Miscarriages of justice when found not guilty

[Rolfe]

I don't trust a Conservative politician or their hangers-on as far as I could throw them, but I assume he's not lying about what the judge said and that would indicate that his story is broadly true.

I know of other questionable police vendettas, and if there was someone in a position of power who had it in for him it's perfectly conceivable that the police could have been induced to pursue a frivolous case against him.

I know of a - political dissident, let's call him - who was arrested in his home, held in a cell for 15 hours and had all his computer equipment confiscated because he told a journalist on Twitter that she was "an absolute disgrace". He was questioned about innocuous banter with friends that the police purported to believe were "death threats", and the police leaked the fact that he had been arrested "on suspicion of harassing a woman" to the newspapers which obediently published articles which only just stopped this side of defamatory. There was much malicious gossip which (wrongly) assumed that he'd been lifted for sexual harassment.

Months later the police finally told him privately that no charges would be brought. Of course that part wasn't leaked to the press. It was months after that before he finally got his computer gear back. He spent most of the time in terror that something like illegal porn or bomb-making instructions were going to be planted on his hard drive.

So I don't find that story particularly improbable.

 

[Samson]

The underlying question is how could the woman take the stand if there was no basis at all, and that is how I understand Worm's query. It seems beyond extraordinary to the ordinary person, which is all we are..

Here is what she appears to have said

"Giving evidence at Southwark Crown Court, the alleged victim told jurors: "He came closer to give me a hug and that's when the incident happened.

"I was putting on my coat and he was going for a hug but an inside the coat hug.

"He was putting his arms around me but within my coat, not outside like a normal hug but inside."

She went on: "I was probably standing still and he's a lot bigger and taller then I am anyway and I could feel more force. I fell back a bit.

"I felt like I was falling, he's quite big compared to me so it's quite forceful.

"His hands were probably on my lower bit of my back just below my waist.

"As I was falling we were kind of moving back towards the wall and his hands were going lower and one went down behind my skirt and between my thighs and between my tights and underwear."

Breaking into tears, the woman said she felt his fingers touch her for "two or three seconds" but said it "felt like longer".
She told jurors she had not anything to drink at the party but believed he was 'under the influence'.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/20...dvisor-sir-michael-fallon-goes-trial-accused/

I can't understand this, in the way I understand secret witness testimony, unless she is being bestowed favours of some sort, as secret witnesses always are.

 

[luchog]

I can't understand this, in the way I understand secret witness testimony, unless she is being bestowed favours of some sort, as secret witnesses always are.

Given what we know of human memory, it's actually very easy to understand. Humans are prone to conflating fantasies and memories, and have often been known to "remember" things that have never happened. The Mandela Effect and Recovered Memory Syndrome are two examples that demonstrate the malleability of memory, and how extreme it can be.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_memory

It's quite possible that she fully believes that the incident occurred, or wants to enough on some level to maintain the assertion. It's also possible that it's deliberately fabricated as an attempt to attack the falsely-accused individual. It's also possible that it's an attempt to shift blame for her own failings, but that seems less likely in this instance, as it's hard to see how she benefits.

 

[Nessie]

This is an example of Police Scotland arresting someone, when clearly there was insufficient evidence;

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news...g-paraglider-past-trumps-no-fly-zone-released

"A protester accused of flying a paraglider into a no-fly zone set up to protect Donald Trump while he visited his Scottish golf course has been released from custody.
The man was arrested and charged on Sunday after allegedly piloting the paraglider in front of the Trump Turnberry hotel on Friday, trailing a banner reading: “Trump: well below par.”
Police Scotland said the incident was being treated as a breach of the air exclusion zone in place for the US president’s two-night stay.
The 55-year-old man had been due to appear at Ayr sheriff court on Monday. But the Crown Office, which runs Scotland’s prosecution service, said he had instead been released pending further investigation.
“The procurator fiscal at Ayr received a report concerning a 55-year-old man and an alleged incident on Friday 13 July,” a Crown Office spokesman said. “He was liberated from custody pending further inquiries and did not appear in court.”

So, he is arrested on the Friday, spends the weekend in police cells and on Monday morning the PF reads the case and realises there is insufficient evidence and instructs the police to release the paraglider. Hence the need for "further enquiries". That is PF speak for, the police had insufficient evidence to arrest him in the first place.

In my experience, a PF only liberates prior to going to court because he knows he does not want to face the Sheriff with a very badly evidenced case.

Maybe no fly zones have no actual power of arrest? Maybe someone forgot to file the paper work? Maybe what the paraglider did was not an actual breach of the law as it is?

