MythBusters Helped a Wrongly Convicted Man Prove His Innocence
innocenceproject.org
innocenceproject.org
Is there any other modern democracy that allows deception as a method of interrogation to the same extent as the US?
In my country, Germany, deception during interrogations is forbitten even for adults. There exist only some minor exceptions, for example, that prior wrong ideas of the suspects may be exploited.
The central paragraph of the law is as follows:
(1) The accused's freedom to decide and exercise his or her will may not be impaired by ill-treatment, by fatigue, by physical intervention, by the administration of drugs, by torment [Quälerei], by deception [Täuschung] or by hypnosis. Coercion may only be used to the extent permitted by the law of criminal procedure. The threat of a measure inadmissible under its provisions and the promise of an advantage not provided for by law shall be prohibited.
(2) Measures that impair the accused's capacity to remember or to reason shall not be permitted.
(3) The prohibition in sections 1 and 2 shall apply without regard to the consent of the accused. Statements made in violation of this prohibition may not be used even if the accused consents to their use.
§ 136a StPO -- German text at https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/stpo/__136a.html
This is literally what was replied to:
> Japan and America seem to be similar
Anyone who has been arrested before learns to answer either "no" or "no comment" to all questions, so deception doesn't come into play anymore.
Has there ever been a documented case of a suspect hypnotised by law enforcement to (rightly or wrongly) confess? That would be an interesting story.
Yes - you should be scared of ordinary prosectutors in suits doing their "best" job more than a gang member for example! They want are motivated to win at all cost... short of obviously illegal ways.
Are you aware of legal systems in other countries with lower false positives?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miscarriage_of_justice#United_...
No. It's on topic because the parent singled out the US, and I'm curious if other countries are taking procedures that could be adopted in the US to reduce false positives and ALSO false negatives.
Suppose there are five people who stole some candy, out of 100 people in the village.
I claim that a system A in which three of the actual thieves are successfully convicted, but the others escape is better than a system B in which four people are successfully convicted, three of them are thieves but one is innocent. You seem to disagree, insisting a better system must also reduce false negatives.
You might need to re-phrase your hypothetical: "five people [...] stole some candy candy", now you have three getting convicted, a new person is innocent, but charged, and what happened to the 5th person?
Regardless, you're skipping a step to argue values about how many people should be incarcerated, etc. False negatives matter because just like you don't want innocent people being locked up for stealing candy (or serious crimes), you ALSO don't want a high number of murderers freed into the streets!
They weren't convicted. I feel like the fact you weren't able to figure that out suggests I need to work through this example a little more slowly in the hope you can follow:
In the village of Example there are one hundred people, that's too many for me to name so I'm just going to number them E00 through to E99.
It so happens five of these people have stolen some candy, with our god view of the world we happen to know that it's E09, E14, E43, E44 and E90, but this information is not available to the other Example villagers or to a prosecutor, judge etc regardless of whether they live in Example. We have this god view, they do not. No real world prosecutors know for sure who committed which crimes and in many cases it's even unclear whether a crime was committed.
In system A, three people are convicted, and they are, let's say E14, E44 and E90, they are actually all thieves.
But in system B, four people are convicted, they're E09, E20, E43 and E90. Unfortunately E20 wasn't a candy thief, we know that with our god view.
I claim that system A is better than system B. Your claim was that system A isn't better because, apparently you feel that a better system must catch more of the thieves, and you've offered no argument for that beyond that you don't seem to see a difference between "more" and "not less".
> apparently you feel that a better system must catch more of the thieves, and you've offered no argument for that beyond that you don't seem to see a difference between "more" and "not less"
Where did I say or imply that.
I asked if other countries were doing things that could [X=reduce false positives] and [Y=reduce false negatives]. That's not presenting an argument. If there are ways to reduce false positives without necessarily reducing false negatives, I didn't ask for those, though, it'd be interesting for discussion.
They laid out two scenarios with 5 people stealing candy.
A. 0% false positive; 40% false negative
B. 20% false positive; 20% false negative (or maybe 4 people convicted with 1 innocent.)
Either way, the false negative % decreased, and it seemed like the point was that they viewed A as morally superior (at the expense of higher false negatives).
Overall, sure. You don't have to necessarily decrease the false negative rate, however, it's something that ideally doesn't go up, all else equal.
