They were all guilty anyway!

[plague3106]

Which is why our goverment is running out of control.

Probably minimal impact

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd have a hard time imagining a case hinging soley on analysis of bullet lead. There's usually far more incriminating evidence in other, more clearly implicit forms.

Re:Probably minimal impact

[truthsearch]

60 Minutes interviewed one person who was convicted with bullet lead analysis as the only physical evidence. All other evidence was circumstantial. No one knows yet how many cases used this as evidence, so there's no way to know how many cases relied heavily on it.

Re:Probably minimal impact

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd have a hard time imagining...

Thanks for telling us about your personal characteristics!

Now, do you have anything relevant to the issue at hand to say?

Polygraph

[king-manic]

Lie Detectors are still occasionally used and can be presented in the US. The basic premise behind them is very tenuous but they continued to be used. What they tell you is several physical indicators of stress which may or may not correlate to telling a lie. Nobody has proved a strong correlation but they continues to be used in the US.

Re:Polygraph

[Samgilljoy]

Actually, as long as we're talking about the FBI and bogus science, what bothers me more is that the FBI routinely uses Lie Detectors for "loyalty tests." They've been told time and again, even by the creator of the system they use, that they are not suited to such uses, but they still do it. I'm fairly certain other federal law and intelligence agencies use them in the same way, but since I only know the details of the FBI's use, I won't generalize.

Re:Polygraph

[3waygeek]

FBI isn't the only three-letter agency to use the polygraph -- the NSA's really big on polygraphs, too.

Legion of Doom

[Doc Ruby]

Sometimes it seems like justice is impossible unless there's something like a criminals union, or at least a defendants union, to counterbalance the government agencies like the FBI that will just lie about evidence and be trusted by judges, who after all are both working for The Man (who raises all that money for bigger prisons).

Re:Legion of Doom

[sssssss27]

That's what The Guild of Calamitous Intent is for.

Re:Legion of Doom

[Anonymous Coward]

The ACLU, perhaps?

Re:Legion of Doom

[mabhatter654]

you have a point, that there's too much conflict of interest in our court system to be truly fair. Judges should be downright hostile to DAs as much as suspects on trial, but often that's hard when the offices are in the same building! Also, separation of powers is not DA/police.. they are the same branch!! But it's easy for police to "trick" the over eager DAs into presenting outright lies in court because police are "assumed" to always tell the truth... something that should be done away with. Once you get that combination of pieces in place, "expert" witnesses are hard to beat because they're supposedly "sworn" to the court... but everybody has their own agenda and the actual suspect is against 5 other people with their own intents... DA, police, judge, and defender... you're rights and interests are dead last.

Re:Legion of Doom

[sumdumass]

OK, This is one of the few places that I would agree with you. I tell you what, lets organize all the criminals and when someone get railroaded in the courts, we get them to all strike. Thats right, that would teach those cops, prosecutors, judges and court workers who have to look for different jobs because with all the criminals on strike, there won't be a need for them. Then after the strike is off, they would likely rehire new employees because th old ones would have moved on with their life.

Unfortunately, if there actually was a strike and most all of the crime disappeared, it would be more likely that new laws would be made to turn more people into criminals then to actually lay off the police and court employees. So I doubt that would work.

PS, I know where you were going with this and I do agree with it. I was just poking fun at the difficulty of the reality of doing something.

Re:Legion of Doom

[Qzukk]

Once you get that combination of pieces in place, "expert" witnesses are hard to beat because they're supposedly "sworn" to the court... but everybody has their own agenda and the actual suspect is against 5 other people with their own intents... DA, police, judge, and defender... you're rights and interests are dead last.

Just look at how often the DA's charge their own star witnesses with perjury when they have been caught lying (oh, sorry, "being incorrect" despite being paid with taxpayer dollars to be correct) under oath.

Re:Legion of Doom

[jimicus]

Sometimes it seems like justice is impossible unless there's something like a criminals union, or at least a defendants union

There is. It's called a lawyer.

The only small issue is that the legal process isn't about justice - it's about both sides getting together and having a supposedly-independent third party decide who has the best lawyer.

Re:Legion of Doom

[Doc Ruby]

A lawyer isn't a union. Now tell me that you're a libertarian.

Re:Legion of Doom

[jimicus]

Very true. Perhaps maybe there is a point to this.

If criminals formed a union, they would be in a much stronger position - think of it, if the worst came to the worst they could go on strike and then where would we be?

Adversarial system

[TheMeuge]

That's what happens when the judicial system is an adversarial system - the prosecutor feels that the defendant is his enemy, because his record is dependent on the percent of cases he closes with a conviction. At the same time there is little to no penalty for convictions that are later overturned, unless they happen to be VERY high profile cases. I am not saying that another system is better, but this problem is certainly inherent in the system.

Other than dramatically increasing the responsibility for false convictions and penalties for malicious persecution, I am not sure that I can come up with any changes that would remedy the problem. People are intrinsically prone to corruption when they are going to benefit from it... and the "blue wall of silence" is just one example of what happens in fraternal orders endowed with power over people's lives.

Re:Adversarial system

[sm62704]

That's why former Illinois Governor George Ryan commuted all the death sentences in Illinois to life after DNA evidence proved that half the men on death row were innocent.

Ryan himself is now in a Federal slammer.

-mcgrew

Re:Adversarial system

[bigdavex]

That's what happens when the judicial system is an adversarial system - the prosecutor feels that the defendant is his enemy, because his record is dependent on the percent of cases he closes with a conviction. At the same time there is little to no penalty for convictions that are later overturned, unless they happen to be VERY high profile cases. I am not saying that another system is better, but this problem is certainly inherent in the system.

I don't have the impression that the prosecutors knew the science was bad.

Re:Adversarial system

[zippthorne]

That's true, but it's much worse for countries with a cooperative justice system where the prosecutor's record is still dependent on the number of cases he closes.

One thing that does bug me..

Cases where convictions are overruled or the defendant is found not guilty.. They don't ever seem to get investigated further. It's like, if our guy doesn't get convicted, the crime didn't really happen, or something. At least, there isn't any media coverage. For instance, OJ was acquitted. Doesn't that mean the case should still be open? What progress have the police made in finding the real killer (or killers?)

Re:Adversarial system

[Unlikely_Hero]

Convict someone of a crime based on evidence you know to be faulty, you serve the sentence instead.

You argued for the death penalty?...ohhh....bad move...

Re:Adversarial system

[pwk]

I don't think it being an adversarial system causes this sort of thing, just the opposite. There would be even less reason for this to come to light if there weren't two sides.

I do agree that the prosecutors should be held responsible for their overzealous conduct. It is usually their job to represent the people of their jurisdiction -- all the people, including defendants -- and they should be held to it. Getting as much "scum of the streets" as possible is a bad job description, even for those elected to office.

Re:Adversarial system

[Anonymous Coward]

No, that's what happens when your judges and prosecutors are elected in a popularity contest instead of promoted based on merit. In the same way that academic publication pressure for advancement (publish or perish) puts too much emphasis on publishing (leading to Least Publishable Information Amount papers), electing judges and prosecutors leads to pressure to find "accused suspects" guilty to appear touch on crime instead of an emphasis on justice.

Re:Adversarial system

[DoofusOfDeath]

That's what happens when the judicial system is an adversarial system - the prosecutor feels that the defendant is his enemy, because his record is dependent on the percent of cases he closes with a conviction. At the same time there is little to no penalty for convictions that are later overturned, unless they happen to be VERY high profile cases. I am not saying that another system is better, but this problem is certainly inherent in the system.

Perhaps a court-employed investigator, who's beholden to prosecution nor the defense?

Re:Adversarial system

[CodeBuster]

Perhaps, but they certainly had an incentive *not* to check too closely into the science either. First, science is not their area of expertise which brings up the second point. Why question potentially valuable scientific evidence that helps your (the prosecution's) case if the scientists say that it is good or at least do not say that it has any problems? As other posters have said, the penalty for getting your conviction overturned someday is small and unlikely while a failure to secure a conviction could potentially have more short term career consequences for an up and coming prosecutor.

Re:Adversarial system

[doggod]

I don't think the problem lies so much with the adversarial system as with another dynamic you mention -- the link between the political success of the District Attorney's office and its record of successful prosecutions. "Success" is thus not defined in parallel with "justice" but rather with court victories.

I see a further linkage here that has to do with general function of the whole "public safety" establishment. Most people, I would guess the overwhelming majority, believe that the function of the police is to protect them from criminals. They are thus dismayed, indignant and often irate when they are victims of a crime and the police appear not to meet their expectations. It's at that point that they learn the truth -- that the real job of the police and the prosecuting attorney isn't to protect them individually but to protect "the public".

Put another way, the job of the public safety establishment is to do whatever is necessary to create the public perception that it is being protected -- such that when the next election rolls around this will be translated into the votes necessary to assure the re-election of the incumbents. Is Joe Prosecutor going to get re-elected if the public perceives him as ineffective when his opponent starts trotting out some statistics showing how few convictions he's gotten? Probably not! Joe P. knows this, so he does what he has to do, and if one or a dozen or a hundred innocent people go to the slammer on account of tainted evidence, well, that's just collateral damage in his effort. If the appeals courts fix it later on, that's nice because it doesn't count against the statistics for his next election campaign.

A solution to the problem would be if our whole legal system could be transformed from one that emphasizes laws and law enforcement into one that emphasizes torts and restitution. Of course that's not going to any time happen soon because that would imply throwing out all the laws that pertain to actions for which there are no demonstrable victims. Well, unless you want to count as "victims" those who get offended by the actions others take that they disapprove of. Such as ingesting drugs or paying for or receiving payment for sexual services or presenting themselves in public without covering those parts of their bodies demanded by the current religious majority.

It's thus worthwhile to ponder the price we all pay for allowing the politicians to pander in this way. In taxes to support the wasted effort and the prisons to provide room and board for those incarcerated, in lost privacy and freedom, and certainly not least in the loss of personal protection against the actions of those who truly do try to do us harm from time to time.

Re:Adversarial system

[Arcane_Rhino]

For instance, OJ was acquitted. Doesn't that mean the case should still be open?

Can't say for all but with OJ the police thought that they had the right guy. No one else existed whose level of suspicion in the double murder reached the level necessary to achieve a warrant for arrest. How are you going to hold a case open when you believe you have apprehended the correct person?

As a side note, amazingly enough, after his acquittal and strong statements that the killer was still at large and needed to be found, the bereaved husband, Mr. Simpson, just kind of let the matter drop as well.

Re:Adversarial system

[CodeBuster]

That sword (pun intended...see below) cuts both ways. Nobody would want to take on the job of prosecuting capital cases if they had to potentially stake their own life on the eventual outcome of the prosecution. In fact, there is an interesting historical precedent for just such problems involving private prosecutions (an option under the old English system of common law) where private citizens could initiate criminal proceedings (i.e. bring charges) against other private citizens in certain cases (i.e. theft, property disputes, and a few other types of cases) but there was a catch. The defendant (i.e. the person that you accused) could elect for the Wager of Battle or Trial by Combat in which a judicially sanctioned duel would decide the outcome of the case.

