The tragic case of the wrong Thomas James is finally righted
gq.com
gq.com
I guess there is no real incentive on the part of the criminal justice system to resolve this.
For example, here is the current Massachusetts model jury instruction on eyewitness testimony: https://www.mass.gov/info-details/model-jury-instructions-on...
It mentions, for example:
> People have the ability to recognize others they have seen and to accurately identify them at a later time, but research and experience have shown that people sometimes make mistakes in identification.
> The mind does not work like a video recorder. A person cannot just replay a mental recording to remember what happened. Memory and perception are much more complicated.[a] Remembering something requires three steps. First, a person sees an event. Second, the person's mind stores information about the event. Third, the person recalls stored information. At each of these stages, a variety of factors may affect -- or even alter -- someone's memory of what happened and thereby affect the accuracy of identification testimony.[b] This can happen without the witness being aware of it.
Eyewitness testimony also just matters less these days. Today, the trial would have involved cell phone location tracking from the accused showing he wasn’t in the area at the time.
They are an imperfect approximation of an ideal truth finding endeavour implemented by imperfect humans. That doesn't mean that the imperfections are a feature, it means that as time goes on society should work towards making more accurate approximations of this truth finding process.
Just as we have done away with things like expert testimony on phrenology, cruentation, or trial by ordeal there may come a time when we do away with witness testimony or restrict the kinds of things we allow witnesses to testify about, like we already do with hearsay.
Some eyewitness testimony is acceptable. People can be reliably expected to recognize people who they know. If a woman’s mother said that she saw the boyfriend hit her daughter, that’s an acceptable form of eyewitness testimony.
The kind of eyewitness testimony that should not be accepted, is when the person in question was not previously known to the witness. This kind of evidence has been proven time and time again to be entirely unreliable and should be considered no more compelling than lie detectors.
So, fsckboy, what we are doing today is not exactly what has been done since Cain and Abel, we took the ancient idea of eye witness and extended it beyond where it is reliable.
I just realized it looks like I'm calling him a bad name!
Edited, and my apologies.
> One witness shall not rise up against a man for any iniquity, or for any sin, in any sin that he sinneth: at the mouth of two witnesses, or at the mouth of three witnesses, shall the matter be established.
Deuteronomy 19:15 KJV. https://bible.com/bible/1/deu.19.15.KJV
Witnessing falsely was rightly a very big deal to them. It's one of the Ten Commandments, right up there with worshipping idols or committing murder. And according to the following verses of this passage, anyone who witnesses falsely will receive the exact same punishment that the accused would have received.
Just like an AI can't make a perfectly accurate 3D replica of a face from a single 2D image, the human brain can't. But that doesn't mean it can't get closer and closer with more data.
It seems to me that the real problem is not eyewitness testimony itself, but the methods used to validate the degree of certainty behind it.
> when the person in question was not previously known to the witness
"Previously" implies a family member or neighbor. But if you were caught and tortured by someone you didn't previously know for awhile, you would still probably identify them pretty accurately.
If that was your only interaction with them, I doubt it. You're likely in the most stressful situation of your life, memorizing what a person looks like may not be high on your list of priorities.
There's the famous Ronald Cotton case where a woman was raped and consciously tried to memorize their attackers face. She proceeded to pick an innocent man out of two lineups until a decade later DNA evidence proved his innocence. The actual perpetrator was also in the lineup, and she swore she had never seen him.
Many of the cases of mistaken memory might simply be 'deliberate forgetting'
And we know of many cases where eyewitness accounts are wrong purely because human memory kinda sucks. Maybe some people are lying about what they know, but that doesn't make eyewitness accounts more reliable.
I find this unacceptable.
[edit] There's something called a preponderance of evidence. One eyewitness may or may not be able to provide that alone, e.g., "he has a tattoo of a dolphin on his penis". Multiple witnesses in tandem can add to the preponderance of evidence based solely on eyewitness accounts. Yes, it's worth it to free ten criminals to prevent convicting an innocent person; but if we accept that as a starting point, it's also immoral to discount witnesses or victims. Using one person who wrongly accused someone of rape to corroborate the idea that people are incapable of identifying the people who raped them is, frankly, gaslighting rape victims.
There are other forms of evidence that a genocide took place other than eyewitness testimony (orders, technical plans, the testimony of subordinates, physical evidence of mass killings). You would hope that a trial on crimes against humanity would have more than just eyewitness testimony.
> I find this unacceptable.
