Miscarriage of justice

[katharath]

Just read this article and was deeply disturbed by it.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2015/07/mark_weiner_conviction_vacated_chelsea_steiniger_text_case_finally_overturned.html#comments


The idea that a prosecutor would ignore so much evidence and continue to prosecute an innocent man is horrifying. Shockingly, it appears that Denise Lunsford is again running for reelection. I can't imagine who would reelect her after reading this! I wonder how she can sleep at night. Reading something like this makes me feel so angry and helpless - maybe I will find out who's running against her and donate to their campaign...

 

[Calliecake]

Katharath, This is such a sad story. It really makes you wonder how many cases are manipulated. On the flip side I have often felt bad for police officers who do everything by the book to ensure a conviction only to have lawyers play multiple games to get criminals off.

 

[tyty333]

That truly is a sad story. Then you have the other cases where there is soooo much evidence and the jury finds them not guilty.
Just really leaves me confused. Seems people dont want to logically connect the dots or perhaps the instructions to the juries
dont let them connect the dots.

(so hard to type "jury"...my mind wants to type "jewelry")

 

[katharath]

I agree with you both, it is very sad. It just made me so angry too, that someone in a trusted position would do that. It's always awful when people that we think of as "the good guys" do things like this.

And of course I agree with the points you both made re: when cops and prosecutors do their best, but aren't successful at putting away actual criminals - that is devastating as well.

Thanks for commiserating with me, I appreciate it.

 

[katharath]

I had to LOL at the jury/jewelry thing, my mind does the same thing

 

[AnnaH]

I share your outrage about this particular case and prosecutor. I recently read that most prosecutors win about 90 percent of their cases. The figure surprised me, so when I read your post, I looked it up to see if that was accurate. It is--85 to 90 percent.
http://kelley.iu.edu/riharbau/RePEc/iuk/wpaper/bepp2008-16-rasmusen-raghav-ramseyer.pdf
So, it would seem that not many bad guys are getting off. How many are falsely convicted? Don't know.

 

[blingbunny10]

Geez. Any consequences for the woman who fabricated the whole story?

 

[packrat]

Katharath, This is such a sad story. It really makes you wonder how many cases are manipulated. On the flip side I have often felt bad for police officers who do everything by the book to ensure a conviction only to have lawyers play multiple games to get criminals off.

I never knew how often both of those things occurred until the last few years. It about boggles the mind and you wonder how in the world the justice system is even working.

 

[katharath]

Anna - you bring up a very good point. I never knew that conviction rates were so high. My first instinct is, oh that's great! But it's only "great" if we are prosecuting the guilty! Otherwise it's scary. No wonder we have dedicated organizations working to help the wrongfully convicted! It must happen more frequently than people realize.

Blingbunny - it doesn't look like anything has been done about her, which is also horrifying.


For anyone interested, here's a link to a Washington Post article I saw today, called: 12 Reasons to Worry About Our Criminal Justice System, from a Prominent Conservative Federal Judge


https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/07/14/12-reasons-to-worry-about-our-criminal-justice-system-from-a-prominent-conservative-federal-judge/

Snip from the intro:

"Although we pretend otherwise, much of what we do in the law is guesswork. For example, we like to boast that our criminal justice system is heavily tilted in favor of criminal defendants because we’d rather that ten guilty men go free than an innocent man be convicted. There is reason to doubt it, because very few criminal defendants actually go free after trial.

Does this mean that many guilty men are never charged because the prosecution is daunted by its heavy burden of proof? Or is it because jurors almost always start with a strong presumption that someone wouldn’t be charged with a crime unless the police and the prosecutor were firmly convinced of his guilt? We tell ourselves and the public that it’s the former and not the latter, but we have no way of knowing. They say that any prosecutor worth his salt can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. It may be that a decent prosecutor could get a petit jury to convict a eunuch of rape."

It goes into much greater detail for anyone interested.

 

[minousbijoux]

Thank you for linking. Truly sad - a good example of how an elected position can work against true justice. I don't know what the solution would be though.