[HN Gopher] MythBusters Helped a Wrongly Convicted Man Prove His...
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MythBusters Helped a Wrongly Convicted Man Prove His Innocence
Author : gbourne
Score : 105 points
Date : 2022-10-09 18:38 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (innocenceproject.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (innocenceproject.org)
| hanniabu wrote:
| > Deceptive tactics -- like offering leniency in exchange for a
| confession or falsely telling children they can go home if they
| confess -- have been identified as risk factors for false
| confessions, and young people are especially vulnerable to
| falsely confessing as a result of these tactics.
|
| The great american justice system
| pstuart wrote:
| The American _Legal_ System. Justice is for sale.
| gnicholas wrote:
| So if it's impossible to light a pool of gasoline with a match,
| what is being used in movies when this appears to happen?
| MichaelDickens wrote:
| I would think any fire on film is either CG or, if real, is lit
| by a hidden fuse being controlled by a pyrotechnician. It would
| probably be too dangerous to have an actor directly light a
| fire using a match.
| suzzer99 wrote:
| I've lit a pool of gasoline with a match before. Screwing
| around in junior high melting our plastic toys in the driveway
| - not something we should have been doing.
| giantg2 wrote:
| A lot of times it looks like they're burning alcohol to me.
|
| It's even more funny when they show them lighting jet fuel with
| a match or lighter.
| mlindner wrote:
| This reminds me of how people get angry at me whenever I poke
| holes in the science of movies. Movies affect people's ideas of
| what is possible and what is impossible.
|
| This is why I'm also quite against, in the general case, post-
| apocalyptic movies that predict a future based on non-science
| impossible things happening. Many spaceflight movies and TV shows
| for example show very bad things in the future giving people a
| false impression that the future will be worse than the past even
| that goes against direct evidence that throughout human history
| things have trended better, on average, every single year with a
| few moments of worsening.
| taberiand wrote:
| How do you reconcile your prediction of a better future with
| the current scientific projections of the effects that climate
| change (and a myriad other environmental challenges and
| resources issues) will have?
|
| Especially given that our current position at the top of the
| trend of improvement is in enormous part due to fossil fuels -
| the primary contributor to climate change and our expected
| future trajectory.
|
| Past performance is not indicative of future results and quite
| frankly, to me, it all looks downhill from here.
| chordalkeyboard wrote:
| > giving people a false impression that the future will be
| worse than the past even that goes against direct evidence that
| throughout human history things have trended better, on
| average, every single year with a few moments of worsening.
|
| This is called 'Whig history' and in my view it is an incorrect
| characterization of history that gives people a false
| impression that things will get better without them having to
| understand the enabling factors that lead to social
| improvement, ironically leading to the possibility of a
| _decrease_ in prosperity and social welfare as people take
| improvement for granted and fail to bring it about through
| their actions.
| emkoemko wrote:
| its art.... leave it alone, these films are not documentaries
| walrus01 wrote:
| > Many spaceflight movies and TV shows for example show very
| bad things in the future giving people a false impression that
| the future will be worse than the past
|
| I think The Expanse got it right, in that we're more likely in
| the near to medium term to get a bunch of oligarch type Jules-
| Pierre Maos (Hi Bezos!) running things behind the scenes. Not a
| utopia type technology + spaceflight + social inequity problems
| solved future.
| mlindner wrote:
| The Expanse is one of the TV series that I was thinking of
| actually when I wrote that comment. It'd be too long to write
| down here but I feel like while The Expanse got many things
| right it also portrayed all sorts of fundamental things that
| were completely off.
|
| For example even in the first season things that are
| fundamentally off that result in very different futures:
|
| * The idea that we would actively intentionally re-create the
| situation of MAD in another context. MAD was an accident of
| historical happenstance and now that we know about it, we
| wouldn't try to re-create it.
|
| * The idea that a magical new engine would suddenly appear
| that made many of the things in the tv series possible.
|
| * The idea that Earth will for some reason simultaneously
| become a massive welfare state, yet still somehow have solar-
| system spanning power.
|
| * The idea that there would be a complete backtrack in labor
| rights and labor safety (the ice asteroid mining scene).
| Izkata wrote:
| > The idea that we would actively intentionally re-create
| the situation of MAD in another context. MAD was an
| accident of historical happenstance and now that we know
| about it, we wouldn't try to re-create it.