> 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.
This builds upon an idea espoused by Voltaire, I believe.
Western philosophical/political systems have long held the idea that false negatives are a worthwhile cost to avoid any false positives.
I agree with you that 1% is a high number in this context, but I don't think the math works for what you're saying here.
If 1 out of 100 convictions are of innocent people, that doesn't mean that 1 out of 100 innocent people put on trial are going to get convicted. That rate could be higher or lower than 1% because it depends how many innocent people are rightfully judged innocent.
Hypothetically, a court system that always returns a guilty verdict could have a 1% false conviction rate if 99% of people put on trial are actually guilty. But the rate of wrongful conviction for an innocent person entering this system would be 100%.
The innocent person has a 75% change of being convicted. A plea deal of the innocent isn't counted if it avoids jail time.
Better to deal with the cost and hassle of parole than being prisoner where you are legally on the same level as a slave.
If the conviction rate is 75%, and the percent of convictions that are innocent is 5%, wouldn't that make an innocent's conviction chance at most 30%?
Edit: I'm silly. It's at least 30%. If some of the unconvicted are guilty, the denominator of innocents is smaller.
https://thehighcourt.co/wrongful-convictions-statistics/
Edit: can't find the actual article. Child commenter goes into great detail about this being a rather solid range though.
[0] https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Documents/Exon...
[0] https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-grisham-wrongful...
So may be better to go to the source (and the latest version). https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Documents/NRE%...
is the 2021 National registry of exonerations annual report.
What you'll see, interestingly, is neither the 2021, nor 2019 report, estimate the prevalence of wrongful conviction directly.
In particular, the claim "According to the 2019 annual report by the National Registry of Exonerations, wrongful convictions statistics show that the percentage of wrongful convictions is somewhere between 2% and 10%. "
It does not say that. It offers no percent view on the rate of wrongful convictions. It only offers the direct number of exonerations, exonerations broken down by race, by crime type, etc. It points out lots of statistical things (exonerations are not evenly distributed by race, crime, etc)
Someone else, with some other (not obviously explained) methodology is using that to calculate wrongful conviction rates.
That said, roughly all sources i can find are within the 2-12% rate bound (IE i see a number saying 3-6%, a number saying 1%, a number saying 12-13%).
The only truly easily found study (IE pops up immediately on google search) is federal: https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/251115.pdf
The DOJ funded the urban justice institute to figure this out back in 2017, and the rate they came up with was also ~11%.
In there, they point to/compare with previous studies on DNA evidence that suggest a rate of 12.5%
If police brutality numbers are higher against black and brown persons, I’d assume the false positive number for convictions is awful especially in the Southern US.
Bias against the poor and minorities isn’t limited to police but extends to juries, judges and prosecutors sadly.
> the few studies that have been done estimate that between 2.3% and 5% of all prisoners in the U.S. are innocent (for context, if just 1% of all prisoners are innocent, that would mean that more than 20,000 innocent people are in prison).
https://innocenceproject.org/contact/#:~:text=How%20many%20i...).
https://innocenceproject.org/how-many-innocent-people-are-in...
(cite for not going to trial: https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/prisons-are-packed-bec...)
So, most estimates suggest in the range of 2-10% of convictions are probably wrongful.
Remember: the person started out in a position of presumed innocence, and were found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. I would expect it to be hard to prove innocence after enough evidence was provided to prove guilt.
Note: I am not saying the system always operates according to principles - that's why those 2% get exonerated. I just wouldn't expect the real number of falsely convicted to be much (if any) higher.
That’s a high standard which if lowered would obviously see more innocent people set free. But we shouldn’t assume there is actually any evidence proving innocence, after all before DNA testing many people who would currently be set free where killed. At best we can estimate who would be set free if we could actually view the past.
"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."
Ben Franklin https://www.bartleby.com/73/953.html
Unfortunately, their job is to minimize the court's time spent spent dealing with their clients.
I think this is the unfortunate reality of them being obligated to take cases even if they don't really have enough defenders. This is an interesting read [1].
The TL;DR of that link is in Montana the head of the public defender's office was held in contempt and fined for refusing too many cases because they don't have the staffing. I don't know what the judge wants them to do, other than providing useless, token representation to clear constitutional requirements. I.e. someone technically has representation, even if that representation doesn't have time to actually form a legal case and can only serve as a liaison for whoever makes the plea deals.
