At what point are "eyewitness testimonies" and "identity parades" going to legitimately be called out as questionable. The science certainly points towards their lack of credibility in many many circumstances.
I guess there is no real incentive on the part of the criminal justice system to resolve this.
Eyewitness testimony has been called out for being questionable for more than a decade now. So have the less reliable aspects of forensic “science.” Courts have made progress in addressing both through jury instructions and gate keeping on expert testimony through the Daubert process.
> People have the ability to recognize others they have seen and to accurately identify them at a later time, but research and experience have shown that people sometimes make mistakes in identification.
> The mind does not work like a video recorder. A person cannot just replay a mental recording to remember what happened. Memory and perception are much more complicated.[a] Remembering something requires three steps. First, a person sees an event. Second, the person's mind stores information about the event. Third, the person recalls stored information. At each of these stages, a variety of factors may affect -- or even alter -- someone's memory of what happened and thereby affect the accuracy of identification testimony.[b] This can happen without the witness being aware of it.
Eyewitness testimony also just matters less these days. Today, the trial would have involved cell phone location tracking from the accused showing he wasn’t in the area at the time.
> I guess there is no real incentive on the part of the criminal justice system to resolve this.
Correct. The numbers for both police and prosecutors are still anchored on convictions, and the police worldview is still largely based on the idea that the people they're dealing with are a "criminal class" who largely deserve to be in prison whether they happened to commit that particular crime or not.
Human societies have relied on eye-witness testimony since Cain and Abel. Sure, you can study it and discover that humans are unreliable (film at 11!) but it's silly to think that we are going to have trials and testimony and leave out eye witnesses. What's important about our trial system and juries-of-peers is that the average person feels the system is doing its best to find the truth so that it's not necessary to form vigilantes. Our system is overall pretty good, better than asking all the people who show up at a crime scene or later to protest.
Cain and Abel didn’t have DNA evidence, security cameras, digital forensics, etc. It’s right to reevaluate in light of the modern world.
Some eyewitness testimony is acceptable. People can be reliably expected to recognize people who they know. If a woman’s mother said that she saw the boyfriend hit her daughter, that’s an acceptable form of eyewitness testimony.
The kind of eyewitness testimony that should not be accepted, is when the person in question was not previously known to the witness. This kind of evidence has been proven time and time again to be entirely unreliable and should be considered no more compelling than lie detectors.
BTW Biblical eye witness testimony requires the witness to know they person they are identifying.
So, fsckboy, what we are doing today is not exactly what has been done since Cain and Abel, we took the ancient idea of eye witness and extended it beyond where it is reliable.
Biblical eyewitness testimony also requires multiple witnesses:
> One witness shall not rise up against a man for any iniquity, or for any sin, in any sin that he sinneth: at the mouth of two witnesses, or at the mouth of three witnesses, shall the matter be established.
Witnessing falsely was rightly a very big deal to them. It's one of the Ten Commandments, right up there with worshipping idols or committing murder. And according to the following verses of this passage, anyone who witnesses falsely will receive the exact same punishment that the accused would have received.
BTW I referenced the time of Cain and Abel as metonymy for "early humans", not advocacy for the Bible. While the Bible(s) contain interesting and thoughtful ideas about how a functioning legal system could be constructed, in terms of advocacy I'd advocate incorporating enlightenment innovations such as the US bill of rights, etc.
> Cain and Abel didn’t have DNA evidence, security cameras, digital forensics, etc. It’s right to reevaluate in light of the modern world.
you are hopelessly naive if you think the court system could operate only on technology the way you are suggesting. Nowhere did I even hint we should not use physical evidence.
Wouldn't proximity and time be rather important? Seeing someone briefly from a distance, in a traumatic and stressful moment, could easily lead to mistaken identification. On the other hand, the Nuremberg trials relied on eyewitnesses to identify people guilty of genocide who were trying hard to disguise their appearance, and this was possible because the witnesses had been in relatively close proximity to the accused for a long period of time.
Just like an AI can't make a perfectly accurate 3D replica of a face from a single 2D image, the human brain can't. But that doesn't mean it can't get closer and closer with more data.
It seems to me that the real problem is not eyewitness testimony itself, but the methods used to validate the degree of certainty behind it.
What I'm taking issue with is the word "previously".
"Previously" implies a family member or neighbor. But if you were caught and tortured by someone you didn't previously know for awhile, you would still probably identify them pretty accurately.
>But if you were caught and tortured by someone you didn't previously know for awhile, you would still probably identify them pretty accurately.
If that was your only interaction with them, I doubt it. You're likely in the most stressful situation of your life, memorizing what a person looks like may not be high on your list of priorities.
