From the New York Times:
The [Bronx] court sealed the case file, hiding from view a problem so old and persistent that the criminal justice system sometimes responds with little more than a shrug: false testimony by the police.
[...] "Behind closed doors, we call it testilying," a New York City police officer, Pedro Serrano, said in a recent interview, echoing a word that officers coined at least 25 years ago. "You take the truth and stretch it out a little bit."
[...] An investigation by The New York Times has found that on more than 25 occasions since January 2015, judges or prosecutors determined that a key aspect of a New York City police officer's testimony was probably untrue. The Times identified these cases — many of which are sealed — through interviews with lawyers, police officers and current and former judges.
In these cases, officers have lied about the whereabouts of guns, putting them in suspects' hands or waistbands when they were actually hidden out of sight. They have barged into apartments and conducted searches, only to testify otherwise later. Under oath, they have given firsthand accounts of crimes or arrests that they did not in fact witness. They have falsely claimed to have watched drug deals happen, only to later recant or be shown to have lied.
[...] Many police officials and experts express optimism that the prevalence of cameras will reduce police lying. As officers begin to accept that digital evidence of an encounter will emerge, lying will be perceived as too risky — or so the thinking goes. [...]
Yet interviews with officers suggest the prevalence of cameras alone won't end police lying. That's because even with cameras present, some officers still figure — with good reason — that a lie is unlikely to be exposed. Because plea deals are a typical outcome [...]
"There's no fear of being caught," said one Brooklyn officer who has been on the force for roughly a decade. "You're not going to go to trial and nobody is going to be cross-examined."
[...] Police lying raises the likelihood that the innocent end up in jail — and that as juries and judges come to regard the police as less credible, or as cases are dismissed when the lies are discovered, the guilty will go free. Police falsehoods also impede judges' efforts to enforce constitutional limits on police searches and seizures.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by unauthorized on Sunday March 25 2018, @03:07AM (2 children)
That's a bit extreme. It is certainly a case for immediate retrial but the fact that the cop lied does not mean that the conviction was wrongful. I'm not willing to accept the immediate release of a serial child rapist because this one cop lied about something pertinent to the case.
No, they shouldn't. "An eye for an eye" is a terrible principle to use in a legal framework for more reasons than I care to list. But to appeal to your "tough on crime" sentiment, if a cop lied in order to get someone convinced over allegations of a very light offense, they might get a very light sentence for what is otherwise a much more serious crime.
Talk about cruel and unusual punishment. Nobody should ever be put in a situation where they could be harmed, regardless of the gravity of their crime. One injustice does not legitimize another.
(Score: 2) by archfeld on Sunday March 25 2018, @07:46AM
An eye for an eye is as much a call for moderation as it is heinous justice. Robert Heinlein wrote of a place that used exact justice. They called it evening I think, and suggested that a man who ran over someone be himself run over and wait for help just as long as the victim did. If you follow that thought process to the end it is horribly chilling. I am not nor would I want to be the ultimate judge, I am not qualified, nor do I believe anyone but God is and we aren't wise enough to interpret his will in simple things let alone life or death.
For the NSA : Explosives, guns, assassination, conspiracy, primers, detonators, initiators, main charge, nuclear charge
(Score: 2) by Justin Case on Sunday March 25 2018, @03:30PM
We may have common ground here. But are you saying nobody should ever be imprisoned? What do we do with those who have established a long pattern of inability to control their violent impulses?
For those who aren't likely to continue harming others, I'd prefer a system where the criminal reimburses victims to one that just locks people away for arbitrarily long slices of their lives.