Comment by credit_guy | Hacker News Reader

Comment by credit_guy | Hacker News Reader

Ms Haddaway made a secret deal with the prosecutors and the prosecutors did not reveal this. But did she lie?

What this article forgets to mention is that Ms Haddaway wore a wire and got Jonathan Smith on tape that he committed the murder in order to get $60000 [1]. Here's part of the dialog for reader's convenience:

"[BH:]Why were you in that field with blood all over ya? And they take, I seen ya goin’up the road that day, you know it? And you had a blue coat on and Ray [Andrews] and you both had huntin’hats on. And then when I come back by there and you were in that cornfield and you said that blood come off a dog, but I think that you held her and David [Faulkner] killed her or one of you three done it.

[JS:]They never found out yet have they?

[BH:]I know, that’s why I want to know ‘fore I die. I seen ya, did I ever tell anybody? You know I ain’t gonna tell on ya, goddamn, you’re my blood. I just wanted to know if you done it. I didn’t really think you did. I think crazy David did

[JS:]It’s a secret. It’s a secret when one person knows[.] It aint [sic] a secret when two people know.

[BH:]Well, the three of you know.

[JS:]Right, there’s only two left.

[BH:]It was you and Ray and David.

[JS:]Ray wasn’t there until after it was over.

[BH:]Where was he?

[JS:]Down the road.

[BH:]Ray was right with you in the goddamn field.

[JS:]Yeah. That was after it was all done with.

...

[BH:] Tell me. I ain’t gonna tell nobody, I just want to know (inaudible).

[JS:]He didn’t do it.

[BH:]You done it.

[JS:]Uh huh.

[BH:]You said you did it before. Why did you kill her? I thought she let you in there when you went fishin’[.]... What, you didn’t know her?

[JS:]I knew she had money.

[BH:]You knew she had money.

[JS:]She had money."

[1] https://www.courts.state.md.us/sites/default/files/unreporte...

I think you should actually read the unanimous opinion by the Maryland Court of Appeals before sleazifying the work of the innocence project so vilely:

https://law.justia.com/cases/maryland/court-of-appeals/2020/...

    In its analysis of the palmprint evidence, the circuit
    court lost sight of the forest for the trees. The 
    points of overriding importance are: 

        (1) Ty Brooks burglarized Ms. Wilford’s house in 
            break-in that was never reported by Ms. Wilford;

        (2) Thomas’s confession that he committed the
            burglary and murder is corroborated 
            by his statement putting Ty Brooks in the 
            house and identifying the murder weapon as
            a butcher knife long before those facts were 
            publicly known; and (3) ...

To break it down for you, they already had a confession in evidence!

Thanks for the link.

Just to make a grand summary for everyone:

* writ of innocence does not mean the court of appeals deems someone innocent. It means it finds that in light of the new evidence a retrial is warranted, and the accused enjoys the benefit of doubt once again (therefore he's "innocent until proven guilty"). It is certainly not an exoneration

* both David Faulkner and Jonathan Smith were granted the writ of innocence

* the prosecutors decided to not pursue David Faulkner anymore (either they think he's innocent, or they think he served enough time, or they think they don't have enough evidence to prove him guilty beyond any reasonable doubt)

* the prosecutors decided to try Jonathan Smith in July [1]. A judge decided to deny him bond until that time and to be under house arrest. The judge was obviously aware of the writ of innocence, and found the weight of evidence sufficient to not grant him bail.

* Finally, Jonathan Smith entered an Alford Plea [2], which is a type of no-contest plea. With this plea, the state let him go free. This type of plea does not imply the defendant is guilty, but does not imply that he's innocent either.

*crucially, the Alford plea does not imply prosecutorial misconduct.

Now, if I was "sleazyfing" the work of the Innocence Project, what did they do in regards to the work of the prosecutors? Is there any way to read their article without inferring massive prosecutorial misconduct?

[1] https://www.stardem.com/emergency_notice/jonathan-smith-deni...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alford_plea

I don't know why you insist on summarizing this case (again) when it's clear you can't be trusted to honestly reflect both sides.

Folks, ignore him, and just read the appeals court decision. They lay it out pretty clear and isn't hard to understand.

> I don't know why you insist on ...

Because what's at stake here is the legitimacy of the government.