 

[Nessie]

A huge fraud case collapses as the judge rules there is no evidence those involved knew what they were doing was illegal. The accusation was overstating profits by including future income not yet received. ;

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-46459884

"The acquittal came after trial judge Sir John Royce dismissed the case brought by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO), halting the trial after the prosecution presented its case.
"I concluded in certain crucial areas the prosecution case was so weak it should not be left for a jury's consideration," Judge Royce said."

From this report, it is clear the police just did not gather sufficient evidence and the prosecution were happy to proceed with what little they had;

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/dec/06/two-tesco-directors-cleared-of-false-accounting

"The SFO’s case relied heavily on whistleblower Amit Soni, a senior accountant within Tesco’s finance team who was concerned with the way income from suppliers was being handled. But the SFO did not directly interview any Tesco buyers or suppliers or call them as witnesses in the trial."

It looks like because in one person's pinion there was a crime (Soni) that was enough to establish there was a crime.

It is unusual for a judge to stop a trial after the prosecution have presented the evidence, because there is insufficient evidence to prove a crime.

 

[Samson]

A huge fraud case collapses as the judge rules there is no evidence those involved knew what they were doing was illegal. The accusation was overstating profits by including future income not yet received. ;

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-46459884

"The acquittal came after trial judge Sir John Royce dismissed the case brought by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO), halting the trial after the prosecution presented its case.
"I concluded in certain crucial areas the prosecution case was so weak it should not be left for a jury's consideration," Judge Royce said."

From this report, it is clear the police just did not gather sufficient evidence and the prosecution were happy to proceed with what little they had;

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/dec/06/two-tesco-directors-cleared-of-false-accounting

"The SFO’s case relied heavily on whistleblower Amit Soni, a senior accountant within Tesco’s finance team who was concerned with the way income from suppliers was being handled. But the SFO did not directly interview any Tesco buyers or suppliers or call them as witnesses in the trial."

It looks like because in one person's pinion there was a crime (Soni) that was enough to establish there was a crime.

It is unusual for a judge to stop a trial after the prosecution have presented the evidence, because there is insufficient evidence to prove a crime.

This happened in Shrien Dewani in South Africa, where the trial judge could see the crime solution was obvious, his wife was killed by carjackers tipped off by the driver.
It should happen frequently, indeed in all the cases of miscarriage on this subforum that I have seen, including Steven Avery and Brendan Dassey.
This raises the possibility that a new system should be considered. After the prosecution make their case, a full review by independent forensic specialists is undertaken.

 

[Nessie]

I think that the problem is prosecution services all over the world are under staffed and not always staffed with the best lawyers. They then do not properly check cases and will proceed with charging and trials where any reasonable enquiry would find there is insufficient evidence.

That results in people accused of crimes and even held in custody when clearly they did nothing criminal. They can wait years before going to trial and the legal system then considers it to be justice working when they are found not guilty or the trial is ended because a Judge has stepped in to say there is insufficient evidence. But it clearly is not justice working at all.

 

[Samson]

I think that the problem is prosecution services all over the world are under staffed and not always staffed with the best lawyers. They then do not properly check cases and will proceed with charging and trials where any reasonable enquiry would find there is insufficient evidence.

That results in people accused of crimes and even held in custody when clearly they did nothing criminal. They can wait years before going to trial and the legal system then considers it to be justice working when they are found not guilty or the trial is ended because a Judge has stepped in to say there is insufficient evidence. But it clearly is not justice working at all.

I was interviewed by police for breaching a name suppression order, I was guilty as sin, except I did not know it was a crime to post on an internet blog site. It was several months of extreme anxiety. Eventually I was instructed to appear at 9 am at central police station in Auckland on a friday, then it was a long weekend. I went without a lawyer, was recorded at length on dvd and cautioned and advised in the usual way.
3 years jail was the maximum penalty the Detective said then rapidly said never had been imposed.
The name was Robert Conchie Harris, who was sentenced to 8 1/2 years for perjury after this incident. The detective was somewhat interested as he was totally unaware that I had posted the name of a cold blooded double killer who had been trained to testify against David Wayne Tamihere, who did 22 years for a crime he did not commit, the murders of Urban Hoglin and Heidi Paakonenn in 1987.

The short story is it is utter misery to be under police investigation.

I was warned a few days later. Smartcooky has a similar story.

 

[luchog]

I think that the problem is prosecution services all over the world are under staffed and not always staffed with the best lawyers. They then do not properly check cases and will proceed with charging and trials where any reasonable enquiry would find there is insufficient evidence.

A bigger part of the problem in the US is that prosecutors in most jurisdictions are elected to office, not appointed, and therefore have to appease their constituency in order to stay in office. Which means that they have to make it appear that they are effective at their job, and are "tough on crime"; which is measured by their overall conviction/incarceration rate, as well as winning convictions in high-profile cases.