1: https://www.aclu.org/news/criminal-law-reform/if-you-care-ab...
(In Seattle, for example, a candidate for prosecutor, Nicole Thomas-Kennedy, ran on abolishing the police, jails, and vowed not to prosecute most crimes.)
The US used to solve the majority of murder cases, but now it’s solving less than half. That’s 10,000 murderers just walking around free each year.
https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2022/07/poli...
Closs the cases, not solve. It's good that police can't convict innocent people as easily anymore.
If we release someone because there’s a 1 in 200 chance they’re not guilty, so be it. That’s not suggesting we release people where that chance is 0 in 200.
The innocent person is worth dozens, but not scores? And certainly “criminals” is a quite broad category - “dozens of shoplifters” but not “scores of pedophiles”?
Curious if that was intentional and where the line actually is.
Otherwise it seems you’re just expressing a cost-free emotional sentiment. In the world of policy with real consequences (violent crime) on real people (also at times innocent), the sentiment gives very little guidance, really only the barest start of an inquiry.
Let’s say thousands of murderers going free that otherwise wouldn’t results in one person dying that otherwise wouldn’t.
Is one person unjustly dying with zero chance of resurrection better than one innocent person going to prison with a non-zero chance of exoneration?
This assumes 100% chance of being murdered in the first place which isn't true.
If you put an innocent person I'm prison, they definitely suffer for no reason. If a guilty person goes free, they might commit another crime.
Now, it's true that there is a class of person who meets this description, but we don't call them "murderers". We call them "serial killers", and they're incredibly rare.
Decades of propaganda (some subtle, some overt) has put this notion of "once a murderer, always a murderer" into our collective consciousness, but in the vast majority of cases, that's not true at all. Almost everyone who commits murder has some clear, specific reason to do it at the time, and we would be much better served as a society if we would push harder for addressing those reasons (which, from what I understand, almost all come back to either "proper therapy/anger management" or "providing proper support for every person's basic survival needs") rather than expecting punishment to make people better.
YouTube video of 60 Minutes Australia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3V5Cj8d43Yw
It did somewhat throw me, in that documentary, to have the policeman that they used to say that be mark fuhrman[0] from the OJ simpson case.
It really doesn’t need to be that exciting. For the most part, it’s much more mundane. A detective comes up with a theory (let’s not forget…American “detectives” are poorly trained in actual detection), and they need to close a case so they are highly primed to prioritize any evidence that supports their theory.
[0] https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Documents/Key-...
Once out of curiosity I googled the name of the officer who simply “took” my online stolen property report, and found out both they and their partner had multimillion dollar judgments against them
One thing I'd like to know is what exactly happened here. Obviously there were multiple miscarriages of justice, but this seems like a pertinent one.
EDIT: (obviously not _the most_ pertinent one, but still one I'd like details/reasoning on. Why would the judge do that, once they had the evidence in front of them).
What you need is for the cigarette to have enough time in contact with right concentration of vapours (2% to 8% by volume). Too little but also too much and you will not get it ignited.
Here is a handy table listing necessary concentrations: https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/explosive-concentration-l...
Now, if you just drop the cigarette into a bucket of gasoline it will not ignite. This is because on a typical small pool/bucket of gasoline the layer with the right concentration of vapours is very thin and the cigarette does not fly long enough through it to ignite it before it reaches the surface and gets completely doused.
There is couple of ways this can be prevented, the easiest is if you let the cigarette lay close to the pool of gasoline but not exactly within it. Drop it on the part of ground that only has very little gasoline on it so that the cigarette will not immediately get doused with it and can lay there waiting for the right concentration of vapours to happen. Bonus points if part of the cigarette get damp with gasoline.
Another way is if the ground is hot and there is a lot of vapours. Or if there is very little wind. Or if the pool is somehow enclosed so that a fairly thick layer of vapour can form before it gets blown.
The ones I've seen are all consistent with static electricity sparks being the source of ignition, or else someone is screwing around with a cigarette lighter.
The table lists concentrations but not ignition temperature. And temperature is a key factor mentioned in the article: "Based on the ignition temperature of gasoline and the temperature range of a lit cigarette [...] the team determined it was highly unlikely that dropping a cigarette into gasoline could cause a fire."
