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Comment by briefcomment | Hacker News Reader

How do you execute someone without at least testing DNA on the weapon?

Ruth Bader Ginsberg was apparently quoted as saying: "No well defended person receives the death penalty." One of the issues with death penalty cases is that they require special hand-selected judges and juries who favor the death penalty, and they have a very hard time finding competent defense lawyers.

In fact, an extension is "no well defended person gets convicted," which isn't quite as ironclad, but still works pretty well in practice. This is actually a good thing. Our system was intended to make it hard to convict people.

In this case, the rationale was that there is no DNA evidence that would outweigh the eye witness testimony.

Heh, I love how courts still accept eye witness testimony as reliable in the first place.

Every court system in the world accepts eye witnesses testimony. Reliability is evaluated on a case by case basis.

Its reliability is consistently over-estimated versus what studies tell us about its utility.

Which is an absurd statement on its face

Which part do you think is absurd? That eye witness data can be considered or that the DNA evidence is irrelevant?

I don't support the death penalty but I see the judge's point. Most DNA evidence isn't very useful and rarely as damning or exculpatory as people think.

You asked for absurd, so:

Eye witness testimony is only slightly more reliable as waving purple LEDs around while chanting long words and rambling off conspiracy theories. (Which is apparently now an acceptable form of criminal investigation in the US).

Is this in reference to something?

I did not ask for absurd. I asked what they thought was absurd.

You got your answer: seriously, just do a cursory search about the reliability of eyewitness testimony.

The idea that eyewitness testimony obviates the need to examine hard evidence is absurd, given how poor people are at providing accurate eyewitness testimony. It’s not that DNA evidence is perfect, it’s that eyewitness testimony is hot garbage.

Like it was always done before DNA testing, I guess...

Not having evidence and not caring about available evidence are very different things.

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