The last such trial were this right was invoked by the defendant (before the British removed it from their legal system as an anachronism) was in the case of Ashford v Thornton in 1818 where one of the judges, Justice Bayley, said specifically:

"One of the inconveniences of this procedure is, that the party who institutes it must be willing, if required, to stake his life in support of his accusation."

It is also interesting to note that since the United States inherited the common law precedents from English law in force before 1776 and this particular judicial procedure option was not abolished in England until 1818 it has never been decided whether this option remains available, at least theoretically, in the United States (although it would probably not be if someone actually tried to use the precedent or it would be removed as the British have done).

Re:Adversarial system

[samkass]

That's why former Illinois Governor George Ryan commuted all the death sentences in Illinois to life after DNA evidence proved that half the men on death row were innocent.

That's a nice gesture, but it's a lot harder for someone sentenced to life in prison to get people to review their case to overturn it. If I was innocent of a crime, I'm not sure if I'd rather be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, or death. The latter would get me a lot more people digging for my innocence.

Re:Adversarial system

[sm62704]

Personally I'd reather die now than spend my life in prison. Everybody has to die, not everybody has to go to prison.

Re:Adversarial system

[operagost]

Dueling is outlawed in the D.C. and all or nearly all states. If anyone knows a state where it isn't, I'd be interested in finding out.

Re:Adversarial system

[Unlikely_Hero]

You're quite right, no one would want to take on the job of prosecuting capital cases. But I'm not talking here about a prosecutor receiving the sentence they were going for if they lose the case, but if it's shown that they were prosecuting the case in a corrupt or illegal manner.
For prosecutors using illegal or corrupt methods to push their cases, perhaps they should be put to death if they're willing to use immoral methods to sentence others to it. I say this and I'm against the death penalty; for those who would use it as a tool though, they should be subject to it for misusing their ability to sentence others to it.
CodeBuster: thanks for bringing that procedure to my attention, I was completely unaware that such a thing existed so late (relatively speaking) in Common Law. Heh, if both parties agreed to it maybe Trial by Combat wouldn't be such a bad thing.
Some people think I'm excessively harsh in my opinions of punishments for corruption; but I stand by it

If you take other people's lives and livelihoods in your hands, and you fuck with them for your own gain, you should die.

Just think how many vacant seats there would be in congress!

Re:Adversarial system

[jmv]

Actually, you should be convicted what what you really did. Someone spent 5 years in prison because of evidence you knew was faulty? You get convicted of sequestration. Someone learly got executed -- attempted murder. Someone got executed -- murder.

Re:Adversarial system

[Toonol]

What are they supposed to do? The evidence points towards a suspect that the courts have found innocent. They can't just switch to the runner-up suspect, and they can't retry the same suspect. If some startling new evidence came up that pointed towards someone new, they'd probably press charges again... but I doubt that happens very often in real life.

Re:Adversarial system

[Darby]

That's why former Illinois Governor George Ryan commuted all the death sentences in Illinois to life after DNA evidence proved that half the men on death row were innocent.

Well, also there was the fact that it was *proven* that a large number of those people had their confessions tortured out of them by the cops.

Re:Adversarial system

[DarkOx]

Right but just because the prosecutor feels that way did nothing to stop the FBI form acting ethically and filing and amicus(sp) curie(sp) breif(friend of the court, sense my spelling is hopeless). The FBI is an investigative and enforcement agency. They don't have a vested interest in convictions, or at least they should not. I hope agents get rewarded for quality investigative work and not just "busts". That might be to much to hope for, but if true then the discovery that evidence is bad should be brought to light in the name of justice. There should be no direct reason the FBI would not want justice.

Re:Adversarial system

[belmolis]

In Imperial Chinese law the judge, who was also detective and prosecutor in a system somewhat like the current European system, would in fact suffer the penalty for the crime if he was shown to have falsely convicted a criminal.

Re:Adversarial system

[Repossessed]

For one, enforce the law. If you know that the test you used is flawed, or even that a more reliable test counteracts what you are presenting, (as another poster mentioned) and you continue to present that as fact, it should be considered purgery and a felony.

I constantly here stories like this about cops/prosecutors/whatever present what amounts to faked evidence in court, and none of them even get a slap on the wrist, even though the law calls for all of them to be in jail.

Re:Adversarial system

[blitziod]

first off a cooperative system is not needed. However the JUDGE should be ( at least prior to conviction) an advocate for the defendant receiving a fair trial ABOVE ALL OTHER THINGS. Not advocating the defendants case per say, BUT carefully scrutinizing the DA and the state for any injustice. This is why you have a judge in a criminal case- to protect the rights of people against the tyranny of the majority. Once a person is convicted, the judge should be there to insure punishment that is fair, just and considerate of the state and victimns interest. Secondly practicing law is one of this country's highest priveledges . A lawyer( DA) who violates those ethics in a way that risks a citizen's freedom should have his/her license revoked in all 50 states FOREVER..ZERO TOLERANCE. Same for cops.

Re:Adversarial system

[Thanshin]

That's a wonderful system!

For example, if you wrongly argued for an eye gougement, you lose your own eye instead!

I wonder how nobody thought of that before.

Re:Adversarial system

[mysqlrocks]

That's what happens when the judicial system is an adversarial system...

IANAL but the difference between the defense and the prosecution is that the defense is obliged to defend their client regardless of whether or not they think (or even know) that their client is guilty. A prosecutor is not supposed to prosecute if they think or know the defendant to be innocent. My understanding is that a prosecutor could be punished by the bar for prosecuting a defendant they think or know is innocent. A defense attorney could be punished by the bar for not properly defending a client that they know is guilty. In other words, it's not simply one side fighting to convict and the other side fighting to acquit - their obligations are not symmetric. Someone correct me if I'm wrong on this.

Re:Adversarial system

[sm62704]

Yes, that's true. And some folks wonder why black people are afraid of cops!

Re:Adversarial system

[Gen.Anti]

Interesting things can happen in the future. You can be freed. One should pretend they have some mental life ;-)

Re:Adversarial system

[ShadowsHawk]

It would be a nice gesture except at least one of the former inmates is back in prison. I believe the charge was murder in the 1st. Also, I personally believe that Ryan was trying to buy some good will with his future jurors.

A true whistleblower

[InvisblePinkUnicorn]

If this turns out to be true, which it seems to be, then William Tobin is a hero for revealing all of this. If I were in his position, working for so many years under the assumption that the FBI had actually done some tests to back up their original theory, I too would be pissed off that my spurious work had put so many people behind bars for decades (the article mentions someone behind bars for 22 years based solely on this evidence, who has maintained absolute innocence from day one).

Re:A true whistleblower

[morgan_greywolf]

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?

Re:A true whistleblower

[Anonymous Coward]

Oswald was convicted?! That must have been a speedy trial.

Re:A true whistleblower

[Intron]

It's true all right. Here is the FBI's letter. "neither scientists nor bullet manufacturers are able to definitively attest to the significance of an association made between bullets in the course of a bullet lead examination."

Re:A true whistleblower

[Anonymous Coward]

It's worth pointing out that the NTSB was also investigating TWA 800, and took over control once it was established it was not a criminal act. There's something of a pissing contest that occurs between the NTSB and the FBI in the initial states of a crash investigation, as the NTSB gets it if it's not criminally-caused and the FBI gets it if it is.

Re:A true whistleblower

[sgt_doom]

While I appreciate Tobin finally coming forward and stating the obvious about that "magic bullet" stuff, the House Select Committee on Assassinations - back in 1979 - pretty much reached similar conclusions, stating that it was most probably a conspiracy involving several or more people. Gee, if only Roselli, Giancana, Paisley, Morales, and de Morenschildt hadn't all mysteriously died just before they were supposed to testify. Gee, I guess it was just another of those strange coincidences.....

Jesus H. Christ, the first historic whistleblower....and look what it got him!

Re:A true whistleblower

[jdh3.1415]

Lee Harvey Oswald was never convicted. He died before the case could go to trial.

Re:A true whistleblower

[blitziod]

is there a "Godwin's Law" for references to the JFK asassination ?

Re:A true whistleblower

[morgan_greywolf]

There should be. :)

What's instead?

[arbenin]

Apparently used method was not "bullet-proof". There is also another technique that allows connecting a bullet to a gun it was shot from. What else will investigators use instead?

Re:What's instead?

[pilgrim23]

Lead test; inconclusive article describes why; ballistics test; in spite of crime TV for 25 years: inconclusive; and in smaller calibers: unusable. Oh and to work at all the bullet cannot be at all deformed which happens if the bullet contacts a bone, wall or anything hard. Paraffin test for shooting a gun: inconclusive; you cannot tell the difference between shooting a gun, lighting a firework, shoveling manure, or shaking hand with a politician and since washing hands after any of these is a natural reaction, it will not work. Most "Scientific" crime tests rely more on the unlettered faith of the jurors in this heap big magic called "Science" then in the science itself...

Re:Preemptive trolling: somewhere, somehow...

[macboygrey]

BushCo is a buntch of kriminals and should be schot! We must stop the facists!

Seriously though. State power and state violence cannot be justified. We need participatory democracy.

Law Science

[Doc Ruby]

One big problem with our justice system is that it's modeled on science, with evidence, hypothesis (of guilt), theory(of how the law was broken), and logical analysis of physical tests (and the weaker, but still analytical, cross examination of witnesses), all relying on the principle of falsifiability (if the hypothesis can be disproven, or alternatives can't be disproven, the hypothesis is rejected). But science really relies on reproducibility. Experiments are repeated several times and competitively criticized by others with experience repeating and reading the results. While criminal justice does a single "experiment", the alleged criminal act, and then analyzes it once. And then sometimes executes people.

Re:Law Science

[Anonymous Coward]

Occasionally, the justice system performs multiple experiments. Like O.J. Simpson, for instance.

Re:Law Science

[areReady]

You have an incomplete understanding of science, and a faulty understanding of the Judicial System in the United States. In the first case, science absolutely examines some things that only happen once. The Big Bang is one example I can think of off of the top of my head. It can't be reproduced. Does that stop anyone from working on the particulars? No. In the second, the burden of proof for court cases is much different...it is typically "beyond a reasonable doubt." This means that if a normal, average person would have good reason to doubt that the person is guilty, then they are innocent. Law by no means follows the rigorous requirements of the formation of scientific inquiries and proving or disproving a hypothesis. Unfortunately, criminal law is as much marketing as it is actual investigation and presentation of evidence, because you're dealing with a jury of laypeople rather than a worldwide community of experts, as in science. Beyond that, the common law system predates the formulation of science as a discipline by centuries. The only real overlap is the terms used, which have different meanings in each case.

