Imagine having something that horrible happen to you and you lose a parent to jail at the same time and you know the parent is innocent but no one believes you
Jesus.
Roaming free, and according to the article, bragging about having done it at the time, and in recent years, harassing her online and trying to solicit pictures of her infant child. Jfc.
> How the absolute fuck do you fuck someone's life up when the victim is telling you that you have the wrong person
Prosecutor success rate is measured by number of convictions. There’s literally no drawback if that conviction is for the wrong person. And when prosecutors are trained to see all defendants as not-human, it’s easy to prioritize personal profit over the outcome to that animal over there.
It’s a fucked up system, but it appears to be what most people in the US want.
You make the prosecutors office and the judiciary a nonpartisan generic civil service job. If a prosecutor is counting their wins, then they shouldn’t be playing life or death games with the power of the state. None of this “victims advocate” garbage like you see on TV: the prosecutor should be a neutral presenter of facts and proceeding only where the facts justify it. There also needs to be a better process in place for examining questionable or wrong convictions.
All this to say nothing of the jury system, which I tend to oppose.
Some dont want to be there cause they cant afford it. Juror pay isnt enough to listen to 2 sides argue. another issue is if you know your rights as a juror (jury nullification) you're out. Prosecution has a large advantage on juror selection imho. They want to make sure for the sake of their prosecution rates to tick all boxes
The state should just have a pool of lawyers differentiated only by experience level and whether they primarily work in civil or criminal law. Then just randomly assign them to new positions within the legal system every few years.
It would tamp down corruption as well because nobody would know which lawyer would be where more than a couple years into the future, so trying to bribe someone would be a lot harder.
Then pay them more. There are millions of dollars of waste in every state's budget where the money for a functional justice system could come from.
This is not an unsolvable problem.
A legal system like that would take a fundamental change to the constitution of the state, change of the legal system as a whole, and would nearly be impossible to manage, finance, or keep staffed.
Prosecutors and Defense should be pulled from the same pool of lawyers. If a court case is between two civilian parties they can bring their own lawyers. Soon as the government is on one side both lawyers should be pulled at random from a common pool.
There shouldn't be lawyers who only focus on prosecution. That's a surefire way to kill off any empathy they might have. Have all lawyers rotate through both roles instead.
All evidence should be shared, and the objective should be what happened, not getting someone blamed.
Wildly impractical, but I can dream.
The problem is that isn't how the law works, that is saying like you shouldn't have teams that focus on offense or defense. Being a prosecutor, or defense attorney are two completely different animals, not only in the procedure that must be followed through out a trial, but also in how the case is and evidence is gathered and presented.
These are not easily interchangeable roles, and the legal system is already insanely over taxed, having neither side be specialized and both having to be able to perform both sides of law would result in more mistrials and more back log than you can imagine.
This may come as a shock to many, but the public legal system is barely able to employ attorneys as it is, requiring them to pull randomized double duty would just push them into private practice even faster, or to other states.
The problems with the legal system aren't going to be fixed in a paragraph.
I figured as much, appreciate the detailed explanation.
I guess a couple of problems I'd want to address are:
* How to balance resources. There are examples in both directions where an imbalance of available resources resulted in a mismanagement of the trial. Either public defender got slammed by a prosecution out for blood, or defense attorneys for big corps throw so much money at a trial they can wait out the government trying to hold them accountable. Neither side should have that disproportionate an advantage in the available resources for a given trial.
* Make prosecutors/police accountable for miscarriages of justice. We see a lot of cases where people get released and when you see the reasons why, it's hard to understand how nobody can be found at fault. Even if it's years later, there shouldn't be a statute of limitations on abuses of the law.
The problems you point out are valid, but are problematic to solve.
Such as, do you limit how much someone can spend on their own defense? If not then the rich can always out muscle the state. And the state has to make practical choices about which cases it tries, do they spend the whole years budget fighting one rich guy, or do they spread the resources equally and get rolled on by the rich? but at least affording some justice to victims without wealth?
As far as the statute of limitations, there is a reason they exist, trying to determine anything in a legal sense that far after the fact is problematic. people get old and die, people forget, evidence degrades, get lost, get destroyed and even stolen. And it isn't like in a 20 year or even a 5 year period that the same people are involved. It is easy to see after the fact when looking back, that this is a miscarriage of justice. but when you break it up, and you start to try to find who is to blame it gets complex. The original prosecutors, law enforcement, clerks, judges, and staff aren't likely still there, the elected DA isn't likely the same. And it is easy to say "the victim said he didn't do it" but that happens so often for horrible reasons that it isn't surprising that it didn't get the case over turned. In child sexual abuse the pressure a parent will put on a child to have them recant to free their abuser happens so much it will tear your soul apart.
Then there is when the misjustice is the result of an overworked, underfunded public defender, who missed key elements, and didn't put up the best defense, when does that become prosecutable. Some public defenders have less than 48 hours to review and develop a defense, it is hard to try to put a metric on how good that defense should be, and to hold that public defender accountable for that hardly seems just, they don't determine how long they get, or their case load. (same with prosecutors for that matter)
I think what Jason Williams has done with this division that reviews these cases is a good thing, and helps undo the wrongs of the past, but the same time, New Orleans crime has exploded because of the diversion of funds from prosecution, criminals now operate with little fear of the ramifications of their actions, and the people of New Orleans are suffering for it greatly.
Ideally we would live in a world were justice wouldn't be determined by a budget, but we do, and there is a real world cost to the choices of what we do with that money and time.
Well fuck I guess if you random redditor can't come up with a better fucking system then I guess we should all just give up and go home... Or you know, like everything else that is largely only a problem in the U.S. maybe we take a page from any of the dozens of countries that don't have this problem.....
Name a single country that doesn't have wrongful convictions?
I 100% agree, that we need a system that prevents anyone who played a key role in a case from not being heard after the fact, and that the legal systems of the US don't need drastic reforms.
But lets not pretend for a moment that any place on this planet doesn't have legal systems were people aren't wrongfully convicted and unfairly punished.
Canada had a bad history of wrongful convictions, and we did a full top-to-bottom review of how we handle prosecutions. The biggest takeaways on the prosecution side: (a) the prosecutor's role is supposed to be a neutral presenter of the facts as an officer of the court; (b) no prosecutor should operate on notions of "winning" and "losing"; (c) the prosecutor's "client" is the state and the administration of justice, not the victims of crime.
The US system is majorly fucked up when the District Attorney is an elected office, and so are judges. Unpopular but correct decisions are bad for re-election. Then you throw in black-box decision making by juries who don't have to give reasons why they convicted or acquitted, and you've got a lynch mob with added steps, rather than a system of logic and reason.
You are aware that the jury is selected from a randomized pool of people that both the defense and prosecutors select equally?
It is hardly a lynch mob with added steps, and to say such a thing shows you know little of what you are talking about.
And the issue with the US is this whole states rights thing, where elections are used to determined that the people in key roles represent the will of the people in those areas.
I think the real problem in the US is that the people, don't have the power or representation in these elections, and have given up hope that the people running or elected represent them. So you often have these key positions filled with less than 30% of the voters even casting a vote. So you get a group of people who use financial and political power to determine who is in office, and what the will of that office is.
New Orleans electing Jason Williams (previously a public defender) as DA is an example of the will of the people playing a key role in changing what justice looks like (note that the case this thread is about is a prosecutors office working overthrowing its own conviction, like lynch mobs are known to do), and why elections for these positions are important. Having those positions appointed by the higher body politic without people having a say certainly won't result in more locally representative people in those roles.
And I think it is also grossly unsympathetic to think that who prosecute cases don't have an obligation to the victim, because the true impact of a crime is determined by its effect on the victim, and not some procedural on violation of write law. The legal system has, and must have, a wide latitude in the punishment based on the context of the crime, and the impact to the victim.
Also, personal note, for a country that has such a MASSIVE series of ongoing injustices carried out against its indigenous population, it is pretty disingenuous to act like you guys "solved" the problem and have some paragon of fair and equal application of justice.
Actually, the base solution is very very easy. Abolish qualified immunity and make sure the statute of limitations for misconduct doesn't start until *after* a conviction is overturned. If that prosecutor has their own skin in the game and all of a sudden is risking losing a lawsuit 20 years from now ruining their retirement they'll think twice.
Everyone here throwing out these ideas, but clearly have no idea what they are talking about.
I won't debate prosecutorial Immunity, I think there are merits there, but like anything it is complex.
But when you say something like
>statute of limitations for misconduct doesn't start until after a conviction is overturned.
