Thu Dec 06, 2007 15:00

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We watch CSI, COPS, Law & Order, LA Law, and of course NYPD Blue, Hill Street Blues, ad infini. Why does big media have such an interest in tailoring our perception of how justice should work, and how corrosively has it’s effects been on how the justice systems of the “Free World” function? Not only is DNA evidence proving the justice systems fallibility stateside but around the world, how have all the justice systems failed miserably across the world? What possible link could these diverse systems share that would corrupt distant judicial systems as well as our own?
Worse yet what are the possibilities of an out of control justice system destroying us, or one of our family members lives. All it really takes is a casual stroll minding your own business when a victim of a crime mistakenly cries out that’s him and points at you, then the nightmare begins. Ah, but I am innocent you think to yourself, the courts have checks and balances to prevent an innocent man from being convicted wrongly, hold on preciously to that thought for you are about to become disillusioned. Worse yet if you cannot afford an attorney to be present at your questioning you may end up confessing to the crime you know you did not commit, pray that you do not have a medical condition that might overcome you after hours of interrogation without your insulin or blood pressure medicine.

In a summary of
Study of Wrongful Convictions Raises Questions Beyond DNA
Brandon L. Garrett, a law professor at the University of Virginia, has, for the first time, systematically examined the 200 cases, in which innocent people served an average of 12 years in prison. In each case, of course, the evidence used to convict them was at least flawed and often false — yet juries, trial judges and appellate courts failed to notice.
At 79 percent the leading cause was erroneous identification by eyewitnesses. In 25 percent of these cases, such testimony was the only direct evidence against the defendant.
55 percent of the cases involved faulty forensic evidence . “In some of those cases, courts put undue weight on evidence with limited value, as when a defendant’s blood type matched evidence from the crime scene. In others, prosecution experts exaggerated, made honest mistakes or committed outright fraud. Most of the forensic evidence involved problems with the analysis of blood or semen. Forty-two cases featured expert testimony about hair, an area that is, Professor Garrett wrote, “notoriously unreliable.””
18 percent of the cases informants testified against the defendants in . “(In three cases, it turned out they had an unusually powerful motive for their false testimony, as DNA evidence proved they were in fact guilty of the crime they had pinned on the defendant.)”
16 percent of the cases were false confessions, with 66 percent of those involving defendants who were juveniles, mentally retarded or both.
Judging Innocence is available in Adobe .pdf format here.
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/national/Garrettjudginginnocence.pdf

Compounding the problem there is a jury mentality that "If they are here, then they are guilty", which I may point out to these individuals that if that was the fact then why do we have a judicial system in the first place. Unfortunately our law officers are overburdened and human, they have to come to a conclusion on the spot as to in their opinion whether the person before them has committed a crime or not, most will err on the side of their gut and the publics safety and let the courts sort out the facts. But therein lies the rub now you have a jury that believes he was arrested so there MUST be a reason he was arrested and therefore be guilty. In actuality it boils down to do not compete with, argue with or infuriate anybody, otherwise they may find a way to eliminate you legally.

Jailing the innocent
By Paul Craig Roberts
http://www.lewrockwell.com/roberts/roberts24.html
January 06, 2004

Every day many Americans commit crimes of which they are unaware. Many of the crimes with which Americans are charged are absurd.