The message of this article is : "Innocent man stays behind bars for 20 years. Prosecutors are monsters".

And people buy this wholesale. Just read the other comments in this thread.

When people hear this time and again, and then they enter their echo bubble, the conclusion is that the US government is not any better than Putin's gang of thugs.

Folks: whenever you read about an "innocent" man wrongfully serving 20 years in prison, spend 15 min on Google to see if there's more to the story. We do not live in Putin's Russia.

> Just read the other comments in this thread.

Right, because you chose to mislead the people in this thread by cherry-picking one heavily disputed fact from many to hinge your argument to make it look like he's still guilty.

When you're no longer an "honest broker" of the facts you no longer deserve anyone's time or effort to debate you on the facts.

I've read the full report. Quoting just this is disturbingly misleading.

There is a family relationship between JS and BH. Even in 1987 (the time of the murder) it appears to be hostile. At the time this snippet was recorded it was 13 years later and BH had manipulated the police into agreeing to drop drug charges against her grandson in exchange for testimony. Oddly this seems like a pattern, because BH also offered to help police with the same evidence in 1994 when a Shawn Haddaway was being charged for 3 offenses -- no explanation for this is given, or the relationship.

[edit: From the other link posted by bb88 (thanks, reading now), Shawn Haddaway was the son of BH]

What other conversations, that were not recorded, occurred between JS and BH prior to this "wiretap"? Had BH been badgering JS for days and the responses JS gave were just "giving her what she wanted" -- if so, it would be classic broken family relationship crap -- I recommended reading some of Deborah Tannen's books.

This snippet also doesn't explain why someone else also admitted to the murder, for which there was physical evidence available, but was suppressed.

What happened is very sad -- a person was murdered. But it is far, far more complicated than what is in this snippet.

> What happened is very sad

Doubly so when they sent the wrong guys to jail. Because now it's three innocent lives that were affected adversely.

So this confession is "uh huh," which is about the extent of what Smith said throughout. The part that discusses the $60,000 and Smith describing the details of the crime is for some reason not included in the transcript. Frankly, his excuse of trying to get a strange pestering woman to leave him alone sounds fairly plausible, particularly a woman with a note from her doctor that she has "an extensive emotional and psychological problem."

> What this article forgets to mention is that Ms Haddaway wore a wire and got Jonathan Smith on tape that he committed the murder in order to get $60000 [1]. Here's part of the dialog for reader's convenience:

Of course, the state reviewed that evidence, and along side it evidence of a confession by a different individual, along with palm prints tying that person to the crime scene, which is included in the same document.

I suspect at least half the people exonerated by the Innocence Project are in fact guilty. However, I think that sloppy police work should never be rewarded with a guilty verdict, even if it's likely the defendant is guilty.

A prosecutor can indict a ham sandwich.

Do you know what indict means?

It's a reference to this quote:

> New York State chief judge Sol Wachtler was famously quoted by Tom Wolfe in The Bonfire of the Vanities that "a grand jury would 'indict a ham sandwich,' if that's what you wanted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ham_sandwich

Yes, I'm well aware. Indictment is in no way being found guilty by a jury of your peers though and has wildly different standards of evidence.

It's still a valid point, a prosecutor is the one presenting a case to a grand jury and has ample opportunity to tip the scales towards indictment or not. It's not like the accused have any similar opportunity to present their case to the grand jury, it's completely one-sided. Not saying there's anything wrong with that, but it's important to note that an indictment is not comparable to a case that's been tried in court.

So are at least half the people acquitted by juries. That's the whole point of the reasonable doubt standard. We believe as a society that it is far more intolerable to imprison innocents than to let the guilty occasionally escape justice.

> We believe as a society that it is far more intolerable to imprison innocents than to let the guilty occasionally escape justice.

That's quite debatable. Our founding fathers believed that, but today's justice and penal systems (and political system that buttresses them) do not reflect that belief.

That may be more money than people speaking to some of those ideas.

While I agree with you on that core idea being debatable, I also see a lot more support for it than not. Clearly, my experiences are anecdotal, but they do come from a wide swath of the nation.

One of my tasty pleasures on business travel is to strike up some conversations with people. I have done it with all walks of life from homeless to rando joe and jane bag of doughnuts to people of serious means.