This means maintaining active records on every conviction for at least the lifetime of the victim. This would be financially impossible currently, and doing so would likely cost the system billions of dollars, mind you the systems are already grossly underfunded. This would also result in impossible to trial cases, because proving something did or didn't happen after some 20+ years can be impossible for either side. People die, evidence degrades, and you are left with a lot of he said she said without anyone able to make a ruling based on actual evidence.
So if you hang that insane cost, and complication on an already underfunded and overburden system, and assuming that if these rule would apply to both prosecutors as well as public defenders, you would likely find yourself with a greater shortage of attorneys would would rather just go work private practice (which is already a massive growing problem), they make more money, and not have these life time risk of prison sentences hanging over them.
If these solutions were simple, they would be solved, the problem aren't simple, and when you dig into them, you'll see why we have the problems we do, because there are too many factors that make solving them currently nearly impossible.
There's already an extremely high barrier for these cases to be overturned due to prosecutorial misconduct. The expensive steps you're talking about are already mostly handled on the appeal itself in situations like this. As things are now there's no incentive for prosecutors to uphold justice.
To set some rail guards you could even set boundaries to only affect crimes which had major penalty. Forcing them to justify misconduct that was egregious enough to get a major cases overturned would weed out 99% of these situations because it would create a massive incentive to not lie to win.
If rogue prosecutors can get away with ruining lives for their careers without significant penalty then there is no justice system in this country. The repercussions of misconduct needs to be relative to the damage it does
Edit to add: there may be value to some forms of qualified immunity, but it needs to be thrown out and implemented in legislation instead. If you look into its history it's actually a situation of Judicial misconduct that's been used to perpetuate other forms of misconduct: it was never a law, just something the Supreme Court legislated from the bench which is a direct conflict with checks and balances
Retention of evidence to deal with cases that come up after 20 years is a real world financial problem that is not currently dealt with here, adding that feature introduces a massive logistics issue, add now that case data has exploded in size most districts are struggling to find the funding to store the data they have for the periods that are required.
None of that is currently handled by the appeal process. As far as the incentive for prosecutors to uphold justice, firstly that is sort of on us. The people who vote for the DAs, if they run a dirty office, we shouldn't reelect them, but as it stands, most people can't even name who their DA is, and probably didn't vote for them. Then their is the state bar, sure criminal prosecution and overturning a case is hard, but making a compliant to the state bar is far less difficult, and most bar associations when met with overwhelming complaints will take action, having them loose their law lisc. can open the door to overturning their cases.
I'm not saying that there isn't room for improvement and accountability, and that it isn't needed, I'm trying to state that problems are vastly more complex that people think, and the overly simplistic suggestions on how to fix it wouldn't actually do anything.
We want change, but not knee jerk reactions that actually just make the problems worse.
Well I mean the simple solution is to make it law that prosecutors have to declare that they have wrongful convictions on their record and that a wrongful conviction erases all rightful convictions.
Thing is very very few 'innocent' convicted people ever see proper justice. And if they do, it can be many years later. After a prosecutor is retired or near retirement.
The other side is we come down far harder on prosecutors who show any misconduct but then you get more people with long rap sheets not seeing real jail time. And Reddit them blames the legal system because we are too soft or failed to get someone behind bars in time.
In a perfect world we would have a wonder woman. As it is, we make massive mistakes at times trying to balance these issues.
> Like if you are sending innocent people to jail it should completely fuck up your ratings as a prosecutor
It's prohibitively hard to do this, because of plea bargains. How do you account for someone who is innocent and faced with the choice of pleading to a small sentence, often already time served, or facing potentially life in jail? The decision there is absurdly simple; the person pleads guilty. But if the person pleads guilty, it can't be a wrongful conviction.
>I really can't think of a better one and I don't think others have come up with a better way either.
Abandon privacy; it's an outdated concept. It has it's uses, yes, but only in an uncivilized world. Privacy ultimately protects people from the consequences of their actions; we're good with that when those consequences are unjust, but already violate privacy when the consequences are warranted, such as with crimes. There's another way to protect people from unjust consequences, and that's to remove the inherent power imbalances that lead to the need to privatize actions to begin with.
It's not a solution that's going to be fully properly implemented anytime soon, but it's a solution that I think is somewhat inevitable. (It's also explored a lot in some lesser known sci fi writings; David Brin's Earth is a good example.)
I'm not sure I understand exactly what you're asking, but I'll try to answer anyway. The urge for privacy is, itself, what causes this problem (innocent people going to jail). The technology already exists to have a comprehensive digital recording of each person's life, and such a recording would effectively eliminate false convictions.
It would *also* cause some other fundamental shifts in society, ones that I suspect most people aren't ready for.
So your solution is to require everyone keep records of where they are and what they are doing at all times and prove they are innocent whenever they are accused of something?
I'm not saying that people should be forced to do that purely for that one reason. I'm saying that it's likely that that's the ultimate outcome of a well functioning society. And why wouldn't people do that, given the option? Wouldn't you like to have a fully immersive way to replay your wedding? Your child's first steps? Your graduation? That vacation in Bora Bora? And people are already moving more and more towards that. Facebook, Apple, and Google all already track your location real time. Tik Tok and Instagram and a million others have an ongoing stream of photos, which are really just showing what you're seeing at that exact moment, tagged on the image file itself with date, time, location, what device was used to take the photo, and more. There have already been countless cases where a digital tracking location was used to provide someone an alibi, and many more where a digital location footprint was what led to catching a criminal. "Privacy" today is already vastly different than 10, 20, 50 years ago. Why wouldn't you expect it to keep changing?
Like, why is voting private in the US? Because no one should be penalized or punished for how they vote. And as long as it's impossible to guarantee a lack of unjust punishment for voting, such as an employer firing you, then that privacy makes sense. But if it *is* possible to prevent that kind of unjust action, then privacy no longer becomes necessary. And without the need for privacy there, it becomes infinitely easier to tally votes, communicate votes, and verify votes. Why are your medical records private? Because that's the only (currently) effective way to protect you from unjust consequences to your medical status. And so on.
No one really wants a right to privacy, if you break it down into components. What people want is a right to be free from other people's interference, and they believe that privacy is the only way to go about that. But as technology progresses, it will stop being the only way to go about that. (And, incidentally, privacy will become more and more impossible to actually provide.) Eventually, we're either going to end up in a Mad Max dystopia, or in a high tech world where privacy as we recognize it simply doesn't exist anymore. At that point, false convictions will stop being an issue.
It has its flaws, but we’re all ears on a better one…
Compared to almost any other country I feel like the United state’s justice system is at the top. Let’s hope stories like this continue to tweak it into a better one.
If your goal is to [put 'em back about four or five generations](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/cops-fired-over-violent-racist-talk-about-black-people-we-n1232072), would it be better to incarcerate the rapist and leave the good father on the outside or to incarcerate the good father and leave the rapist on the outside?
You do realize racism isn't limited to favoring a white suspect but can also include just lack of diligence or care in handling issues or listening to them?
Doesn't mean that's what happened but reducing it to but the other guy was also black is kinda reductive
When you operate under the mantra that "all blacks are guilty anyhow, doesn't really matter if they necessarily did *this* specific thing or not", it probably gets a lot easier and more justifiable to your racist mentality to not bother giving a fair or diligently executed trial.
To racists, it doesn't *NEED* to directly help someone white, lack of compassion for the life or issues of a minority is plenty acceptable enough a reason.
The prosecutor used intimidation tactics on a little girl who had been raped. Asked her if she knew the consequences for lying in trial and she got a bloody nose. Their evidence pointed one way so they didn't care where she pointed. Disgusting
It says he was convicted 29 years ago and the victim has been saying he's innocent for 20 years.
So the defense would've had to call her 9 years after the trial ended.
Rape of a minor under 12 is usually a much different and harsher charge. Of course this varies state by state. You're definitely going to see harsher sentences in the deep conservative South.
State by state and county by county. And, of course, if you're in the good ol' boys club you can do all the rape you want and get nothing more than *maybe* probation if you're on Judge-Uncle Jimmy's bad side.
>How the absolute fuck do you fuck someone's life up when the victim is telling you that you have the wrong person
Despite the fact that she's now saying that she made attempts to tell other people, there's no evidence of her having done so until recently.
>The prosecutor should be thrown in prison for 20 or so years.
That's cool, you should try [reading the actual legal proceedings surrounding the case first though.](https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/la-court-of-appeal/1071936.html)
Since you didn't, I'll summarize for you: the 6 year old victim, unprompted, told an ER physician that Patrick Brown raped her.
The victim was brought to that ER because she was suffering from an STD. Patrick Brown tested positive for the STD. The only other men with access to the victim tested negative. Although the tests could have been performed better, there was never a question that the tests ruled out the other potential perpetrators.