Spontaneous ignition temperature for gasoline vapour listed as 280C, well below "red hot".
But you couldn't even link one? Very HN of you.
Lots of videos showing how it doesn't work.
This is why I'm also quite against, in the general case, post-apocalyptic movies that predict a future based on non-science impossible things happening. Many spaceflight movies and TV shows for example show very bad things in the future giving people a false impression that the future will be worse than the past even that goes against direct evidence that throughout human history things have trended better, on average, every single year with a few moments of worsening.
I think The Expanse got it right, in that we're more likely in the near to medium term to get a bunch of oligarch type Jules-Pierre Maos (Hi Bezos!) running things behind the scenes. Not a utopia type technology + spaceflight + social inequity problems solved future.
For example even in the first season things that are fundamentally off that result in very different futures:
* The idea that we would actively intentionally re-create the situation of MAD in another context. MAD was an accident of historical happenstance and now that we know about it, we wouldn't try to re-create it.
* The idea that a magical new engine would suddenly appear that made many of the things in the tv series possible.
* The idea that Earth will for some reason simultaneously become a massive welfare state, yet still somehow have solar-system spanning power.
* The idea that there would be a complete backtrack in labor rights and labor safety (the ice asteroid mining scene).
It would be a boring landscape if all the predictions which went into every science-fiction story were the ones you happen to like.
Add them up, you get Star Trek. That's great: but we already have Star Trek.
There's a reason why there's a Chinese curse: "May you live in interesting time."
This cannot be true, because there is no such curse.
The original Channel 4 version was brilliant (although the subject matter didn't age well, or maybe aged a bit too well). Didn't see the US remake but heard it was a dud.
* The idea that we would actively intentionally re-create the situation of MAD in another context. MAD was an accident of historical happenstance and now that we know about it, we wouldn't try to re-create it.
If there is one thing that best predicts how individual human will behave, it is how they have behaved in the past. It is sad, but that is the reality. Similarly, as a species, once we know, a certain set of actions are an option, there will be people who will aim for that set of actions. If a creation of blackholes becomes possible, you can rest assured, MAD will almost instantly will be recreated throughout the known human biome. I personally think you give humanity way too much credit than it deserves.
* The idea that a magical new engine would suddenly appear that made many of the things in the tv series possible.
Hmm, not exactly magically, but most of recent technological wonders sped up developments in other areas significantly to the point, where ( naturally with exception of fusion which is always 20 years away ) we sometimes see developments in ways that could not be imagined before ( Operation Warp speed and resulting vaccine come to mind ) save for science fiction's like Rainbow's End, where a line between development and production is.. ridiculously short. I think in the span of human existence, suddenly likely needs to be limited by definition somehow.
* The idea that Earth will for some reason simultaneously become a massive welfare state, yet still somehow have solar-system spanning power.
I don't want to be that guy, but not to search very far Soviet Russia was just such a state ( with the tech allowed to it at the time ). I am not sure how this is a contradiction. Each society governs its own priorities.
* The idea that there would be a complete backtrack in labor rights and labor safety (the ice asteroid mining scene).
I can't even.. We can just barely force corporations to maintain labor rights now with some semblance of control since we have them physically operating and we can summon the representative in court and enforce compliance. And even then, those controls are eroded via various means. Is it really that difficult to imagine 'when cats away' scenario?
Some people argue that we've already recreated it: https://consilienceproject.org/its-a-mad-information-war/
> While the 2016 U.S. election was a watershed in computational propaganda, the same phenomenon has basically swept the planet, beginning as early as 2010.[..] We posit that this frontier leads toward mutually assured destruction, like all frontiers of arms races in weapons technologies.
We've had massive improvements in workplace safety in 100 years. Just look at some old footage/pictures of an industrial linen sewing plant from the turn of the 20th century. Limb amputation happened on the regular. Or look at the job descriptions of "chimney sweeper". Any person from our era would be horrified at what they saw. We've come so far that almost the entire reason for labor unions even needing to exist has almost been eliminated.
What I am saying is that this civilization that allowed it to eventually happen is not a fixed construct, but a continuous process that can go forward, stay unchanged or, just as easily, revert to its original starting point.