Re:Law Science

[Anonymous Coward]

All of the above is correct except for, "good reason to doubt that the person is guilty, then they are innocent." They are not declared innocent. That's a separate proceeding. There are also different ways to clear your record and different levels of exhortation, exculpation, pardon, et al.

When there is a reasonable doubt the person is found "not guilty" and they are acquitted. That definitely does not mean they are innocent and it is not declared that they are.

Re:Law Science

[areReady]

Good call; my bad. "Not Guilty" is indeed a different status than "Innocent,", and the courts generally don't even go into innocence, but instead refrain from conviction. Some of it is a semantic difference as used popularly, but yes, in criminal courts the question is guilty or not guilty.

Re:Law Science

[Doc Ruby]

Science rarely examines onetime events, out of all the phenomena it studies. And when it does, it explicitly states its certainty in very low confidence levels. And, like with the Big Bang, composes a theory of how the event itself isn't just gone, but is part of massive evidence everywhere - or scientists won't argue with much certainty of all.

Science also works on shades of doubt and uncertainty. Science, in fact, took many of the terms and practices of law, as they coevolved - usually in the same countries and cultures.

So it is you who misunderstands, and misstates, both science and law. And especially you misunderstand one device common to them both: analogy and metaphor.

Re:Law Science

[syousef]

Bad analogy. Very bad analogy. Science isn't always about reproducibility. If it were we wouldn't be able to theorize about one time events like the big bang, the formation of our solar system etc.

Re:Law Science

[Doc Ruby]

Terrible critique. Even the Big Bang is studied as reproducible conditions, at least in scale or in part. Science is always about reproducibility, as consistency of phenomena laws across all spacetime is one of science's fundamental principles (that is itself frequently tested and investigated).

Also, announcing your conclusion before making your argument isn't very scientific. More like a lawyer. The kind of lawyer who knows nothing about science but its vocabulary and popular covers of _Discover_ magazine.

Re:Law Science

[Anonymous Coward]

stuff it up your ass, poofter

what a ridiculous argument

what are you? 12?

Re:Law Science

[syousef]

A good theory makes predictions that are testable. It doesn't have to predict an exact repeat of past behavior. Deductive reasoning about what did happen in the past is also permissible and quite scientific.

By the way I actually have a Masters in Astronomy, and no law degree. I don't suppose you seeDo you not see the delicious irony in someone making a personal attack while whining about lawyers and unscientific thinking now do you? If you're going to make a personal attack at the very least make one that can't be shot down and turned right around at you, making you look foolish.

Oh and by the way if you think atom smashing in even our largest colliders is a reproduction of the big bang, you're the one who reads too many popular magazines like discover.

Re:Law Science

[jimicus]

It's not even as complicated as that.

A large proportion of the population - including those who we pay to fight our cases in court - doesn't understand a number of basic scientific principles.

I don't mean things like "water boils at 100 degrees celcius".

I mean things like "In science, the word 'theory' is applied to a hypothesis which fits all available evidence, for which there is no contradicting evidence yet cannot be proven - whereas the colloquial use of the word 'theory' implies 'it's an idea which may or may not be correct, we don't really know'".

I would even extend this to more simple concepts like "No test is 100% accurate". And "It is easy to cock up a test, making its results completely worthless".

As soon as you start blinding people with science, a lot of people will just say "oh, it must be right then".

Re:Law Science

[Doc Ruby]

The fact is that science looks at evidence left on the scene of the Big Bang to deduce what happened at that time by making theories about the event, and testing them by reenacting it. Then comparing the results to the evidence of the big bang. Making the argument that the difference between the original and the reenactment is solely in the synthetic conditions introduced in the test. That is an exact parallel of the process of law, at least in principle. Which is what we're talking about - the principle they have in common.

I don't know how good an astronomer you are. But you'd be a terrible lawyer. I don't see any irony is finding that you're a typically narrow specialist who can't see that another discipline parallels yours in principle. In fact, the irony lies in both your not realizing that, and your failure to properly identify irony - lawyers know better, and scientists are smarter. Next time _American Lawyer_ has "Fallacies: Argument from Authority" on the cover, look into it.

Re:Law Science

[Doc Ruby]

Go look for ass stuffing poofter 12 year old friends elsewhere. They'll teach you more about reproduction than you ever wanted to know.

Re:Law Science

[moeinvt]

"A large proportion of the population - including those who we pay to fight our cases in court - doesn't understand a number of basic scientific principles."

A poll conducted by the University of Chicago suggested that a large percentage of the population didn't know the orbital relationship between the earth and sun. Among those who did believe that the earth orbits the sun, only a subset knew that it takes ~1 year for a full orbit. IIRC, the percentages were 66% and 75% respectively, so only about half of those surveyed knew both.

If I'm ever accused of a crime, I'll waive my right to trial by jury. I'm sure that there are exceptions, but I'd wager that the average judge is vastly more intelligent than the average juror.

Re:Law Science

[syousef]

You on the other hand would make a great lawyer. You just did a backflip and a half on what you were saying, while continuing to sling insults. My point was simply that good science wasn't about reproducing results exactly, and that deductive reasoning as per what you might see in a criminal trial is quite valid. Since you appear to have conceded that point, there's nothing left for me to do here unless I wish to continue to trade petty insults. Sorry but that ability doesn't make you a good scientist, nor a good lawyer for that matter. Try politician.

Re:Polygraph - inaccurate

[eleuthero]

Lie detectors can be used in investigations but not in trials. There's a real, significant difference there.

Fingerprints?

[whoever57]

I seem to recall reading that there is no scientific study validating the uniqueness of fingerprints. The primary defence for the use of fngerprints on Wikipedia appears to be that "they have been used for a long time", repeated in several forms.

Re:Fingerprints?

[sm62704]

I seem to recall reading that there is no scientific study validating the uniqueness of fingerprints.

Science doesn't prove, it disproves. You test your theory, and if it's not found to be invalid it's assumed to be valid, until further or different tests disprove it. If on the unlikley event the second law of thermodynamics is shown to be false, or false under some circumstances, it will be dropped or modified.

When it is shown that two people can, indeed, have identical fingerprints then fingerprints can no longer honestly be used as evidence.

Re:Fingerprints?

[Dan Ost]

There is no physical law that dictates that fingerprints are unique, but there is an enormous amount of statistical evidence to that effect. Of course, this is dependent on the fact that you've got a good print for comparison. Smudged prints, partial prints, etc, all significantly weaken the statistical case for fingerprint evidence.

Re:Fingerprints?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice try, but the burden of proof is on the person making the extraordinary claim. The claim "no two fingerprints are identical" or, more problematically "analysis of partial fingerprints can uniquely tie a single human being to the print" has not been rigorously scientifically tested.

Re:Fingerprints?

[Anonymous Coward]

Science doesn't prove, it disproves. You test your theory, and if it's not found to be invalid it's assumed to be valid, until further or different tests disprove it.

Sort of.

Science is fundamentally about patterns in what we observe. Some patterns are observed to be pervasive and without any exceptions (e.g. laws of physics). Other patterns have occasional exceptions. Even patterns with occasional exceptions can be useful in that there are statistical methods to quantify the exceptions.

In the case of fingerprints, there is a general pattern that different people have different fingerprints. With a suitable definition of "different" it is entirely feasible to estimate the frequency that different people have "different" fingerprints (or, equivalently, the frequency that different people have "the same" fingerprints).

Re:Fingerprints?

[CrazedWalrus]

Even with a small recurrence of fingerprints, I'd think they could still be used in court -- just not as the only evidence. They would have to prove that one of the people with those prints had motive and was in the right place at the right time, or some other circumstantial evidence.

With 4 (5?) billion people on this planet, I can't imagine that my index finger's pattern of swirls is absolutely unique -- especially when you start talking about partial prints. But, if I share fingerprints with some poor farmer in China, and the prints show up on a murder weapon in my home state, I'd doubt the farmer would be served summons papers, questions of jurisdiction aside.

Re:Fingerprints?

[HiThere]

Fingerprints have NEVER honestly been used as evidence. To use it honestly one would need to calculate the probability that the portion of a fingerprint that was found at the scene was only present on one person. This would NEVER yield a certainty.

What is actually done is even less that that. They take the sample(s) and analyse them for a number of particular features, and then they look for someone with those particular features. An accurate comparison would require that after they select a suspect, that they then do a more complete comparison to ensure that the portions of the fingerprint that were not deemed "features" also match.

OTOH, fingerprints definitely increase the probability that the correct person will be apprehended than if you were to select at random out of all those persons matching the other known parts of the evidence. This is true even if you use fingerprints as the first selection criterion, provided that you then ensure that all of the remaining features of the evidence also match.

Unfortunately, there is little evidence that the evidence is combined in a method designed to maximize accuracy rather than in a way designed to maximize the chance of conviction. This means that evidence that only provides a filtering effect is presented as if it were a certain path to the true villian. (In such cases I am of the opinion that the true villian is the prosecuting attorney...with the judge who tolerates such abuse of justice as a close second. For some reason they don't seem to want me on juries, but I occasionally have managed to sneak on without lying.)

OTOH, certainty isn't something that is found outside of religion and mathematics. I feel that the certainty in mathematics is frequently overstated. And with religion...let's just say there isn't very much evidence, and it feels like certainty for the feeling of certainty.

Re:Fingerprints?

[Toonol]

Right. There's no reason that two fingerprints can't be alike, but if there was a significant rate of erroneous matches, it would have been noticed by now. If two matching fingerprints are found, and one of them is the victim's spouse, and the other is an old lady who lives a thousand miles away, I don't think it weakens the prosecutor's case much.

What is more likely to cause error are matches from incomplete or smudged fingerprints that are presented as more reliable matches than they really are.

Re:Fingerprints?

[Badge 17]

There is a lot of research in both forensics and statistics about fingerprint uniqueness. A classic reference for calculating these numbers is Stoney and Thornton - Stoney, David A., and John I. Thornton. 1986. A critical analysis of quantitative fingerprint individuality models. Journal of Forensic Sciences 31 (4): 1187-1216.

Fingerprint identification is done by comparing the location and orientation of "minutiae," small defects in a fingerprint pattern. Typically, it takes around 12 minutiae to be considered a good match (by the FBI). Now, IF ALL OF THESE MATCH, the probability of misidentification is small (10^-8 or so assuming perfect procedure, I don't remember actual numbers, but it's a small, small chance). However, it's even money that the FBI has two fingerprints that match up to six minutiae.

There have been some high-profile misidentifications (take this case) but these seem to come from a couple of errors:

1) true screwups in the lab (only double-checking and real responsibility will help)
2) people believing that six or fewer minutiae matching is conclusive (education and honesty needed)

Incidentally, a somewhat convincing anecdote is that identical twins have correlated*, but clearly distinct fingerprints!

