Posted on 01/03/2008 1:15:07 PM PST by cougar_mccxxi
I think the sin is on us when our elected officials make such mistakes. Poor guy. 26 years is a long time. I hope his burglary sentence was a long one so that he didn’t have a LOT of extra years to suffer.
When they start paying jurors the salary that they make at their normal jobs, maybe more decent people would do it.
I just don’t see how someone with a job could sit for a long case for what they pay. Wouldn’t you go broke?
That used to be true, but the technology has advanced to where they can make a numerical representation to be put in a data base.
It is accurate enough to be sicentifically repeatable and valid.
Let someone (or a company) put up a bond amount for anyone they want to claim is innocent. The bond should cover DA time and lab testing for the DNA. If they are right, they keep their bond and receive, say, 30% of any settlement with the wrongly convicted defendant (I could live with a standard settlement amount per year served - $50,000 - $100,000). If they lose, they forfeit the bond. Government is out NO money for retrying guilty people. Advocates can take on ANY case they think was unfair.
In exchange for 26 years of lost life?
I wish him well in what time he has left, but let’s be for real here.
Not even a cool million, tax free, is adequate compensation for something like this.
You cannot put a price on 26 years. However, what I found is that most of those unfairly convicted were usually not living right in the first place. Regardless, I do believe in due process. It is too easy for a girl to make up a rape accusation and then it is just like the Duke lacrosse team.
Not everyone should be able to sit on a Jury. read my old post
You said — “You just don’t understand - putting the occasional (or maybe not so occasionally) innocent person in jail is just the price we pay to have law and order. And just because new evidence, or evidence of proecutorial/police misconduct comes to light, that doesn’t mean they should get a new trial - why, the whole system would grind to a halt.”
Of course, you were mimicking someone else’s statements... I think we all know (or should know) that the “see-saw” of how these things work would be — (1) you make sure you get all the guilty; fallout is some innocent get caught in that web, (2) you protect all the innocent; fallout is some guilty get let go.
Now, it’s a “see-saw” from #1 to #2. As you see-saw more one way, you get more of that fallout that way. If you got back the other way, you get more of that fallout to the other direction.
But, what all should really know is that our legal system is supposed to be designed to *primarily* prevent the innocent from getting swept up in the hunt, conviction and jailing of the guilty — and not the other way around (i.e., “getting all the crooks”).
So, anyone who seeks to *absolutely insure* that we “get all the crooks” is — inevitably — going to be working against the protections of the innocent, and therefore *subverting* our system...
Regards,
Star Traveler
If it had been your ass sitting in jail 26 years for a crime you didn’t commit, you would be singing a different tune, or would you have us believe that you would be begging the State of Texas to keep you in a cell because you were ‘properly’ convicted on the best evidence available at the time?
IIRC, it’s about $15,000/year based on settlements in other states.
Very rarely, but it happens.
Some people may remember a Virginia man, featured on the cover of Time Magazine, who was executed despite protestations of innocence?
From the New York Times, Jan. 13, 2006:
DNA Ties Man Executed in ‘92 to the Murder He Denied
WASHINGTON, Jan. 12 - Thirteen years after Roger K. Coleman went to the electric chair declaring, “An innocent man is being murdered tonight,” a new DNA test has found that he was almost certainly the source of genetic material found in the body of his murdered sister-in-law, Virginia officials announced on Thursday.
The finding was a stunning blow to a lay minister who for nearly 18 years argued for Mr. Coleman’s innocence, and it vindicated the prosecutors who won Mr. Coleman’s conviction in 1982 and the governor, L. Douglas Wilder, who allowed his execution to proceed 10 years later.
“The confirmation that Roger Coleman’s DNA was present reaffirms the verdict and the sanction,” said Gov. Mark Warner, who ordered the test last week. It was the first time that a governor had ordered a DNA test involving an executed person.
The testing was closely watched across the nation because of the belief that it would provide powerful momentum to death penalty abolitionists if it were to prove that an innocent man had been put to death.
Yet even after Thursday’s announcement, critics of capital punishment said Mr. Warner’s decision set an important precedent that might encourage other governors, judges and prosecutors to allow postexecution DNA analysis in disputed capital punishment cases...
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/13/national/13dna.html
Which is why so many jurors are low-ranking civil servants and postal workers ... they are paid during their jury duty!
Which is why so many jurors are low-ranking civil servants and postal workers ... they are paid during their jury duty!
BTW, we'll probably never get the full story on something like this. Being innocent of a particular charge doesn't guarantee that the accused was a splendid citizen. It's entirely possible that he was innocent of the rape, but guilty of something else that mitigated against his being successfully defended ... B&E, or assault on his record, perhaps.
Also, to give the guy a fair shake, he may well have been poorly represented ... or the cops and DA hid some exculpatory evidence. Ya just never know.
I swear to you, I am innocent, you must believe me!!!
Ah, yes, Dantès, I know...
You mock me monsieur?
No, Dantès, were you truly guilty, there are a hundred prisons they could have sent you to, The Château d'If is for the ones they are truly ashamed of..
And we will shout them down as well!!!!
Great!! So when the SCOTUS rules the 2nd an individual right I can get my city of Denver conviction for illegal possession of a firearm reversed and then get payment for the 5 days I spent in jail and reimbursement for my firearm they supposedly destroyed?
That sounds more like the justice system I know...
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