The basic argument is that just because we currently did not have any massive atrocity ( lets say along the lines of Crusades, Khan or Mao ) does not mean we can't have one tomorrow. It is hard for me not to channel George Carlin now by saying something along the lines:
"This civilization that you are so proud of. Do you realize how fragile all this is?"
Please let me know if I am misreading your post.
1. Is it recreation, or just maintaining the status quo? Once MAD exists, I don’t think it ever stops existing. Space creates an opportunity to escape MAD thus intrinsically a threat. It’s not hard to imagine MAD proliferating as humanity proliferates. It may seem obvious that this is the wrong path, but it’s not obvious that major world players see things the same way.
2. I think books and shows tend to be made about periods of time that involve extraordinary discoveries because the time prior to this is not particularly interesting and there wouldn’t be anything to tell a space story about.
This show also sets out to show the relatively near future and early stages of space exploration which means it must necessarily come on the heels of some major breakthrough.
3. Why do the two have to be mutually exclusive? Is this too far off from current reality?
4. Look at the current climate towards human rights and the trend towards losing them worldwide. Recent major decisions by the US Supreme Court also come to mind. That old behaviors would re-emerge in environments subject to less oversight seems pretty plausible.
Obviously everyone has personal preferences, but $0.02.
> [The Soviets] believed that whoever had superiority in these weapons would take over the world, without necessarily using them. He was afraid of a "missile gap" and took several more steps to achieve his goal of keeping up with the Soviets
(This is an except from the parent's wikipedia link)
Assuming you're talking about the Epstein Drive and not the protomolecule... it didn't suddenly appear, it was invented. And, surprisingly enough, it's way closer to realistic than most scifi.
http://toughsf.blogspot.com/2019/10/the-expanses-epstein-dri...
> The idea that there would be a complete backtrack in labor rights and labor safety (the ice asteroid mining scene).
What labor laws cover the asteroid belt today? Or, closer to home, the moon? If an earthly nation claims some territory out there its own and seeks to enforce the law, that's one thing. But what if a private company sends workers out there in unclaimed space? Humanity hasn't had access to such a lawless frontier in centuries, but we've got a lot of ugly history to look back on. Civil rights are not won by optimists, they're won through bloody and protracted fights. Look no further than Apple to see that companies in today's economy are still fully on board with slavery and sweatshops, and Apple is one of the "good guys" known for holding vendors' feet to the fire over human rights abuses.
I haven't seen The Expanse, but "try" doesn't seem to come into it: We are very close to that situation right now with NATO and Russia.
Our economy has always relied on people lacking labor rights or safety. From serfdom, to colonialism, to slavery, to police fighting strikes, to banana republics (governments overthrown for not trading on the US terms), and today hundreds of millions work in unsafe conditions or as child labor for coffee, chocolate, diamonds, precious metals, clothing, in recycling, etc. But that doesn't make good TV, so it's asteroid mining and there's no kids on screen.
As for the idea the human race has transcended past MAD... that's just wishful thinking on your part! I could equally say capitalism was due to historical happenstance and wouldn't be invented today. It would have about as much evidence.
* MAD has proven an extremely effective tool for maintaining (relative) peace. It's almost certainly the only reason for the Russian Federation remaining an ongoing concern, and it's been the primary motivator for the continued existence of NATO, which is itself a stabilizing force. If you're a state that wishes to maintain independence, super weapons are a proven approach.
* In the US, we're currently watching a backslide of all sorts of gains made over the last century. History is far from monotonic, and taking progress for granted is a surefire recipe for losing it. In the case of a full-blown regime change, it would not at all be a given that basic things like labor rights were upheld.
Especially given that our current position at the top of the trend of improvement is in enormous part due to fossil fuels - the primary contributor to climate change and our expected future trajectory.
Past performance is not indicative of future results and quite frankly, to me, it all looks downhill from here.
This is called 'Whig history' and in my view it is an incorrect characterization of history that gives people a false impression that things will get better without them having to understand the enabling factors that lead to social improvement, ironically leading to the possibility of a decrease in prosperity and social welfare as people take improvement for granted and fail to bring it about through their actions.
In the real world (and the article here is a good example of it), generally most confessions from torture tend to be false because people will make up whatever they think they need to say to make it stop (unless they're trained to resist it, but obviously in that case they'll feed the interrogator false information).