This provides the impetus for a great deal of malfeasance, including inflating conviction rates by manipulating or manufacturing incriminating evidence, withholding exculpatory evidence from the defense, intimidating or manipulating suspects into confessions or plea bargains even when innocent, and so on. There is also the impetus to pander to prejudices and fears when selecting juries and presenting cases, in order to guarantee a conviction.

None of which spells anything good for actual justice being done.

 

[luchog]

mispost

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Brandon Mayfield and fingerprint evidence

The Brandon Mayfield case is one that never went to trial. The California Innocence Project has a decent short summary, and I will continue to look for intermediate-length discussions. In brief, the FBI thought that his prints matched a latent print from the Madrid train bombing. One problem with the identification is that each subsequent examiner knew the conclusion of a previous examiner.

Simon Cole's article, "Scandal, fraud, and the reform of forensic science: the case of fingerprint analysis” had an interesting observation about this incident: One important part of the story that is omitted from many accounts is that there were media leaks in Europe about an American suspect in the Madrid bombing. It was these leaks which forced the FBI to apprehend Mayfield as a material witness, rather than keeping him under covert surveillance."
EDT
Professor Cole's article is worth reading, both for its discussion of the Scottish McKie fingerprint scandal and also for his more general remarks on the insufficiency of scandals as a means of effecting needed forensic reforms.

 

[Elaedith]

The Brandon Mayfield case is one that never went to trial. The California Innocence Project has a decent short summary, and I will continue to look for intermediate-length discussions. In brief, the FBI thought that his prints matched a latent print from the Madrid train bombing. One problem with the identification is that each subsequent examiner knew the conclusion of a previous examiner.

Simon Cole's article, "Scandal, fraud, and the reform of forensic science: the case of fingerprint analysis” had an interesting observation about this incident: One important part of the story that is omitted from many accounts is that there were media leaks in Europe about an American suspect in the Madrid bombing. It was these leaks which forced the FBI to apprehend Mayfield as a material witness, rather than keeping him under covert surveillance."

I use the Mayfield case as an example when teaching about cognitive biases in forensic analysis. A lot of people are surprised about this case because they assume fingerprint matching is now automated and not based on the judgement of examiners. It is the use of automated search in huge databases that results in the retrieval of prints that look highly similar leading to vulnerability to biasing effects.

I first heard about this in the seminar by Dror that got me interested in this area. Dror discussed the case in few articles such as this one.

One thing I was never clear about is how the Spanish analysts avoided the bias - whether it was because they retrieved a different potential match in the first place, or they were able to disregard the previous decisions by FBI examiners because they didn't place much faith in them. I seem to remember Dror saying something to this effect.

 

[Roger Ramjets]

I was interviewed by police for breaching a name suppression order, I was guilty as sin, except I did not know it was a crime to post on an internet blog site.

Hard to believe that someone could be that ignorant.

 

[Rolfe]

A lot of people are surprised about this case because they assume fingerprint matching is now automated and not based on the judgement of examiners. It is the use of automated search in huge databases that results in the retrieval of prints that look highly similar leading to vulnerability to biasing effects.

That is an extremely interesting observation.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Level 3 details in the Mayfield case

I am still reading up on the the Brandon Mayfield case; I am reading both the analysis from the Department of Justice's Office of the Inspector General and its 2011 follow-up report covering changes in the FBI laboratory's approach. His prints were ranked fourth best in the automated search (see page 31, which is in Chapter 2 of the first OIG report).

One problem of which I was not previously aware is that Level 3 details in fingerprints are tricky because they are not entirely reproducible, and an over-reliance on Level 3 details was one of the reasons for the misidentification. Level 1 deals with arches, loops, or whorls; Level 2 deals with the more familiar minutiae of the ridges, such as bifurcations and lakes; and Level 3 deals with pores and also with subtle changes in ridge thickness, as I understand it. There was also the problem of circular reasoning; knowledge of the reference prints influenced the interpretation of the latent print.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Shirley McKie and fingerprint comparisons

Concerning the Shirley McKie fingerprint case in Scotland, Dror and Cole (Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 2010, 17 (2), 161-167) wrote, "In this case, a print left at a murder scene was identified as that of Shirley McKie, and after this identification was further verified by other experts, she was arrested. However, she contested the identification all along, and indeed many leading international fingerprint experts have categorically rejected that it is her print. Eventually, she received an apology for the erroneous identification and was awarded £750,000 in a compensation settlement (Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland, 2000; Justice 1 Committee, Scottish Parliament, 2007; McKie & Russell, 2007). What is interesting about this case is that the print continues to be disputed. The issues of cognitive bias and psychological influences have been raised by both sides as a contributing factor to the errors of their opponents." Ms. McKie cowrote a book about her ordeal, which is pertinent to the subject of this thread.