For profit prison is growing unpopular. I think it should. And that profit motive does drive a lot of policy aimed at keeping cells full, often justified in dubious ways.

One point in your favor is our trend toward aggressive punishment. People want to see the big, sexy verdicts and game over sentencing and often equate that to a greater measure of their own safety and security.

There is also very low support for better answers to what people do when they have paid, are out again and unable to build a life for ongoing punishment as an ex con. Fewer than I would prefer to see equate that to a lesser measure of security and safety in their lives.

All that said, I am definitely on the err on the side of guilt, meaning some guilty people are not convicted.

I am also on the side of corrections. The goal should be for people to pay their debt to society for wrong doing, AND while paying it, arrive at some plan, skills, resources to try again where it makes sense.

Not doing those things means releasing people who are extremely likely to fail and our results reflect that reality. Sadly, very large numbers of people respond to those facts with even more aggressive sentences, often openly saying we just do not need those people.

Rough topic, IMHO. There is work to do here. Not sure the will exists to do it.

I have a friend who works for ICE. She has literally deported assassins for the Mexican cartels. She said the hardest part of her job is that cities like San Francisco give millions of dollars to activist lawyers to help keep these criminals in the US. The activist lawyers and even SF know that these are real criminals but they don’t care. That money could be going to help the cases of real illegal immigrants who are making life better in the US but it’s instead going to defend these criminals. She says it’s really disheartening that they don’t care, they are blinded by trying to beat ICE.

Perhaps ICE should focus their resources on these criminals instead of attempting to deport every person who ever crossed the border. Has she ever considered that this change might even be within their own power?

They don’t. That’s the problem. All you read about is the propaganda. My friend genuinely cares about making sure that there is justice but the media paints her like she’s some immigrant-hating Trump MAGA warrior. She has worked under Obama and Trump, and her job hasn’t changed.

No, I read first hand experiences. Your friend can be whatever she wants, but if she is trying to argue that ICE doesn't pursue non-criminals, she is untrustworthy.

Technically, crossing the border is a crime. You should clarify you mean violent criminals.

Most "illegal immigrants" are here on visa overstays, which is decidedly non-criminal. So you should refrain from correcting people about things you yourself aren't fully versed in.

Source for most: https://www.npr.org/2019/01/16/686056668/for-seventh-consecu...

More context: https://www.cnn.com/2017/02/24/politics/undocumented-immigra...

I said nothing about illegal immigrants. I’m a non-citizen myself. Here is the relevant law for you and other down voters: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_and_Nationality_Ac...

Obviously, we’re talking about ICE so my comment was meant towards non official border crossings.

That's all well and good - but ICE doesn't just pursue border-crossers -- they regularly arrest and deport people here on Visa overstays..

Many of the people that OPs friend is complaining about receiving aid from San Francisco "activist lawyers" are from Asia, who obviously didn't enter the country illegally, hence, non-criminals.

> That's all well and good - but ICE doesn't just pursue border-crossers -- they regularly arrest and deport people here on Visa overstays..

Isn't visa overstay illegal? Is it not part of ICE job?

Visa overstay is a civil infraction, hence this whole debate - calling everyone who ICE deports “criminals” is factually wrong.

You’re not a criminal if you leave your car parked in a street cleaning zone, you committed a civil infraction.

There is obviously a large range between a parking violations and the discussed immigration actions. Let's be honest from both sides and compare it to something kinda comparable: trespassing. When such a thing occurs, most reasonable people expect the police (ICE) to come and remove them from the private property (country).

I think you are answered a slightly different question when you replied to my comment.

"Isn't visa overstay illegal?" is not related to "calling everyone who ICE deports “criminals” is factually wrong."

Undoubtedly some of the visa overstays entered with a good faith belief that their stay would be temporary, but my guess would be the vast majority planned to immigrate and lied at some point in the visa issuance or border control process. That would make them make them guilty of criminal improper entry.

The statutory language is in 8 USC § 1325[0] and consists in relevant part of:

"Any alien who... obtains entry to the United States by a willfully false or misleading representation... shall... be fined under title 18 or imprisoned... or both"

It's hard to prove and rarely prosecuted of course, but that doesn't change the fact that many of the overstays are guilty.

