I spent 21 years in prison for a murder I didn’t commit. [Reddit AMA] | Hacker News Reader

I spent 21 years in prison for a murder I didn’t commit. [Reddit AMA]

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52 pointslisper18 comments

"Since we can never know anything for sure, it is simply not worth searching for certainty; but it is well worth searching for truth; and we do this chiefly by searching for mistakes, so that we have to correct them."

The injustices done by a jury of peers who are certain beyond reasonable doubt can be seen from Christ's trial under Pilot clear through the Salem witch trials and into the present day. What's newer is the incentivized nature of the American criminal justice system. Until people are educated enough to be aware of their own fallibility and psychological biases, and the fallacies inherent in human cognition more generally such instances of state sponsored injustice will continue. I shudder when I hear calls to always believe the victim, not because victims do not deserve justice, but because injustice done by the state, legitimized by a jury of peers, is nothing more than tyranny.

so should we make it mandatory for jurors to undergo training? maybe make it a career?

I would definitely say make jurors go through training and pay them more; a lot more. The more expensive for the state to prosecute someone, the better.

Why would it be better for it to be more expensive to prosecute someone? The point of laws is that we'd like to see them enforced. If the people don't like the laws they should change them not try to cripple their government's ability to do its job.

"That it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer, is a Maxim that has been long and generally approved."

-Franklin

We should remove mandatory sentences and give judges discretion

Doesn't work as long as judges remain an elected position, because any judge who doles out reasonable sentences will be constantly attacked for being "soft on crime."

https://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21613276-theyre...

Serving on a jury showed me how racist and hateful fellow peers are. Maybe I just got stuck with a strange group. And it wasn't even coming from people we've been taught about as being racist. I live in a state were juries also decide on the amount and type of monetary damages. It seems nothing ignites the stereotypes and prejudices as much as having money in the mix.

I felt the same way. I served on a jury for a nonviolent drug case, and felt like I heard a lot of thinly veiled racism during jury deliberations. It made me sad how eager most of my fellow jurors were to throw the book at the defendant as if her doing time was going to make the world a better place.

Also relevant: In 1989, Donald Trump, a private NYC citizen at the time, bought a full page newspaper ad to prosecute five young boys in the court of public opinion[1].

They were later exonerated from the Central Park Jogger rape and assault and won a large civil case for malicious prosecution. Trump, proven wrong in a court of law, denied that they were innocent and "he refused to acknowledge the Central Park Five's innocence and stated that their convictions should never have been vacated."

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Park_jogger_case#Accus...

I'm horrified by police and the justice system. I don't see them as protective, I see them as someone in the USSR would see their police.

s/justice/legal/

I have similar feelings, but I don't see the US and the USSR legal systems as remotely similar.

The US system requires a much greater amount of complicity and culpability of citizens and elected officials. We, the citizens, are completely culpable for the entire system. Our elected representatives (for whom we are responsible for curtailing) have given police+prosecutors:

* far too many tools+laws to invade our liberties, * detain us with insufficient evidence, * interrogate us with mentally coercive techniques, * provide a massive asymmetry to legal information, * allow the poorest of us to rot in jail awaiting trial * incentivize those charged with crimes to settle pre-trial 98% of the time * too much credibility in the mind of juries

and governments underfund the public defender's offices to the point that they are essentially just a tool of the prosecution to help make plea deals faster.

I agree with everything you've said about problems with the justice system, but I've never been given the option to vote otherwise, state or local. Both parties are happy with this way of doing justice. Until we get a viable third party, this will never change. The two parties we have now made it awful difficult to get a third viable party.

We may be responsible for curtailing them, but we have no ability to do so. It's great in theory, but in current day practice, we can't do much about it.

They are slightly different. In the ex-USSR the police regularly torture people to extract confessions. Not "just" by extra beatings but stuff like putting a gas mask on them and cutting off the air supply until they pass out or confess. They even have cutesy names for the torture proceedures. The gas mask one for example is called "slonik" (baby elephant).

I've read stories of police beating confessions out of people in the US. It's probably not as common and not as creative as it was in the USSR, but it does happen.

I'm not saying the US is as bad, but the fact that is approaching the old USSR is pretty damn scary.

I would be willing to bet that police beatings in the US are lower then they have ever been.

I could see that as true, especially compared to the civil rights era. It's still a despicable thing that shouldn't happen in the US and just goes to show the current US and the former USSR aren't nearly as far apart as they should be.

I saw the screening of the movie about his story, "Crown Heights". It's a must see.

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