The Innocence Project claims 337 clients who were found to be innocent of the charges they were convicted of using DNA evidence. Our prisons are not full of innocent people, We the People should be pleased our justice system is as good as it is. It could be better, and we can work to that end … not one innocent behind bars.
If you injured one of them, then surely it wasn’t just you against them. One of them had unexplained injuries, right?
There was some other evidence, although it was pretty light-weight…
Again that was not the only evidence…
Evidence is any fact that would help the trier of fact determine the truth of any element of the crime. That testimony did no such thing. In fact, it was cumulative: Montgomery himself testified to the tickling.
It’s not uncommon, is it, for poeople to be convicted of minor traffic offences on the evidence of just one eyewitness?
It was just a swollen eye and nose. In theory, I suppose both of them could have accused me of assaulting them because that was the only physical evidence for my claim at least. In fairness, there was a whole lot more including the fact that they were recently released violent felons that shed some of their clothes in a dumpster and were caught red-handed and almost shot to death before arrest because they had someone in an armed and life-threatening situation.
However, none of that would have been allowed in court because none of the other witnesses would cooperate because of some inexplicable reason that I will never understand. Obviously the police and DA believed me over them but I am not sure what would have happened if it actually went to trial. I was the only one left and all I could claim was attempted armed robbery rather than more serious charges that they deserved. They were so wanted and notorious that I probably could have claimed anything and made it stick.
Many other cases would not be nearly as straightforward and clear-cut.
However note that:
- The standard of evidence required to overturn a conviction is very high, not just reasonable doubt.
- A judge still has discretion over overturning a conviction regardless of whatever evidence is presented.
and most importantly:
3. Just because there is insufficient evidence to overturn a conviction is not proof of guilt.
What the actual proportion of innocent people is we cannot know…I would guess that the vast majority are guilty, but with an incarceration rate like the US’ even 1% innocent would be a vast population. And many of those released by the innocence project had been in prison for decades…this is not a trivial thing.
In the original “recovered memory” case, a guy named George Thomas Franklin, sr., was convicted solely on the testimony of his daughter, who had “recovered” the memory of her father killing her friend Susan Nason 20 years earlier.
Now, it’s pretty screwed up, but, a girl named Susan Nason was a friend of Eileen Franklin, and was mysteriously murdered 20 years earlier.
If there hadn’t been a real murder, the charges probably wouldn’t have been taken so seriously. The father was convicted on a single person’s testimony, it was dubious, “recovered memory” testimony, but there was independent evidence of the crime itself.
As it turned out, Franklin was innocent, and the whole thing unraveled, unfortunately after he had spent several years in prison, but my point is, there was an actual unsolved murder, and a body of a dead little girl. If the daughter had come forward with a story of he father killing someone, and there was no body, and no unsolved crime, it’s doubtful it ever would have gone to court.
In the rape he said/she saids, there is frequently evidence either that the woman was drugged, or there is bruising that shows evidence of forced penetration and generally rough treatment. Often that is taken as independent confirmation of her story.
In other words, the very fact that the crime happened is evidence. If a woman claims to have been raped, but an exam shows no evidence whatsoever of recent intercourse, she might end up with a psych consult. (That’s oversimplifying-- don’t come back with “what about attempted rape,” or what about a rape that happened several weeks ago," because that’s not what I’m talking about.)
While your conclusion is probably accurate, your underlying facts are entirely irrelevant. First, the Innocence Project’s national budget is $15 million. The LA County District Attorney’s annual budget alone is $112 million (and of course that does not include the much more substantial resources of law enforcement). The Innocence Project only has the resources to investigate a few hundred cases per year, out of tens of thousands of felony convictions.
Second, the 337 figure counts only DNA-based exonerations. Obviously that is just a subset of the wrongly convicted. In the same period approximately 1,200 convicted people were exonerated by other means (primarily former eyewitnesses recanting testimony or admissions of prosecutorial misconduct). DNA evidence is rarely available, and may no longer be available in old cases.
Third, as Mijin notes, even strong evidence of innocence may not entitle a convict to a new trial, much less to exoneration. There is a huge bias in the system toward upholding verdicts once the appellate process is complete.
One thing often ignored in these conversations is the shadow criminal justice system of probation and parole.
The majority of prisoners in many states are in on parole or probation violations. When such violations are adjudicated, you don’t have a right to counsel and the state only has to prove it’s case on a preponderence of the evidence, not beyond a reasonable doubt. So even if the non-lawyer defendants are getting a fair shake, we would expect a significant percentage to be innocent of the offense based on the low evidentiary standard.
In my gig from 10 years ago, we generally arrested a shit’em for possession of CDS (Controlled Dangerous Substance, aka, drugs) and then scared the hell out of them and flipped them into informants. So the cases often started with the say-so of just one individual.
After that, of course, it would mushroom into a pretty extensive investigation with wiretaps, controlled deliveries, UC buys and so on…
Perhaps more relevant to what you’re thinking is the instance (previously mentioned) of an alleged rape or other assault. I’ve certainly seen instances in which a pissed off woman accuses her ex boyfriend/husband of raping her and the kit shows positive evidence. In a few of these instances, it turns out that she slept with him again with the intention of having him charged with sexual assault. Needless to say, in those cases (after the inevitable confession), the female in question was charged with falsely reporting an incident (and usually a few other things).