There's the famous Ronald Cotton case where a woman was raped and consciously tried to memorize their attackers face. She proceeded to pick an innocent man out of two lineups until a decade later DNA evidence proved his innocence. The actual perpetrator was also in the lineup, and she swore she had never seen him.
If you're threatened the "right" answer would be to say you don't recognize anyone in the lineup. Not accuse an innocent person.
And we know of many cases where eyewitness accounts are wrong purely because human memory kinda sucks. Maybe some people are lying about what they know, but that doesn't make eyewitness accounts more reliable.
The logical endpoint of this argument is that no one can be convicted for genocide without DNA evidence, regardless of how many eyewitnesses saw that person executing people and can identify them on sight.
I find this unacceptable.
[edit] There's something called a preponderance of evidence. One eyewitness may or may not be able to provide that alone, e.g., "he has a tattoo of a dolphin on his penis". Multiple witnesses in tandem can add to the preponderance of evidence based solely on eyewitness accounts. Yes, it's worth it to free ten criminals to prevent convicting an innocent person; but if we accept that as a starting point, it's also immoral to discount witnesses or victims. Using one person who wrongly accused someone of rape to corroborate the idea that people are incapable of identifying the people who raped them is, frankly, gaslighting rape victims.
> The logical endpoint of this argument is that no one can be convicted for genocide without DNA evidence, regardless of how many eyewitnesses saw that person executing people and can identify them on sight.
There are other forms of evidence that a genocide took place other than eyewitness testimony (orders, technical plans, the testimony of subordinates, physical evidence of mass killings). You would hope that a trial on crimes against humanity would have more than just eyewitness testimony.
> I find this unacceptable.
I also find it unacceptable for someone to be convinced based entirely on circumstantial evidence and eyewitness testimony, only to discover they were innocent decades later.
> [edit] There's something called a preponderance of evidence.
"Preponderance of the evidence" (meaning that it is more likely than not) is a lower bar than "beyond reasonable doubt" (which means what it says on the tin). What you described (having multiple corroborating witnesses) is actually not what preponderance of evidence means.
I think this is unnecessarily pedantic. If the crime was over a prolonged period of time or on multiple instances with the same witness present, then you eventually become familiar with the perpetrator.
The original commenter obviously meant that a witness should be reasonably familiar with the person, whether that be from knowing the person prior to any crime or, in rare cases like kidnappings/torture/etc., during the prolonged period of time with the accused. It's not like we're writing legislature ourselves here; those rare cases probably just didn't come to mind when the original commenter wrote their comment. Informal internet commentary need not be so needlessly scrutinized.
But if we really want to be pedantic with your example, you would become familiar with the person from the "previous" torture sessions.
They are an imperfect approximation of an ideal truth finding endeavour implemented by imperfect humans. That doesn't mean that the imperfections are a feature, it means that as time goes on society should work towards making more accurate approximations of this truth finding process.
Just as we have done away with things like expert testimony on phrenology, cruentation, or trial by ordeal there may come a time when we do away with witness testimony or restrict the kinds of things we allow witnesses to testify about, like we already do with hearsay.
> [I]t’s silly to think that we are going to have trials and testimony and leave out eye witnesses. What's important about our trial system and juries-of-peers is that the average person feels the system is doing its best to find the truth so that it's not necessary to form vigilantes.
Have you considered that perhaps we’ve reached (or are approaching) the point where trials with eye witness testimony are undermining the trial system by making the average person feel the system isn’t doing it’s best to find the truth? If a method is hopelessly unreliable at finding the truth and people know it’s hopelessly unreliable at finding the truth and we continue to employ the hopelessly unreliable method as a means to find the truth it’s “silly” to think that the public would observe the process and conclude its “doing its best to find the truth”.
When I was in jail I ended up in court twice with people who's sibling had used their name during a traffic stop and got caught with something illegal and ended up in jail, then bailed out. Then they forgot to go to court, so weeks later THE SIBLING got arrested for something they didn't do and had to spend a whole bunch of time in jail (because they are now classified as a flight risk for not coming to court) before they could persuade a judge they weren't the right person.
And if you run the probability that I ended by chance in the court twice when this happened, then it must be happening much, much more often than I witnessed.
It's funny my first reaction was to wonder how the other people involved feel about this:
I wonder how the defense attorney feels about this. The July 2021 GQ article says "Chin, now retired, declined to answer questions for this article, citing client confidentiality."
I suppose Detective Conley has seen the news too? ("Detective Conley told me through an intermediary that he wasn't interested in talking, either. He wanted to enjoy his retirement.")
But on further reflection I guess those people … really don't matter? They're no longer working, they can't hurt anyone else. What is Mr. James going to do now?
