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I was reading this article today. Found it sad and disturbing how easy a person can be convicted of murder, with overwhelming evidence pointing to their innocence. The man at the end of the story had 9 witnesses place him 400 miles away from the murder scene. Zero physical evidence. Basically all it takes is a very persuasive prosecutor to convince a jury. He's still in prison after 30 years, hoping for a pardon. I also think it should be illegal for prosecution to restrict eyewitness testimony, when it could prove innocence.
I used to be for the death penalty. Now, I'm not because 165 people have been exonnerated from death row since 1973. I did time myself, and I can tell you that for serious crimes- it is NOT rare for an innocent person to be in prison. The system is slanted in favor of the prosecution. Anybody that gets a serious felony charge, and has a Public Defender is toast.
I used to be for the death penalty. Now, I'm not because 165 people have been exonnerated from death row since 1973. I did time myself, and I can tell you that for serious crimes- it is NOT rare for an innocent person to be in prison. The system is slanted in favor of the prosecution. Anybody that gets a serious felony charge, and has a Public Defender is toast.
The word on the street and social media among the perpetually outraged is that the system is slanted in favor of the guilty going free.
The fact is its an imperfect system relying on imperfect people, and mistakes go both ways, and that's reason enough to abolish the death penalty.
I watched Innocent Man documentary on Netflix...John Grisham wrote about this small town Ada Oklahoma...very disturbing...I won't spoil it but at the end they showed some statistics on wrongful convictions...they occur 4% of the time which doesn't seem an awful lot until they said that amounts to over 90,000 people! Very hard to wrap ones head around that...
Dateline just had one on last night. The woman wasn't convicted, but she spent a year and 3 months in jail because she couldn't afford bail. This was in Randall Co Texas -- Amarillo.
I guess android cell phones were pretty new at the time because the prosecutor didn't know about the tracking function until he heard an assistant talking about it. He checked the suspect's child's phone because the suspect's tracking had been turned off. The child was exactly where the suspect said they were, not where the murder occurred. That got her released and her husband arrested a few months later when he tried to flee.
If not for an overheard convo about androids, and that child's cell phone, she'd almost certainly have been convicted and be sitting in prison right now.
I think social media makes things worse. There's a lynch mob mentality on social media, often before a person even has a real trial in court.
Which is fueled initially by the mainstream media. Just recently, look at what happened to James Fields. You don't have to share a person's ideology to see that this man was completely railroaded and convicted in the media on the day the accident took place.
The jury even convicted him of hit and run, although his car was violently attacked and his windows smashed in immediately. What was he supposed to, stay, get dragged out of his car and beaten to do death by a violent mob?
The MEDIA is also to blame in a lot of wrongful convictions/sentences. But, yeah sure they'll do a few stories here and there about innocent people in prison to throw the people a bone. Make them think they actually CARE and are "real journalists".
I think social media makes things worse. There's a lynch mob mentality on social media, often before a person even has a real trial in court.
This is very, very true! And any news media can do this.
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