The bottom line is that, yes, people can certainly be arrested based on simple accusation.
Parole and probation violators may indeed have a right to counsel - even if they don’t have a Federal Constitutional right, nothing prevents a state from providing such a right. I know that there is a right to counsel in my state at a final parole revocation hearing and I am sure it is not the only state to have such a requirement.
And I just want to clarify- by "innocent of the offense" , you do mean innocent of the violation, right? Because the lack of a lawyer/lower evidentiary standard doesn't have any impact on the underlying criminal conviction and while I certainly wouldn't say it's a good thing for someone to go to prison for a parole/probation violation they didn't commit, it's also not the same thing as someone being convicted of a *crime *they didn't commit.
Duly noted. My understanding is that few states provide counsel in each case. A few more provide it at the discretion of the judge. And most do not provide it at all. But I don’t know that I’ve seen a count.
Why is it different, in your view?
Because someone who has been convicted and sentenced for a crime they didn’t commit shouldn’t have been convicted or sentenced at all. In the case where a person did commit the underlying crime and didn’t commit the violation , they will be resentenced to a sentence that could have been imposed instead of probation to begin with , or in the case of an early release will continue serving the sentence that was originally imposed. It’s not as though the maximum authorized sentence for a crime is 2-6 years and when someone gets probation and violates they now get sentenced to 4-12 years. Nor does someone who was sentenced to 1-3 years get resentenced to 2-6 for violating their early release ( at least not anywhere I know of). They serve whatever remains of that 3 years in custody rather than on under supervision.
Can a jury send a innocent man to prison on such evidence?
I don’t know that I share the general moral intuition that you state here, that it’s a lesser harm to improperly jail someone who could have been put in jail for that period if the facts had been different. In my view, the fact that they received probation or parole means that they deserved not to be in jail as much as anyone else deserves not to be. And they suffer the same harm as the person who has never committed any crime and is wrongly jailed–they get put in a building full of neglect and physical and sexual violence. It’s small consolation that they could have been put there anyway if they hadn’t gotten good time credit, or hadn’t persuaded a judge that they deserved a chance to put their life back together, or whatever it is that earned them probation or parole.
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There are also two big caveats to what you said: the probation time need not be counted toward the sentence, and the fees associated with the process are cumulative. Those two small differences are a big part of what creates the situation in which millions of young black men are perpetually under the thumb of the criminal justice system. If you live in certain heavily-policed neighborhoods, your chances of getting a conviction for a petty misdemeanor rise dramatically. The kind of thing that white kids get school detention for cause black kids to get their first misdemeanor, for example.
And once you get that first conviction, if you live in a neighborhood with a lot of probation officers (and you probably do if you live in the kind of place where cops show up at school when someone gets pushed or when a kid is disruptive in class), you’re very likely to get violated. Eventually, you’re going to be in the car of a felon that gets stopped. Or you’re going to wander onto the block you’re restricted from entering. And even if you don’t, you’ll probably eventually be accused of committing one of the dozens of petty probation conditions that are routinely imposed.
Then you’re back to court. Your probation gets extended, you lose your job or get kicked out of school, and you rack up a few hundred more dollars in “court fees.” In many states, you can’t vote. You can’t hold a licensed occupation like a barber or a landscaper. And there are hundreds of other legal restrictions that apply until you complete probation AND pay off all the fines, which are accumulating interest. More than anything else, the perpetual nature of it is what makes the system look to a lot of us like the New Jim Crow.
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When caught, they had physical injuries consistent with a victim’s testimony.
They had disposed of the clothes they allegedly worse when committing the crime, with no sensible explanation.
They had previous convictions for violent armed robbery, which shows a pattern.
They were caught by the police in the act of committing another armed robbery, and I am guessing the police were prepared to testify to that.
They had no alibi for where they were when you alleged crime took place.
This is about as far from “no evidence but the victim” that a crime can get.
Well, the previous convictions and the other armed robbery are not admissible as evidence at all. The lack of an alibi is circumstantial evidence, but pretty weak circumstantial evidence. If the defendants chose not to talk, or to testify at the trial, it wouldn’t be evidence at all. The defendants’ physical injuries are circumstantial evidence.
I agree, had they been convicted this wouldn’t be a conviction based on the testimony of just one witness. But, really, in addition to the witness, all you have that is admissible and that carries any weight is the defendants physical injuries. This is not very far at all from “no evidence but the victim”. You could get much further - other eyewitnesses, forensic evidence linking the defendants to the crime scene or even to the person of the victim, etc, etc.
And really, “lack of an alibi” isn’t evidence at all. Giving a false one might be (although that would generally require another witness) , but not having one at all or giving an unverifiable one isn’t evidence of guilt. My alibi for last night is that I was home alone watching recordings from my DVR - that’s not evidence that I committed any of the crimes that were committed last night. It won’t rule me out as a suspect if someone says I did, but it’s not evidence on its own.