They also censored themselves when they discovered a recipe for an incredibly easy and powerful explosive. I throw that out there as a case of self-regulation in the marketplace of ideas.
Edit: Adam Savage talking about it -- https://nerdist.com/article/mythbusters-destroyed-all-eviden...
Apparently it was not well known, so not an original discovery but still a legitimate use of the word.
My comment was a point about censorship in that it can be the right thing to do. I'm curious AF about what the recipe is but am ok with not knowing and and knowing that effectively no one else does.
Other mythbusters censors include dropping an entire episode about credit card hacks/fakes because Visa and friends threatened to pull ads from the network, and another episode where they accidentally caused their test mice to cannibalize each other.
I bet it would be a huge hit, add an extra often graphic layer to the hugely popular true crime with the added bonus of potentially creating another Serial like situation where your fan base are positive of someone's innocence.
It's even more funny when they show them lighting jet fuel with a match or lighter.
If a movie shows a close-up slow motion shot of a match hitting the ground+igniting gasoline, it's probably "real", but the larger shot of the building or whatever going up is filmed separately. They usually use propane/natural gas for large fires because it can be piped in and turned on/off easily.
https://www.gofundme.com/f/us2zh-free-after-35-years-in-pris...
(Click “donate now” button to see what I mean)
The great american justice system
> When Mr. Galvan asserted his innocence, Detective Switski beat him, Mr. Galvan said. Through the walls, his older brother Isaac listened helplessly to the detective’s yelling and John’s cries. [...] Detective Switski also threatened John, telling him he would face the death penalty and end up “laying next to” his late father. [...] [The defendants] — 18, 20, and 22, respectively at the time — were all convicted and sentenced to life in prison without parole [for setting one building on fire which lead to the death of two persons].
A lifetime in prison, for an 18-year-old, for setting one house on fire? Even with the intent to kill, that seems very excessive. I'd be curious how murder through arson in the USA and other countries turned out if anyone happens to know of any.
A quick check on the Dutch wikipedia for Moord reveals that the maximum sentence for murder is thirty years. Belgium and Germany have life sentences, but then the Netherlands is the only EU country where a life sentence is actually the rest of your life (from https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levenslange_gevangenisstraf). Depending on whether the person was already 18 at the time the arson was committed, in Germany the highest amount of prison you can get as a minor is 10 years. All not mild at all, and if the motive and method are all firmly established then indeed it shouldn't be, but quite a difference from "you will stay incarcerated and then you die".
> The court concluded that without John’s false confession, which he did not give voluntarily, “the State’s case was nonexistent.”
I listen to a podcast sometimes called Napleiten, which is quite interesting. It's not super legally technical, but it sounded like, in the Netherlands, it's effectively impossible to convict someone solely based on a confession. There has to be other (even if only circumstantial) evidence supporting the claim. (Edit: this is correct, already since 1926 it seems, according to https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valse_bekentenis and https://wetten.overheid.nl/BWBR0001903/2022-10-01/0/BoekTwee...). Even without torture, false confessions are a thing, which I thought was well known.
And then to top it all off, the thing described in the confession isn't even physically possible. But fair enough, that's not something one would necessarily think to question (in the lawyer's words: "I feel like all of us have seen [this in] movies [...] and I really had never given much thought to whether or not that might be real").
Edit: as an interesting aside, I found while reading up on false confessions that, in Sweden, 130 people confessed to the same murder. The prime minister was shot in 1986, leading to the longest running murder investigation in the country. 788 firearms were tested but not one could be conclusively linked to the bullets found. 10k people were interrogated, some more than once. 130 confessions were obtained. The person who they now assume did it (but has since died) was not among the confessions. Source is unfortunately in Dutch https://nos.nl/artikel/2336792-zweedse-om-moordzaak-premier-...
Deception leads to false convictions.
How?
To me, it's like wearing a safety belt. I mean, if all your driver assistance systems work and all the other drivers pay attention and drive perfectly, you shouldn't need it, right?
There also needs to be some utility left to the interview. Sure we don't want to have long, aggressive, or abusive interviews. But how useful would suspect interviews be if you just asked questions based on real information? Sometimes you might get some info, but the smart ones won't be that easy. Sometimes it would be good to use some deception just to gauge what they know, even if you don't get a confession. It's a useful tool that doesn't present any downside with the proper safety measures in place.
a) understand that fully at the time of interrogation, especially if one is a minor or a foreigner
b) trust that a court-appointed lawyer will actually work for your best interests
c) actually get a court-appointed lawyer who does work for your best interests.
