True crime stories are influencing the real-life justice system
cbc.ca
cbc.ca
I served on a jury nearly 20 years ago for a criminal case. And the biggest thing at the time, if you recall that long ago, was the biggest shows in TV were CSI and Law & Order. I certainly watched them a fair amount.
Both, and the myriad of spin off and other shows in the same vein, presented a flashy and scientifically certain view of law enforcement.
I bring up my time on that jury because the lawyers both spent a _huge_ amount of time preempting everyone's questions about why there wasn't any conclusive "scientific" evidence. No finger prints, no weapons marks, no expert testimony, etc.
It turns out real life is far more messy than a 30-60 minute tv drama.
So as CSI, et. al. gave us these unrealistic fever dreams about how crime is solved in the real world, so too do "True Crime" stories give us an unrealistic view of what happens out there in the real world.
And of course the public deference to them over that period enabled a bunch of shoddy work and that shoddy work is what underpins the current generation of "ignored X" and "framed Y" type true crime and so the pendulum of public perception swings back toward where it was in the 1990s when the public was becoming aware that police had, roughly speaking, spent the prior decades framing a bunch of black guys because that was easier than solving crimes.
Edit: Now that I think about it it's kind of a condemnation of the industry how quickly the pendulum swung.
That said, juries should be skeptical of the story they are being sold, right? Maybe we should not lock up very many people for whom there isn’t any hard evidence of their guilt.
Would you consider eyewitness testimony to be 'hard evidence'?
I don't have any CCTV in my house, so if a guest visiting my house beats me up, although my face is indisputable evidence that someone attacked me, the only evidence they did it is my eyewitness testimony.
Would our society be a better place if my attacker was convicted, or if he wasn't?
What if they were twins?
What if the person was wearing a mask that you knew your guest owned, but it wasn't actually him?
You're entering into this with the assumption that you know who beat you up. The police don't have anything other than your assertion. That's why corroborating evidence is needed.
More likely, if a guest beats you up, there will be some other witnesses and some motives. Anyway, police can get search warrants and work it out, or like… maybe the guest will feel guilty and admit what they did, perhaps after a stern talking-to along with the implication that they’ll probably be found out after some investigation anyway.
ROFLMAO!
Not to say that it should be completely discounted, only that it should be treated as evidence with a less than perfectly reliable. Not quite "hard" evidence, but definitely something that should be considered.
At the end of the day the one dude still hit his friend with his truck and threw him at least 10 feet across a wide sidewalk and into a wrought iron fence hard enough to partially impale him. Everyone agreed that the one guy was driving, and that the other guy was hit. The only real evidence was how injured the victim was. It was completely open and shut. There was plenty of supposed nuance. None of it mattered. Still drunken assault with a deadly weapon.
I’d honestly need more than that if impaneled on a jury to conclude beyond reasonable doubt that you’d correctly identified your assailant. Hell, if the only evidence is eyewitness testimony from the victim, an obviously-interested party, I’m not even sure I’d be comfortable awarding civil damages. Especially in a modern context, where every sneeze throws off a digital and/or forensic trail.
> Maybe we should not lock up *very many people* for whom there isn’t any hard evidence of their guilt.
This should be very rare, so even if we caught everybody who spontaneously beat up their hosts, there still wouldn’t be very many people in this category.
This doesn’t mean we don’t have to investigate any crimes of course. It is important for the legal system to work for victims too. But if you get beat up and point to some guest of yours, an investigation can start, a search warrant can be generated, we can see if they’ve discussed it with anybody, etc etc.
Are you assuming most assaults are premeditated? I'd say most aren't. Even something like burglaries/robberies are often opportunistic, without anything incriminating like a heist planning board.
It isn’t most assaults, it is a sort of weird artificial situation constructed to have a crime committed without any physical evidence, but which could be solved just assuming the victim’s testimony was 100% true and accurate.
If this is the case, we need body cams on us 24/7 and many more cameras on other areas. The me-too movement was based on hearsay from sometimes two decades ago. Should everyone in these cases walk free?
I suspect there would be more vigilante justice in these cases.
But at the end of the day, they jury is asked to decide if an accusation is true "beyond a reasonable doubt".
After serving on a jury I have only the following advice: Stay away from the criminal justice system as much as you can. Once you are in a courtroom on a jury trial, you are effectively a coin toss from prison.
The amount of uninformed opinions and plain old charisma involved in deciding a case is just mind boggling. There are no certainties, just people reliving their trauma and deciding whether or not the person they see in the courtroom looks like a person that would cause that trauma.
Folks make fun of "justice involved person" but it's capturing a real thing that it's a black hole (heh) that is impossible to escape from completely. Even when you're the victim. You are at your safest when the police have no idea who you are.
"Every time you talk to an entity with enforcement capabilities, you significantly increase your chances of receiving an enforcement action. My clients that maintain a strict policy of never engaging with [regulators, police, justice] all have significantly less enforcement actions than clients who agree to be witnesses, report potential crimes, or otherwise take steps to be a good citizen." (Paraphrased, but I've received advice like that across many areas of justice/regulation)
https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jul/28/ving-rhames-...