One recent case brought to light by Ellen Podgor and Paul Rosenzweig is that of three Americans sentenced in federal court to eight years in prison for importing lobster tails from Honduras in plastic bags instead of cardboard boxes. Why this matters, no one knows. Moreover the importers of the lobster tails have no responsibility for how the seafood was packed in Honduras. Federal prosecutors decided that Honduran law was violated by the shipment because a few tails (3% of the shipment) were less than 5.5 inches in length. The Honduran government objects to this interpretation of its law and filed a brief in behalf of the defendants, but federal judges nevertheless convicted their fellow citizens for violating the Lacey Act by importing “fish or wildlife taken, possessed, transported, or sold in violation of any foreign law.” To insure a harsh sentence the prosecutors loaded up charges against the defendants by bringing indictments for smuggling, money laundering and conspiracy. Smuggling is inferred from a few of the tails allegedly being undersized and illegal. Money laundering is charged because the lobster purchase and sale required money to be deposited in a bank. Conspiracy is charged on the basis that more than one person was involved.
In other words, these are totally trumped-up crimes. The upshot is that three Americans have had their lives ruined by federal prosecutors and judges for violating a Honduran law that the Honduran president, attorney general and embassy say is not on their country’s statute books. For reasons no one knows, federal prosecutors spent six months trying to find reasons in Honduran law to indict the American importers of the lobster tails. If it took federal prosecutors six months to find something in foreign law that they could allege the importers to have violated, how could the importers possibly have known that they could be imprisoned for the ordinary everyday business of importing lobster tails for restaurants?
Legal scholars such as Mr. Rosenzweig at the Heritage Foundation and Erik Luna at the University of Utah Law School are calling attention to the over criminalization that has made it impossible in America to conduct ordinary business activities without risk of indictment. It is tyrannical to burden Americans with the substantive obligation of knowing how federal prosecutors might interpret every foreign law. No sane person could regard the lobster importers’ conduct as criminal. Liberty is extinguished where law is so broad and vague as to entrap even the most honest citizen. Naive Americans tend to regard miscarriages of justice, such as the lobster import case, as rare examples of legal idiocy that somehow will be corrected by the legal system. However, such cases are routine and are seldom if ever corrected. In America today law enforcement boils down to the exercise of power by unaccountable prosecutors. Justice is not served by ensnaring the innocent.

Married men who happen to own guns are being turned into felons by wives who ask for restraining orders when they file for divorce. Prosecutors interpret restraining orders as criminalizing prior gun ownership. A restraining order turns a law-abiding gun owner into a criminal. It is an example of unconstitutional ex post facto law at its worst. Americans are uniformed about the tyrannical nature of their criminal justice system. Until they become personally ensnared in the system, Americans believe that police and prosecutors would never convict an innocent person. Once they experience the system, Americans are terrified by the system’s indifference to whether a defendant has committed a crime. Mary Sue Terry, former attorney general of the Commonwealth of Virginia, says the concern of the justice system “has turned from seeking truth to seeking convictions, and our post-conviction efforts are focused on denying any further review.” Ever widening arrest powers are bringing a reality check to more and more Americans. Just before Christmas the US Supreme Court ruled that a police officer who discovers contraband in a car can arrest every occupant if no one admits to ownership of the illicit item. Warn your teenagers never to get into a car with acquaintances who might have alcohol, drugs, or weapons. And be careful whose car you get into yourself. In a recent Cato Policy Report, Erik Luna says that “the sheer number of idiosyncratic laws and the scope of discretionary enforcement” are making criminals out of many Americans who had no intent to break a law or any knowledge that they had. A country that goes out of its way to imprison the innocent has no business preaching democracy to the world.

So where do I believe the media fits into all this, how does Hollywood Drama corrupt the diverse judicial systems across this planet, cases are being proved by DNA to have been miscarriages of justice worldwide. We are taught we have the finest judicial systems with checks and balances to prevent the innocent of being unjustly convicted, still there are justice systems that have their own checks and balances that were created on the principles of our justice system, but with a view toward eliminating possible prejudices that were ingrained in our system. How did these later improvements to judicial systems in other courts manage to fail as well as our own. There has to be some external mechanism at work, something that is consistent in all the countries affected. This external mechanism would have to effect a diverse multitude of

According to http://forejustice.org/search_idb.htm
2,203 People Currently Listed in the Innocents Database
There are cases from 57 Countries
177 people were executed
471 people were sentenced to death
507 people were sentenced to life in prison
1,030 people convicted of murder were imprisoned an average of 8-3/4 years
303 people convicted of rape were imprisoned an average of 9-3/4 years
23 people died in prison after being imprisoned an average of 9-1/4 years
2,007 people were judicially exonerated or pardoned

In the US a study gives a conservatively low estimate of 10,000 innocent people convicted yearly, http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/ronhuff.htm
By C. Ronald Huff
10,000 INNOCENT PEOPLE CONVICTED EACH YEAR, STUDY ESTIMATES

Wrongful convictions plague justice systems in Canada and abroad, says report
By Stephen Thorne
January 25, 2005--17:32

