Arson Forensics Sets Old Fire Myths Ablaze
npr.org
npr.org
"Days before the meeting, however, Gov. Rick Perry replaced the commission chairman with Bradley, district attorney in Williamson County. The session at which Beyler was scheduled to speak was canceled, and the fire expert never appeared before the body."
"But the Texas Forensic Science Commission panel heading the inquiry also found insufficient evidence to prove that state Deputy Fire Marshal Manuel Vasquez and Corsicana Assistant Fire Chief Douglas Fogg were negligent or guilty of misconduct in their arson work."
http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Flawed-scien...
Nothing more powerful than magical thinking and politics combined.
On closer inspection however I see a lot of my own bias:
- I'm not American, and so I believe that my system is better than yours.
- I read sites like Reddit daily, which is infested with stories of wronddoing, police violence and what have you. Since a lot of the userbase is from the US and the site generally is US centric I'll be exposed to a lot more US based wrongdoing which will bias my opinion.
- The US has a larger population than Northern Europe, which means that even if the two systems are exactly the same there will be more injustices done in the US.
So which is it? I don't know, but I do know that if I hadn't stopped to think I'd agree with the parent poster.
Are people more likely to die in jail than outside? If so, you have death sentences, you just don't admit that you're pulling the trigger.
Death penalty opponents claim that there are about 10 innocents who have been executed. (The actual claim is less, but 10, or even 100 suffices for our purposes.)
The vast majority of people who die in prison are not executed. Instead, they're killed by prison life, including life-without-parole. Unless you want to argue that the innocent are more likely to get death sentences than other sentences, you're stuck arguing that most sentences don't end in death. While true, that isn't enough to make the case.
Note that folks who get a death sentence get far more review and the like than folks who don't.
The numbers are pretty straightforward. Folks who yell about the death penalty killing innocents are either innumerate or care about the death penalty, not killing innocents. There's nothing wrong with the latter, when done honestly.
Did you mean "life sentence"? If so, that's nice, but it doesn't happen.
> If the person is sentenced to immediate death, there are no do-overs.
There is no "sentenced to immediate death" in the US. The closest was Timothy McVeigh and his case was extremely special.
Texas, which is among the fastest, is currently executing folks convicted in the mid 90s. CA hasn't executed anyone since 2006.
> we find out that an innocent person was executed, who get the blame? No one.
Like I said, we kill innocents all the time. They die from "prison live", not being executed. They don't get any attention, which pretty much demonstrates that the death penalty is the issue, not innocents dying because of being wrongly convicted.
As I wrote, there's nothing wrong with being against the death penalty, but don't tell us you're against innocents dying because they were wrongly convicted.
I don't know - do you? It seems very likely that they live longer even in jail than if they are being executed by death sentence, though.
Of course even being in jail as an innocent is a tragedy, but my personal feeling is that being executed is even worse.
I've never been to a prison and I don't know how the prison experiences vary by country. Somehow I have a hard time believing that in my country the infamous shower rapes are the norm. But I don't know.
I am surprised that the claim is only 10 innocents who have been executed. Even just casually reading I have a feeling that I read about more cases (and definitely about more cases who have been on death row but were freed in time, maybe because of the initiative of that law professor with his students?). Maybe you mean 10 innocents per year?
Perhaps it is also less likely that a case is being resolved after a death sentence, because there is less incentive to look into it. While people are still on death row, there might be more urgency to trying to prove their innocence.
Yes, I do. If it's relevant to your argument, shouldn't you also know?
> It seems very likely that they live longer even in jail than if they are being executed by death sentence, though.
Oh really? Based on what? Death row inmates have no risk from other inmates, good health care, etc.
> who have been on death row but were freed in time, maybe because of the initiative of that law professor with his students?).
The vast majority of said cases aren't innocents, but "wrongly sentenced", which is basically "sympathetic defendant".
> Maybe you mean 10 innocents per year?
Nope. 10 total in the past few decades.
> Perhaps it is also less likely that a case is being resolved after a death sentence, because there is less incentive to look into it.
Huh? People die every day in prison.
Now, it's not bad if your particular field has a few areas that are still lacking in basic research. But you have a DUTY to express this in court. For example, in this case, the expert can say that based on his 40 years in the field, this is his opinion, but he should note that there is no scientific support, and he should always declare if there is any disagreement within the community.
Forensic science is an amazing field...unfortunately the practitioners tend to mess it up.
(Science can nibble around the edges of the problem of software engineering, but even what results we have strike me as likely to suffer from the usual problems of taking small isolated samples from an n-dimensional space and then trying to extrapolate. For one thing, almost every study you've ever heard of that establishes some "fact" about software engineering was done on students. Scientifically speaking, there's no particular reason to expect such results to translate to professionals in any particular manner.)
Software Engineering Institute: http://www.sei.cmu.edu/
Max Planck Institute for Software Systems: http://www.mpi-sws.org/
UW CSE Software Engineering Research: http://www.cs.washington.edu/research/software.intro.html
I know someone who contracts out to forensics labs and police depts. The situation is basically a mess. "Experts" are selling "expertise" to people who are not familiar with the domain. So it just comes down to convincing the prosecutor, attorney, judge, a member of a jury, that you are an "expert". That can be done by clever sales techniques: look professional, know how to use lots of buzz words, and stuff like that.
Then the more a certain "expert" is invited to testify or to examine evidence they accrue "credibility" regardless if they ended up making shit up on the spot or not. This "expert" has been invited by appear at 10 trials, so they must be good. Or "look he worked with 3 police departments, he must be good".
The fundamental problem is those who are not experts in a domain need to find expert, so that opens a possibility for "clever salesmanship" therefore my friend's business...
But they're sure happy to keep them there.