I also find it unacceptable for someone to be convinced based entirely on circumstantial evidence and eyewitness testimony, only to discover they were innocent decades later.
> [edit] There's something called a preponderance of evidence.
"Preponderance of the evidence" (meaning that it is more likely than not) is a lower bar than "beyond reasonable doubt" (which means what it says on the tin). What you described (having multiple corroborating witnesses) is actually not what preponderance of evidence means.
The original commenter obviously meant that a witness should be reasonably familiar with the person, whether that be from knowing the person prior to any crime or, in rare cases like kidnappings/torture/etc., during the prolonged period of time with the accused. It's not like we're writing legislature ourselves here; those rare cases probably just didn't come to mind when the original commenter wrote their comment. Informal internet commentary need not be so needlessly scrutinized.
But if we really want to be pedantic with your example, you would become familiar with the person from the "previous" torture sessions.
you are hopelessly naive if you think the court system could operate only on technology the way you are suggesting. Nowhere did I even hint we should not use physical evidence.
pretty sure Cain and Abel relied on having an omniscient Lord going around checking in on people https://web.mit.edu/jywang/www/cef/Bible/NIV/NIV_Bible/GEN+4...
to quote:
Then the LORD said to Cain, "Where is your brother Abel?" "I don't know," he replied. "Am I my brother's keeper?"
The LORD said, "What have you done? Listen! Your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground.
Have you considered that perhaps we’ve reached (or are approaching) the point where trials with eye witness testimony are undermining the trial system by making the average person feel the system isn’t doing it’s best to find the truth? If a method is hopelessly unreliable at finding the truth and people know it’s hopelessly unreliable at finding the truth and we continue to employ the hopelessly unreliable method as a means to find the truth it’s “silly” to think that the public would observe the process and conclude its “doing its best to find the truth”.
Correct. The numbers for both police and prosecutors are still anchored on convictions, and the police worldview is still largely based on the idea that the people they're dealing with are a "criminal class" who largely deserve to be in prison whether they happened to commit that particular crime or not.
And if you run the probability that I ended by chance in the court twice when this happened, then it must be happening much, much more often than I witnessed.
Have to wonder how many innocent people have been executed.
/Facepalm
I wonder how the defense attorney feels about this. The July 2021 GQ article says "Chin, now retired, declined to answer questions for this article, citing client confidentiality."
I suppose Detective Conley has seen the news too? ("Detective Conley told me through an intermediary that he wasn't interested in talking, either. He wanted to enjoy his retirement.")
But on further reflection I guess those people … really don't matter? They're no longer working, they can't hurt anyone else. What is Mr. James going to do now?
That’s the real crime, that he ruined at least one man’s life but still gets to “enjoy retirement”. And I bet he sleeps like a baby.
But yes. For a mistake in which all(!) parts of the system have completely failed, for that then the pawn is to be punished.
In a time of cancel culture, mobs on the net, cyber bullying and death threats by idiots online, I wouldn't talk to a reporter either.
At least that's how I can imagine the thought process. And there may be another aspect. I don't know, but my pop culture "education" would make me fear that I might expose myself to the risk of a lawsuit for damages if I were to admit a mistake instead of the police officer.
Because in my opinion he is not to blame. But he does bear part of the responsibility. And he should own up to it. Unquestioningly. But I know too little whether he would make himself personally vulnerable.
In this respect I would not go from the refusal to comment on the case to deny him the enjoyment of the pension.
I think the issue is the contrast between having ruined someone’s life and the “fuck off and let me enjoy myself” reply. And the utter lack of empathy this betrays. A simple acknowledgment and possibly an apology for having caused so much hurt would have gone a long way.
People online are brutal. It's better not to engage at all.
>He wasn't interested in talking, either. He wanted to enjoy his retirement.
and
>He wasn't interested in talking, either but feels sorry for what happened.
We have exactly one piece of evidence to the quality of his work and it's that the quality of his work is garbage. Why would you assume this?
Another option is to punish all of those involved.
It should not have taken months to see that the original conviction was flawed, so I suspect this is a paraphrase for the state attorney holding her ground until the evidence against her position was overwhelming. Once reasonable doubt has been established, continued incarceration begins to look increasingly like a kidnapping, the longer it goes on. Where is the justice in that?
Of course they matter. They're reflections of the entire system they existed in. There are a lot of Detective Conleys out there, and Detective Conley probably mentored at least a few of them. The same goes for the prosecutor.