OTTAWA (CP) - Wrongful convictions continue to plague justice systems in Canada and elsewhere despite studies and reports on the issue, says a report by federal, provincial and territorial prosecutors and police. "Various commissions and studies in Canada and around the world have provided valuable insight into the systemic causes of wrongful convictions and into what has gone wrong in individual cases," the report says. "What is startling, however, is that some problems, themes and mistakes arise time and time again, regardless of where the miscarriage of justice took place." Fault lies with the conduct of police, prosecutors, defense lawyers, judges and forensic scientists, and they are not confined to proceedings in the courtroom, says the report. Like disasters, miscarriages of justice are rarely the result of a single mistake or event but almost always the result of a series of events, says the report presented Tuesday at a conference of justice ministers. There are no simple solutions, it says, and responsibility to prevent wrongful convictions lies with all participants in all jurisdictions of the criminal justice system. "Police officers, Crown counsel, forensic scientists, judges and defense counsel all have a role to play in ensuring that innocent people are not convicted of crimes they didn't commit," says the report.

"As useful as commissions of inquiry may be, they usually come many years after the fact. The goal of all justice system participants must be to prevent wrongful convictions from occurring in the first place." At the conclusion of the two-day ministers meeting, federal Justice Minister Irwin Cotler lauded what he called the "landmark" report, saying he plans to ensure it is distributed internationally. "The purpose is to prevent wrongful convictions," Cotler said. "We want to work to prevent the wrongful convictions to begin with, and this report details recommendations as to how that can be done." The ministers issued a communiqué outlining a broad range of issues they discussed, including limiting conditional sentences, improving the management of mega-trials, federal funding of legal aid, detaining those charged with youth crimes and protecting vulnerable people. The 155-page committee report says common factors come up in wrongful convictions in Canada and elsewhere.
It devotes a chapter to each with 40 recommendations:
-Tunnel vision, or "the single-minded and overly narrow focus on an investigation or prosecutorial theory," is the leading cause of false convictions.
-Mistaken eyewitness identification and testimony can come from "the most well-meaning, honest and genuine eyewitness."
-A New York study found 35 of the first 130 post-conviction exonerations - 27 per cent - made on DNA evidence involved false confessions.
-In-custody informers are notoriously unreliable yet still factor in a significant percentage of cases that end in wrongful convictions.
-While not proof that one person or another committed a crime, DNA evidence has proven many cases of false conviction.
-"Tainted, tailored and unsubstantiated expert evidence couched in scientific terms and language, based on unreliable fact and ultimately debunked science" is a leading cause of wrongful convictions.

The reporting panel led by Rob Finlayson, Manitoba assistant deputy attorney general, concludes that the criminal justice system must constantly guard against factors that can contribute to miscarriages of justice. Focusing primarily on serious crimes such as homicides, its recommendations target everyone from individual police officers and prosecutors to police forces and prosecution services. The report stresses the need for continuing education and urges each prosecution service to develop a comprehensive written plan to educate its prosecutors on the causes and prevention of wrongful convictions. It also recommends creation of a virtual resource centre on the issue for police and prosecutors and establishment of a permanent prosecutors' committee on the prevention of wrongful convictions. "The risk of error always exists in any human endeavour," it says. "In the justice system, the consequences of a wrongful conviction can be tragic. "The working group hopes its recommendations, if implemented, will go a long way towards reducing the risk of future wrongful convictions and ensuring that the innocent are acquitted and the guilty convicted."

For Full Report:
http://canada.justice.gc.ca/en/dept/pub/hop/toc.html

From an excellent view of a coroner’s assessment on his website at http://www.coronerstories.com
Hollywood vs. Reality: An Introduction
January 14, 2005
As a general rule, I avoid watching Hollywood’s dramatic interpretations of death investigation. I can only assume that physicians have similar issues if or when they watch hospital dramas. The exception to this rule is when I stumble on a crime drama while channel surfing or I’m simply looking for something amusing to watch. To say that writers and directors take liberties with reality is putting it mildly.
These inaccuracies must be the Hollywood equivalent of “anticipated casualties” when the sole intention of any program is to attract and retain viewers. Fortunately for me, these inaccuracies serve as a seemingly unlimited source of writing material for this site.
I plan to use these inaccuracies—and my subsequent issues—in what I anticipate to be a series of segments. I admit this series may be perceived as an extended rant filled with various soapbox issues, but the goal here is to deliver some insight. I certainly don’t expect anything I write here to change the face of television. I fully expect the modern-day crime drama to continue to be successful for years to come. After all, fiction has historically been easier to sell than non-fiction. I prefer the History Channel, but at last check it has yet to eclipse the networks in the prime time ratings.