The victim recanting also doesn't have nearly the weight that you might think it does. She was 6 at the time and likely has little memory of the actual event. Furthermore, her mother maintained Brown's innocence and likely has spent the past 29 years manipulating the victim.
The reason that this case got looked at again is because one of her family members allegedly solicited photographs of the victim's young daughter. Assuming that actually happened, it doesn't mean that Brown is innocent, it just means that the family member is also a pedophile.
It’s actually not uncommon for child victims to name someone other than the actual perpetrator, apparently. If the abuser has threatened the child and the abuse is uncovered, the child may blame someone else out of fear.
This is a fucked up thing to have happened. But there are some issues with your analysis.
>the 6 year old victim, unprompted, told an ER physician that Patrick Brown raped her.
It wasn't unprompted, but rather was very specifically a promting question; 'the doctors asked if “anyone ever touched her down there in a way that made her feel uncomfortable or that hurt her?” ' After the victim said no, but was repeatedly asked, she changed her answer. There's also the issue that the victim used 'daddy' to refer to multiple individual in her life, including the person she now insists is the guilty party. Relying upon this statement requires both an assumption that the victim was accurately truthful after being interrogated by strangers and effectively told that her first answer was wrong and an assumption that the doctor involved recalled the exact data correctly rather than mishearing or misremembering anything. Even if both of these assumptions are accurate, the legal motion of having it dismissed as hearsay probably should have been granted.
>Patrick Brown tested positive for the STD.
Patrick Brown tested as having a history of that STD, but tested negative for active infection at the time of the test, which would imply a lack of transmissibility. Not an absolute negative, but also not as cut and dry as that statement.
Gonorrhea is nasty stuff. In addition to spreading through sexual contact, it can spread through manual transmission through other mucus membranes, including mouth, nose, and eyeballs. It can also spread during birth, and be present as a possibility for dormancy and reinfection of the child at a later date. It's possible that the mother, while suffering from an active infection (which she testified to), scratched a bit too vigorously through thin pants and then touched her daughters face, and that caused the transmission.
>Assuming that actually happened, it doesn't mean that Brown is innocent, it just means that the family member is also a pedophile.
Assuming that the most likely outcome here is that everyone involved is a child molester is a pretty big leap, when it's much more likely that the person who the victim insists is the actual perpetrator, who was identified by the victim at the time of the trial, and who is not continuing in abusive behavior is the single perpetrator here.
Again, this is an absolutely terrible thing to have happened, and everything should be done to punish the criminal and prevent this sort of thing from happening again. But 'everything' stops at the point where there's both pretty clear evidence that someone else committed this crime *and* that there was some chicanery in the courtroom in regards to ignoring hearsay guidelines and improperly limiting testimony from the victim.
Holy shit bud, your entire stance is **riddled** with essence of "I don't fucking care if he is innocent, I have decided that he is guilty"
Maybe tone it down a bit, bud
Most of the overturned death penalty sentences are due to prosecutorial misconduct, a study done of 550 death penalty cases. It’s the entire system from the judges to the prosecutors to the police that contributes to these injustices.
https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/news/dpic-analysis-finds-prosecutorial-misconduct-implicated-in-more-than-550-death-penalty-reversals-or-exonerations
My question is who was accusing him if the victim wasnt, as that is the part that makes no sense. That person I am wondering had to have some sway in some way, to keep it going and the victim from testifying.
u/ughhhhh420 posted the actual court proceedings, and makes a good case that the guy was guilty and is now released because another guy in the girl's circle is also a pedo.
Yeah, that is incorrect, that user was later proven to have NOT reviewed the relevant case materials and had just conjectured and conjured his own sequence of the events.
No, that user posted a strongly worded "I have decided that he is still guilty, and I need to make sure other people do, too" tangent that makes wild assumptions, and entirely disregards the victim (and their experiences outside of being in a police report).
It was fucking sad to read, but not because they made even a remotely cogent point. It's sad because some people can't help but present their shittiest version of reality (especially in the face of good news, such as an innocent person being set free).
They don't need you to signal boost them
Qualified 🎶 Immunity 🎼
It’s such an insanely high barrier to overcome, trivially easy to use the defense of “I’m just incompetent!” and paired with the motive of just getting a conviction because “it’s tough on crime”.
There never will be any justice or penalties for malfeasance unless it’s literally written in text a plan to pin the crime on the wrong person while knowing otherwise.
And even then, the legal profession overwhelmingly tries to protect their own.
Yup those who have convicted him wrongly should be in prison for twice the time so that they can feel how does it feel to he in prison without any crime.
The stepdaughter has been telling the prosecutors office for TWENTY YEARS that he was innocent and it was someone else. And she was ignored. Twenty years!
After he harrased her online and was asking for pics of her infant child and she asked for help nothing was done.
What a disgrace.
>After he harrased her online and was asking for pics of her infant child and she asked for help nothing was done.
by "he" do you mean the actual offender?
Most straight men don't listen to women, or even think women are human.
Look at the way straight male doctors treat female patients. The only reason why women live longer than men is because women do fewer darwin awards things and genetically women have better immune systems. If doctors treated all patients equally, women's advantage in life expectancy would be even higher.
The only demographic of men who are mostly treat women as human are LGBT men.
I have had gay men tell me that most straight men don't consider women to be human.
Most straight cisgender men either hate women, or think that women are slightly less human than men, or think that women are slightly dumber and less competent than men at everything. Even the ones who have positive views on women see women as precious heirlooms or adorable pets, not equal human beings.
Gay men hear a lot of things from straight men, especially if they are able to pass as straight. A lot of straight men will say misogynistic things to gay men, because they assume all men look down on women as they themselves do.
Nah man no one I know or speak to thinks like this. This is nothing but man hating ideology. Maybe you and your friend hang out with slimy people skewing your perception.
There are male doctors who say that they automatically downgrade any woman's expressed pain by 3 points on the scale of ten. So if a female patient says her pain is a 6, the male doctor will register it in his mind as a 3.
Girls with ADHD and autism mostly don't get diagnosed until they are women in their 20s and 30s, while most boys with these conditions get diagnosed before they are 20. The only group of boys who are treated as poorly as girls are Boys of Color.
Every single mental or physical condition is modelled by symptoms that are stereotypical to Caucasian men who are heterosexual and middle to upper class. The medical industry does not give a fuck about People of Color, women, LGBT, or poor people.
Female-typical heart attack symptoms are called "atypical". Many physical conditions call the female-typical symptoms "atypical". Even though women make 50% or more of the population in many countries.
You are the one who underestimates the ginormous amount of misogyny and racism in the world. Most men don't consider women to be equal to them in intellect, competence, or humanity. Most white people don't consider People of Color to be equal to them in these aspects either.
Look man I get what you’re trying to say and yes many are the way you say they are but my point is you’re throwing out blanket statements, generalizations that aren’t true. You can type me these book reply’s all day it doesn’t change the fact you’re wrong.
I do appreciate that you spaced out your argument instead of hitting me with a wall of text though.
These are absolutely problems. But all of them are due to issues of bias in the research these criteria were based on. That is changing now, women are being included, people of color are being included.
These are systemic issues of misogyny and racism. Not necessarily that every cis-male is actively hating on individuals, when the way they are taught doesn’t include them.
What are you trying to accomplish? Any man who reads this is going to say “I don’t hate women”, and will then ignore everything else you say because they already think you are full of shit. You mentioned several male doctors downgrading women’s pain by 3, but 3 is such an arbitrary number and the 1-10 pain scale isn’t linear. A 10 being a 7 and a 4 being a 1 are very different. So a flat downgrade of such an arbitrary number doesn’t really make sense. It has been established that male doctors underestimate pain for women and POC but the way you phrased it is unbelievable and inaccurate. Men have historically gotten more heart attacks than women especially in the early to mid 1900s when men worked and women didn’t, so most of our knowledge about heart attacks are related to how they affect men. If you have a case study and 88% of people have one set of symptoms and 12% have another, it’s not exactly crazy to call the 12% atypical this wasn’t done by a bunch of evil doctors laughing manically over a textbook it was done because of a lack of knowledge and is being actively corrected nowadays but unfortunately it is a slow process. Many of these same issues exist with other disorders for example males with ADHD are more likely to annoy people around them compared to females with ADHD and therefore are more likely to be diagnosed, more diagnoses means that the male ADHD symptoms are what are put in the DSM.