So your assumption that someone in this position necessarily has an effective lawyer present, absent other police misconduct, is clearly a flawed assumption.
The Miranda reading should mean they understand the right to a lawyer.
You have to trust that any lawyer will work for your best interest since they tend to be paid regardless of outcome.
If they don't work for your best interest and you can prove it, you get a retrial. Same for private attorneys.
"So your assumption that someone in this position necessarily has an effective lawyer present, absent other police misconduct, is clearly a flawed assumption."
Where is that assumption? They necessarily have access to one. We can what-if all day. The fact is, you have the right to an effective attorney. This is even popularized by TV, and thus common knowledge.
And what's popularized by TV, through dozens of police procedurals, most of which could be fairly accurately termed "copaganda," is the idea that asking for a lawyer is what guilty people do.
And, again: even if you actually have an attorney present with you, it is not guaranteed that they will be effective, and your handwaving that "If they don't work for your best interest and you can prove it, you get a retrial" does not negate the fact that a) people can, and do, take bad advice from attorneys that results in devastating plea bargains, b) actually proving they didn't work in your best interest is nontrivial, and c) even if you can do that, a retrial also requires an attorney, which you probably still can't afford to hire, so you're just getting another public defender, and also, in the vast majority of cases, takes place while you are still in prison...and will likely take months to years.
In general, your assumptions are very much that for someone wrongfully accused, the justice system will be kind and work in the most ideal way possible. I would not seek to deny that that can happen (particularly for affluent white men); my point is simply that it is only one end of the spectrum of possibilities, and far from the most likely for people who are further down the socioeconomic ladder.
Edit to add: Re: Miranda rights, the Supreme Court recently gutted that, making it far, far more difficult to ensure that any given accused has been read and understands their rights.
No what?
"it is not guaranteed that they will be effective,"
Umm, yeah you do. If you have ineffective counsel you can get a new one or even a new trial. That is a legal right.
"a) people can, and do, take bad advice from attorneys that results in devastating plea bargains, b) actually proving they didn't work in your best interest is nontrivial, and c) even if you can do that, a retrial also requires an attorney, which you probably still can't afford to hire, so you're just getting another public defender, and also, in the vast majority of cases, takes place while you are still in prison...and will likely take months to years."
Your point? All of this is also true with private lawyers.
"In general, your assumptions are very much that for someone wrongfully accused, the justice system will be kind and work in the most ideal way possible."
Not at all! Stop incorrectly patronizing me! I believe more or less the opposite.
"Re: Miranda rights, the Supreme Court recently gutted that, making it far, far more difficult to ensure that any given accused has been read and understands their rights."
Source?
That is definitely not required for a false confession. I don't have stats handy, but for another comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33146157) I was reading up on the Dutch Wikipedia article on false confessions. Reasons for false confessions given there (https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valse_bekentenis) are:
- Feeling guilty for what happened, even if it's not your fault
- To protect the actual perpetrator
- To receive benefits such as contact with one's family, stopping the interrogation, sentence reduction, or to prevent a loved one from also being (further) prosecuted
- Due to a pathological need for attention or sensationalism
- Thinking you are guilty due to memory problems or other psychological issues such as delusions
In one case I heard in de podcast Napleiten, someone gave a false confession because the interviewers said they had video evidence, saying something along the lines of "if you have it on video then I guess I must have done it". She was a teenager, been interviewed for hours on end, and had barely slept the night before in the cell (after she came to the police the day before, expecting to clear up this apparent mix-up where she appeared on some wanted list). The public prosecutor brought a signed confession before the court.
The Wikipedia article lists as measures that can lead to further pressure for a false confession: long interrogations, interrogations at unexpected moments, preventing rest or sleep, providing gruesome footage of the event, raising one's voice, saying they can prove it anyway so it is useless to deny it, and obviously things like actual torture (which I'd say sleep deprivation should also count as) or threats thereof. Some of these things might happen inadvertently, such as if someone is already dead on their feet due to no fault of the police's, or if they don't know/realize that discussing gruesome footage is a risk factor for a false confession.