[0] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1325

And some of the people being brutally punished by ICE and CBP do not even know what a country border is, because they don't know what a country is, because they're not even 1 year old.

Feel free to jump to pages 7, 8 and 9 of this report. https://docs.house.gov/meetings/GO/GO00/20190712/109772/HHRG...

No, it's not a crime - it's a civil offense by deliberate design. If it were a crime, it'd have to be judged in a criminal court with juries and a whole lot of inconvenient rights instead of the farce that is immigration courts.

Yeah that damn due process. Always getting in the way of extrajudicial punishment.

Yeah, and that damn visa application process! Always getting in the way of crossing the border.

Why do cities like San Francisco want to keep assassins in the US?

They don't.

What they do want is for immigrants to not fear deportation, so they want to make a stand that they'll fight immigration enforcement every step of the way. Hence why they'll get involved with these kinds of lawsuits. Even if ICE purely deported only people who committed crimes other than illegal entry or overstaying a visa; you'd still have plenty of immigrants afraid of all law enforcement. Yes, even the legal ones; nobody wants to have to show their papers on pain of having their life uprooted, even if they have those papers.

I don't know exactly what lawsuits SF is filing, but I'm going to assume the actual legal argumentation is less "let the assassains go free" and more "assassains should serve time in American prisons rather than being deported to Mexico where they'll likely escape and reoffend".

If someone is legally in the US, why would they fear having their life uprooted by having to show their papers?

Given that ICE has deported US citizens before, pretty sure it's a reasonable concern for immigrants to be concerned about ICE agents.

Not in the US but the UK. [0] a large group of people who moved here legally between 50 and 70 years ago have been deported, detained and refused legal rights. This does happen.

[0] https://www.jcwi.org.uk/windrush-scandal-explained

Allegedly, in the timespan 2003 to 2010, the US detained (in some cases for months) or even deported over 20k US citizen:

https://jacquelinestevens.org/US-Unlawfully-Detaining.Steven...

There's no "papers" in the US. You're not required to have a birth certificate or a Social Security card or a drivers license or a passport. There's no list of who is and isn't a citizen.

My opinionated and probably-biased answer to your question:

1. Due to their being no real central database, it's hard for physical persons in the US to prove their identity and consequently their citizenship status.

2. There are a lot of illegal immigrants in the US.

3. There are a lot of illegal immigrants in the US that have lived here for a long time so the "legality" of their status is muddied. This then makes the whole debate around this more about "what is right" and the emotions involved, instead of what the laws say.

If someone is honestly paying their taxes, why would they fear having their finances uprooted by being audited by the IRS?

If one of these "assassins" has an actual conviction in the US before they were deported, I'm sure you can name one and find some proof of this, otherwise it's just accusing people without evidence. ICE have no right to declare someone an assassin.

Yes, that’s the difference between an assassin and an “assassin.” With no conviction, a guy could be Mr. Rogers on paper — still doesn’t change the fact that he’s killed 20 people.

Yes, but how do you know that? And why should we believe it?

We're literally in a thread about wrongful conviction. Evidence. It matters.

Thats certainly in the realm of possibility but the evidence of that needs to be clear. Accusations like that are one step removed from complete paranoia.

Well the evidence would have to be clear to deport a single person. But a general trend could be enough justification to shut down immigration from certain countries. That is not a personal punishment like a deportation, so it does not need conclusive proof (which of course doesn’t exist, there is no country which sends exclusively or predominantly bad immigrants to the US).

The only difference between an "assassin" and the actual Mr. Rogers is the word of the gestapo-lite thugs in ICE.

The people know the difference between Filipina nurses and MS-13 gangbangers, and if there is no constitutional policy that distinguishes them, they’ll crack down on all immigration. If there’s no politically correct way to advocate for this, they will use anonymous forums: Reddit and the voting booth.

If you want to work anywhere as a nurse, the first things they will ask you are:

- To fill USCIS Form I-9, Employment Eligibility Verification.

- To provide a valid nursing license.

USCIS Form I-9 is also required by most jobs. So the remaining jobs that are targeted by undocumented people are informal jobs in agriculture, construction, landscaping, food processing, etc.

From the international news I've seen from El Salvador, it is my impression that Mara Salvatrucha/MS-13 gang members are easy to identify since they use MS-13 tatoos.