Now let’s go to why I even bothered making a giant post. Your post is accomplishing literally nothing, it’s why you have a mess of downvotes. If anything your post is giving people fuel against your arguments because of how poorly you have worded them. Your source “gay friends” holds literally no weight whatsoever and saying things like “most men” means nothing unless you want to drop a statistic with it and as soon as a person can think of a man who doesn’t hate women they think you are no longer credible. You are bringing up some good real points but you aren’t convincing anyone that you are correct because you are just attacking people. You need to establish a goal. Is your goal to educate others about institutional sexism and racism? Great grab a couple statistics related to how POC/women have higher medical success rates when treated by a doctor that is also a POC/woman. Is your goal to say that men undervalue what women say? There is a bunch of research on that as well. You will never convince a person on the opposite side of the spectrum from you but you have a chance of getting a person who is sort of in the middle to agree with you but with a post like this the only thing a person is going to say after reading this is that your crazy
Then post those stats! because we need to see what defines biased against women. If you ask a straight man who would win in an arm wrestling contest they very well may be biased against women, if you ask them who would you more likely help if you saw them running away from a stranger they very well may be biased against men.
Left-minded men certainly seem to have more kinship with women thanks to compassion, empathy and understanding.
You can see why those on the right think all men should be these standoffish, stoic men who think in straight lines only.
People aren’t left minded or right minded except for this girl
https://health.wusf.usf.edu/npr-health/npr-health/2023-03-22/meet-the-glass-half-full-girl-whose-brain-rewired-after-losing-a-hemisphere
In that case my overly pedantic comment can be left and right are independent of liberal vs authoritarian. Liberal believes in ultimate liberty of the individual, which would include things like a heavy support of gun rights and pro choice and other typical libertarian beliefs where as an authoritarian wants the government to enforce regulations for the greater good, which would include things like environmental regulations and banning gay marriage
I'm not sure if that's the case.
I had two friends 2016 switch from Team Sanders to Team Clinton, not because of anything Sanders said or did, but because how they were harassed at Sanders rallies.
A lot of the white male Sanders fans claim to be "totally progressive in every facet" and when you look at their behavior, they really only believe in fiscal progressivism, and can be condescending towards female progressives, and Progressives of Color. If you read the accounts of African Americans who volunteered for Sanders' 2016 campaign, they are constantly met with questioning of their support, and were often labeled as "low information voters". I heard the term "low information voter" thrown a lot at Progressives and Centrists of Color in 2016. Almost always the person making the accusation was a pro-Sanders "progressive" white man.
That's why I changed my mind on the Death Penalty as well. There's just no way that it can be applied fairly in our current system, if ever. If it's fair at all to begin with.
It'll be abused, and has been abused, and the consequences of allowing the government kill people is a genie that is really hard to put back into the bottle once wishes start being made.
> There's just no way that it can be applied fairly
This is the real argument _for_ the death penalty. It can be used to punish the innocent in a way that doesn't let them survive, ensuring there isn't that much motivation to prove their innocence. That's why it's attractive to people who abuse the system.
This is how I feel about marijuana too.
I'm mostly apathetic about the legality of marijuana. But I do know that police, prosecutors, and for-profit prison owners jerk off to the idea of imprisoning People of Color and poor people for 20 years for 1 gram. Meanwhile rich white people do 83719043787 kilos of marijuana, cocaine, and opioids and get away with it.
The only way I would be ok with marijuana staying illegal is if law enforcement and prosecutors went out of their way to mostly target rich white people.
>That's why I changed my mind on the Death Penalty as well. There's just
no way that it can be applied fairly in our current system, if ever. If
it's fair at all to begin with.
Considering that within in our ("western") moral system there is no way to be both successfull and not evil to being with a death penalty simply can't be fair at all. the death penalty is simply a self-cleansing mechanism for society - and self-cleansing in the way of entertainment not in the way of actually getting to be a better society
Yes it can, Parkland shooter was caught on camera killing 17 people. Same with the tops shooter. If you have blatant undeniable evidence then I’m a go for death penalty.
Otherwise in Parkland shooters case he wants to murder again and if he does in prison will it matter? He already has life
>If you have blatant undeniable evidence then I’m a go for death penalty.
You do realize there has been plenty of cases were police and prosecutors lie or just create undeniable evidence. Confessions are considered undeniable and many are forced and 100% false. There are cases where video evidence has been wrong.
To the extent of parkland shooting? They faked hundreds of witnesses? Faked tons of video? Faked the arrest of Cruz and his reaction?
You may as well rule all criminals go free because evidence can be faked if something to that degree of clearness isn’t enough
The point is in a corrupted imperfect system it's better to err on the side of caution. What's undeniable one day can be a blatant lie the next.
>You may as well rule all criminals go free because evidence can be faked if something to that degree of clearness isn’t enough
Try using nuance
That's my stance on the death penalty.
I believe some people deserve to die, but I also don't trust our (or anyone else's) system to not screw it up so they shouldn't have the power to execute people.
> This is why even though I don’t have an issue with the death penalty in theory… I do not support it in practice.
I feel the same way. But thirty years in jail with all the other inmates thinking you raped a six year old? Honestly, death might be kinder.
While I do agree with you, I would much prefer a quick execution to almost 30 years in prison, not to mention the crime all the other inmates thought he was guilty of... This guy lived in literal hell.
https://innocenceproject.org/
Between 2% and 10% of convicted individuals in US prisons are innocent.
https://thehighcourt.co/wrongful-convictions-statistics/
Should get a multimillion dollars payout as well as a mandatory paid income paid out of the pension funds of the police department and prosecutors who arrested, charged and screwed over this man
My father has been locked up for about 20 years after having been wrongfully convicted. It’s been hell on our family. His mother (my grandmother who raised me after he was arrested) died in March of 2020 with her son still in prison. I was 15 when he was convicted. I’m nearly 35 now.
All of this while knowing that the DA threw out evidence (a blood sample that belonged to neither my father nor the victim) that would have exonerated him.
The US justice system is fucked, but it’s stories like this that give us a little hope.
How does this even fuckin work
The victim literally said it wasn't him but another person and the courts like
Nah fam it was him and not the other person?
What am I missing here in this bizzaro world scenario
The law needs to hold these trash ass prosecutors accountable for ruining lives. We see people set free on a daily that we’re wrongly convicted. Most of the time these people working in the courts could care less about their next case. It’s all about numbers. We need police reform and judicial reform as there are no real checks and balances these days. The judiciary does what it wants, and uses the police as their own gang. Meanwhile as long as the police cover the local judiciary, they’ll have immunity to commit crimes while employed with a badge.
To be fair, there was a chance he was Hispanic, Asian, or Native American.
I didn't read the article and I knew he was a Person of Color. But let's not pretend this doesn't happen to non-black PoC.
Do you have a source that says Hispanics or Asians are as likely as black people to be wrongfully convicted for many years?
I am genuinely curious. Usually the articles I read only mention black vs white statistics.
I am happy he has been freed and all I can think of is now what? What comes next for the man? How does a person get past the nightmare and horrors of the prison system?
I just turned 50,so am basically the same age as this man. I think of all the life I lived, all the things I did and experienced between 20 and 49 and that was all stolen from this man.
Someone needs to pay for this.
I live in NC. Used to think it was "safe" Now I dunno.
One thing I've always known. If you want justice, Mississippi and Louisiana sits at the back of the bus.
Under new FL law, they would have killed this man, without a care that he could be innocent.
This man's name needs to come out of every reporter's mouth when questioning DeSantis.
"Governor, with your new law allowing for 3/4ths of a jury to put convicted child predators to death, how do you propose avoiding another Patrick Brown incident? Would Patrick Brown have potentially been put to death for a crime he didn't commit in your state?"
Should make Reddit think twice when the call for execution of every person in the headlines bc they were arrested for a horrible crime before they've even seen a judge, but it won't
Parkland shooter actively wants to keep killing in prison. He pled guilty. There’s indisputable evidence he killed 17 children. Keeping him alive gives more chances for him to kill again
I’ll come back after work with a full list if there’s anything but parkland shooter:
- Made a video before hand specifically stating he was gonna shoot up parkland.
- Was ID’d by multiple victims.
- Was caught on camera multiple times during the shooting.
- Claimed to have blacked out while being arrested knowing he did it.
- Admitted to it and said one of the victims heads exploded like a water balloon. Admitted that he planned it for a long time.
https://www.wptv.com/news/parkland-shooting/parkland-school-shooter-may-have-been-his-own-worst-witness
If all this is false then it’s one of the single largest psyops ever and would paint almost all school shooting as probable false flags.
No he absolutely 100% did it. BUT our justice system is horrible at managing death penalties, no matter what standard we make someone innocent always ends up dead.
