Female journalist told skirt too short when reporting on Alabama execution

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Jarlaxle
Posts: 5370
Joined: Sun Apr 25, 2010 4:21 am
Location: New England

Re: Female journalist told skirt too short when reporting on Alabama execution

Post by Jarlaxle »

BoSoxGal wrote:
Wed Aug 03, 2022 5:52 pm
A decade or so ago Frontline/Pro Publica did a special on forensic science in the USA. I was literally sick to my stomach after I watched it. It played a large part in shifting my thinking toward exiting the criminal justice system - it was simply devastating. Since watching it I’ve read volumes on the subjects covered and looked at dozens of cases of wrongful convictions.

They have since done a similar expose on the so-called science behind shaken baby syndrome, a methodology still being taught to prosecutors nationally but which has been largely discredited now by science - despite there being a cohort of physicians and pathologists so invested in it (their careers having been made on it) that it continues to put innocent parents and caregivers behind bars unjustly, for deaths that are more often than not simply the result of illness or accident.

The foundations of criminal investigations for decades which have now been discredited either fully or significantly:

Fingerprint evidence
Hair follicle comparison evidence
Bite mark comparison evidence
Fiber comparison evidence
Blood spatter analysis evidence
Arson analysis evidence

and the least reliable of all yet most trusted by jurors,
Eyewitness testimony evidence

There are many shocking cases of egregious wrongful convictions that we could discuss concerning this issue, but the case of Cameron Todd Willingham is proof positive that we have executed innocent people for deaths that weren’t even crimes, just horrible accidents.

Anyone who supports the death penalty in the face of modern understanding of broken policing, broken prosecuting and the faulty truth of the body of forensic ‘science’ employed by state investigators has either a deep streak of cruelty or a deep vein of profound stupidity.
You missed one: ballistic evidence. It can be useful...but as an identifier, it's as useful as a Ouija board.

Jarlaxle
Posts: 5370
Joined: Sun Apr 25, 2010 4:21 am
Location: New England

Re: Female journalist told skirt too short when reporting on Alabama execution

Post by Jarlaxle »

MajGenl.Meade wrote:
Wed Aug 03, 2022 5:33 pm
more than ample opportunity to initially plead their case, appeal their conviction and sentence post trial, or otherwise try to prove that the police, prosecutor, and the prisons had the wrong person.


Remedial law reminder: the accused has no need to prove anything. The burden is on the prosecution to prove guilt.

Now when the prosecution cheats, lies, hides evidence, manufactures evidence and persuades even a reasonable person such as me that BB "did it", then it doesn't matter that 10 years after BB was executed it turns out that he was, after all, innocent.

You'd be quite content that these executed people turned out to be innocent? And what about all those sentenced to life or long prison terms (because the death penalty was no longer legal) who have been exonerated and set free years and years later. You would prefer they were found innocent years after they were executed?

1989 The Wrong Carlos: Anatomy of a Wrongful Execution, describes the faulty eyewitness testimony, the police’s failure to investigate Carlos Hernandez, and the misrepresentations by the prosecution that “the other Carlos” DeLuna claimed committed the killing was “a phantom,” while one of the prosecutors knew of Hernandez’s existence and his criminal history. Hernandez and DeLuna looked so similar that their own families mistook photos of the men for each other.

2020 Nathaniel Woods was sentenced in 2005 to death after a non-unanimous jury sentencing recommendation in August 2005 for the killings of three Alabama police officers. His case featured several hallmarks of wrongful conviction: official misconduct, coerced informant testimony, and racial discrimination.

Prosecutors acknowledged that Woods’ co-defendant, Kerry Spencer, shot the officers in an incident in a drug house. Spenser, who received a life sentence in his trial, has consistently maintained that he shot the officers in self-defense, after they had beaten Woods during a shakedown and then pointed a gun at Spenser. Knowing he was not the shooter, prosecutors offered Woods a plea deal for 20-25 years, but Woods’ lawyer advised him not to take it, misinforming him that he could not be convicted of capital murder as an accomplice. After Woods, who is Black, turned down the plea deal, prosecutors for the first time claimed that he had been the mastermind of a plan to kill the three white officers because he supposedly hated police. In support of that new theory, they presented testimony from Woods’ girlfriend that he purportedly had made comments about his hatred of police. But even before the trial, she recanted that statement, saying police had threatened to charge her with parole violations if she did not testify. At trial, the court refused to allow the defense to present evidence of police misconduct.

Spencer called Woods “100 percent innocent.” “Nate ain’t done nothing,” he said. “All he did that day was get beat up and he ran.”

Missouri prosecutors tried Walter Barton (executed 2020) five times for the brutal 1991 stabbing death of 81-year-old Gladys Kuehler. Twice, Barton’s convictions and death sentences were overturned because of prosecutorial misconduct. Two other times, the trials ended in mistrials.

Barton was one of three people, along with a neighbor and Kuehler’s granddaughter, Debbie Selvidge, who discovered her body. He consistently maintained that he pulled Selvidge away from Kuehler’s body, getting droplets of Kuehler’s blood on his clothes. His conviction rested on junk science testimony that small blood stains on his clothes had been “impact stains” from “high velocity” blood spatter, which the prosecution argued occurred while Barton was purportedly stabbing Kuehler. However, a 2015 analysis by crime scene analyst Lawrence Renner concluded that the bloodstains on Barton’s clothes were actually “transfer stains,” likely caused by contact with other bloodstains. Kuehler had been stabbed 50 times, and Renner said that the perpetrator of such a grizzly murder would have been covered in the victim’s blood. Prior to his execution, three jurors who had voted to convict Barton signed affidavits saying that the new analysis of evidence from the case would have affected their guilt-stage deliberations.

In 2015, the Justice Department and the FBI formally acknowledged that nearly every examiner in an FBI forensic squad overstated forensic hair matches for two decades before the year 2000. Of the 28 forensic examiners testifying to hair matches in a total of 268 trials reviewed, 26 overstated the evidence of forensic hair matches and 95% of the overstatements favored the prosecution. Defendants were sentenced to death in 32 of those 268 cases.
One of the most egregious is Shareef Cousin. Railroad job, top to bottom.

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