|
| I haven't seen The Expanse, but "try" doesn't seem to come
| into it: We are very close to that situation right now with
| NATO and Russia.
| samatman wrote:
| It sounds like fiction isn't your style, basically.
|
| It would be a boring landscape if all the predictions which
| went into every science-fiction story were the ones you
| happen to like.
|
| Add them up, you get Star Trek. That's great: but we
| already have Star Trek.
| haswell wrote:
| Addressing your points:
|
| 1. Is it recreation, or just maintaining the status quo?
| Once MAD exists, I don't think it ever stops existing.
| Space creates an opportunity to escape MAD thus
| intrinsically a threat. It's not hard to imagine MAD
| proliferating as humanity proliferates. It may seem obvious
| that this is the wrong path, but it's not obvious that
| major world players see things the same way.
|
| 2. I think books and shows tend to be made about periods of
| time that involve extraordinary discoveries because the
| time prior to this is not particularly interesting and
| there wouldn't be anything to tell a space story about.
|
| This show also sets out to show the relatively near future
| and early stages of space exploration which means it must
| necessarily come on the heels of some major breakthrough.
|
| 3. Why do the two have to be mutually exclusive? Is this
| too far off from current reality?
|
| 4. Look at the current climate towards human rights and the
| trend towards losing them worldwide. Recent major decisions
| by the US Supreme Court also come to mind. That old
| behaviors would re-emerge in environments subject to less
| oversight seems pretty plausible.
|
| Obviously everyone has personal preferences, but $0.02.
| lozenge wrote:
| "The idea that there would be a complete backtrack in labor
| rights and labor safety"
|
| Our economy has always relied on people lacking labor
| rights or safety. From serfdom, to colonialism, to slavery,
| to police fighting strikes, to banana republics
| (governments overthrown for not trading on the US terms),
| and today hundreds of millions work in unsafe conditions or
| as child labor for coffee, chocolate, diamonds, precious
| metals, clothing, in recycling, etc. But that doesn't make
| good TV, so it's asteroid mining and there's no kids on
| screen.
|
| As for the idea the human race has transcended past MAD...
| that's just wishful thinking on your part! I could equally
| say capitalism was due to historical happenstance and
| wouldn't be invented today. It would have about as much
| evidence.
| kiba wrote:
| Utopia makes for very boring television. Dystopian
| megacorporations make the future interesting to watch.
|
| There's a reason why there's a Chinese curse: "May you live
| in interesting time."
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| Utopia doesn't mean that there are no more challenges, it
| just means they are different. You can have space travel
| in a utopia - same with time travel. There are lots of
| ways to get into dangerous situations. The drama is just
| centered around different things than it is with
| dystopias.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > There's a reason why there's a Chinese curse: "May you
| live in interesting time."
|
| This cannot be true, because there is no such curse.
| Anthony-G wrote:
| Another myth busted: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_yo
| u_live_in_interesting_ti...
| Joeboy wrote:
| > Utopia makes for very boring television.
|
| The original Channel 4 version was brilliant (although
| the subject matter didn't age well, or maybe aged a bit
| too well). Didn't see the US remake but heard it was a
| dud.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJnN3WMwDsk
| mlindner wrote:
| Dystopia is just as lacking in creativity as Utopia. You
| can have very interesting things happening even when
| overall society is getting better. For example: A TV
| series showing civilization winning against some form of
| evil is plenty interesting and has been done many times,
| despite it not being dystopian. Right now it's become
| "popular" to have things go badly or to have a set
| standard start of things going badly. This is a mental
| disease of movie writers in the modern era.
| pehtis wrote:
| About your first point, MAD was actually developed by John
| von Neumann and there is nothing accidental about it. 'He
| also "moved heaven and earth" to bring MAD about.' https://
| en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann#Mutual_assure...
| gridspy wrote:
| Yes, but in response to the soviet threat.
|
| > [The Soviets] believed that whoever had superiority in
| these weapons would take over the world, without
| necessarily using them. He was afraid of a "missile gap"
| and took several more steps to achieve his goal of
| keeping up with the Soviets
|
| (This is an except from the parent's wikipedia link)
| klyrs wrote:
| > The idea that a magical new engine would suddenly appear
| that made many of the things in the tv series possible.
|
| Assuming you're talking about the Epstein Drive and not the
| protomolecule... it didn't suddenly appear, it was
| invented. And, surprisingly enough, it's way closer to
| realistic than most scifi.