*i.e. if one has a whorl-pattern, the other is more likely than average to also have a whorl - this doesn't mean the minutiae are correlated, I don't know about that.

Re:Fingerprints?

[Anonymous Coward]

When it is shown that two people can, indeed, have identical fingerprints then fingerprints can no longer honestly be used as evidence

Um, no. Evidence does not have to be specific to one person in order to be admissible. Phone records are admissible, even though multiple people might have access to a phone. Photographs of a crime in progress is admissible, even though 2 people can look alike. Juries have to consider all the admissible evidence and weigh its importance; they don't look only at the slam-dunk evidence.

Re:Preemptive trolling: somewhere, somehow...

[Sciros]

Everyone knows the Bush administration started in 1988!

Update from the first link

[bi_boy]

On Friday, the FBI agreed. It acknowledged that it had made mistakes in handling bullet lead testimony and should have done more to alert defendants and the courts. As a result of the 60 Minutes-Washington Post investigation, the bureau said it will identify, review and release all of the pertinent cases, and notify prosecutors about cases in which faulty testimony was given.

The FBI also says it will begin monitoring the testimony of all lab experts to make sure it is based on sound scientific principles. FBI Assistant Director John Miller said, "We are going to the entire distance to see that justice is now served."
Evidence Of Injustice: FBI's Bullet Lead Analysis Used Flawed Science To Convict Hundreds Of Defendants

Re:Update from the first link

[sgt_doom]

Excellent comment, bi_boy. This is EXACTLY why the press (Fourth Estate) is included in the US Constitution. They are always supposed to be doing valuable and necessary reportage of this kind. The problem is that old concentration of the media, and sad to say, that is killing this country.....

In other related news,

[Anonymous Coward]

the FBI has reiterated its ongoing support for forensic anthropometry, spectral evidence, and trial by ordeal.

Re:In other related news,

[blitziod]

if i am accused of anything trial by ordeal of the cross is fine with me!

I watch enough TV

[Kazrath]

to realize the bullet evidence is not the proverbial "Hand in the cookie jar". Police generally have to have a pretty good reason to detain you for something since this was pre-patriot act. Unless someone goes back over the case history and looks at the evidence this one piece may not have even been required to seal a conviction is was just the cherry on top.

Re:I watch enough TV

[BlowHole666]

Yes but all it takes is one piece of evidence. You have no way of knowing how much that one piece of evidence swayed each member of the jury. It is just like when a witness lies on the stand and they do not find out till years down the line. OR they retest the DNA evidence and they are not guilty etc. A good question may be if Double Jeopardy will apply here or not?

Re:I watch enough TV

[Kazrath]

I guess it really comes down to "When" did the FBI learn that this proceedure was bunk. And how many years did they keep it in practice. When it was scientifically believed accurate none of those cases should be eligable for review if it ever comes to that. We as a society cannot make it to easy for criminals to get away with crimes or the crime rate will rise. Right now the crime rate is high because infractions have not been punished harsh enough from parents and law. Without making the risk much greater than the reward the activity will continue.

Re:I watch enough TV

[BlowHole666]

As much as I would love to agree with you I can not. If new evidence comes along disproving someones guilt they should be retried. Just if a convicted rapist was put away and they later test the DNA from the inside vict and the convicted rapists' DNA and and they do not match. He should go free. The FBI lied on the stand, to convict people. They may be guilty but it is up to the state to convict these people in a fair trial. Not a trial where the DA's witness provided faulty evidence.

Re:I watch enough TV

[Qzukk]

When it was scientifically believed accurate none of those cases should be eligable for review if it ever comes to that. We as a society cannot make it to easy for criminals to get away with crimes or the crime rate will rise. Right now the crime rate is high because infractions have not been punished harsh enough from parents and law.

So based on this, your position is that we must continue to punish people who were possibly innocent?

There's a difference between "tough on crime" and "tough on criminals". One of them is merely institutionalized revenge.

Re:I watch enough TV

[HiThere]

Would you care to detail the evidence proving:
"Right now the crime rate is high because infractions have not been punished harsh enough from parents and law."

It seems a reasonable assertion, but I know of no evidence that it is actually correct. I could construct many other plausible statements, e.g.:
1) Right now the crime rate is high because those commiting the crimes aren't punished, and others are.
2) Right now the crime rate is high because violence and crime are glorified in the media.
3) Right now the crime rate is high because the government has destroyed it's moral authority.
4) Right now the crime rate is high because economic disparity between rich and poor has escalated enormously.
5) ...
Well, you get the idea. There are an indefinitely large number of possible explanations, and more than one may be true. But because there are so many, any particular one of them needs evidence that it is actually the, or a major, correct choice.

Re:I watch enough TV

[Anonymous Coward]

to realize the bullet evidence is not the proverbial "Hand in the cookie jar". Police generally have to have a pretty good reason to detain you for something since this was pre-patriot act. Unless someone goes back over the case history and looks at the evidence this one piece may not have even been required to seal a conviction is was just the cherry on top.

I was tired, he was black, I didn't like the way he looked, they were black, his brother is a criminal, he was black...

Re:I watch enough TV

[Kazrath]

Sure thing.

One pretty universal way to prevent people from doing something is pain. Children usually burn themselves one good time on a hot stove or maybe even hot soup and they learn what not to do. Pain does not always mean physical it can also be mental. Some mental methods would be taking something away thats dear to them such as a favorite toy. Maybe even making them take a timeout, go to their room, or grounding them from seeing friends. All of the traditional punishments work great in teaching an acceptable level of behavior with children. And if parents stick to these punishments and follow through with them the children generally learn what is accptable behavior and what is not. There are always going to be a small few whom just don't get it and those have a bunch of terms for them such as troublemaker or brat and maybe a few others. Each of these punishments can easily be associated with an equivilent adult punishment. The bottom line is each of the traditional punishments removes freedom of one nature or another.

Today if I spent one day in a grocery store just listening and watching children with their parents I will see all of the normal behavior expected of children. However something new has cropped up in society which is a complete and total disrespect for authority. I was completely shocked the first time I heard a little boy probably 6 or 7 tell his mother to "Shut the fuck up I don't have to listen to you" and to my amazement he was not slapped silly. No the mother said "Don't talk to me like that it is not nice". Which obviously did not change the childs behavior. This scenario I have seen more than once while shopping. I don't know about you but as a child I only swore at my parents one time ever.

Children and Adults behavior is influenced the same way. They will do everything they can to prevent their lifestyle from changing for the worse. If the punishments were actually followed through with instead of matrixing out criminals the next day who should be in jail for months I believe the risk/reward will grow to the point where it is not worth it for most criminals.

Re:I watch enough TV

[sgt_doom]

If you, Kazrath, are speaking of the USA then you are truly ignoring reality. As the economy is restructured to worse and ever worse - and no, the economy is not doing well, poverty has been on the dramatic upswing over the past 7 years, it is truly a wonder that the crime rate is not considerably higher than what it presently is. Especially given the 100% corruption of the judicial system and government in this country.

While child-rearing practices should never be ignored, it is simply a minor factor in the overall scheme of things. Your attributing all human behavior to "what is in their best interests" is still nothing more than libertarian - perhaps Ayn Randian - drivel. The criminals are in control, that is the most salient fact of the day. Citizens are punished for proper, constructive behavior while criminal and antisocial behavior is both rewarded and the norm. You are truly living in a schizoid wonderland to suspect anything different is at hand.

For a bit Reality Economics 101, check this out

Re:I watch enough TV

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Children and Adults behavior is influenced the same way. They will do everything they can to prevent their lifestyle from changing for the worse. If the punishments were actually followed through with instead of matrixing out criminals the next day who should be in jail for months I believe the risk/reward will grow to the point where it is not worth it for most criminals.

Okay, there are several problems with this. First, we already imprison more people than almost any other country and keep them there longer. Second, our prison system is overloaded with nonviolent drug offenders. Third, punishment is not an effective means of rehabilitation according to pretty much every study. Prison tends to institutionalize people and turn them into even worse criminals, because of the psychological damage, culture, associations, and because their lives are largely destroyed and they have trouble getting a legal job once out. Fourth, draconian punishments rarely serve as effective deterrents because most criminals don't believe they will be caught; they do however lead to increasingly violent crime as criminals become more desperate to avoid capture and have been shown in past to motivate people to commit multiple murders to cover up fairly minor crimes.

You want my prescription for solving the crime problem in the US and making it manageable? Well here it anyway. First, the number one sociological correlation with violent crime is wealth disparity. The more difference between the ultra rich and very poor, and the smaller the middle class shrinks, the more we can expect crime rates to increase. Fix the tax system so that wealth stops consolidating through inheritances and starts to be redistributed according to an individual's merits. The ratio of money owned by the third or more generation of ultra-rich is insane. Next, decriminalize (not legalize) drug possession and use. Then, provide socialized drug treatment programs to actually help people with addictions, the cost is a pittance compared to the cost of not doing it we are paying now. Once that is done, we just have to hold out about 10 years and watch the crime rates fall away to levels similar to western Europe.

Re:Preemptive trolling: somewhere, somehow...

[fastest fascist]

We need participatory democracy like we need a kick in the groin. Have you actually talked with the people at large out there? It's damn scary.

I'll go along with the democracy idea provided I get to choose who has any influence over me.

Re:Polygraph - inaccurate

[king-manic]

Lie detectors can be used in investigations but not in trials. There's a real, significant difference there. Actually, they aren't considered scientifically sound enough to be entered into most courts. certain US jurisdictions will allow it or a polygraph expert to testify or test to be conducted in front of juries. defense councils occasionally use them in jury cases. So no they aren't strictly forbidden and thats is one of the problems. As well their prominence in Media give them drastically undue weight to a jury of my peers.

Re:Preemptive trolling: somewhere, somehow...

[marcello_dl]

> ... a troll will tie this issue to the "Bush administration", or even to "BushCo".

That's easy. Bush is pro-death penalty, death penalties may have occurred because of judgements affected by false proof by the FBI, so Bush's stance killed innocent men.

You happy now that somebody victimizes your precious president? He's just a placeholder, anyway.

Re:Preemptive trolling: somewhere, somehow...

[flaming error]

Anybody for 1975?

The political scene on the home front from which Bush had been so anxious to be absent during 1975 was the so-called "Year of Intelligence," in that it had been a year of intense scrutiny of the illegal activities and abuses of the intelligence community, including CIA domestic and covert operations.
...
Preparation for what was to become the Halloween massacre began in the Ford White House during the summer of 1975. The Ford Library in Ann Arbor, Michigan preserves a memo from Donald Rumsfeld to Ford dated July 10, 1975, which deals with an array of possible choices for CIA Director. Rumsfeld had polled a number of White House and administration officials and asked them to express preferences among "outsiders to the CIA."
...
Dick Cheney of the White House staff proposed Robert Bork, followed by Bush and Lee Iacocca.
...
the CIA post was finally offered by Ford to Edward Bennett Williams, perhaps with an eye on building a bipartisan bridge towards a powerful faction of the intelligence community. But Williams did not want the job. Bush, originally slated for the Department of Commerce, was given the CIA appointment.

