> Unless you have a clear alibi with documented proof that you were nowhere near the scene of the crime, every public defender in America (and plenty of private lawyers) recommends you take a plea deal.
And even when you have a clear alibi including video proof, you're still in grave danger[1]:
> Three months later, Juan would be facing a murder rap. The slaying in question had taken place on May 12, the same night he was at Dodger Stadium — 20 miles from the crime. Investigators didn’t buy his story. As covered in the Netflix documentary “Long Shot,” out Friday, Juan’s innocence would ultimately rest on a near brush with fame — more specifically, with Larry David and “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”
*
> Show’ producers allowed Melnik to view their footage from that day. He sourced eight 10-minute tapes before finding his holy grail: Juan, in his No. 27 Kevin Brown shirt, and his young daughter walking to their seats after returning from the concession stand.
*
> The discovery seemed a home run for Juan, who by then had been in jail over a month. Still, the prosecutor argued that the footage was from 9:10 p.m. — and the murder had occurred at 10:32. Juan ostensibly could have left early, driven to the scene of the crime, and still had time to kill Puebla.
It's worth reading the whole thing. They were going to push the death penalty for the guy. Eventually, his lawyer finds other evidence proving he wasn't there. After sitting in jail for five and a half months, he's finally let out, but then has to go back to jail for another 2 weeks because of a clerical error.
What a terrible justice system. It's a disgrace to this country. The way the prosecutors are incentivized to lock people up away forever with little or no evidence, and even kill innocent people (with the death penalty), is cruel and evil.
It's not a justice system, it's a judicial system. Justice is its ostensible purpose, sure, but its true propose is to maintain order so that the state can preserve its authority.
I don't think that's true - beliefs like this are down to a human inclination to over-ascribe intentionality to systems. I doubt anyone has sat down and planned a system to disregard justice and make the state stronger. It's a bad state of affairs that has evolved out of well-meaning but ultimately malign pressures such as a desire to be seen to be tough on crime, and save public money by discouraging trials.
> I doubt anyone has sat down and planned a system to disregard justice and make the state stronger.
Only a tyrant would do that. But you still need to recognize that a justice system cannot provide justice unless it has power and credibility. A powerless justice system isn't a justice system at all. So there are definitely instances where "justice" is sacrificed for the sake of the "justice system".
When I say "true purpose", I am specifically not ascribing intentionality to it. The "true purpose" of a bee's stinger is to defend the hive, regardless of the consequences to the individual bee's life. Bees were not designed by humans, yet aspects of their anatomy can still have a true purpose.
Maybe “purpose” is the wrong term, but surely the effect of judicial & law enforcement systems is to be the mechanism by which a state metes out “violence” to assert its power & legitimate authority.
The prosecutor had an eye witness that placed him at the scene. So the state did their part to prove guilt. Turns out the eye witness was either outright lying or made a grave mistake.
We need to leave behind eye witness testimony. It has been shown time and again to be misleading and often completely false. The worst part is that the eye witness is usually not lying on purpose, but genuinely trying to help.
Think about everything you did yesterday, now put near exact times on it. It's very hard to do, and if someone pushed or suggested you in either direction 1 hour here or there you would likely go along with it. Now go out to last week or last month. Unless something extraordinary happened on the day in question most people do not have the ability to remember the time or even day. It's just not how memory works.
EDIT
And don't even get me started on jailhouse 'witnesses'. The prosecutor says if current criminal can get person arrested and sitting in jail to talk, current criminal gets a reduced sentence. I'm sure that's completely reliable testimony /s, yet it is pushed and used all the time.
I am of the very strong opinion that it is better to let 10 criminals go rather than putting 1 innocent person in jail. IMO, putting innocent people in jail damages society much more than letting criminals with little evidence of the crime walk.
When something extraordinary happens, people tend to have vivid memories that are false or even impossible.
What were you doing when the Challenger exploded?
> What were you doing when the Challenger exploded?
Walking from one class to another, while I was in the 8th grade. I was likely walking from my English class, but I don't recall what class I was walking to. I was told by a friend of mine who had just gotten out of his science class. We both participated at the time in the "Young Astronauts Program" as an afterschool thing, taught by our science teacher. I was walking past the PE locker / gym building, in a grassy area.