I don't understand this ad hominem. Why should the policeman not be allowed to enjoy his retirement. I would assume that he has done his job hundreds of times and has provided justice in more than the vast majority of his cases.
But yes. For a mistake in which all(!) parts of the system have completely failed, for that then the pawn is to be punished.
In a time of cancel culture, mobs on the net, cyber bullying and death threats by idiots online, I wouldn't talk to a reporter either.
At least that's how I can imagine the thought process. And there may be another aspect. I don't know, but my pop culture "education" would make me fear that I might expose myself to the risk of a lawsuit for damages if I were to admit a mistake instead of the police officer.
Because in my opinion he is not to blame. But he does bear part of the responsibility. And he should own up to it. Unquestioningly. But I know too little whether he would make himself personally vulnerable.
In this respect I would not go from the refusal to comment on the case to deny him the enjoyment of the pension.
> I don't understand this ad hominem. Why should the policeman not be allowed to enjoy his retirement.
I think the issue is the contrast between having ruined someone’s life and the “fuck off and let me enjoy myself” reply. And the utter lack of empathy this betrays. A simple acknowledgment and possibly an apology for having caused so much hurt would have gone a long way.
In today's culture, a simple apology might have set him up for a year-long social media shitstorm including doxxing. So I can totally relate to why he refused to talk to the press.
If he wants to communicate an apology to the people who deserve one, then he can do that, but the public isn't owed the satisfaction of an article about it. Somewhere over the last 10 years people got the idea that when A harms B, then C deserves to hear them apologize so they can write a review of that apology on social media. It's a bad impulse. You're not owed anything here.
To me, the most troubling part is this: "State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle maintains her office held its ground against outside pressure, and took the time needed to do a thorough investigation."
It should not have taken months to see that the original conviction was flawed, so I suspect this is a paraphrase for the state attorney holding her ground until the evidence against her position was overwhelming. Once reasonable doubt has been established, continued incarceration begins to look increasingly like a kidnapping, the longer it goes on. Where is the justice in that?
> I guess those people … really don't matter? They're no longer working, they can't hurt anyone else.
Of course they matter. They're reflections of the entire system they existed in. There are a lot of Detective Conleys out there, and Detective Conley probably mentored at least a few of them. The same goes for the prosecutor.
The question isn't how do we deal with them, the question is how we change the system to stop manufacturing people like them and then giving them the power to do these things.
It says that the case could not be re-opened because for that you need new evidence, but the evidence was just overlooked during the initial trial. Even if all the existing evidence is enough to prove your innocence you somehow need "new" evidence to reopen your case. This is not the first time this happened either. It is very hard to get justice even when you are obviously innocent.
Yet the end to James’ confinement came abruptly and almost anti-climatically.
That's a very good thing, because one would hope that the justice system, after realising its mistake, would correct it quickly instead of dragging things out like it usually tends to do.
Still they gave the impression of dragging it out. There were protests and it took a very long time for this anticlimactic ending to occur.
Basically even with doing everything properly they really took their time. Way longer than it seems it took them to check the facts initially and prosecute him.
Florida pays the wrongfully imprisoned $50k per year - but only if they have no other felony convictions. And Thomas James has one for possession of marijuana in 1989, so by Florida law he's entitled to no compensation at all.
Parts of the justice system in the USA are quite unforgiving, which feels at odds with a professedly Christian nation.
>which feels at odds with a professedly Christian nation
I observe and respect the Christian heritage and traditions.
Having said that, and from my own experience, the most vile, hypocrite and ill-intentioned people I've met, happen to portray an image of justice and purity based on (their purported) Christian values.
I believe it's some sort of mimicry they develop on purpose, to balance out the negative image deserving of their real self.
They're also quite easy to spot, though. Most Christians keep what they do, good or bad, to themselves, while these guys preach it out in a way that comes off as unnatural.
Anyway, these kind of scumbags, when at the right place/time, could do irreparable damage to other people's lives and then go on with their business and completely forget about it, so be careful when you encounter one, best advice is to just steer away from them. (Thomas couldn't, in this case, and that's part of the tragedy).
Anyone that flaunts morality (of themselves or others) or loudly decries 'immorality' at most charitable probably hasn't thought things out well, most likely is lying to themselves (though they often don't realize it), and at worst their basis for morality is based on fears of things they might themselves want.
There are also the more obvious examples of people that pander to get some perceived benefit, most are happy to believe 'the other party does this'. It's really sad that it is a rare gem of a politician who really believes in everything they say.
I do not think this is Christianity specifically, I think this is how religion stays whole. They have to have absolute rules otherwise people would leave them and stop to obey out of fear.