The question isn't how do we deal with them, the question is how we change the system to stop manufacturing people like them and then giving them the power to do these things.
That's a very good thing, because one would hope that the justice system, after realising its mistake, would correct it quickly instead of dragging things out like it usually tends to do.
Basically even with doing everything properly they really took their time. Way longer than it seems it took them to check the facts initially and prosecute him.
Parts of the justice system in the USA are quite unforgiving, which feels at odds with a professedly Christian nation.
I observe and respect the Christian heritage and traditions.
Having said that, and from my own experience, the most vile, hypocrite and ill-intentioned people I've met, happen to portray an image of justice and purity based on (their purported) Christian values.
I believe it's some sort of mimicry they develop on purpose, to balance out the negative image deserving of their real self.
They're also quite easy to spot, though. Most Christians keep what they do, good or bad, to themselves, while these guys preach it out in a way that comes off as unnatural.
Anyway, these kind of scumbags, when at the right place/time, could do irreparable damage to other people's lives and then go on with their business and completely forget about it, so be careful when you encounter one, best advice is to just steer away from them. (Thomas couldn't, in this case, and that's part of the tragedy).
There are also the more obvious examples of people that pander to get some perceived benefit, most are happy to believe 'the other party does this'. It's really sad that it is a rare gem of a politician who really believes in everything they say.
When you have some oppressing others, this is always in the name of something great and beyond mere mortals. Never because "I said so" (even if of course this is usually the case)
There is nothing in federal or state legal documents that mention Christianity. God? Yes. Traceable to Judeo-Christian values? Yes. Christianity explicitly mentioned. No.
Bear in mind those figures are statutorily-mandated money that you get by law. You can also sue on top of that.
The issue is that it's often impossible to sue for decades behind bars. All sorts of things stop you, such as statutes of limitation, qualified immunity from prosecution etc.
First, I think there's a base, flat fee even if you're in just one day. Next, some kind of pro-rated per annum amount, based on some multiple of the median income in that state. Additional amounts for, I don't know, each day in solitary, whatever documented medical issues arise (it isn't like we can get anyone to write down prison beatings), and so on.
A separate account is created to pay lawyers whose sole job is to scrub the erroneous conviction, from each and every place it exists. I imagine a group to do this.
Another account is created to pay for therapists, pretty much "for life."
I also think something needs to be set aside for assessment of the person's skills and guidance for retraining, five years of college, whatever.
Room and board for, well, I don't know how many years. Your car got repo'd? Yeah, that's a new car for you.
Essentially, the reasonable and fair thing to do would be do whatever is possible to re-integrate people and make them as whole as is possible: financially, psychically, materially, and so on.
Yes agreed, at a minimum.
Perhaps we can/should go further.
In cases like these, I wonder how the incentive structure may change if it became mandatory for all involved crooked prosecutors and inept judges to personally apologise, be temporarily stripped of their professional credentials, and perhaps serve some time in jail as retribution.
i.e. the "Prosecutor's Fallacy"
(more typically invoked over DNA, but "we found a 'name' at the scene" is effectively equivalent)
How can he be made whole ? Seems almost impossible.
In other words, it will never be righted. He may be out of jail now, but he can never get back all those missed years.
Once the slow grinding wheels of government start moving against you there is no stopping it. You often find your entire life at a halt. Call it what you want but I"m not carrying a govt fastpass to jail in my pocket.
Turns out if you pander to wannabe-autocrats, people will remember.
The courts job is to exonerate you not the police. Once the police start to zero in on you every incentive they have is to find a reason to bring you to court. Now you have to spend potentially thousands of dollars and a great deal of your time to defend yourself even if the case is "open and shut". Anything that makes the process "push button" is terrible for a law abiding citizen and potentially life destroying.
This is the difference between tyranny and due process. CSAM Takes away due process by automating the process of guilt. It doesn't matter if its well intentioned.
https://www.siliconrepublic.com/enterprise/apple-csam-child-...
I'm getting used to seeing anti-Apple rants on HN based on very flimsy connections, but this one is egregious: the man's wrongful conviction, the struggle to exonerate himself, and his final justification and liberty have nothing to do with Apple or any 'mistaken' technological evidence, but actually the reverse.
If he'd been carrying a device (back in 1990) that could have located him away from the scene of a crime, then it would have been a help and not a hindrance to his case.
It probably speaks to how few posters here have had any real world experience dealing with governments beyond the daily procedural stuff like ID's and tax payments.