Hollywood vs. Reality: Part II
January 27, 2005
Hollywood bodies are also much more durable. Gunshot wounds to the head usually only cause a neat little hole–no exuding brain tissue, no disfiguring skull fragmentation and no passive flow of blood that reappears right after the previous passive flow is wiped away. Bodies that fall from roofs also remain remarkably intact and limbs maintain their natural configuration. The effect of having a gradual pool of blood appear at the head of the body from an elevated camera angle is a nice touch. For contrast sake, throw a fresh egg off of a building and you’ll see a lot more than slowly leaking egg white. On second thought, don’t do that. God only knows what that egg will do to the person on the street and I am in no hurry to find out.

In excerpts from…
CSI shows give 'unrealistic view'
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/4284335.stm
By Paul Rincon BBC News science reporter, in Washington DC

People have unrealistic expectations of forensic science thanks to the success of the CSI TV shows, real experts say.
Lawyers also fear the effect because jurors have a distorted view of how forensic evidence is used.
The issue was discussed at a major science conference in Washington DC.
Crime Scene Investigation (CSI) and its spin-offs, CSI: Miami and CSI: New York, have proven exceptionally popular with audiences on both sides of the Atlantic.
"The CSI effect is basically the perception of the near-infallibility of forensic science in response to the TV show," said Max Houck, who runs a forensic science graduate course at West Virginia University, US.
"This TV show comes on and everyone starts watching it - including the cops and prosecutors - and submissions to forensic laboratories go through the roof," he told the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
The American forensics expert said there were roughly 200,000-300,000 backlogged DNA samples in US labs.
Yet these constituted just 10% of the total test backlog, said Dr Houck.
Forensic pathologist Dr Patricia McFeeley said she had started to see the show's influence in dealing with the families of victims.
"What I find is that families now are more dissatisfied with the investigation than was previously the case," she explained.
"For example, on television, the toxicology results are available almost instantaneously. But when people find out that it can take several months, they can find that very difficult."
Study attraction
Dr McFeeley added that the accuracy with which forensic investigators can determine time of death was far lower than most people's perceptions.
The show's influence can follow forensic investigators all the way into the courtroom, making lawyers jittery.
"Prosecutors fear the CSI effect with juries because, for example, they wonder: 'why wasn't everything tested?' Well, in fact, not everything needs to be tested," Dr Houck explained.
"Defense attorneys also worry about the CSI effect because they think that jurors come in and have this view of science as a juggernaut; this objective method that's always accurate."
However, he admitted the show had had positive as well as negative effects on the field.
"My university course started with four graduates in 1999; we're now the largest major on campus - with 400 students," he said. Dr Houck added that there was an urgent need for better funding of forensic science at the university level: "There's more money spent in this country on holistic medicine than there is on forensic science research."

It is said that it is better to let ten guilty go free, rather then imprison one innocent, so I guess that means the eleventh is fair game, that means what 12 criminals walking the street. How about we fix the system to where the guilty are punished and the innocent acquitted accurately, in real lives there is no room for errors.
Just remember for every miscarriage of justice you have a person who has a family that has been destroyed, worse yet you have a real criminal on the streets free, who is sure to be emboldened that he got away scot
free to commit further crimes, where is the justice in that? We must demand better from our judicial then just convictions! Furthermore prosecutors need to realize their place in the judicial system is to prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt, not make one up.

For further related information
http://www.truthinjustice.org/index.htm
http://truthinjustice.org/systemworks.htm
http://realcostofprisons.org/blog
http://www.dredmundhiggins.com/database.htm
http://www.nacdl.org/public.nsf/defenseupdates/innocence138
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200708u/innocents-in-prison/2
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/06/070628161330.htm

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