Stonewalling by the FBI

[Henry Pate]

The article says the National Academy of Sciences started the study in 2002, and it took 18 months, to give them the benefit of the doubt let's say that they finished the study in 2004 and found that the method was severely flawed. Then they waited an entire year to stop using the technique and the report they issued downplayed the severity of the issue saying that they still stood behind the science, even when they knew it could have been wrong. Nobody in the FBI or the Justice Department tried to identify the hundreds of cases that used their analysis, nor did they notify the defendants, prosecutors or judges involved in these cases.

What kind of twisted lies do you have to tell yourself to justify keeping possibly innocent people behind bars? They weren't just trying to ignore the science, they didn't notify defendants or their lawyers when they knew their time for appeal was almost up. Oh sorry, you appealed too late, no doubt the evidence against you is utter horseshit, but sorry, it's been a few years and everyone else has moved on, get used to jail.

It took 60 Minutes to actually get some progress on this, I hope all the people involved in keeping evidence that could exonerate someone get a fair punishment.

Re:Stonewalling by the FBI

[BlowHole666]

I am just wondering but is the FBI or the DA etc required to inform the people they convicted that the evidence was flawed or is that up to the defendants lawyer? I am not a lawyer and I have not been convicted of anything so I do not know what the rules are behind that. (Can not remember from government class either).

Re:Stonewalling by the FBI

[dpryan]

Up until the 60 minutes report the FBI said that informing those convicted wasn't their job. Apparently after the report they've changed their minds (at least from what I remember from watching 60 minutes).

Re:Stonewalling by the FBI

[belmolis]

Some prosecutors consider finality of judgment so important that they oppose freeing or even granting a new trial to people who have been shown by overwhelming evidence to be actually innocent. I've read interviews in which they say this.

Didn't they do this to Alger Hiss?

[Anonymous Coward]

I seem to recall reading something about something similar in the case of Alger Hiss. The FBI testified that a letter among their evidence matched Hiss's typewriter. They knew that with modification, a typewriter could be "fixed" after the fact to match any given document, but neglected to mention this to Hiss's defense attorneys.

Re:Preemptive trolling: somewhere, somehow...

[macboygrey]

That's the point... a democratic society where at all levels people have control of the decisions which affect them and the resouces on which they are dependent. This definition, at least, seems to fit your requirements.

Re:Preemptive trolling: somewhere, somehow...

[DeepHurtn!]

Y'know, the Bush administration gives people many legitimate things to worry about and to criticize. Things that any American concerned with fiscal responsibility, civil liberty, and the deaths of thousands of human lives in the name of the American flag should be concerned about -- *regardless* of political affiliation.

You're mistaken if you think the frequent criticisms directed at Bush and his administration are the result of some mindless vendetta or liberal routine.

Surprised?

[Unlikely_Hero]

Is anyone actually surprised here? I am of the opinion that any legal system begins serving those who make it up rather quickly. The US Legal system serves overzealous prosecutors over all others and seems to be on a trend to increase this.

Innocent Man Behind Bars...

[appleguru]

To be fair. the legal system in the US is at best a compromise; a system designed to be as fair as possible and lead mostly correct convictions. Unfortunately, it is lacking in a lot of places, and frankly, I'm not really sure how I'd go about improving it. But for starters, having a lawyer disbarred because he violated client-lawyer privilege after his client was dead is insane. Especially when the privilege required the man to withhold crucial testimony that proved another man's innocence.

From the CBS article:

Twenty-two years ago, as a young public defender, Hughes was representing Lee Wayne Hunt's co-defendant in the double murder that sent him to prison for life.

Hughes says his client, Jerry Cashwell, told him in great detail, shortly after he was arrested, how he alone had committed the double murder. Lee Wayne Hunt, he said, wasn't even there. But because of the attorney-client privilege, Staples Hughes was duty-bound to keep the secret.

"It was sort of one of those moments that stops you completely still," Hughes says. "You know, my client's saying, 'Not only did I kill two people, but these other folks didn't have anything to do with it. The state's case is a lie. It's a fabrication.'"

Asked if he tried to get Cashwell to tell that to the authorities, Hughes says, "No."

Because?

"I'm his lawyer," Hughes says. "It wasn't in his interest to tell, to have that known at all."

"Because he could have been facing the death penalty?" Kroft asks.

"He was facing the death penalty. It wasn't theoretical," Hughes says.

Asked if this bothered him, Hughes tells Kroft, "It bothered me most when Mr. Hunt was being tried. And it's bothered me ever since. There wasn't anything I could do about it. But I knew they were trying a guy who didn't do it."

It wasn't until his client committed suicide in prison that Hughes felt he could come forward to tell his story in court. But instead of being commended for coming forward to clear an innocent man, the judge threw out his testimony and reported Hughes to the North Carolina bar for violating attorney-client privilege, even though his client was dead.

While the bullet lead analysis story is indeed big news, the number of people that are unjustly behind bars because of it can likely be counted on one hand. And while that's hardly fair, and they fully deserve retrials with fair evidence... our legal system has much bigger problems that affect many more people. Imposing big fines for filing frivolous lawsuits would be a start towards unclogging the courts and getting the attention and funding of the legal system back to where it's needed most.

Re:Innocent Man Behind Bars...

[schwaang]

While the bullet lead analysis story is indeed big news, the number of people that are unjustly behind bars because of it can likely be counted on one hand.

Where are you getting that idea? The 60 Minutes story said that of 300 cases involving bullet-lead-analysis that 60 Minutes looked at, something like 18 hinged on that analysis. And they said that the 300 cases were a fraction of the total, since the FBI was unwilling to release the list of cases they had provided the analysis for. However:

As a result of the 60 Minutes-Washington Post investigation, the bureau said it will identify, review and release all of the pertinent cases, and notify prosecutors about cases in which faulty testimony was given.

So, did you have any facts to support your "likely to be counted on one hand" comment?

Re:Innocent Man Behind Bars...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey be fair maybe he is Polydactal

Re:Innocent Man Behind Bars...

[appleguru]

Well, the article said that the FBI had done analysis on 2500 cases... So just extrapolating, 2500/300*18 means that something like 150 people were convicted largely because of this evidence. Obviously, 150 >5, but my reasoning was more so that of those 150 the majority of them actually committed the crimes they're in jail for. So, my "likely to be counted on one hand" comment was a bit sensationalistic, yes, but compared to the number of people we have in jail at the moment (1.5->2 million depending on where you look) it's not really significant. While it's hardly fair to call those wrongfully imprisoned a meaningless statistic, my point is only that we need to look at reforming the reasons many of them are in jail in the first place. A BBC article from today outlines the failures of the US prison system nicely: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7102054.stm

Re:Innocent Man Behind Bars...

[Anonymous Coward]

Imposing big fines for filing frivolous lawsuits would be a start towards unclogging the courts and getting the attention and funding of the legal system back to where it's needed most.

How do you know how many frivolous law suits are out there? Every law suit that has a chance of being seen as "frivolous" also has a person that would benefit from people thinking that it is frivolous. That person makes sure it gets as much attention as possible, and it get stuck in public memory, much like urban legend does. No one knows the facts of the case, they just know a carefully worded version of the case, and that a lot of money was supposedly awarded. Is the money ever delivered? I don't know. I bet you don't either. I would bet you can't name a frivolous law suit that you have enough information about to prove that it is frivolous. You might be able to google one up, but I bet you don't know the facts about a single frivolous law suit. You only will know the spin doctored version.

Hmmm.

[SatanicPuppy]

Seems that troll was you! Or perhaps you were being ironic?

How can I ever avoid reasonable doubt now?

[nasor]

As a jurror, how the hell am I supposed to not have "reasonable doubt" about anything that's introduced as evidence in a trial? It's already very well-established that eye-witness identification has horrible reliability. Now apparently I shouldn't even take the reliability of forensic evidence forgranted. What's left? If the prosecution presents damning forensic evidence and the defense lawyer simply says "Yeah, but since it's been proven that even established forensic tests aren't necessarily reliable, why should anyone believe you?" how am I supposed to not have reasonable doubt about the forensic evidence now?

Re:How can I ever avoid reasonable doubt now?

[twifosp]

I was going to mod you up but will reply instead:

Yeah, but since it's been proven that even established forensic tests aren't necessarily reliable, why should anyone believe you?" how am I supposed to not have reasonable doubt about the forensic evidence now?

You have nothing to worry about. That type of thinking (logicical) will exclude you from ever being selected as a juror. Unless you fiegn complete ignorance in the selection process, that is.

That is what I see as the single biggest flaw with the American legal system. We are supposed to be judged by our peers, but I wouldn't consider any modern jury to be made up of my peers. They are selected based on their ignorance of the topic involved. Prosecutors want blank slates to trick with fancy sounding testimony. Defenders want considerate and empathetic people. In any case involving race, both sides will seek to fill a quota of a certain demographic.

Judged by your peers? Not very likely.

Re:How can I ever avoid reasonable doubt now?

[RWarrior(fobw)]

It's obvious you've never been on a jury. You're too smart.

Re:How can I ever avoid reasonable doubt now?

[zolaar]

You sound reasonable.

Congratulations! You will never serve on a jury. You'll be excused from the jury pool early enough to make it into work.

Re:How can I ever avoid reasonable doubt now?

[ignavus]

And even confessions are unreliable.

So the jury falls back on that old tried and true method ... does the defendant *look* guilty?

I just wonder, though, whether it is statistically more accurate than tossing a coin.

In the olden days it was easier - if the police charged you, you were obviously guilty. But then we discovered that the police were not entirely reliable. Occasionally, even, they were the criminals.

Maybe universal CCTV is the answer. If your entire life is recorded, then criminal charges will be easier to determine.

Good. Problem solved. Next!

Re:How can I ever avoid reasonable doubt now?

[twifosp]

Maybe universal CCTV is the answer. If your entire life is recorded, then criminal charges will be easier to determine.

Given the context of your post (which I did not quote) I realize this statement was probably tongue in cheek, but I felt the need to respond anyway.

CCTV systems are used to investigate crimes. But they rarely actually catch the criminal act themselves. Instead it's used to connect people, places, and times. Would you like to be linked to criminal activity just because you happened to be in two wrong places at the wrong times? If a linked crime happens in 2 areas, the probability goes up that all the people recorded in that area are suspects. This also increases your probability to be charged with a crime you did not convict. Even if you are acquitted in the end, the mere charge of a crime in today's societies comes with negative consequences. Even if you are proven innocent, you suffer reputation damages, probably wife and kids, and most assuredly your job.