|
| http://toughsf.blogspot.com/2019/10/the-expanses-epstein-
| dri...
|
| > The idea that there would be a complete backtrack in
| labor rights and labor safety (the ice asteroid mining
| scene).
|
| What labor laws cover the asteroid belt today? Or, closer
| to home, the moon? If an earthly nation claims some
| territory out there its own and seeks to enforce the law,
| that's one thing. But what if a private company sends
| workers out there in unclaimed space? Humanity hasn't had
| access to such a lawless frontier in centuries, but we've
| got a lot of ugly history to look back on. Civil rights are
| not won by optimists, they're won through bloody and
| protracted fights. Look no further than Apple to see that
| companies in today's economy are still fully on board with
| slavery and sweatshops, and Apple is one of the "good guys"
| known for holding vendors' feet to the fire over human
| rights abuses.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| It is possible that I am biased, because I watched Expanse
| and ( apart from being annoyed by how it quickly it became
| a relationship show ) I absolutely bought into the premise
| including the points you listed:
|
| * The idea that we would actively intentionally re-create
| the situation of MAD in another context. MAD was an
| accident of historical happenstance and now that we know
| about it, we wouldn't try to re-create it.
|
| If there is one thing that best predicts how individual
| human will behave, it is how they have behaved in the past.
| It is sad, but that is the reality. Similarly, as a
| species, once we know, a certain set of actions are an
| option, there will be people who will aim for that set of
| actions. If a creation of blackholes becomes possible, you
| can rest assured, MAD will almost instantly will be
| recreated throughout the known human biome. I personally
| think you give humanity way too much credit than it
| deserves.
|
| * The idea that a magical new engine would suddenly appear
| that made many of the things in the tv series possible.
|
| Hmm, not exactly magically, but most of recent
| technological wonders sped up developments in other areas
| significantly to the point, where ( naturally with
| exception of fusion which is always 20 years away ) we
| sometimes see developments in ways that could not be
| imagined before ( Operation Warp speed and resulting
| vaccine come to mind ) save for science fiction's like
| Rainbow's End, where a line between development and
| production is.. ridiculously short. I think in the span of
| human existence, suddenly likely needs to be limited by
| definition somehow.
|
| * The idea that Earth will for some reason simultaneously
| become a massive welfare state, yet still somehow have
| solar-system spanning power.
|
| I don't want to be that guy, but not to search very far
| Soviet Russia was just such a state ( with the tech allowed
| to it at the time ). I am not sure how this is a
| contradiction. Each society governs its own priorities.
|
| * The idea that there would be a complete backtrack in
| labor rights and labor safety (the ice asteroid mining
| scene).
|
| I can't even.. We can just barely force corporations to
| maintain labor rights now with some semblance of control
| since we have them physically operating and we can summon
| the representative in court and enforce compliance. And
| even then, those controls are eroded via various means. Is
| it really that difficult to imagine 'when cats away'
| scenario?
| tremon wrote:
| _we wouldn 't try to re-create it_
|
| Some people argue that we've already recreated it:
| https://consilienceproject.org/its-a-mad-information-war/
|
| > While the 2016 U.S. election was a watershed in
| computational propaganda, the same phenomenon has
| basically swept the planet, beginning as early as
| 2010.[..] We posit that this frontier leads toward
| mutually assured destruction, like all frontiers of arms
| races in weapons technologies.
| [deleted]
| dghughes wrote:
| I find explosions are the worst specifically the sound of them.
| Far away exploding things don't make a sound the instant the
| explosive explodes there's a delay. What funny is the delay
| makes it dramatic it's intuitive to humans far away means
| delay.
| Laaas wrote:
| There's a 4chan post somewhere with a hypothesis about how
| people are subconsciously unable to discern between fiction and
| reality, even though they might be able to consciously, just as
| you describe.
| saalweachter wrote:
| Isaac Asimov had an essay about how, in order for fantasy to
| exist as a genre, you first have to understand that some
| things aren't real. It's been awhile since I read it, but I
| believe he does address that many people have a problem with
| fantasy _because they don 't really distinguish between
| talking about something and believing in something_.
| _Reading_ a story about witches becomes _believing in
| witches_ or _trying to be a witch_.