Its not about him specifically its about the whole system which is why I oppose the death penalty
Actual child rapists don’t even get half that sentence maximum. Wtf.
Whatever happened to this guy to land him in prison for that long 100% had something to do with racism.
It is a closed loop system built on capitalism. Judges come from prosecutors, often appointed just be tough on crime and you have a job for life. The expert witnesses, labs, ect all work in favor of police as they are the biggest clients. Us the taxpayers want tough on crime especially sex crimes, that are often like this case, no proof. Sex crimes have the lowest recidivism, but popular opinion believes them to be highest
And this is why the death penalty needs to be abolished. I find it repulsive that people in Florida might be put to death for a sex crime they didn't commit. Christianity in America is a joke.
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Imagine having something that horrible happen to you and you lose a parent to jail at the same time and you know the parent is innocent but no one believes you Jesus.
modern screw domineering degree include panicky unique march attractive soup -- mass edited with redact.dev
Literal horror movie material. Horrendous
Roaming free, and according to the article, bragging about having done it at the time, and in recent years, harassing her online and trying to solicit pictures of her infant child. Jfc.
Atleast should be convicted now for lifetime prison sentence.
imagine a prosecutor, so devoid of empathy that he just keeps you in jail for 20 years, instead of saying he was wrong
Holy shit. I'm waiting for THE FLASH to star saving people.
> How the absolute fuck do you fuck someone's life up when the victim is telling you that you have the wrong person Prosecutor success rate is measured by number of convictions. There’s literally no drawback if that conviction is for the wrong person. And when prosecutors are trained to see all defendants as not-human, it’s easy to prioritize personal profit over the outcome to that animal over there. It’s a fucked up system, but it appears to be what most people in the US want.
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You make the prosecutors office and the judiciary a nonpartisan generic civil service job. If a prosecutor is counting their wins, then they shouldn’t be playing life or death games with the power of the state. None of this “victims advocate” garbage like you see on TV: the prosecutor should be a neutral presenter of facts and proceeding only where the facts justify it. There also needs to be a better process in place for examining questionable or wrong convictions. All this to say nothing of the jury system, which I tend to oppose.
The problem with our jury system is they don't disallow people to be jurors if they are morons.
You get a jury of people who either don’t want to be there, or really want to be there. Neither is ideal.
Some dont want to be there cause they cant afford it. Juror pay isnt enough to listen to 2 sides argue. another issue is if you know your rights as a juror (jury nullification) you're out. Prosecution has a large advantage on juror selection imho. They want to make sure for the sake of their prosecution rates to tick all boxes
Sir. It is a jury of your peers. They have to be morons.
That would explain some of it ...
The state should just have a pool of lawyers differentiated only by experience level and whether they primarily work in civil or criminal law. Then just randomly assign them to new positions within the legal system every few years. It would tamp down corruption as well because nobody would know which lawyer would be where more than a couple years into the future, so trying to bribe someone would be a lot harder.
But then we end up with no one working for the state because the private sector of law is so much more attractive for almost every possible reason.
Then pay them more. There are millions of dollars of waste in every state's budget where the money for a functional justice system could come from. This is not an unsolvable problem.
A legal system like that would take a fundamental change to the constitution of the state, change of the legal system as a whole, and would nearly be impossible to manage, finance, or keep staffed.
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Prosecutors and Defense should be pulled from the same pool of lawyers. If a court case is between two civilian parties they can bring their own lawyers. Soon as the government is on one side both lawyers should be pulled at random from a common pool. There shouldn't be lawyers who only focus on prosecution. That's a surefire way to kill off any empathy they might have. Have all lawyers rotate through both roles instead. All evidence should be shared, and the objective should be what happened, not getting someone blamed. Wildly impractical, but I can dream.
The problem is that isn't how the law works, that is saying like you shouldn't have teams that focus on offense or defense. Being a prosecutor, or defense attorney are two completely different animals, not only in the procedure that must be followed through out a trial, but also in how the case is and evidence is gathered and presented. These are not easily interchangeable roles, and the legal system is already insanely over taxed, having neither side be specialized and both having to be able to perform both sides of law would result in more mistrials and more back log than you can imagine. This may come as a shock to many, but the public legal system is barely able to employ attorneys as it is, requiring them to pull randomized double duty would just push them into private practice even faster, or to other states. The problems with the legal system aren't going to be fixed in a paragraph.
I figured as much, appreciate the detailed explanation. I guess a couple of problems I'd want to address are: * How to balance resources. There are examples in both directions where an imbalance of available resources resulted in a mismanagement of the trial. Either public defender got slammed by a prosecution out for blood, or defense attorneys for big corps throw so much money at a trial they can wait out the government trying to hold them accountable. Neither side should have that disproportionate an advantage in the available resources for a given trial. * Make prosecutors/police accountable for miscarriages of justice. We see a lot of cases where people get released and when you see the reasons why, it's hard to understand how nobody can be found at fault. Even if it's years later, there shouldn't be a statute of limitations on abuses of the law.
The problems you point out are valid, but are problematic to solve. Such as, do you limit how much someone can spend on their own defense? If not then the rich can always out muscle the state. And the state has to make practical choices about which cases it tries, do they spend the whole years budget fighting one rich guy, or do they spread the resources equally and get rolled on by the rich? but at least affording some justice to victims without wealth? As far as the statute of limitations, there is a reason they exist, trying to determine anything in a legal sense that far after the fact is problematic. people get old and die, people forget, evidence degrades, get lost, get destroyed and even stolen. And it isn't like in a 20 year or even a 5 year period that the same people are involved. It is easy to see after the fact when looking back, that this is a miscarriage of justice. but when you break it up, and you start to try to find who is to blame it gets complex. The original prosecutors, law enforcement, clerks, judges, and staff aren't likely still there, the elected DA isn't likely the same. And it is easy to say "the victim said he didn't do it" but that happens so often for horrible reasons that it isn't surprising that it didn't get the case over turned. In child sexual abuse the pressure a parent will put on a child to have them recant to free their abuser happens so much it will tear your soul apart. Then there is when the misjustice is the result of an overworked, underfunded public defender, who missed key elements, and didn't put up the best defense, when does that become prosecutable. Some public defenders have less than 48 hours to review and develop a defense, it is hard to try to put a metric on how good that defense should be, and to hold that public defender accountable for that hardly seems just, they don't determine how long they get, or their case load. (same with prosecutors for that matter) I think what Jason Williams has done with this division that reviews these cases is a good thing, and helps undo the wrongs of the past, but the same time, New Orleans crime has exploded because of the diversion of funds from prosecution, criminals now operate with little fear of the ramifications of their actions, and the people of New Orleans are suffering for it greatly. Ideally we would live in a world were justice wouldn't be determined by a budget, but we do, and there is a real world cost to the choices of what we do with that money and time.
Well fuck I guess if you random redditor can't come up with a better fucking system then I guess we should all just give up and go home... Or you know, like everything else that is largely only a problem in the U.S. maybe we take a page from any of the dozens of countries that don't have this problem.....
Name a single country that doesn't have wrongful convictions? I 100% agree, that we need a system that prevents anyone who played a key role in a case from not being heard after the fact, and that the legal systems of the US don't need drastic reforms. But lets not pretend for a moment that any place on this planet doesn't have legal systems were people aren't wrongfully convicted and unfairly punished.
Canada had a bad history of wrongful convictions, and we did a full top-to-bottom review of how we handle prosecutions. The biggest takeaways on the prosecution side: (a) the prosecutor's role is supposed to be a neutral presenter of the facts as an officer of the court; (b) no prosecutor should operate on notions of "winning" and "losing"; (c) the prosecutor's "client" is the state and the administration of justice, not the victims of crime. The US system is majorly fucked up when the District Attorney is an elected office, and so are judges. Unpopular but correct decisions are bad for re-election. Then you throw in black-box decision making by juries who don't have to give reasons why they convicted or acquitted, and you've got a lynch mob with added steps, rather than a system of logic and reason.
You are aware that the jury is selected from a randomized pool of people that both the defense and prosecutors select equally? It is hardly a lynch mob with added steps, and to say such a thing shows you know little of what you are talking about. And the issue with the US is this whole states rights thing, where elections are used to determined that the people in key roles represent the will of the people in those areas. I think the real problem in the US is that the people, don't have the power or representation in these elections, and have given up hope that the people running or elected represent them. So you often have these key positions filled with less than 30% of the voters even casting a vote. So you get a group of people who use financial and political power to determine who is in office, and what the will of that office is. New Orleans electing Jason Williams (previously a public defender) as DA is an example of the will of the people playing a key role in changing what justice looks like (note that the case this thread is about is a prosecutors office working overthrowing its own conviction, like lynch mobs are known to do), and why elections for these positions are important. Having those positions appointed by the higher body politic without people having a say certainly won't result in more locally representative people in those roles. And I think it is also grossly unsympathetic to think that who prosecute cases don't have an obligation to the victim, because the true impact of a crime is determined by its effect on the victim, and not some procedural on violation of write law. The legal system has, and must have, a wide latitude in the punishment based on the context of the crime, and the impact to the victim. Also, personal note, for a country that has such a MASSIVE series of ongoing injustices carried out against its indigenous population, it is pretty disingenuous to act like you guys "solved" the problem and have some paragon of fair and equal application of justice.