The ICE of the past few years is one of the cruelest and most out-of-control institutions in the USA which has regularly operated like a fascist secret police agency. Maybe your friend should try to exert some internal pressure to cut back on the institutional depravity, lawbreaking, coverups, and stream of lies, so that ICE can fix its ruined reputation and start building a bit of trust and support from the society.

Legalize drugs.

Not that she would be biased in any way, shape or form. Right?

> cities like San Francisco give millions of dollars to activist lawyers to help keep these criminals in the US.

This is HN. Please provide evidence of such a claim.

> The activist lawyers and even SF know that these are real criminals but they don’t care.

This is highly speculative. What possible motivation could they have for this?

I agree with your second sentence. By the time the Innocence Project gets a result, the moral standard of "letting a hundred guilty people go free to avoid convicting one innocent one" is far gone in any case.

They don't have a lot of resources so they only take on cases that are clear injustices.

Usually this means that there's good evidence that the person is actually innocent and the trial was completely botched. There are plenty of rural areas where the court decides that someone "seems" guilty and then suppresses any evidence that doesn't support that.

I disagree with this. The police aren't made any better off by getting a guilty verdict. They take their salaries home either way. As it should be.

Society benefits when the guilty are in prison and suffers when they go free. If a person is guilty and the police made a mistake, we should correct the mistake the police made, including by firing people responsible or pressing criminal charges if appropriate, but malpractice by the police should not exonerate a guilty person.

> If a person is guilty and the police made a mistake, we should correct the mistake the police made, including by firing people responsible or pressing criminal charges if appropriate, but malpractice by the police should not exonerate a guilty person.

The purpose of that is to disincentivize malpractice. That's why we have the "fruit of the poisoned tree" doctrine for improperly obtained evidence. There's no point in illegally breaking into someone's house to get evidence because that evidence is inadmissable.

The alternative solution is to allow the evidence and prosecute the people who gathered it illegally. The problem there is that there's a clear conflict of interest: they were gathering that evidence for the prosecutor. The same prosecutor who will try to convict them for gathering that evidence. That prosecutor is incentivized to let them walk so they can keep getting illegal evidence. The second issue is that it's not always clear whether it's actually legal to gather some evidence in a particular way. We either have to prosecute negligence the same as malice, which seems unfair, or we leave a gaping loophole where we have to prove malice. All you have to do to get away with is shrug and go "I had no idea that it was illegal for me to just walk into the house if the door was already unlocked, and no, no one can verify the door was unlocked before I got there".

"Beyond a reasonable doubt"

The defendant doesn't have to prove his innocence the DA has to prove his guilt. I hope you never do jury duty.

It’s funny how these inconvenient facts are never brought up.

Thank you for this, it’s pretty eye opening.

How do we know the so called taped evidence wasn’t manufactured?

I’m not usually given to conspiracy theories, but we already have plenty of evidence that the prosecution lied repeatedly in this case.

I mean, how can we know that any evidence isn’t manufactured?

Besides, the article definitely presents its side of the story, but the fact it left out a huge detail that the person admitted to committing the crime calls into question the article itself. What other things did it conveniently leave out?

Did he admit to committing the crime? Or did he just say “uh huh”?

But to answer the question, well how do we know any evidence isn’t manufactured? You know, I agree with your sentiment here.

But I would also say that the prosecution here has been caught lying, red handed, multiple times. For this case and for the evidence presented here, it should be examined and reaxamined.

>How do we know the so called taped evidence wasn’t manufactured?

would a false tape made 21 years ago show signs of falsification detectable with modern technology? I don't know but I would expect yes.

It's not eye opening at all. The evidence that exonerated Smith was a confession from another individual accompanied by physical evidence of that individual at the scene of the crime. Much more compelling than Smith's "uh huh." The comment you're replying to is being deceitful.

OP is cherry-picking one piece out of the story. Getting karma for it, but in a most sleazy way possible.

As someone who listens to true crime podcasts, there are loads of people who brag to their friends about committing a crime they didn't do.

People literally confess crimes during interrogation that they didn't do. I know of a case we're they worked on someone for 15 hours straight and the poor sod just confessed because he wanted it to be over. Not everyone is a trained spy or psychopath.

A confession should never be the sole evidence of convicting anyone.

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