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Comment by janmo | Hacker News Reader

The real Woods was a homeless, while the fake woods had a job and family. The police and justice system are very biased, it is a well known fact.

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> University of Iowa Police Detective Ian Mallory opened an investigation into the case. Mallory found the biological father listed on Woods’ birth certificate — which both Woods and Keirans had sent him an official copy of — and tested the father’s DNA against Woods’ DNA. The test proved Woods was the man’s son.

Detective Mallory is the hero of this story. He believed a man who few people would at that point.

This. There's no substitute for competence.

I'd watch the movie about detective Mallory.

Alice and Bob are on a crime spree and planning their next hit, but Detective Mallory inserts himself into their communications and sets up a sting using a replay attack against Bob.

I'd watch it twice if Tom Hanks played detective Mallory.

Only if Leonardo DiCaprio plays the guy faking his identity for 35 years.

He didn't even necessarily act on belief, he was just diligent.

As bad as it is that he was unjustly sent to a mental hospital, I wonder if getting on medication helped him get into a better place and advocate for himself more credibly.

What's horrifying to me is that the real Woods should have been appointed a defense attorney, and it seems that that attorney didn't believe him either or even make an effort to act as though they did. It should have been his defense attorney back during the trial who thought to hunt down the father and do a DNA test.

If he was homeless it's almost assured that he had a public defender. An LA public defender is so overloaded that[1]:

    L.A. public defenders are carrying workloads that require 4,160 hours of work or more to effectively represent their clients. That is more than double the amount of work hours available in a year, assuming no vacation or sick time is taken.

If I had to work 80 hours per week I'd make a lot of mistakes too. Some attorneys I've talked don't even meet their clients until the day of court. Our public defense system is horribly broken.

1: https://www.aclusocal.org/en/press-releases/los-angeles-lags...

He very probably did have a public defender, who seems to have done a very good job by the metric of what most public defenders understand their job to be: negociating with the DA.

Woods managed to not serve any additonal time after sentencing and didn't even have to admit guilt for that.

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