Re:How can I ever avoid reasonable doubt now?

[WallyDrinkBeer]

You should be cautious about anything being presented. Expert or not. In most situations there will be lots of difference evidence to consider. It's a matter of judgment not black and white.

For example, a suspect fleeing a murder scene in a White Ford Bronco after his wife was just killed should be given a little weight. If the same suspect owned gloves which were found bloodied at the murder scene, that would be even stronger evidence.

Then again, why would Chewbacca, a wookie live on the planet Endor. Endor with 4 foot tall ewoks. It does not make sense. If it does not make sense you should always acquit.

Re:How can I ever avoid reasonable doubt now?

[KudyardRipling]

Please pardon the pedantry.

One's peers? What does that mean? As with most words in the English language dealing with legal matters, it comes from Old French and ultimately from the Latin par meaning equal. The Latin phrase prima inter pares meaning first among equals. Pair is the same word used when items are grouped on the basis of matching.

The phrase "jury of one's peers" has its roots in a society that had (and to an extent still maintains) multiple levels of citizens based on inheritance of title, namely England (see peerage.). The US of A is a republic. A republic assumes one level of peerage, namely that of citizen in theory. However, there is a back door for having multiple peerages in a republic. Instead of a nobility based on birth, there is a nobility based on achievement. The most obvious form of achivement is the college degree whose origins are from a society with a birth nobility that still lingers in a republic. Another form of multiple peerage is wealth. Face it. Money buys things, including justice or rather the corruption thereof.

These two items, education and wealth combine into what is called class. Karl Marx had the right diagnosis (groan all you want, but truth is on his side). The problem arises in the courtroom where along with the fiction of the presumption of innocence, there is the presumed non-existence of class. If that be so, why do prosecutors like well-to-do college degreed white males? Why are US citizens of foreign origin routinely dismissed from jury service unless they are very well assimilated (prosecutor listens for accent)? The prosecutor is looking for rubber stampers. You know those with 'things to lose' namely cushy jobs, nice homes, SUVs, entertainment systems, boats, RVs, retirement portfolia, vacations, etc.

These are the intended audience when a prosecutor issues a jury pool tainting statement at a news conference when a media worthy case is involved. It is nothing more than a shout out to his boys.

Re:Preemptive trolling: somewhere, somehow...

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

... a troll will tie this issue to the "Bush administration", or even to "BushCo".

If you RTFA you'd know the problem is not that the test is wrong, it is that current FBI and DoJ officials who are the only people in a position to provide a list of all the cases where this evidence may have sent innocent people to jail, have not bothered to do so. They did stop performing the test, but in the letter informing police agencies of this, downplayed the issue and stated that they think the scientific basis is still valid. As a result, there are almost certainly innocent people who will not get an appeal despite all it would take is the FBI admitting the problem and handing over the list. Note the FBI director was one of the first people Bush appointed to office and he also appointed the head of the DoJ, so I think some blame rightly belongs with the Bush administration and their habit of politically expedient coverups, instead of justice.

We've just had this in Canada

[davecb]

A leading pathologist had his cases reviewed
and numerous convictions brought back to the
attention of the courts...

--dave

Re:Fingerprints? What about the DNA?

[PS3Penguin]

If your logic was true .. then they would stop using DNA evidence. It has been proven (many times over) that two people can have the exact same DNA (see Identical twins)... However we continue to use DNA to convict people all the time. "used as evidence" just means the court accepts the conclusions implied by the facts being tried. I don't recall hearing a real case on TV (court TV .. not Law & Order) .. where they said "This fingerprint could only be maid by Mr. X" .. instead they say "There is a 1 in 10^17 chance that this 107 point point of the fingerprint .. came from someone other than Mr. X" .. In most cases all evidence includes a likelihood of failure.

DNA

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

On a related note, if you ever go to trial and DNA matching is used, question the methodology and get the source to the software used. A friend of mine works at a company that makes DNA comparison devices and says they make some really, really, really questionable choices in their matching algorithms. Like if the DNA strand shows a sequence that is rare in the common populace (rarer than an arbitrarily chosen value) the algorithm assumes it is an error an substitutes the most common sequence for purposes of matching. He says it sometimes keeps him up at night worrying about who is going to jail.

Re:DNA

[BlowHole666]

Sounds like he never took an ETHICS class. That should have whistle blowing all over it.

Re:DNA

[Anonymous Coward]

The UK forensic science laboratory is using a new statistical technique for "proving" that tiny samples of DNA match a given suspect. But they won't tell anyone how they do it because it's a valuable trade secret. As far as I know, nobody's been convicted on this technique yet, but it is worrying that is even admissable in court. They may as well invite a medium as an expert witness.

Re:DNA

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like he never took an ETHICS class. That should have whistle blowing all over it.

He did, but now he is trying to pay for it. Hard to do that without a job.

Re:DNA

[Anonymous Coward]

>if you ever go to trial and DNA matching is used

"Both I and my spouse have advanced degrees in Molecular and Cellular Biology, and both of us have worked
for many years in research fields connected to genetics. I am a fully trained expert in DNA analysis,
and while it may be appropriate for me to serve this court as an expert witness for the defense, it would be irresponsible and for this court to seat me on a jury."

Re:DNA

[Anonymous Coward]

and while it may be appropriate for me to serve this court as an expert witness for the defense, it would be irresponsible and for this court to seat me on a jury."

Because of course, courts aren't for finding fact, they're for convicting everyone that comes to trial. Allowing the jury to make decisions based on the truth would throw a wrench in the works.

Re:Preemptive trolling: somewhere, somehow...

[sumdumass]

No, he isn't mistaken. You see, if all the criticism was placed at what you consider a legitimate problem, then I could agree with you. I'm not the poster your replying to but I had to chime in because I constantly see things that Bush has nothing to do with, wasn't even president when they happened and in some cases happens happens outside the US by government outside the US getting blames on Bush as a knee jerk reaction.

So maybe you aren't acting out of some mindless vendetta or liberal routine but that doesn't mean nobody is. Your probably the exception to the rule. At least here anyways.

Big surprise!

[Master of Transhuman]

Anybody remember the big deal over the manipulated crime lab results a few years back?

The FBI's function has always been since Day One to put people in jail without regard to guilt or innocence.

Does anybody really believe that J. Edgar Hoover ever gave a damn about "evidence"?

There's a reason that the rule for talking to the FBI is: You say "On advice of attorney I have nothing to say to the FBI." That's it. You never say anything else, because they WILL use it to build a case against you even if you have done nothing.

Ask that guy Jewel from the Atlanta bombing case. Ask the guy suspected in the anthrax case. Ask thousands of people in Federal prison.

The FBI is the equivalent of the Gestapo except they have slicker methods and better PR thanks to the TV shows.

Re:Big surprise!

[/dev/trash]

Contempt will get yer ass thrown in jail too.

Re:Big surprise!

[Attila Dimedici]

Actually, if I recall correctly, Richard Jewel only had problems because the news media figured out that he was being investigated by the FBI. The news media assumed that since he was a suspect he must be guilty. The FBI was doing its job, the media made his life hell. The FBI did overstep itself after the media jumped all over the case because they were afraid of evidence being destroyed. However, what went wrong in the Richard Jewel case was the media.
And if you think the FBI is the equivalent of the Gestapo, you live an insanely sheltered life.

Re:Big surprise!

[rjh]

This is not actually good advice. When interviewed by federal agents, the proper response is I'd love to help, but I need to talk to my attorney first. I'll have him get in touch with you.

If you express an unwillingness to talk to the agents, that can be used to support warrants against you, on the grounds that it's indicative of some sort of suspicious behavior. If you express a willingness to talk but you assert your right to counsel before any conversation, they can't use that to support a warrant.

The key is to say this, to smile, to accept their business cards, to offer them a cup of coffee, to be sociable and cooperative without telling them anything. Once they're gone, call your lawyer and have your lawyer place the phone calls. If you and your lawyer decide that cooperation is called for, then your attorney will arrange a time to talk to the agents. If you and your lawyer decide to clam up, your lawyer will have a lot of experience in how to keep your silence from being used against you.

Any advice on how to deal with the FBI which does not reduce down to "get an attorney as soon as possible, and get real legal advice" is fundamentally broken.

(Note: I am not an FBI agent, but I have a lot of federal law-enforcement in the family.)

Does the death penalty have Undo?

[EmbeddedJanitor]

This is the kind of reason why most of the real Free World does not have the death penalty.

As with all science, forensics also move on with time and methods used a few years back can be shown to be invalid a short while later.

Re:Does the death penalty have Undo?

[Faylone]

If it did, and you were later found that the invalidity itself was invalid, would not have to worry about the death penalty again due to prevention of double jeapordy?

Re:Does the death penalty have Undo?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the kind of reason why most of the real Free World does not have the death penalty

Yeah. Because if someone's been rotting in jail (at taxpayer expense) for 25 years, and they are found found innocent due to new forensics, we can give them their 25 years back. And the money we spend to keep them in jail, and to feed them, etc, all magically re-appears.

Re:Does the death penalty have Undo?

[Foobar of Borg]

Yeah. Because if someone's been rotting in jail (at taxpayer expense) for 25 years, and they are found found innocent due to new forensics, we can give them their 25 years back.

It beats being dead.

And the money we spend to keep them in jail, and to feed them, etc, all magically re-appears.

It costs more in taxpayer money to execute someone (with all the legal costs, appeals, etc.) than it costs to keep them in prison for the rest of their lives.

Re:Does the death penalty have Undo?

[Ochu]

You know what, you're right! It IS better to execute them than waste all that money! Who cares that they might be innocent! Hey, wait a minute, you know what would save LOADS of money? If we shot EVERYONE who was costing the state money! So long, single mum! BANG! Eat dirt, bum! BANG! You're at a public school? Oh dear... BANG!

Re:Does the death penalty have Undo?

[Gen.Anti]

You're a government offical? BANG! Dreamin' 'bout having public roads to drive on, eh? BANG! You expect armed forces to protect you instead of standing up for yourself, you looser? BANG! I'm the guy who does bang?? Ugh, toooo bad! BANG!

had been funny

Re:Does the death penalty have Undo?

[ShadowsHawk]

It costs an average of 40k per year to keep an inmate housed. Assuming he/she is put away at 25 and dies at 75, that works out to 2 million. That doesn't factor any increases in costs for the next 50 years. How does it cost more than 2 million dollars to execute someone?

Re:Does the death penalty have Undo?

[Foobar of Borg]

How does it cost more than 2 million dollars to execute someone?

The extra cost comes from appeals and other things that go with prosecuting a capital murder crime. You have to factor in all the legal costs and what not.

A pretty good write-up can be found here: (this is not my work, BTW).