| Fezzik wrote:
| Are people surprised by this? The vast (super?) majority of
| people on this planet seem to consciously claim to know or
| believe in supernatural things they cannot possibly know and
| that there is absolutely no evidence for. People appear to be
| extraordinarily bad at distinguishing between reality and
| their hopes and dreams.
| pstuart wrote:
| Such a great show.
|
| They also censored themselves when they discovered a recipe for
| an incredibly easy and powerful explosive. I throw that out there
| as a case of self-regulation in the marketplace of ideas.
|
| Edit: Adam Savage talking about it --
| https://nerdist.com/article/mythbusters-destroyed-all-eviden...
|
| Apparently it was _not_ well known, so not an original discovery
| but still a legitimate use of the word.
|
| My comment was a point about censorship in that it can be the
| right thing to do. I'm curious AF about what the recipe is but am
| ok with not knowing and and knowing that effectively no one else
| does.
| mlindner wrote:
| They didn't "discover a recipe". Anyone who was a kid at that
| time could look up on the internet the recipes for these
| things, and even pre-internet in things like "The Anarchist
| Cookbook" and other such literature.
| vore wrote:
| I don't think that's so much self-regulation as it is the
| producers would probably not let them publicize something like
| that on TV and avoid some 3-letter agency knocking on their
| doors.
| louwrentius wrote:
| Some people have a basic sense of morality, doing what's
| right.
| dtx1 wrote:
| meh, they also censored how to make thermite (iron oxide powder
| and aluminium powder ignited by magnesium) and you can get
| explosive material easily almost everywhere gunpowder is
| available. They censored how to make Nitrocellulose as well
| which requires strong acids that are arguably more dangerous
| than Nitrocellulose itself. Anyway that recipee is available on
| wikipedia anyway
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrocellulose#Guncotton
| anon_cow1111 wrote:
| I had to look this up, it seems it was related to the myth of a
| LOX tanker truck spilling/crashing and turning the road asphalt
| itself into an explosive. Seems kinda weird to omit this though
| as it's not really arcane knowledge (Pretty sure "The Martian"
| had a scene where they blow open an airlock with something
| similar).
|
| Other mythbusters censors include dropping an entire episode
| about credit card hacks/fakes because Visa and friends
| threatened to pull ads from the network, and another episode
| where they accidentally caused their test mice to cannibalize
| each other.
| dghughes wrote:
| Curb Your Enthusiasm was filming an episode during a baseball
| game. A man accused of killing someone walked into frame as part
| of the crowd and that was proof of his location at the time of
| the crime.
|
| YouTube video of 60 Minutes Australia:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3V5Cj8d43Yw
| JoshGG wrote:
| There's a short documentary "Long Shot" about this on Netflix
| that is pretty good:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Shot_(2017_film)
| giantg2 wrote:
| So why is deception wrong in an interrogation? I can see some of
| the other tactics as problematic, but not that directly.
| pkrotich wrote:
| What scares me about US legal system is; Elected prosectutors are
| motivated by high conviction rate for obvious reasons (re-
| election and politics of it all). Add the fact that their line of
| work requires competitive personalities and you become just but a
| number, especially if you don't have competent cousel. I'm not
| saying ALL public defendors are incompetent, but we see to many
| cases of ineffective representation when the accused cannot
| afford a high powered attorney.
|
| Yes - you should be scared of ordinary prosectutors in suits
| doing their "best" job more than a gang member for example! They
| want are motivated to win at all cost... short of obviously
| illegal ways.
| caminante wrote:
| False positives are rare in the US [0]: estimated at only 1% of
| incarcerations according to the Innocence Project (mentioned in
| HN article) and go even lower depending on who does the
| analysis.
|
| Are you aware of legal systems in other countries with lower
| false positives?
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miscarriage_of_justice#United_...
| el_nahual wrote:
| That number doesn't seem right to me so I followed the
| wikipedia citation. It cites "The Innocence Project", which
| actually says:
|
| > the few studies that have been done estimate that between
| 2.3% and 5% of all prisoners in the U.S. are innocent (for
| context, if just 1% of all prisoners are innocent, that would
| mean that more than 20,000 innocent people are in prison).
|
| https://innocenceproject.org/contact/#:~:text=How%20many%20i.
| ..).
| nostromo wrote:
| The 1% actually cites the estimation method (extrapolation
| from DNA exonerations). The higher 2.3-5% doesn't. What
| studies are those?
|
| https://innocenceproject.org/how-many-innocent-people-are-
| in...