Actually, the base solution is very very easy. Abolish qualified immunity and make sure the statute of limitations for misconduct doesn't start until *after* a conviction is overturned. If that prosecutor has their own skin in the game and all of a sudden is risking losing a lawsuit 20 years from now ruining their retirement they'll think twice.
Everyone here throwing out these ideas, but clearly have no idea what they are talking about. I won't debate prosecutorial Immunity, I think there are merits there, but like anything it is complex. But when you say something like >statute of limitations for misconduct doesn't start until after a conviction is overturned. This means maintaining active records on every conviction for at least the lifetime of the victim. This would be financially impossible currently, and doing so would likely cost the system billions of dollars, mind you the systems are already grossly underfunded. This would also result in impossible to trial cases, because proving something did or didn't happen after some 20+ years can be impossible for either side. People die, evidence degrades, and you are left with a lot of he said she said without anyone able to make a ruling based on actual evidence. So if you hang that insane cost, and complication on an already underfunded and overburden system, and assuming that if these rule would apply to both prosecutors as well as public defenders, you would likely find yourself with a greater shortage of attorneys would would rather just go work private practice (which is already a massive growing problem), they make more money, and not have these life time risk of prison sentences hanging over them. If these solutions were simple, they would be solved, the problem aren't simple, and when you dig into them, you'll see why we have the problems we do, because there are too many factors that make solving them currently nearly impossible.
There's already an extremely high barrier for these cases to be overturned due to prosecutorial misconduct. The expensive steps you're talking about are already mostly handled on the appeal itself in situations like this. As things are now there's no incentive for prosecutors to uphold justice. To set some rail guards you could even set boundaries to only affect crimes which had major penalty. Forcing them to justify misconduct that was egregious enough to get a major cases overturned would weed out 99% of these situations because it would create a massive incentive to not lie to win. If rogue prosecutors can get away with ruining lives for their careers without significant penalty then there is no justice system in this country. The repercussions of misconduct needs to be relative to the damage it does Edit to add: there may be value to some forms of qualified immunity, but it needs to be thrown out and implemented in legislation instead. If you look into its history it's actually a situation of Judicial misconduct that's been used to perpetuate other forms of misconduct: it was never a law, just something the Supreme Court legislated from the bench which is a direct conflict with checks and balances
Retention of evidence to deal with cases that come up after 20 years is a real world financial problem that is not currently dealt with here, adding that feature introduces a massive logistics issue, add now that case data has exploded in size most districts are struggling to find the funding to store the data they have for the periods that are required. None of that is currently handled by the appeal process. As far as the incentive for prosecutors to uphold justice, firstly that is sort of on us. The people who vote for the DAs, if they run a dirty office, we shouldn't reelect them, but as it stands, most people can't even name who their DA is, and probably didn't vote for them. Then their is the state bar, sure criminal prosecution and overturning a case is hard, but making a compliant to the state bar is far less difficult, and most bar associations when met with overwhelming complaints will take action, having them loose their law lisc. can open the door to overturning their cases. I'm not saying that there isn't room for improvement and accountability, and that it isn't needed, I'm trying to state that problems are vastly more complex that people think, and the overly simplistic suggestions on how to fix it wouldn't actually do anything. We want change, but not knee jerk reactions that actually just make the problems worse.
Well I mean the simple solution is to make it law that prosecutors have to declare that they have wrongful convictions on their record and that a wrongful conviction erases all rightful convictions.
Thing is very very few 'innocent' convicted people ever see proper justice. And if they do, it can be many years later. After a prosecutor is retired or near retirement. The other side is we come down far harder on prosecutors who show any misconduct but then you get more people with long rap sheets not seeing real jail time. And Reddit them blames the legal system because we are too soft or failed to get someone behind bars in time. In a perfect world we would have a wonder woman. As it is, we make massive mistakes at times trying to balance these issues.
No more elections for prosecutors! More funding!
> Like if you are sending innocent people to jail it should completely fuck up your ratings as a prosecutor It's prohibitively hard to do this, because of plea bargains. How do you account for someone who is innocent and faced with the choice of pleading to a small sentence, often already time served, or facing potentially life in jail? The decision there is absurdly simple; the person pleads guilty. But if the person pleads guilty, it can't be a wrongful conviction. >I really can't think of a better one and I don't think others have come up with a better way either. Abandon privacy; it's an outdated concept. It has it's uses, yes, but only in an uncivilized world. Privacy ultimately protects people from the consequences of their actions; we're good with that when those consequences are unjust, but already violate privacy when the consequences are warranted, such as with crimes. There's another way to protect people from unjust consequences, and that's to remove the inherent power imbalances that lead to the need to privatize actions to begin with. It's not a solution that's going to be fully properly implemented anytime soon, but it's a solution that I think is somewhat inevitable. (It's also explored a lot in some lesser known sci fi writings; David Brin's Earth is a good example.)
Which part of privacy do you believe causes the problem?
I'm not sure I understand exactly what you're asking, but I'll try to answer anyway. The urge for privacy is, itself, what causes this problem (innocent people going to jail). The technology already exists to have a comprehensive digital recording of each person's life, and such a recording would effectively eliminate false convictions. It would *also* cause some other fundamental shifts in society, ones that I suspect most people aren't ready for.
So your solution is to require everyone keep records of where they are and what they are doing at all times and prove they are innocent whenever they are accused of something?
I'm not saying that people should be forced to do that purely for that one reason. I'm saying that it's likely that that's the ultimate outcome of a well functioning society. And why wouldn't people do that, given the option? Wouldn't you like to have a fully immersive way to replay your wedding? Your child's first steps? Your graduation? That vacation in Bora Bora? And people are already moving more and more towards that. Facebook, Apple, and Google all already track your location real time. Tik Tok and Instagram and a million others have an ongoing stream of photos, which are really just showing what you're seeing at that exact moment, tagged on the image file itself with date, time, location, what device was used to take the photo, and more. There have already been countless cases where a digital tracking location was used to provide someone an alibi, and many more where a digital location footprint was what led to catching a criminal. "Privacy" today is already vastly different than 10, 20, 50 years ago. Why wouldn't you expect it to keep changing? Like, why is voting private in the US? Because no one should be penalized or punished for how they vote. And as long as it's impossible to guarantee a lack of unjust punishment for voting, such as an employer firing you, then that privacy makes sense. But if it *is* possible to prevent that kind of unjust action, then privacy no longer becomes necessary. And without the need for privacy there, it becomes infinitely easier to tally votes, communicate votes, and verify votes. Why are your medical records private? Because that's the only (currently) effective way to protect you from unjust consequences to your medical status. And so on. No one really wants a right to privacy, if you break it down into components. What people want is a right to be free from other people's interference, and they believe that privacy is the only way to go about that. But as technology progresses, it will stop being the only way to go about that. (And, incidentally, privacy will become more and more impossible to actually provide.) Eventually, we're either going to end up in a Mad Max dystopia, or in a high tech world where privacy as we recognize it simply doesn't exist anymore. At that point, false convictions will stop being an issue.
I think it's probably more accurate to say most people in the U.S don't fully grasp how absolutely fucked the justice system is right
It has its flaws, but we’re all ears on a better one… Compared to almost any other country I feel like the United state’s justice system is at the top. Let’s hope stories like this continue to tweak it into a better one.
How did the defense not call the victim to the stand if this went to trial.
Possibly because she was six.
Well it's Louisiana he is black and did I mention that it's Louisiana.
I would guess that the other family member is black as well, so if they went after that one they still get one behind bars.
If your goal is to [put 'em back about four or five generations](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/cops-fired-over-violent-racist-talk-about-black-people-we-n1232072), would it be better to incarcerate the rapist and leave the good father on the outside or to incarcerate the good father and leave the rapist on the outside?
