This Just Makes Me Sick
 

http://www.cnn.com/2002/LAW/11/07/DN....ap/index.html

This guy, due to be released in January after serving 20 years for rape, has been exonerated through DNA evidence. No wonder prosecutors work so hard to keep old cases from being re-examined. We'd all lose whatever shred of respect we have left for the justice system if we knew how frequently we put innocent people in prison and sentence them to death.

What's particularly heartbreaking about this case (and inspiring at the same time) is that he could have been out on parole much sooner had he played their game and apologized for a crime he didn't commit. His quest to preserve a modicum of self-respect probably cost him quite a few years in prison.

What would you have done in his shoes.

Its cases like this that made me change my views on the death penalty.

Maybe I'm misreading the story but it seems to say he's not even entitled to any compensation? WTF is up with that?

Believe me if someone can sue McDonalds for coffee being too hot and winning he'll be having some money coming his way!

"Webster became a suspect because police had arrested him in Towson months earlier in the theft of a pocketbook, according to court papers. "

I swear everyone brings up this case just to piss me off.........



it's also cases like this guy's that changed my mind on te death penalty as well...and also to not always be so sure of someone's guilt or innocence.....

Nope, unless someone passes the hat, he just gets his clothes back and an official "Oops!"

Notice "arrested," not "was convicted." And since when is this an excuse for such a horrendous mistake, anyway, even if he was the world's #1 pickpocket, the real rapist continued to walk the streets after his conviction.

Just goes to show ya that you can't even trust an honest purse snatcher these days. What a trumped up charge!!

Seems like the news mentioned not all that long ago that some states were moving to pass legislation to prevent improperly charged and incarcerated prisoners from the right to compensation.

For all the complaining about this DNA test' cost... its about 600 dollars. They're willing to spend MILLIONS to put someone to death with all the appeals and such (when life costs hundreds of thousands), yet hedge at a piddly 600? Makes both of us suspicious. :Graucho

And yes we are basically against the death penalty. If nothing more than to save all those tax dollars in cases of actual guilt. Actual guilt would have to be 'caught with the smoking gun over the body'. It's just too easy to twist evidence. I'd have to think 23 hours a day in a cell all alone would be more punishment than death.

Putting even one person to death that turns out innocent... well thats just wrong. I know if I lost someone to murder, my first reaction would be death, but a few years down the road, when I was watching tv, cat on the lap and a bag of chips... I'd think evil thoughts about the killer on that cot, reading a magazine, knowing he will be kept in the best of health just to insure he spends an awfullllll long time to think about it. Well now, THAT is justice.

And if it turns up that someone incarcerated IS innocent, we can turn 'em loose and give them the millions it would have cost to kill him. He'd / She'd deserve it. We can't bring them back. :(

If our system views death as the ultimate penalty, then it follows it tries hardest to get those decisions right. So, when Illinois found it was set to to execute about a half dozen innocent men, I changed my own mind not only the death penalty, but on the possibility of justice under the American system, which those involved in it like to call, "The worst legal system anywhere, except for all the others."

Actually, I prefer the French system, which is not adversarial, but is more of an inquiry.

YEAH!!!

WHAT THE FUCK!!!

Let's start a fund. Send me the money.

Actually, even with the addt'l prison time, he's better off this way.
If he'd been paroled he would have had to register as a sex offender everywhere he went and send letters to his neighbors informing them of his conviction etc.
At least this way he's a truly free man.

I agree with Tom and Sykkboy on these issues, I'm against the death penalty mostly because you always run the risk of executing an innocent person.
And for people who boo hoo about the $$ it takes to imprison people, did you know it costs less to keep someone in prison for life than it does to execute them?

Pretty frightening isn't it. There are flaws in DNA evidence too but it's the best thing we have and thank goodness it helped this guy get out of prison.

in some states its about a .01% ratio of felony offenders who get a trial, the pub. defenders make the rest plead because they convince them that they shouldnt get a jury trial

:thumbsup

For all its flaws , its still one of the best sytems " Money Can Buy":Graucho

Sueing should only be allowed on a case by case basis with approval from a council setup by the government.

People may not be allowed to sue for frivolous things such as coffee being too hot.

People may not be allowed to ask for huge sums of money for trivial matters. (Such as the lady who sued Macy's for over $100 million because one of the big Thanksgiving balloons hit a lampost that her head. She was in a coma for a few days).

The largest possible sum one can sue for in a medical-related suit is twice the amount of the medical bill.

That's pretty bad. What's just as bad or worse are people on death row that serve a long ass time in prison and later exonerated. See http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/Innocentlist.html

I have a girlfriend who worked for the Innocence Project; If you guys wanna wack up some money I'll see that the guy gets it.

Hell I'll even kick in a hundred. To get it started, what's the best way to do this? Is there a way to set something up so people can make easy donations? You can paypal me the money and I'll make sure it gets off to the guy...anyone who knows me will vouch for my honesty.

What would be the best way to hook a brother up who got ass raped by a bunch of cracker ass prosecutors?