| Retric wrote:
| 2% of people on death row get exonerated and that's an
| underestimate due to the difficulty in proving innocence.
| Most crimes don't see anything close to that level of review
| before or after conviction with death row reserved for the
| most clear cut cases.
|
| So, most estimates suggest in the range of 2-10% of
| convictions are probably wrongful.
| polygamous_bat wrote:
| If every time you enter the legal system and you have a 1%
| chance of being falsely convicted, that is a broken and
| dangerous system regardless of how other countries fare at
| that metric. Especially if you consider that certain
| underprivileged demographics are already at a higher risk of
| having more run-ins with the police regardless of their
| criminal state.
| PebblesRox wrote:
| > If every time you enter the legal system and you have a
| 1% chance of being falsely convicted
|
| I agree with you that 1% is a high number in this context,
| but I don't think the math works for what you're saying
| here.
|
| If 1 out of 100 convictions are of innocent people, that
| doesn't mean that 1 out of 100 innocent people put on trial
| are going to get convicted. That rate could be higher or
| lower than 1% because it depends how many innocent people
| are rightfully judged innocent.
|
| Hypothetically, a court system that always returns a guilty
| verdict could have a 1% false conviction rate if 99% of
| people put on trial are actually guilty. But the rate of
| wrongful conviction for an innocent person entering this
| system would be 100%.
| caminante wrote:
| _> that is a broken and dangerous system regardless of how
| other countries fare at that metric._
|
| No. It's on topic because the parent singled out the US,
| and I'm curious if other countries are taking procedures
| that could be adopted in the US to reduce false positives
| and ALSO false negatives.
| tialaramex wrote:
| Wait, why do you think it's necessary to _also_ reduce
| false negatives?
|
| Suppose there are five people who stole some candy, out
| of 100 people in the village.
|
| I claim that a system A in which three of the actual
| thieves are successfully convicted, but the others escape
| is _better_ than a system B in which four people are
| successfully convicted, three of them are thieves but one
| is innocent. You seem to disagree, insisting a better
| system must also reduce false negatives.
| caminante wrote:
| _> a system B in which four people are successfully
| convicted, three of them are thieves but one is
| innocent._
|
| You might need to re-phrase your hypothetical: "five
| people [...] stole some candy candy", now you have three
| getting convicted, a new person is innocent, but charged,
| and what happened to the 5th person?
|
| Regardless, you're skipping a step to argue values about
| how many people should be incarcerated, etc. False
| negatives matter because just like you don't want
| innocent people being locked up for stealing candy (or
| serious crimes), you ALSO don't want a high number of
| murderers freed into the streets!
| TheCoelacanth wrote:
| If you don't care about reducing false negatives, then
| the ideal policy is simply to abolish prisons because
| that results in zero falsely imprisoned people.
| rfrey wrote:
| They said they don't think it's essential to _reduce_
| false negatives, presumably from current levels. That 's
| quite different than your reducto ad absurdum.
| tremon wrote:
| Does that 1% include the number of people who accepted a plea
| deal, or only the number of wrongful convictions after a case
| has gone to trial?
| giantg2 wrote:
| More like 2-10%. And that's only for the _incarcerated_.
| There are many more that take deals to avoid prison time and
| rotting in jail for 2 years just to get a trial, etc.
|
| https://thehighcourt.co/wrongful-convictions-statistics/
|
| Edit: can't find the actual article. Child commenter goes
| into great detail about this being a rather solid range
| though.
| DannyBee wrote:
| Both overall cite NRE data.
|
| So may be better to go to the source (and the latest
| version). https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Doc
| uments/NRE%...
|
| is the 2021 National registry of exonerations annual
| report.
|
| What you'll see, interestingly, is neither the 2021, nor
| 2019 report, estimate the prevalence of wrongful conviction
| directly.
|
| In particular, the claim "According to the 2019 annual
| report by the National Registry of Exonerations, wrongful
| convictions statistics show that the percentage of wrongful
| convictions is somewhere between 2% and 10%. "
|
| It does not say that. It offers no percent view on the rate
| of wrongful convictions. It only offers the direct number
| of exonerations, exonerations broken down by race, by crime
| type, etc. It points out lots of statistical things
| (exonerations are not evenly distributed by race, crime,
| etc)
|
| Someone else, with some other (not obviously explained)
| methodology is using that to calculate wrongful conviction
| rates.