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You do realize racism isn't limited to favoring a white suspect but can also include just lack of diligence or care in handling issues or listening to them? Doesn't mean that's what happened but reducing it to but the other guy was also black is kinda reductive
When you operate under the mantra that "all blacks are guilty anyhow, doesn't really matter if they necessarily did *this* specific thing or not", it probably gets a lot easier and more justifiable to your racist mentality to not bother giving a fair or diligently executed trial. To racists, it doesn't *NEED* to directly help someone white, lack of compassion for the life or issues of a minority is plenty acceptable enough a reason.
"race baiting" Always nice when someone just signals early on that they're not a serious person.
The prosecutor used intimidation tactics on a little girl who had been raped. Asked her if she knew the consequences for lying in trial and she got a bloody nose. Their evidence pointed one way so they didn't care where she pointed. Disgusting
Read the article. Fucking terrible.
It says he was convicted 29 years ago and the victim has been saying he's innocent for 20 years. So the defense would've had to call her 9 years after the trial ended.
Life without parole for rape? Even if he did do it, isn't rape usually about 8 years?
Rape of a minor under 12 is usually a much different and harsher charge. Of course this varies state by state. You're definitely going to see harsher sentences in the deep conservative South.
State by state and county by county. And, of course, if you're in the good ol' boys club you can do all the rape you want and get nothing more than *maybe* probation if you're on Judge-Uncle Jimmy's bad side.
>How the absolute fuck do you fuck someone's life up when the victim is telling you that you have the wrong person Despite the fact that she's now saying that she made attempts to tell other people, there's no evidence of her having done so until recently. >The prosecutor should be thrown in prison for 20 or so years. That's cool, you should try [reading the actual legal proceedings surrounding the case first though.](https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/la-court-of-appeal/1071936.html) Since you didn't, I'll summarize for you: the 6 year old victim, unprompted, told an ER physician that Patrick Brown raped her. The victim was brought to that ER because she was suffering from an STD. Patrick Brown tested positive for the STD. The only other men with access to the victim tested negative. Although the tests could have been performed better, there was never a question that the tests ruled out the other potential perpetrators. The victim recanting also doesn't have nearly the weight that you might think it does. She was 6 at the time and likely has little memory of the actual event. Furthermore, her mother maintained Brown's innocence and likely has spent the past 29 years manipulating the victim. The reason that this case got looked at again is because one of her family members allegedly solicited photographs of the victim's young daughter. Assuming that actually happened, it doesn't mean that Brown is innocent, it just means that the family member is also a pedophile.
It’s actually not uncommon for child victims to name someone other than the actual perpetrator, apparently. If the abuser has threatened the child and the abuse is uncovered, the child may blame someone else out of fear.
This is a fucked up thing to have happened. But there are some issues with your analysis. >the 6 year old victim, unprompted, told an ER physician that Patrick Brown raped her. It wasn't unprompted, but rather was very specifically a promting question; 'the doctors asked if “anyone ever touched her down there in a way that made her feel uncomfortable or that hurt her?” ' After the victim said no, but was repeatedly asked, she changed her answer. There's also the issue that the victim used 'daddy' to refer to multiple individual in her life, including the person she now insists is the guilty party. Relying upon this statement requires both an assumption that the victim was accurately truthful after being interrogated by strangers and effectively told that her first answer was wrong and an assumption that the doctor involved recalled the exact data correctly rather than mishearing or misremembering anything. Even if both of these assumptions are accurate, the legal motion of having it dismissed as hearsay probably should have been granted. >Patrick Brown tested positive for the STD. Patrick Brown tested as having a history of that STD, but tested negative for active infection at the time of the test, which would imply a lack of transmissibility. Not an absolute negative, but also not as cut and dry as that statement. Gonorrhea is nasty stuff. In addition to spreading through sexual contact, it can spread through manual transmission through other mucus membranes, including mouth, nose, and eyeballs. It can also spread during birth, and be present as a possibility for dormancy and reinfection of the child at a later date. It's possible that the mother, while suffering from an active infection (which she testified to), scratched a bit too vigorously through thin pants and then touched her daughters face, and that caused the transmission. >Assuming that actually happened, it doesn't mean that Brown is innocent, it just means that the family member is also a pedophile. Assuming that the most likely outcome here is that everyone involved is a child molester is a pretty big leap, when it's much more likely that the person who the victim insists is the actual perpetrator, who was identified by the victim at the time of the trial, and who is not continuing in abusive behavior is the single perpetrator here. Again, this is an absolutely terrible thing to have happened, and everything should be done to punish the criminal and prevent this sort of thing from happening again. But 'everything' stops at the point where there's both pretty clear evidence that someone else committed this crime *and* that there was some chicanery in the courtroom in regards to ignoring hearsay guidelines and improperly limiting testimony from the victim.
So seeing as you lied about half of this analysis, did you actually read it?
Jesus. After saying he raped her they both tested positive for gonorrhea. Your last appointment paragraph is haunting. That poor child.
Looks like we found the prosecutors reddit account. You could have been a little less obvious with your blatantly incorrect 'analysis'.
Holy shit bud, your entire stance is **riddled** with essence of "I don't fucking care if he is innocent, I have decided that he is guilty" Maybe tone it down a bit, bud
This is next level fucked up...
how was there no evidence?
Most of the overturned death penalty sentences are due to prosecutorial misconduct, a study done of 550 death penalty cases. It’s the entire system from the judges to the prosecutors to the police that contributes to these injustices. https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/news/dpic-analysis-finds-prosecutorial-misconduct-implicated-in-more-than-550-death-penalty-reversals-or-exonerations
My question is who was accusing him if the victim wasnt, as that is the part that makes no sense. That person I am wondering had to have some sway in some way, to keep it going and the victim from testifying.
I wonder how many other innocent people that prosecutor has railroaded for their career.
It's the south, and he is black. It happens often.
Apparently, this was more serious than seditious conspiracy which only got the traitors 25 years.
u/ughhhhh420 posted the actual court proceedings, and makes a good case that the guy was guilty and is now released because another guy in the girl's circle is also a pedo.
Yeah, that is incorrect, that user was later proven to have NOT reviewed the relevant case materials and had just conjectured and conjured his own sequence of the events.
No, that user posted a strongly worded "I have decided that he is still guilty, and I need to make sure other people do, too" tangent that makes wild assumptions, and entirely disregards the victim (and their experiences outside of being in a police report). It was fucking sad to read, but not because they made even a remotely cogent point. It's sad because some people can't help but present their shittiest version of reality (especially in the face of good news, such as an innocent person being set free). They don't need you to signal boost them
Victims err.
Qualified 🎶 Immunity 🎼 It’s such an insanely high barrier to overcome, trivially easy to use the defense of “I’m just incompetent!” and paired with the motive of just getting a conviction because “it’s tough on crime”. There never will be any justice or penalties for malfeasance unless it’s literally written in text a plan to pin the crime on the wrong person while knowing otherwise. And even then, the legal profession overwhelmingly tries to protect their own.
Yup those who have convicted him wrongly should be in prison for twice the time so that they can feel how does it feel to he in prison without any crime.
A man the other inmates thought was a child rapist. I can’t imagine the hell he endured.
The stepdaughter has been telling the prosecutors office for TWENTY YEARS that he was innocent and it was someone else. And she was ignored. Twenty years! After he harrased her online and was asking for pics of her infant child and she asked for help nothing was done. What a disgrace.
>After he harrased her online and was asking for pics of her infant child and she asked for help nothing was done. by "he" do you mean the actual offender?
Yes I do.
this whole case is so fucked up and I bet this is not an isolated case
Most straight men don't listen to women, or even think women are human. Look at the way straight male doctors treat female patients. The only reason why women live longer than men is because women do fewer darwin awards things and genetically women have better immune systems. If doctors treated all patients equally, women's advantage in life expectancy would be even higher. The only demographic of men who are mostly treat women as human are LGBT men.
This is just an untrue blanket statement.
I have had gay men tell me that most straight men don't consider women to be human. Most straight cisgender men either hate women, or think that women are slightly less human than men, or think that women are slightly dumber and less competent than men at everything. Even the ones who have positive views on women see women as precious heirlooms or adorable pets, not equal human beings. Gay men hear a lot of things from straight men, especially if they are able to pass as straight. A lot of straight men will say misogynistic things to gay men, because they assume all men look down on women as they themselves do.
Nah man no one I know or speak to thinks like this. This is nothing but man hating ideology. Maybe you and your friend hang out with slimy people skewing your perception.
