Hacker News Reader

Comment by diogenes_atx | Hacker News Reader

As stated in the article written by the legal scholars at the Innocence Project:

> "There is no reliable evidence proving that Marcellus Williams committed the crime for which he is scheduled to be executed on Sept. 24. The State destroyed or corrupted the evidence that could conclusively prove his innocence and the available DNA and other forensic crime-scene evidence does not match him."

DNA evidence is based on proven science, and the DNA evidence that was not destroyed by the state is exculpatory.

View on HN

As far as I can tell, this isn't actually true: "the DNA evidence that was not destroyed by the state is exculpatory". The Innocence Project are being very careful with their wording here. Initially, they relied on trace DNA on the knife that didn't match the accused murderer, but that ended up being from someone in the prosecutor's office handling it after it had been processed for forensic evidence. Then they tried to argue that this showed the state had destroyed evidence which would've proved his innocence, but the courts didn't buy it because all available evidence suggests the killer's DNA was simply never on the knife. (Which isn't that surprising - DNA evidence isn't perfect and gloves exist.) The other "forensic crime scene evidence" seems to be hothingburgers like a few non-matching hairs in a house that'd had a large number of people going in and out in the recent past.

DNA evidence is where it's hard to get a false negative then false positive.

It's sad to me that the Innocence Project, instead of being a neutral third party investigating and then pushing back against wrongful convictions, have just become an all out 'stop the death penalty' advocacy group.

Ultimately I think this undermines their cause and hurts their ability to save truly innocent people.

This is the real issue. Either the death penalty is wrong in all cases, even when it’s brutally obvious that the person is guilty of heinous crimes, or it is simply a matter of taste when it should be applied, like seasoning. The argument against executing someone should stem from the first not the second, even though the second is much easier to play in the media.

The Innocence Project has been like this for a while. They are not a neutral third party, they are activists. In this particular case, this man was plainly and obviously guilty of a heinous murder. They’re using weasel words and a disingenuous reading of DNA evidence to argue that there’s reasonable doubt when there is not. If their issue is with the death penalty then just argue that issue.

Do you have reason to also claim that any of the points raised in the article are incorrect? If not, that would seem to contradict your claim that they are just a stop-the-death-penalfy advocacy group.

They have always been such.

There cause is to sow distrust and spread misinformation to discredit the death penalty so it will be abolished. They are doing a fair job.

DNA evidence is notoriously faulty. Let's not pretend it's 100% accurate. If I understand correctly, the innocence project has -- in the past -- used the fact that it's not accurate as a way to cast doubt on convictions.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com