He was in his own house minding his business.
He thought it was hilarious.
Before you get distracted by that (admitted outrage), there were a couple of other weird dynamics at play:
1) The lead cop even gave those two holdouts the squicks. I was good, and didn't google his name until after the whole trial was over, but he'd been the subject of multiple lawsuits - including wrongful death, in which he rolled up to a scene being controlled by other officers and started shooting 8 seconds after getting out of his car. No one on the jury (said they) trusted him.
2) The case was horrifically over-charged. The defendant was shady, and was probably looking for a car to break into when the cop rolled up. However, there was nothing (besides prejudice and supposition) linking him to the drugs the dog found thirty feet away, and describing the items they found in his backpack as "deadly weapons" strained credulity. There might have been something there ("carrying burglary tools"? Is that a thing?) on which I would have voted to convict, but not the case presented.
Still, it was a coin toss. The first vote was eight to four to convict, and it all could easily have gone another way.
I'm more inclined to attribute this to the fact that when everyone got a high-resolution video camera in their pocket, we got no new compelling evidence for UFOs but lots of it for police brutality.
They primed the pump, now they're complaining they're wet.
> He says the genre focuses on outlier situations — cases that feature the "unresolved nature of the crime," the "grisly or more so shocking nature of the criminal conduct" and "extensive media coverage."
The first season of Serial, which I assume is what they mean since that's the famous one everyone listened to, is about an unsolved and reasonably grisly murder case. (Never mind the fact that it's a really story about the legal proceedings surrounding the case and our criminal justice system as a whole, not a voyeuristic slasherfest like so many true crime stories are.)
But there have been several more seasons of Serial since then, including the third season, which focuses on a number of completely ordinary, mundane cases from a single courthouse in Ohio—except what turns out to be shocking is how even these ordinary cases, run-of-the-mill trials and sentencings that never would've been on anyone's radar, are subject to the whims of random judges and cops with no oversight.
It's not that the original murder story is remarkable for having a questionable trial with so many unanswered questions; so many people's experiences with our justice system are equally arbitrary and confusing, and for much smaller charges. What's remarkable about the season one case is its degree, not its kind.
(As an aside, people who are REALLY into the "is he innocent/guilty" posturing for the season one case, and are otherwise a fan of those voyeuristic slasherfest-type stories, didn't seem to like season three. Which is a shame since I thought it was fascinating, and arguably more horrifying, since your odds of being arrested under dubious charges and sentenced by an untouchable judge seem a lot higher than your odds of being randomly murdered in the woods.)
"According to Maclean's, the officers' "controversially—and almost comically—sloppy sleuths helped to explain the lack of evidence. While working on the crime scene, officers used the bathroom for two days before it could be tested for blood or fingerprints, and they could not always remember what they had touched around the office with bloodied gloves. The blood spatter expert did not arrive from Halifax until four days after the homicide, by which time the body had been removed and spatter had dried and flaked. Officers touched the back door before testing it for fingerprints, did not interview some witnesses for 18 months, and did not photograph the back alleyway until three years after the crime"."
A more unexpected and interesting headline would be if fictional crime stories were affecting real life (which they do by giving people unrealistic expectations of detectives and crime labs and witness testimony etc).
This is liking saying that water affects moisture.
The rise of amateur sleuthing is less clear. I can’t actually think of a single case where the true crime community actually solved a case that the police couldn’t. But you regularly see a mob of weirdos going after innocent people and trying to ruin their lives.
See the video "don't mess with cats" for an example.
Also, the identification of the murderer Luca Magnotta IIRC.
> After the interview, Durst goes to the bathroom. Apparently unaware that his microphone is still recording, he rambles at length, ending with, "What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course."
> On March 14, 2015, the eve of the final episode's airing, the FBI arrested Durst in New Orleans on a first-degree murder warrant the LAPD obtained in connection to Berman's death. They had undertaken an investigation based on new evidence presented in the miniseries.
'true crime is somehow creating more crime for the justice system?' Is this the violent video games argument?
The problem in Canada, we have insanely risen violent crime; tons of viral cases where people are out on bail less than 24 hours, were caught again committing more crime and being right back out on bail.
Literally multiple holy wars occurring in the streets.
South of us, the vast majority of the US states have now adopted constitutional carry. Conceal carry a handgun for your safety. Resulting in significantly less violent crime. Very easy choice to make as a politician. Canada did the opposite. There are hold outs in the usa trying to prevent guns being carried. They like Canada have similar violent crime problems.
CBC's take on this issue, 'true crime is somehow creating more crime for the justice system?'
Citation needed, because the numbers I'm aware of say the opposite; the US has one of the highest murder rates of all the high-income OECD nations, all of which have substantially stricter limits on concealed carry. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/murder-ra...
My suspicion is that it's both reaction and cause.
As to concealed carry preventing violent crime, I think there'd be little evidence for that. You can't legally brandish your firearm on people that haven't made any threat. It's up to the criminal to make that threat at a time and place of advantage. So smart criminals negate concealed carry with tactical advantage, and dumb criminals are too dumb to be afraid.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/ariannajohnson/2023/04/28/red-s...