|
| That said, roughly all sources i can find are within the
| 2-12% rate bound (IE i see a number saying 3-6%, a number
| saying 1%, a number saying 12-13%).
|
| The only truly easily found study (IE pops up immediately
| on google search) is federal:
| https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/251115.pdf
|
| The DOJ funded the urban justice institute to figure this
| out back in 2017, and the rate they came up with was also
| ~11%.
|
| In there, they point to/compare with previous studies on
| DNA evidence that suggest a rate of 12.5%
| giantg2 wrote:
| Good catch
| caminante wrote:
| Where is the 2-10% in the source document [0]? I couldn't
| find it in a brief glance.
|
| [0] https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Documents
| /Exon...
| giantg2 wrote:
| Looks like they're referencing the LA Times but I can't
| find the actual article.
| caminante wrote:
| I see the stat referenced in an LA Times OpEd [0] by the
| fiction author, John Grisham, but hit a dead end.
|
| [0] https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-grisham-
| wrongful...
| BlargMcLarg wrote:
| The actual source mentions the 1% being 'conservative'.
| Considering the Duluth model rules in many DV cases and there
| is an obvious bias towards not admitting false positives, I'd
| be surprised if that conservative measure was a maximum.
| justin66 wrote:
| A 1% false positive conviction rate is not comforting.
| sanp wrote:
| This doesn't show what the false positive number is from
| African Americans or Latinos.
| rfrey wrote:
| Notwithstanding the other replies to your comment estimating
| as high as 5%, 1% struck me as shockingly high.
| lalopalota wrote:
| Most public defenders are competent at their job.
|
| Unfortunately, their job is to minimize the court's time spent
| spent dealing with their clients.
| awb wrote:
| A couple things misleading about the title.
|
| 1) Mythbusters wasn't aware of this case
|
| 2) His confession under duress was the major factor in the
| release
|
| > In 2019, the appellate court granted John post-conviction
| relief on the grounds of actual innocence -- a rarity in Illinois
| -- largely based on the abuse used to coerce a false confession
| from John.
| ergocoder wrote:
| The insulin inventor wasn't aware of millions of diabetic
| people either.
|
| MythBusters's episode was the starting point for him. The title
| is okay.
| woojoo666 wrote:
| What kind of compensation do these people typically get? I can't
| imagine what compensation would be enough for losing 35 years of
| your life, especially the years 18-53. There goes almost all
| dreams of becoming famous, meeting your soulmate, starting a
| family, etc.
| hammock wrote:
| Many municipalities have an online database of all the wrongful
| death settlements, etc that they (aka the taxpayer, split with
| e.g. the police pension fund) have paid or are current paying.
|
| Once out of curiosity I googled the name of the officer who
| simply "took" my online stolen property report, and found out
| both they and their partner had multimillion dollar judgments
| against them
| caminante wrote:
| Here's info for wrongful incarceration compensation at the
| federal and state level [0].
|
| [0]
| https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Documents/Key-...
| lucb1e wrote:
| Takeaway from that link: around 50k/year in the USA, more or
| less depending on the region, and you have to go to another
| court (or similar) to get it, depending on the region.
| Additionally, in some regions you might get "tuition
| assistance", "medical expenses" (national healthcare for the
| rest of your life I think this might mean?), "job search
| assistance", and other things that you expect to get in a
| prosperous country without having to have been wrongfully
| convicted, and these benefits aren't even universal across
| the USA after a wrongful conviction. But the 50kx35=1.75
| million USD should make for a nice retirement fund regardless
| of anything else.
| mlindner wrote:
| None by default AFAIK. They can sometimes start a civil lawsuit
| against the state.
| louwrentius wrote:
| Maybe this has always been obvious to everybody but the American
| justice system is not about truth or fairness.
|
| The goal is to convict no matter what. That is how the incentives
| are lined up.
|
| Case in point: the (famous) Serial podcast started about the (now
| evidently) wrongful conviction of a teenager. He was recently
| released after 20+ years because of a note found written by a
| prosecutor that pointed to other plausible suspects, information
| never shared with the defence.
|
| You are very unlikely to ever be judged by a jury of your peers.
| You are much more likely to not 'risk' that and take the plea
| deal. From the perspective of a European (and we have our issues)
| it sounds the system is fundamentally rotten.
|
| The mythbuster story only highlight how basic truth finding isn't
| really an issue.
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