He was prosecuted 20 years ago. Obviously, the evidence available at the time was compelling enough for a jury to convict him. It doesn't make me sick. It makes me happy that advances have been made in DNA technology and that mistakes such as this one are dramatically less likely to happen now.

I mean, sure, i feel bad for the guy, but if the jurors had no reasonable doubt that he was guilty, they did what they had to do.

I'm sorry but you have a very naive view of the US jury/justice system. You have a DA that needs to get voted back in. A jury who is expecting to see Perry Mason who will get the guilty yo confess in 45 minutes. Then a State defender who probably does not have the skills the prosecutor does.

This is not a innocent versus guilty thing, this is two sides trying to win an argument. The BEST side wins. Ask OJ

True, but i mean, what can the jury really do? If they're convinced the person is guilty, the only verdict they can return is guilty. Obviously, that's not perfect, which is abundantly clear in this case. For that same reason, we can only appreciate advances made in DNA technology, and hope for further advances.

Im sure he was guilty of something.

I strongly appose the death penalty. However i cant help but view this flaw of justice as perhaps a possitive thing. By having this man wrong fully convicted it has caused the rest of you to question the US legal and justice system. I see that as a great thing,... to be able to question your county and your government and not be shot for it.... lucky people!!

As in just as it is, if shit never went wrong how would we ever learn how to do it right?

Absolutely terrible. The proving of crime is so hard that I have some sympathy for prosecutors, but obviously there are terrible miscarriages of justice.

Anyone that has had anything to do with the legal system knows how imperfect and fucked-up it is. Bottom line: The power of prosecutors and the system is huge and you can't defend yourself if you don't have the cash.

The idea this guy doesn't get compensation for 20 YEARS of false imprisonment is UN-FUCKING-BELIEVABLE. What Republican cocksucker wrote that law?

I also just think of Noelle Bush. American law only applies poor folks. Zero tolerance unless you're rich. Fuck them all.

Actually, wouldn't he still have to do that if he hadn't finally been exonerated? I'm not sure that registration and notification thing is strictly for parolees in many jurisdictions.

I went to law school with a guy who went to prison for about 3 years for rape. He was a nurse working with disabled people and got railroaded. He was eventually exonerated by DNA evidence and received a $3 million dollar settlement award. What happened sucks, but he made out ok in the end.

I would think some sort of provision could be made for long-term wrongful imprisonment. PLUS, there should be an inquiry to determine if there was any monkey business on the part of the authorities.

You have a jury who wants to get back to earning a living, you have overworked and sometimes dishonest police, prosecutors, and defenders... It's hard to imagine what there is in the American justice system which is actually conducive to justice.

Unless you're loaded, of course, and then the reverse is true.

Yes, and if I were to shoot you in the head, it might cause people to reexamine their views on gun control. Love your logic!

Actually, over the last year we have had a very similar case going on here in Cleveland. A guy was just cleared of raping a young girl after spending 10 years in jail for the crime. They fought tooth and nail to keep his ass in jail, too. He's going to get some money (a few hundred thousand or something) but not nearly enough to make up for ten _years_ in jail for something he didn't do.

The only thing more fucked up than us putting innocent people in jail is how hard the assholes fight to keep them there. They're interested in prosecution percentages and not lives.

Just watch a judge or prosecutor running for election. "In the last five years, John Q. Doe has put over 3,000,000,000,000,000 people in jail for life. He gets the TOUGHEST sentences." You never see a commercial saying "John Q. Doe carefully considered every case and only prosecuted people he was really, really sure were guilty."

SpaceAce

I saw something on the news a few months ago about how most DNA evidence from rape kits arent processed. Apparently they usually only test evidence if they have a suspect to match it to. The excuse is that the cost is too high. The kicker is that they wont let the victim pay for the DNA testing because it would make the system "unfair" to those who couldnt afford it.

The news show offered to pay for 50 tests at random. Some of the tests came back with matches to suspects that were ALREADY in the national database which led to arrests.

I cant fucking imagine being raped and someone refusing to allow me to pay for me own test!! Our system is fucked sometimes.

But is that not how a society corrects their injustices? Whether it be gun control, abuse.... if these occurences never caused people to question their validity and humanity then when would it stop? Would we continue to live as a society with values?

What a sad spectacle. He might not be entitled to any compensation according to the State, but hopefully he'll find a lawyer who'll get him a nice award.

And those who said it were right about prosecutors. Alot of 'em are in it to win cases and get themselves elected to higher positions, not to serve the cause of justice.

Right on dude, I like the way you think.

Another interesting point is that attorneys assigned by the state are most often inexperienced or incompetent. They can receive as little as $6 an hour, so only those desperate for work and those only fighting for justice take up that kind of work.

A few months ago a man got executed in Texas whose trial took exactly 3 days and who had an attorney specialized in real estate as defense. The only "evidence" they had for him committing the crime he was accused of was that he was in the vicinity of the scene of the crime (2 miles away in a town with 100k+ inhabitants) and that he looked like the perpetrator - both were bald black men. His attorney however had just finished law school a few months ago, and didn't have a clue. So, he fried.

Blaze of Glory!