But over and above cost, there is still the issue of how permanent a sanction the death penalty is. In most capital murder cases, there is a decent chance that the court got it wrong and they are sending an innocent man to his death. I guess that's why hardly anyone (at least to my knowledge) kicked up a fuss about executing Timothy McVeigh. The murders were truly horrific and he was definitely guilty, to the point of being proud to admit it.

Re:Does the death penalty have Undo?

[weber]

This is the kind of reason why most of the real Free World does not have the death penalty. Uhm, it could also be because we believe that it is wrong to kill a human, period.

Re:Polygraph - inaccurate

[snowraver1]

I believe that they may be addmitted as hearsay. IANAL

Re:Preemptive trolling: somewhere, somehow...

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Note: at this point the FBI has reversed its decision, because of pressure caused by the 60 minutes report. Isn't it sad that it takes pressure from mainstream media in order to get the director of the FBI to make such a minor action that has such great potential for reversing injustices? What kind of a scumbag would put such a person in charge of the FBI?

It's not what you know or don't know

[olddoc]

It's what you know that ain't so.
I love that saying....

ACLU indeed.

[NeutronCowboy]

Dammit - and here I have mod points, but already replied to something else.

This is exactly the purpose of the ACLU. While it doesn't deal with expert testimony, it does represent the union of all people who are accused (note that accused != guilty) and are being railroaded by the system. I never understand why people rail against the ACLU when the ACLU defends people like the KKK and child molesters because of a lack of due process in the trial. The only thing that stands between an honest man/woman and a wrongful conviction is the process itself. We'll disregard lying witnesses, missing evidence and other things that are just human failure. But if process isn't followed, the system itself is failing. And we can't have that.

Re:ACLU indeed.

[Greg_D]

Perish the thought that protecting the very processes which are there to protect your fundamental freedoms would ever triumph over the ease of emotion laden controversy.

Placeholder?

[anomaly]

And the representative from the *other* party won't be?

The National Academy of Sciences report

[superswede]

The scientific report:
Forensic Analysis: Weighing Bullet Lead Evidence, The National Academies Press, 2004.
URL: http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?isbn=0309090792

An extract from "Appendix K: Statistical Analysis of Bullet Lead Data by Karen Kafadar and Clifford Spiegelman (169-214)" follows.

Section 3.1 FBI Calculation of False-Positive Probability (FPP):

"The FBI reported an apparent FPP that was based on the 1,837-bullet data set (Ref. 11). The authors repeated the method on which the FBI's estimate was based as follows. [...] The FBI summarized the results by claiming an apparent FPP of 693/1,686,366, or 1 in 2,433.4 ('about 1 in 2,500'). ***That estimated FPP is probably too small, in as much as this 1,837-bullet data set is not a random sample of any population and may well contain bullets that tend to be further apart than one would expect in a random sample of bullets.***"

Section 3.2 Simulating False-Positive Probability:

"We simulate the probability that the 2-SD interval (or range interval) for one bullet's concentration of one element overlaps with the 2-SD interval (or range interval) for another bullet's concentration of that element. The simulation is described below. [...] Thus, the FPP could be estimated here as roughly 47/91, or 0.516. [...] Because homogeneous batches of lead, manufactured at different times, could by chance have the same chemical concentrations (within measurement error), the actual FPP could be even higher."

Section 4.2 Individual Equivalence t Tests:

"[...] Probabilities such as the FBI's claim of '1 in 2,500' are inappropriate when based on a data set such as the 1,837-bullet data set; as noted in Section 3.2, it is not a random collection of bullets from the population of all bullets, or even from the complete 71,000+ bullet data set from which it was extracted."

Re:The National Academy of Sciences report

[superswede]

mods, ehe?!?

Re:Polygraph - inaccurate

[servognome]

certain US jurisdictions will allow it or a polygraph expert to testify or test to be conducted in front of juries. defense councils occasionally use them in jury cases. So no they aren't strictly forbidden and thats is one of the problems.

Is it allowed for trial juries (determine guilt or innocence) or only grand juries (determine whether or not there is enough evidence to indict)

Korematsu

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not surprising to me at all. The FBI has fabricated/used questionable evidence many times before. For example, the Korematsu v. US case in which the Supreme Court upheld executive order 9066 (the one that allowed us to set up concentra--I mean internment camps for Japanese-Americans during WWII.) Many MANY years later, Korematsu (who had been imprisoned for years and essentially had his entire life taken from him by the government) was finally able to get his conviction overturned after somebody realized that the FBI had presented fake evidence to convict him. Scary thought: although Korematsu's conviction was overturned, the ruling in support of executive order 9066 still stands. Bush's appointee to a Congressional committee on human rights (get ready, you should smell the irony already) even suggested back in 2003 using the ruling to intern Arab-Americans in the US. I guess they just went with the "secret prisons where we secretly torture you" route instead.

Re:Preemptive trolling: in the neocon way

[sgt_doom]

Yes, sumdumass, Bush is the face of an obvious criminal organization now running this country - something rather obvious to anyone with an IQ above a toad. Everything Bush has done is aimed at the privatization of everything, the destruction of all social infrastructure and the selling off all physical infrastructure which should be part of the public commons, and is against anything on behalf of the public welfare - an important phrase in the US Constitution.

But then, I suppose that document is something your kind has never placed any importance on. Bush is/has set on destroying all unions, all workers' rights, all possiblity of any and all economic opportunity for the citizenry....but you'll never, ever figure that out.

Not all PDs are that way ...

[timothy]

I can't say that a large chunk *aren't*, but I've met (through a clinical internship this semester) many of the folks at the Camden (NJ) Defender's office, and while there are certainly touches / streaks / rivers of justified cynicism and battlefield humor, many of the folks there are basically idealistic and hard working, and most of them aren't very young. They're like a really good law firm with terrible pay and computers straight out of Bedrock.

They're overburdened with cases, I'd say, but they aren't overworked in the same way some private attorneys are. They'll freely tell you (if you are a criminal defendent in Camden, NJ, which I hope is not the case) that if you have the money to hire a private attorney, you should. Not because the result will be any better (you're going to be hard pressed to find people who know the system or the law any better), but because a) it makes things easier on them and b) if you like to talk with your attorney more frequently, those guys are billing you aggressively and therefore happy to talk ... at length.

(In NJ, the PD is a statewide agency, with locations / branches around the state, I think one per county. Some places, that's not the case. Also, the PD -- contrary to my initial thought -- is not "free" for the clients, just very cheap vs. a private attorney. They don't collect every bill, but some percentage.)

timothy

Re:Not all PDs are that way ...

[rtechie]

I can't say that a large chunk *aren't*, but I've met (through a clinical internship this semester) many of the folks at the Camden (NJ) Defender's office, and while there are certainly touches / streaks / rivers of justified cynicism and battlefield humor, many of the folks there are basically idealistic and hard working, and most of them aren't very young. It's nice that you have this impression, but what's their success rate? Most public defenders "win" about 5% of the cases they take to trial. That's not counting the plea bargains, which accounts for about 95% of the cases that come across their desks, so if you do the math you'll find that most PDs get a "not guilty" or equivalent verdict about 0.25% of the time. That means if you go to a PD you have about a 99% chance of being convicted.

Private attorneys have better than 0.25% success rate because they take many more cases to trial. In fact, many people go to private attorneys after first going to a PD who insists on a plea bargain and outright refuses to take the case to trial, or they tell the defendant that he's absolutely guaranteed to lose no matter what. A PD will not spend one red cent on your defense (largely because he doesn't have it).

Basically, if you have no money and you're charged with a crime RUN. If you're innocent, you'll almost certainly be convicted.

Re:Not all PDs are that way ...

[timothy]

What you've outlined is true but hardly the fault of the PD :) It is shameful and caustic, though -- insane punishments possible on the books make pleading very attractive. (Gee, only 3 years, instead of a statutorily possible 12? Awesome!)

Most cases end up pleading, Yes -- but I have witnessed PDs aggressively defending clients when the charges are basically bogus. Also, no lawyer can force someone to plead guilty, even if he suspects that the client *is* guilty -- but he can advise based on previous bitter experience what likely outcomes look like.

timothy

Re:Not all PDs are that way ...

[rtechie]

I have witnessed PDs aggressively defending clients when the charges are basically bogus. These guys must be in rural areas, because PDs in metro areas simply don't have this kind of time.

Also, no lawyer can force someone to plead guilty, even if he suspects that the client *is* guilty He can say, "If you don't plead guilty, I'm going to tank your case to make sure you lose." Another big problem I've seen with PDs is that some of them are WAY too friendly with DAs to the point that they basically WERE DAs and cooperated with them to force plea bargains (because that's the minimum amount for work for both the PD and DA).

Re:Preemptive trolling: in the neocon way

[sumdumass]

I guess I will never figure that our because it simply isn't true. Of course I would be for dismantling some of the unions, I think they have drove America into the state we are now where everyone looks to foreign goods so they can actually afford them. We would be in a shit load of trouble if it wasn't for walmart and china.

Your post goes to prove my point though. I don't know if you are attempting to be snarky or if you actually believe the stuff you just spewed. The funny thing is that I have heard others say it before which makes me think you actually believe it. This is something that is really sad when you consider that there is no basis in reality for it. IT is all either tinfoil hatism gone bad or deliberate attempts to demonise him. Either way, my point was made. Thank you for your support.

How did experts swear themselves in?

[BPPG]

Do you swear to probably tell the truth, almost the whole truth, and not much else but the truth?

Re:Polygraph - inaccurate

[Averyge Joe]

I'm pretty certain I read about a lie detector used in a case in the mid-west in the last couple of months.

More things we thought were true and aren't

[rpbird]

This is the second untrue "truth" from the FBI that has been exposed. Profound questions about the viability of criminal profiling have been made in the New Yorker. Profiling may all be hokum, pure junk science based on only a handful of interviews with serial murderers. So this begs the question: what is it about the FBI that they prefer junk science to real science?

Big feaking deal

[aepervius]

Bad science is bad science, pre-trial, during and post trial. And that include during investigation. So no there is no difference.

Jack Thompson

[kingturkey]

Somehow I knew what your link was to even before I hovered over it.
Perhaps there should be a corollary to Godwin's Law regarding Jack Thompson?

Re:Jack Thompson

[Foobar of Borg]

Perhaps there should be a corollary to Godwin's Law regarding Jack Thompson?

So, are you suggesting that Jack Thompson is as bad as Hitler? Geez. Even I don't go that far!

It's not just bullets

[JCSoRocks]

I saw special on TV about 9 months ago - it's not just lead bullet testing. There are thousands of people in jail based on bad science and / or human error. Hair analysis and finger printing are two good examples. Both of these techniques are only as good as the person executing them. I don't remember the state, but there was a guy that was doing hair analysis for criminal cases that knew nothing about it. He testified in hundreds of cases and put many people in jail. When the state found out that he was bogus they refused to pay to retry any of the defendants. Even in cases where his testimony was the state's primary evidence. The fact is, our government doesn't really care about true justice. They want the appearance of justice, just like they want the appearance of security. Real justice requires more time, effort and money than fake justice.