When you have some oppressing others, this is always in the name of something great and beyond mere mortals. Never because "I said so" (even if of course this is usually the case)
Wow, $50K / year is high. Illinois I think tops out at a max of $140K total, and that only kicks in at something like a decade locked up.
Bear in mind those figures are statutorily-mandated money that you get by law. You can also sue on top of that.
The issue is that it's often impossible to sue for decades behind bars. All sorts of things stop you, such as statutes of limitation, qualified immunity from prosecution etc.
There is nothing in federal or state legal documents that mention Christianity. God? Yes. Traceable to Judeo-Christian values? Yes. Christianity explicitly mentioned. No.
ha, christianity is nothing but a way of social signalling purity. So they can get away with being nasty brutish selfish beings.
The world suddenly makes sense if you consider that the majority of people are complete asshats who would kill you for a sandwich and never think on it again -as long as they can get away with it.
LOL “Christian nation.” I don’t even think the Evangelicals actually believe this. It’s just a set of coded language they use to gain power, like people quoting their favorite movie.
I have often wondered what a default payout ought to be, given that 1) these things happen and 2) we'd like to disincentiveize them.
First, I think there's a base, flat fee even if you're in just one day. Next, some kind of pro-rated per annum amount, based on some multiple of the median income in that state. Additional amounts for, I don't know, each day in solitary, whatever documented medical issues arise (it isn't like we can get anyone to write down prison beatings), and so on.
A separate account is created to pay lawyers whose sole job is to scrub the erroneous conviction, from each and every place it exists. I imagine a group to do this.
Another account is created to pay for therapists, pretty much "for life."
I also think something needs to be set aside for assessment of the person's skills and guidance for retraining, five years of college, whatever.
Room and board for, well, I don't know how many years. Your car got repo'd? Yeah, that's a new car for you.
Essentially, the reasonable and fair thing to do would be do whatever is possible to re-integrate people and make them as whole as is possible: financially, psychically, materially, and so on.
In this case I think the state owes him a comfortable retirement. They took the entirety of his prime earning years and released him just in time to retire. So cough up a nice pension and make sure he's got a comfortable place to live and access to whatever social workers and psychological help it takes to reintegrate him into society. And a great big public apology, if he's okay with it, admitting that the fact he was sent to prison for life based on nothing but a single eyewitness is an obvious miscarriage of justice.
In cases like these, I wonder how the incentive structure may change if it became mandatory for all involved crooked prosecutors and inept judges to personally apologise, be temporarily stripped of their professional credentials, and perhaps serve some time in jail as retribution.
Is the wrong 'righted' though ? He was locked up >30 years, and now was recognized as innocent. Not even sure if that means that his prison time is expunged.
How can he be made whole ? Seems almost impossible.
I would say $60,000/yr plus a pension would be a start. At least that way he could have a home and maybe have a family of his own in the time he has remaining. Money doesn't fix everything but better a bandaid and a kiss on the booboo than a "tough luck, piss off", right?
This is why I adamantly am against CSAM and will never buy another apple product as long as I live.
Once the slow grinding wheels of government start moving against you there is no stopping it. You often find your entire life at a halt. Call it what you want but I"m not carrying a govt fastpass to jail in my pocket.
> why I adamantly am against CSAM and will never buy another apple product as long as I live.
I'm getting used to seeing anti-Apple rants on HN based on very flimsy connections, but this one is egregious: the man's wrongful conviction, the struggle to exonerate himself, and his final justification and liberty have nothing to do with Apple or any 'mistaken' technological evidence, but actually the reverse.
If he'd been carrying a device (back in 1990) that could have located him away from the scene of a crime, then it would have been a help and not a hindrance to his case.
You really don't know how government and police work. Its sad how many posters on HN have some unrealistic belief in a benevolent government.
It probably speaks to how few posters here have had any real world experience dealing with governments beyond the daily procedural stuff like ID's and tax payments.
You really don't understand the seriousness. The law enforcement job is to find a reason to arrest you, HN posters seem to have a grave misunderstanding of how police work. They will not use info to make you innocent "anything you say can and will be used against you"
The courts job is to exonerate you not the police. Once the police start to zero in on you every incentive they have is to find a reason to bring you to court. Now you have to spend potentially thousands of dollars and a great deal of your time to defend yourself even if the case is "open and shut". Anything that makes the process "push button" is terrible for a law abiding citizen and potentially life destroying.
This is the difference between tyranny and due process. CSAM Takes away due process by automating the process of guilt. It doesn't matter if its well intentioned.
Given the potentially destructive nature of this policy, even suggesting it is a major red flag and it's not unreasonable to take an absolutist approach to the problem.
Turns out if you pander to wannabe-autocrats, people will remember.
I guess there is no real incentive on the part of the criminal justice system to resolve this.