The example you gave clearly had numerous other issues in it.
I guess I'm still not seeing how deception would be a problem if we fixed the other issues - including not corroborating the confession (there are methods for this, even with limited evidence).
"We have a video of you at the scene of the crime with indisputable evidence. It doesn't matter what you say, there are 10 policemen waiting to testify against you. It's your word against theirs. If you don't take this deal you will go away for life."
You don't have money for a lawyer and you have no idea if there are actually 10 policemen waiting to testify against you. Do you take the chance? How is that not problematic?
Because that's an unrealistic scenario (based on my other points). You have access to a lawyer even if you don't have money. The confession can (and should) be verified. There are ways to do this with safeguards.
"Huh? I've never been so saddened by a comment actually."
It sounds like you already have your mind made up. Otherwise I strongly suggest looking into proper interrogation techniques (which avoid abuse but can leverage deception, and uses techniques to verify the confession is true/real).
The sad part is just that people have opinions about things from a theoretical point of view who have never lived out what happens in the real world. I know from close friends that what you are describing just doesn't always happen.
"The sad part is just that people have opinions about things from a theoretical point of view who have never lived out what happens in the real world."
You don't know me or my experiences. It's sad to see someone on HN blindly attack someone. Because from my perspective, you seem to be the one who is uninformed. Please do some research on the methods of taking and verifying confessions.
Not attacking, pointing out other perspectives. You saying it is an unrealistic scenario is what I was arguing against in that not only is it realistic, but I have seen it happen.
You've made my point once again with your comment: "Please do some research on the methods of taking and verifying confessions."
Yes, sure, ideally we should all be informed about the law, but if I happen to not be, and I happen to get arrested, there is no way that I can know that my interrogator is lying and that there are ways around that. Yes, I know lawyers are provided, that doesn't mean that people have my best interest in mind, etc. Like I said, speaking from personal experience of SEEING this happen to people.
My point is that you are speaking from a position of "being informed" when not everyone is informed, can get informed, wants to get informed, etc. This is why we have protections, this is why we hire lawyers, because we can't be "informed" about everything. That is besides the fact of my moral disagreement that a professional working for the government should be able to lie to a child so that they confess to a crime and potentially get life in prison (as seen here).
I'll leave it there though. Not trying to attack so if it came across that way, sorry.
worst of both worlds.
TL;DR: 18 year old was forced by a detective with threats and violence to sign a false confession and despite that detective having been accused of multiple cases of forced and falsified confessions, the way he finally got out after 20 years of a life sentence later was by finding a scientific impossibility in the fabricated and coerced confession.
Like yeah, "yay science!" and it's a great thing he finally got out, but how is the real story here not that once you sign a confession, you're basically fucked no matter what the circumstances of the confession were?!? I guess this might not be a surprise to people in or more familiar with the US, but holy shit it's scary to me as an outsider from a (yes, I'll say it) actually developed county!
1) Mythbusters wasn’t aware of this case
2) His confession under duress was the major factor in the release
> In 2019, the appellate court granted John post-conviction relief on the grounds of actual innocence — a rarity in Illinois — largely based on the abuse used to coerce a false confession from John.
MythBusters's episode was the starting point for him. The title is okay.
He already had an attorney helping appeal his case when he saw the episode. It's making a tiny part of his lengthy story the main theme, but that's not a huge issue.
The goal is to convict no matter what. That is how the incentives are lined up.
Case in point: the (famous) Serial podcast started about the (now evidently) wrongful conviction of a teenager. He was recently released after 20+ years because of a note found written by a prosecutor that pointed to other plausible suspects, information never shared with the defence.
You are very unlikely to ever be judged by a jury of your peers. You are much more likely to not 'risk' that and take the plea deal. From the perspective of a European (and we have our issues) it sounds the system is fundamentally rotten.
The mythbuster story only highlight how basic truth finding isn't really an issue.
No, the goal of the prosecution is to convict no matter what. The goal of the defense is to prevent the prosecution from winning. In order to win, one side must convince a jury. This is an intentionally designed adversarial system.
The European system, where a judge is essentially an inquisitor trying to discover the truth rather than a referee, is not better, it's just different. It is not more immune to abuse or bad results than the Anglo-American system.