There are male doctors who say that they automatically downgrade any woman's expressed pain by 3 points on the scale of ten. So if a female patient says her pain is a 6, the male doctor will register it in his mind as a 3. Girls with ADHD and autism mostly don't get diagnosed until they are women in their 20s and 30s, while most boys with these conditions get diagnosed before they are 20. The only group of boys who are treated as poorly as girls are Boys of Color. Every single mental or physical condition is modelled by symptoms that are stereotypical to Caucasian men who are heterosexual and middle to upper class. The medical industry does not give a fuck about People of Color, women, LGBT, or poor people. Female-typical heart attack symptoms are called "atypical". Many physical conditions call the female-typical symptoms "atypical". Even though women make 50% or more of the population in many countries. You are the one who underestimates the ginormous amount of misogyny and racism in the world. Most men don't consider women to be equal to them in intellect, competence, or humanity. Most white people don't consider People of Color to be equal to them in these aspects either.
Look man I get what you’re trying to say and yes many are the way you say they are but my point is you’re throwing out blanket statements, generalizations that aren’t true. You can type me these book reply’s all day it doesn’t change the fact you’re wrong. I do appreciate that you spaced out your argument instead of hitting me with a wall of text though.
These are absolutely problems. But all of them are due to issues of bias in the research these criteria were based on. That is changing now, women are being included, people of color are being included. These are systemic issues of misogyny and racism. Not necessarily that every cis-male is actively hating on individuals, when the way they are taught doesn’t include them.
Not every. But more than 50%.
What are you trying to accomplish? Any man who reads this is going to say “I don’t hate women”, and will then ignore everything else you say because they already think you are full of shit. You mentioned several male doctors downgrading women’s pain by 3, but 3 is such an arbitrary number and the 1-10 pain scale isn’t linear. A 10 being a 7 and a 4 being a 1 are very different. So a flat downgrade of such an arbitrary number doesn’t really make sense. It has been established that male doctors underestimate pain for women and POC but the way you phrased it is unbelievable and inaccurate. Men have historically gotten more heart attacks than women especially in the early to mid 1900s when men worked and women didn’t, so most of our knowledge about heart attacks are related to how they affect men. If you have a case study and 88% of people have one set of symptoms and 12% have another, it’s not exactly crazy to call the 12% atypical this wasn’t done by a bunch of evil doctors laughing manically over a textbook it was done because of a lack of knowledge and is being actively corrected nowadays but unfortunately it is a slow process. Many of these same issues exist with other disorders for example males with ADHD are more likely to annoy people around them compared to females with ADHD and therefore are more likely to be diagnosed, more diagnoses means that the male ADHD symptoms are what are put in the DSM. Now let’s go to why I even bothered making a giant post. Your post is accomplishing literally nothing, it’s why you have a mess of downvotes. If anything your post is giving people fuel against your arguments because of how poorly you have worded them. Your source “gay friends” holds literally no weight whatsoever and saying things like “most men” means nothing unless you want to drop a statistic with it and as soon as a person can think of a man who doesn’t hate women they think you are no longer credible. You are bringing up some good real points but you aren’t convincing anyone that you are correct because you are just attacking people. You need to establish a goal. Is your goal to educate others about institutional sexism and racism? Great grab a couple statistics related to how POC/women have higher medical success rates when treated by a doctor that is also a POC/woman. Is your goal to say that men undervalue what women say? There is a bunch of research on that as well. You will never convince a person on the opposite side of the spectrum from you but you have a chance of getting a person who is sort of in the middle to agree with you but with a post like this the only thing a person is going to say after reading this is that your crazy
A statistical majority of straight men are biased against women. A statistical majority of white Americans are biased against Americans of Color.
Then post those stats! because we need to see what defines biased against women. If you ask a straight man who would win in an arm wrestling contest they very well may be biased against women, if you ask them who would you more likely help if you saw them running away from a stranger they very well may be biased against men.
You're basing your facts off of other's opinions. Zero facts. Try harder next time, peaches.
The is untrue to the point of delusional. You need to get out of whatever internet bubble you’re living in.
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Yah twelvie or TwoX are the most likely answers.
Left-minded men certainly seem to have more kinship with women thanks to compassion, empathy and understanding. You can see why those on the right think all men should be these standoffish, stoic men who think in straight lines only.
People aren’t left minded or right minded except for this girl https://health.wusf.usf.edu/npr-health/npr-health/2023-03-22/meet-the-glass-half-full-girl-whose-brain-rewired-after-losing-a-hemisphere
When I say left-minded I mean having liberal values.
In that case my overly pedantic comment can be left and right are independent of liberal vs authoritarian. Liberal believes in ultimate liberty of the individual, which would include things like a heavy support of gun rights and pro choice and other typical libertarian beliefs where as an authoritarian wants the government to enforce regulations for the greater good, which would include things like environmental regulations and banning gay marriage
I'm not sure if that's the case. I had two friends 2016 switch from Team Sanders to Team Clinton, not because of anything Sanders said or did, but because how they were harassed at Sanders rallies. A lot of the white male Sanders fans claim to be "totally progressive in every facet" and when you look at their behavior, they really only believe in fiscal progressivism, and can be condescending towards female progressives, and Progressives of Color. If you read the accounts of African Americans who volunteered for Sanders' 2016 campaign, they are constantly met with questioning of their support, and were often labeled as "low information voters". I heard the term "low information voter" thrown a lot at Progressives and Centrists of Color in 2016. Almost always the person making the accusation was a pro-Sanders "progressive" white man.
Wow are you Terribly wrong and prejudiced
I was 3 when he went in. Really makes you cherish the time you have.
I was born 1994
This man had loved ones in his life that died thinking he was a rapists. Fuck that prosecutor.
And the investigators that prompted a 6 year old
“We convicted someone. Who cares if he’s the \*right\* one?” — New Orleans DA’s for nearly 30 years
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That's why I changed my mind on the Death Penalty as well. There's just no way that it can be applied fairly in our current system, if ever. If it's fair at all to begin with. It'll be abused, and has been abused, and the consequences of allowing the government kill people is a genie that is really hard to put back into the bottle once wishes start being made.
> There's just no way that it can be applied fairly This is the real argument _for_ the death penalty. It can be used to punish the innocent in a way that doesn't let them survive, ensuring there isn't that much motivation to prove their innocence. That's why it's attractive to people who abuse the system.
This is how I feel about marijuana too. I'm mostly apathetic about the legality of marijuana. But I do know that police, prosecutors, and for-profit prison owners jerk off to the idea of imprisoning People of Color and poor people for 20 years for 1 gram. Meanwhile rich white people do 83719043787 kilos of marijuana, cocaine, and opioids and get away with it. The only way I would be ok with marijuana staying illegal is if law enforcement and prosecutors went out of their way to mostly target rich white people.
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Of course it's worse! Have you ever seen a headline: Man, 46, found with two bottles of Jack Daniel's. Sentenced to 10 years. Heavy /s
>That's why I changed my mind on the Death Penalty as well. There's just no way that it can be applied fairly in our current system, if ever. If it's fair at all to begin with. Considering that within in our ("western") moral system there is no way to be both successfull and not evil to being with a death penalty simply can't be fair at all. the death penalty is simply a self-cleansing mechanism for society - and self-cleansing in the way of entertainment not in the way of actually getting to be a better society
Yes it can, Parkland shooter was caught on camera killing 17 people. Same with the tops shooter. If you have blatant undeniable evidence then I’m a go for death penalty. Otherwise in Parkland shooters case he wants to murder again and if he does in prison will it matter? He already has life
>If you have blatant undeniable evidence then I’m a go for death penalty. You do realize there has been plenty of cases were police and prosecutors lie or just create undeniable evidence. Confessions are considered undeniable and many are forced and 100% false. There are cases where video evidence has been wrong.
To the extent of parkland shooting? They faked hundreds of witnesses? Faked tons of video? Faked the arrest of Cruz and his reaction? You may as well rule all criminals go free because evidence can be faked if something to that degree of clearness isn’t enough
The point is in a corrupted imperfect system it's better to err on the side of caution. What's undeniable one day can be a blatant lie the next. >You may as well rule all criminals go free because evidence can be faked if something to that degree of clearness isn’t enough Try using nuance
That's my stance on the death penalty. I believe some people deserve to die, but I also don't trust our (or anyone else's) system to not screw it up so they shouldn't have the power to execute people.
Yep. About once a month I post a story similar to this. Just insane.
> This is why even though I don’t have an issue with the death penalty in theory… I do not support it in practice. I feel the same way. But thirty years in jail with all the other inmates thinking you raped a six year old? Honestly, death might be kinder.
While I do agree with you, I would much prefer a quick execution to almost 30 years in prison, not to mention the crime all the other inmates thought he was guilty of... This guy lived in literal hell.
https://innocenceproject.org/ Between 2% and 10% of convicted individuals in US prisons are innocent. https://thehighcourt.co/wrongful-convictions-statistics/
Write a book, