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The Washington Post has a story about flawed FBI science, and its effects on hundreds of cases prior to the year 2000.
The FBI has admitted that virtually all of their elite examiners have given tainted testimony overstating forensic hair matches.
The Justice Department and FBI have formally acknowledged that nearly every examiner in an elite FBI forensic unit gave flawed testimony in almost all trials in which they offered evidence against criminal defendants over more than a two-decade period before 2000.
Of 28 examiners with the FBI Laboratory's microscopic hair comparison unit, 26 overstated forensic matches in ways that favored prosecutors in more than 95 percent of the 268 trials reviewed so far, according to the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) and the Innocence Project, which are assisting the government with the country's largest post-conviction review of questioned forensic evidence.
Hair match wasn't the ONLY evidence in these cases. But in many cases it may have been the only evidence that placed defendants at the scene. However, 32 of these cases were death penalty cases, and 14 of those defendants have been executed.
All of these cases are now going to be reviewed.
This is the second major use of junk science the FBI has been forced to admit. There was the whole Bullet Lead Analysis used for decades to claim that the lead in bullets used in a crime matched batches of bullets the defendant had access to.
Peter Neufeld, co-founder of the Innocence Project, commended the FBI and department for the collaboration but said, "The FBI's three-decade use of microscopic hair analysis to incriminate defendants was a complete disaster."
(Score: 2) by morgauxo on Monday April 20 2015, @03:35PM
I used to be pro death penalty but damn! There are just way too many false convictions. This is just another way they have happened. I now believe that life and death is a power that no court should hold.
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Monday April 20 2015, @04:02PM
You're okay with the state having the ability to lock people in a concrete box until they die, but not okay with the state killing those same people? The former punishment actually seems more torturous than the latter, at least to me. Do you want some sort of European-island-resort-prisons, instead of our current concrete-rape-box-prisons? This could potentially make the position have some consistency.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 20 2015, @04:57PM
The thing about that concrete box is that it can be unlocked. You can't unexecute someone.
> Do you want some sort of European-island-resort-prisons, instead of our current concrete-rape-box-prisons?
> This could potentially make the position have some consistency.
That's an interesting phrasing. The difference between the OP's argument and yours is that his is utilitarian, yours is ethical. They can't be consistent without referring to some greater principle that you have not articulated.
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Monday April 20 2015, @11:12PM
The thing about that concrete box is that it can be unlocked. You can't unexecute someone.
You can't unrape someone either.
The difference between the OP's argument and yours is that his is utilitarian, yours is ethical. They can't be consistent without referring to some greater principle that you have not articulated.
You might be making some assumptions about my positions. I was asking about morgauxo's views on what the state ought to be able to subject prisoners to. I didn't say European-island-resort-prisons are a bad thing, they certainly seem preferable to concrete-rape-box-prisons.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 20 2015, @11:25PM
> You can't unrape someone either.
Irrelevant to the original question.
No form of punishment is undoable, but executions are final. Please don't pretend that you can't see the difference.
Whether rape is an acceptable form of punishment is an entirely different question - one of ethics, not utility.
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Tuesday April 21 2015, @01:29PM
No form of punishment is undoable, but executions are final. Please don't pretend that you can't see the difference.
I really don't see a difference. I think maybe you're assuming that life has some inherent value we both recognise, or something? Death is simply a lack of life, it can happen quickly and painlessly (though it doesn't in the US prison system). I am contending that torture is more horrifying than death. Torture changes the individual beyond current repair, as does death. Death changes us more, but I don't think that makes it inherently worse.
(Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Tuesday April 21 2015, @06:15PM
I really don't see a difference.
"You can't unrape someone either." was completely irrelevant to the discussion. When you take into account the possibility of innocents being executed even after all those trials, the fact that the person can't live anything resembling a life after they've been executed (because they're dead, and this doesn't apply to rape), and the fact that the person has already been captured, one can come to the conclusion that they should not be executed. If they want to die so badly, and they're determined, they will probably do so themselves. But lots of people don't kill themselves in prison or when they get out, so obviously not everyone agrees with your logic.
I am contending that torture is more horrifying than death.
Well, lots of people don't want to die (even ones in prison), so that's merely your opinion, not a universal fact, and especially if the form of "torture" is being in prison.
(Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Monday April 20 2015, @08:59PM
You're okay with the state having the power to murder people? They can't let out a person who later proves to have been innocent if they've been murdered.
The former punishment actually seems more torturous than the latter, at least to me.
You could always commit suicide if you end up in that situation. Don't try to make life-and-death decisions for others.
Do you want some sort of European-island-resort-prisons, instead of our current concrete-rape-box-prisons?
I want our 'justice' system to focus on rehabilitation, not vengeance. That likely does mean changing the prison environment, and it would certainly mean getting rid of private prisons. But that won't appease the barbarians, so it'll be an uphill battle getting that to happen.
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Tuesday April 21 2015, @01:40PM
You're okay with the state having the power to murder people? They can't let out a person who later proves to have been innocent if they've been murdered.
Man, I don't even support the existence of the state above a municipal level. I was just inquiring about somebody else's views, the only view of my own that I expressed was that I consider torture worse than death.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday April 21 2015, @10:27PM
The justice system is just to have a rule book to follow when evaluating who's guilty and how hard the punishment should be. It has nothing to do with justice, if it does it's just plain fluke. Focusing on rehabilitation instead of vengeance would probably be more effective but then that requires people to raise above their own emotion driven decision making. Not likely to happen to a majority of voters.
The barbarians are most likely just emotionally driven people that just can't see above that. And politicians use it to win elections.