Re:Preemptive trolling: somewhere, somehow...

[mi]

Note the FBI director was one of the first people Bush appointed to office and he also appointed the head of the DoJ, so I think some blame rightly belongs with the Bush administration and their habit of politically expedient coverups, instead of justice.

Somehow you fail to credit the Administration with stopping the use of the bogus test and with publicizing this information to law enforcement and criminal lawyers in the first place.

Yes, they did not go far enough (or so one would think after reading the article), and that seems like a fault. But if you blame Bush for the FBI's failure to go far enough, you should also credit him for their ending of the decades-long procedure — however embarassing (and thus resistance-inducing) the admission is to the FBI.

Three quarters-full vs. one quarter-empty?..

First case I know of

[DynaSoar]

Leonard Peltier. Bogus evidence presented, real evidence suppressed.
Watch "Incident At Oglala".

That's only the first I know of, from 1976. Others may preceed it.

Re:Preemptive trolling: in the neocon way

[sgt_doom]

I suppose it requires a minimum literacy level to read the Federal Register, the Congressional Record, the legislation passed with any frequency, the decisions handed down by Bush-appointed N.L.R.B., the presidential directives, the presidential executive orders, etc., ad infinitum.

No doubt you are also uninformed about the history of the Bush family going back four generations? No, of course not, neocons are never bothered by the facts, by the data, they simply live by fractured fairy tales.....And America is IN TROUBLE from the likes of Walmart (who, when Sam was alive, would NEVER have bought solely from foreign sources as he was an American Firster!) and shipping as many jobs as possible to China, and allowing them to ship back poisonous and radioactive goods. Your massive ignorance about economics is woefully apparent.....

Re:Preemptive trolling: in the neocon way

[sumdumass]

I suppose it requires a minimum literacy level to read the Federal Register, the Congressional Record, the legislation passed with any frequency, the decisions handed down by Bush-appointed N.L.R.B., the presidential directives, the presidential executive orders, etc., ad infinitum.

Yea, and it takes a complete fool to interpret it the ways you have. I'm not saying your a complete idiot, I'm saying your handler(s) is. Your just an idiot enough to believe them. Of course you would probably be happy if we were in a massive recession with unemployment so high that we end up with teens looking for jobs rioting in the streets, destroying personal and public property like France. Or maybe you too damn ignorant to know what got them in that situation in the first place.

No doubt you are also uninformed about the history of the Bush family going back four generations? No, of course not, neocons are never bothered by the facts, by the data, they simply live by fractured fairy tales

Actually, I wouldn't describe myself as a neocon. Although a lot of people like you have attempted to label me that way. You see, I subscribe to the ideal of truth, not a party. That seems to get in your types way quite a bit. Your not citing facts, you cite biased opinions about facts as a fact. And if you don't know what that means, maybe you should start shutting your mouth. It would certainly lets you see a lot less people ignoring your so called facts. Who knows, it might even stop a few from disliking your idiocy pushed as political awareness that is typical of a first year college student attempting to act smarter then he is capable of.

And America is IN TROUBLE from the likes of Walmart (who, when Sam was alive, would NEVER have bought solely from foreign sources as he was an American Firster!) and shipping as many jobs as possible to China, and allowing them to ship back poisonous and radioactive goods. Your massive ignorance about economics is woefully apparent.....

Yes, long live Sam. The guy who created a mega giant but infused no values in the people running it so they could destroy everything he worked for after he is out of the picture. I bet that would make a good movie if you would like to write the screenplay for it.

Anyways, yes they are part of the problem. But they are the band-aid to the problem not the cause. The actions of companies like walmart are helping the average citizen at a time when unions and constant government regulation drove the costs of doing business higher then what the American consumer was able to pay for so the companies looked outside the country.

And of course there are benefits outside the country in some areas. You get to influence their work standards to some degree and force the governments not to be ruthless dictators that would rather kill you dead before letting you hang a sign in the square. You also escape the possibility of unknowingly polluting your own backyard and using all you own resources. But you can't beat the transfer rates, tax shelters, and labor rates in these foreign markets. and if your going to get pissed about either of that, then I suggest you ask your own government to get rid of the conditions that make it so attractive.

Re:Preemptive trolling: in the neocon way

[sgt_doom]

Of course you would probably be happy if we were in a massive recession with unemployment so high that we end up with teens looking for jobs rioting in the streets, destroying personal and public property like France. Or maybe you too damn ignorant to know what got them in that situation in the first place.

Obviously, you must be one of those uneducated rich bastards - any relation to the Busheviks, perhaps? - as the unemployment rate is quite high and growing. More importantly, what is happening in France, should have happened years ago in America were not the population complete Sheeple! And France has had the good sense not offshore as many of their IT jobs as possible - at least they have a modicum of self-respect.

Your further drivel is such complete neocon tripe it is not worthy of any response - suffice to say if you haven't figured out yet that the American government supports these ruthless dictators, even putting more than a few of them in power, then you are truly and hopelessly ignorant and beyond any help....

Re:Preemptive trolling: in the neocon way

[sumdumass]

The unemployment rate in the US is Quite low compared to large European nations. France's unemployment rates are almost twice as high and Germany's is even higher than in the US.

And I am the uneducated rich bastard because France's system is better? Have you looked at the big picture lately, or are you just repeating the half truths your handlers told you. America's unemployment rates are considered low by American standards. We haven't seen numbers much lower since we started keeping track.

Your further drivel is such complete neocon tripe it is not worthy of any response - suffice to say if you haven't figured out yet that the American government supports these ruthless dictators, even putting more than a few of them in power, then you are truly and hopelessly ignorant and beyond any help....

Man, maybe your should just go upstairs and have a good cry by your self. You need to do something because your spouting shit that you really have no clue about. Take some Midol and get back with me when the cramps are gone.

Re:Preemptive trolling: in the neocon way

[sgt_doom]

As your buddy, Bush that deserter/AWOLEE or Cheney the draft-dodger would say: 9/11/01, 9/11/01, 9/11/01, 9/11/01....

BTW, where is Bush's cousin, Osama???

Re:Preemptive trolling: in the neocon way

[sumdumass]

It is interesting that you quit when the facts were presented. I'm glad your little world revolves around childish school yard antics.

And BTW, IT id cheney that is cousins to Barack Osama Obama. Close though.

Re:Preemptive trolling: in the neocon way

[sgt_doom]

Curious how you never once actually deal with the facts - the economy is going great according to you, Cheney and Fats Thompson, actor extraordinaire. While every single indicator strongly suggests otherwise - but the facts are something you can never, ever deal with - which is why your are misnamed - it should be the Ultimate dumb ass!

Now a little real economics 101:

That surge is ostensibly working in Iraq because Bush has spent over $100 million there since July, spread it among the various militias - bought them off, that is, with some taking off, others staying and quieting down for awhile until they decide to grab power. And equally important, there have been fewer and fewer actual army patrols going out since this supposed surge took place.

Second point: Bush has been buying off Osama with his billions every year to Pakistan, with some of it going to his buds in Osama's gang. Just as they went into Afghanistan (and this is obvious public record - just go back and read, for a change) and paid off all those warlords - and what has it bought the Bushies? Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq, catch a clue - for a change, dood!

Re:Preemptive trolling: in the neocon way

[sumdumass]

Curious how you never once actually deal with the facts - the economy is going great according to you, Cheney and Fats Thompson, actor extraordinaire. While every single indicator strongly suggests otherwise - but the facts are something you can never, ever deal with - which is why your are misnamed - it should be the Ultimate dumb ass!

I'm the dumbass when you cannot even follow the progression of the conversation? I never said anything about the economy. I said unemployment rate, and to that note, I also said it was lower then the other countries who have broken their system attempting to curtain to the unions. You even go as far as attempting to link affiliations with people that I have made no affiliation with. Facts, my ass. Your just a snot nose puke that was handed their ass in an argument and you are resorting to the old tried and true, character assassination and ignorant accusations to appear to be on top. I owuld be more then happy to debate you based on facts, if you could keep them straight and stick to them long enough to make it happen. My guess is that you would be drifting to one losing proposition after another as soon as you position starts to go down.

Second point: Bush has been buying off Osama with his billions every year to Pakistan, with some of it going to his buds in Osama's gang. Just as they went into Afghanistan (and this is obvious public record - just go back and read, for a change) and paid off all those warlords - and what has it bought the Bushies? Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq, catch a clue - for a change, dood!

You see, here you go again. You are citing opinion as fact and making a complete ass of yourself. I chose this moniker to make people like you more comfortable in talking with me. However, it appears that you are incapable of seeing things outside you little delusional world. Bush, actually the United States government, seeing how bush has to get congress raise and approve any funds going to Pakistan, has been giving pakistan aid in exchange for their supposed cooperation in hunting the taliban. This is not Bush paying off Osama, It is what it sounds like. Now, the money may be offsetting funds that have gone to Osama's buds but that is another story.

You see, when anyone goes back and reads, you easily see that what you claim was said wasn't actually there at all. You are connecting dots that don't exist outside your mind or your handler's mind and citing your delusional opinion as facts. You are then inventing some sort of disagreement that you think I am in, respond to it in your head and then attempt to respond to the crazy shit you just made up. That isn't how a conversation works. You say something, I say something, we then alternate saying things. However, a conversation doesn't invovled you imagining anything being said and attempting to act as if it was actually said. SO tell your "everybody's out to get me" shrink to up your meds or something. OR at least reread the shit yourself to make sure what you think was there is actually there.

Now, unless you can act like a normal person, you might as well not reply.

Re:Preemptive trolling: in the neocon way

[sgt_doom]

You seem to use the vulgar term for feces quite frequently, is this due to some peculiar trauma in your upbringing - perhaps you found yourself as a child a castaway among a wolf pack, but they found you unsuitable so they left you in a pig troth.

How very fitting, raised by pigs and given to delusional meglomania. Please humor my fundamental curiousity in the matter, but have you ever actually read a complete book from start to finish? Ever graduated from high school - or that prep school your kind sometimes attends?

Re:Preemptive trolling: in the neocon way

[sumdumass]

I use other words too. Words like Damn, Fuck and Bitch. I pick them depending on the asshat that I am replying to.

You have a lot of nerve criticizing my choice or words when you cannot stick to the point. Maybe that it the only way your superficial shell of a life can remain intact. As if avoiding certain topics somehow protect the identity you have chosen for a political being. But then again I have dealt with people like you before and know that you are operating in a delusional fantasy that exists only in your mind. You want to put opinion as facts and are often wrong. There is actually a reason why everyone seems to out to get you, and it doesn't have a thing to do with the other people.

I suggest you seek profesional help.