For all I know, though, this was so long ago that I could be completely wrong, so I don't really trust that memory too much; that's just how I remember it.
I was reading that part in Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman where he's participating in a panel investigating the Challenger explosion, and sticks the model o-rings in the ice water.
Quite impossible, obviously. But I can't remember a single detail of what I was really doing. Probably ignoring the television with my nose in some fantasy novel, based purely on statistics.
Kimmel's late night television show does "lie-witness news", which effectively demonstrates that ordinary people will say pretty much anything if you prompt and cue them towards what you want to hear.
Exactly. Even when something extraordinary events occur people are bad at remembering. Eye witness testimony should be barely passable as evidence, yet it is given huge weight in a courtroom.
A single eyewitness is rarely sufficient to convict, you would at least need some circumstantial evidence as well (e.g., a weapon, a motive, that defendant was in the area, etc.)
I do not think there is anything wrong using it, as long as it is explained to a jury that the accuracy of eyewitness testimony is suspect. Similar to how they are told that DNA evidence is ~99.999% accurate, they should be told that eyewitness testimony can often be incorrect (I wouldn't provide a number value though).
No. It is absolutely enough in our current legal interpretations.
"I saw naasking communing with Satan, I swear it" is enough to get you put in prison or to a death sentence in the US. We like to think we are beyond the days of witch trials, but a few weeks in a courtroom would change your mind.
Trying to change that legal interpretation is going to be very difficult. Many crimes have very little physical evidence, even the interpretations of physical evidence we have are horribly bad because of biased expert witnesses and broken crime labs. Moreso, any push for better physical evidence will get more pushback from voters that are "Tough on crime", which is a very strong voting block in the US.
Between the criminal justice system (that can be read two ways), mass surveillance, warrantless searches etc., it's pretty clear we're all guilty until proven very guilty.
"Everyone is guilty of something or has something to conceal. All one has to do is look hard enough to find what it is." ~ Solzhenitsyn.
That doesn't mean "innocent until proven with 100% certainty that they absolutely committed the crime." It means innocent unless found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
That was one helluva story - thank you for posting it!
I have to say - outside of the obvious judicial system problems - the whole ordeal ultimately led Juan to completely change his life, in ways he probably never imagined. I'm sure he would like it had the whole "jail time" aspect of the ordeal could be deleted, but without it, he never would have ended up where he is now with his education and potential future career or business prospects.
It's one of those crazy things about life, which we rarely and truly appreciate, that oftentimes even the bleakest moments within our lives can sometimes prove to be great turning points toward better future things (of course, there's "survivorship bias" also playing into that - for many, tragedy has begotten tragedy; perhaps also leading to the whole "misfortune visits 3 times" trope).
And even when you have a clear alibi including video proof, you're still in grave danger[1]:
> Three months later, Juan would be facing a murder rap. The slaying in question had taken place on May 12, the same night he was at Dodger Stadium — 20 miles from the crime. Investigators didn’t buy his story. As covered in the Netflix documentary “Long Shot,” out Friday, Juan’s innocence would ultimately rest on a near brush with fame — more specifically, with Larry David and “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”
*
> Show’ producers allowed Melnik to view their footage from that day. He sourced eight 10-minute tapes before finding his holy grail: Juan, in his No. 27 Kevin Brown shirt, and his young daughter walking to their seats after returning from the concession stand.
*
> The discovery seemed a home run for Juan, who by then had been in jail over a month. Still, the prosecutor argued that the footage was from 9:10 p.m. — and the murder had occurred at 10:32. Juan ostensibly could have left early, driven to the scene of the crime, and still had time to kill Puebla.
It's worth reading the whole thing. They were going to push the death penalty for the guy. Eventually, his lawyer finds other evidence proving he wasn't there. After sitting in jail for five and a half months, he's finally let out, but then has to go back to jail for another 2 weeks because of a clerical error.
[1] http://nypost.com/2017/09/23/how-curb-your-enthusiasm-saved-...