There is also a good summary at this blog.
EDT
"Disagreement existed over the number of points of correspondence required to determine an identification, and concern was raised over the lack of a blind verification procedure. In 2011, the Scottish Public Judicial Enquiry into Fingerprinting concluded that a misidentification had occurred (see report issued by [11])." link

 

[catsmate]

Molly and Thomas Martens, at least wrt murder.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Mayfield's surveillance

"'I, myself, have dark memories of stifling paranoia, of being monitored, followed, watched, tracked,' he said, choking back emotion."

"'The days and weeks and months following my arrest were some of the hardest and darkest that myself and my family have ever had to endure,' he [Brandon Mayfield] said." CNN

Mr. Mayfield was quoted in a Frontline documentary The Real CSI: "He [defense consultant Kenneth Moses] actually confirmed what the other three examiners had said. And from that point on, I kind of felt like the train to a death penalty just pulled out of the station."
EDT
A blog entry that discusses two cognitive errors in this case is found here.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Mayfield, McKie, and the responses from the authorities

After having extensively reviewed the Mayfield case and briefly reviewed the McKie case, I think that the Scottish authorities come off badly in the comparison. Mr. Mayfield was given an apology, and the FBI took corrective action. The Scottish authorities have never acknowledged their probable error, and there has not been an apology. When Rolfe called Scotland a justice hellhole, I thought that this might have been a rhetorical flourish, but I am more inclined to think that it was an honest statement of opinion.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Murder of Wayne and Sharmon Stock

Wayne and Sharmon Stock were murdered in their farmhouse near Murdock, Nebraska. Their nephew Matt Livers and Nick Sampson were arrested and spent months in prison, owing the Mr. Livers' false confession. They were released owing to some excellent police work from Wisconsin and in spite of shoddy and corrupt work in Nebraska. It is unclear to me whether some of the victims' relatives still think that Matt Livers had a role in this crime.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

The prosecution of Ryan Mays for the fire aboard the USS Bonhomme Richard (we have a thread covering this case) also belongs here. Seaman Mays wanted to try out a second time for the Navy Seals. Although I do not know what happened to him after he was acquitted, commenters on the case thought that his Navy career was over. He also spent several months in the brig.

 

[AmyStrange]

I hope this isn't outside the scope of this thread, but it's interesting to note that two authors who wrote many novels about fictional lawyers (James Grisham and Erle Stanley Gardner) also wrote books about miscarriages of justice.

John Grisham's Innocent Man and now Framed.

In a review for the latter book, it was written:

In John Grisham’s first work of nonfiction since The Innocent Man, “the master of the legal thriller” (Associated Press) teams up with Jim McCloskey, “the godfather of the innocence movement” (Texas Monthly), to share ten harrowing true stories of wrongful convictions.

Although I have great respect for Jim McCloskey's work through Centurion Ministries (from Wikipedia):

Centurion Ministries was founded in 1983 by Jim McCloskey as a result of his investigation on behalf of a prisoner, Jorge De Los Santos.

He may have been one of the later founders of the innocence movement, but he isn't THE godfather, so let me set the record straight by telling you about Erle Stanley Gardner and his organization and book that predated all of that by almost three decades.

Erle Stanley Gardner may not be a household name now a days, but you'd definitely recognize his most famous creation, Perry Mason. In September of 1948, he wrote a column for Argosy magazine called The Court of Last Resort.

Here's a quick summary from Wikipedia about what happened next:

The Court of Last Resort is an American television dramatized court show which aired October 4, 1957 – April 11, 1958, on NBC. It was co-produced by Erle Stanley Gardner's Paisano Productions, which also brought forth the long-running hit CBS-TV law series, Perry Mason.

The concept for The Court of Last Resort was developed from a popular true crime column of the same name. Written by lawyer-turned-author Erle Stanley Gardner, the column appeared in the monthly magazine Argosy for ten years beginning in September 1948. Gardner enlisted assistance from police, private detectives, and other professional experts to examine the cases of dozens of convicts who maintained their innocence long after their appeals were exhausted.

In conclusion, if you get the chance, please read all three books, but especially the one by Erle Stanley Gardner, The Court of Last Resort. They'll open your eyes to how easy it is for LE to "frame" a suspect and make him look guilty, even though he's really innocent.

Not everyone in LE is like that, but IMO, even just one is one too many.

Thank you.


-