Incorrect! I didn't press the mere fact of lying; I most certainly did consider context: they lied to stay out of jail. That is important context!
And of course I lied like a rug when I was a kid...in order to get out of trouble for something I did wrong.
But that's exactly they point. They lied because their lives were on the line. I would expect many, if not most reasonable people to lie in the same situation. Therefor, when someone tells a lie in such a context in which
any reasonable person would likely tell the same lie, to me, that does not hurt their credibility.
People do not only lie to get out of trouble for something they actually did, so the fact that this is the only reason you have ever lied (which I frankly don't believe), and you only lied as a kid (which I also don't believe) does not mean that this is the only reason people lie. People lie for all sorts of reasons. Sometimes people lie and say they did something they didn't. My sister lied in a way that got her into
more trouble. She was caught with weed in high school (though she was old enough to be charged as an adult) and got arrested. She was offered to have all charges dropped if she turned in the person who sold it to her, which my parents greatly pressured her to do. But the person who sold it to her was just some other high school kid, a friend of hers, who could score her some weed. She lied and said she didn't know who the person was, she bought it from some random person, so her friend wouldn't get in trouble. And as a result, charges were pressed against my sister.
yes
Even a very low chance of losing a retrial to too much when your life is at stake. It's not just the probability of win/loss that counts, it's also the consequences of win/loss.
Say, someone offers me a choice: One choice is I get $10 up front. Other choice is I open 1 of 100 boxes at random. 99 boxes contain $1000 each. 1 box contains a bomb which would kill me.
I would take $10.
This, exactly. It's not just about the likelihood of losing, it's the consequences of losing. If the consequences of my making a decision is that I spend my life in prison and so does my buddy, and my other buddy dies, then even if the chance of my success was 99%, it would not make me make that decision if another decision offers me a 100% chance of me and my buddies being free.
And has been stated to you over and over again, considering the experience these men have already had with the justice system, they are likely to be far more pessimistic about their chances than reality may reflect, which would put them in even more of a mindset to make a deal.
In other words, one can never completely recover one's good name, despite the fact that the evidence of innocence was overwhelming in this case. Anyone can PM me if interested in the details. MOO.
Exactly. Examples have already been provided on this thread of people who
did in fact, win their appeals or got new trials and who were
actually exonerrated, and for whom evidence of innocence was overwhelming. The people who believed they were guilty before mostly still believed they were guilty afterwards.
It takes some wit to arrive at that big money that bothers some so much, it's not enough to be just a stoner 
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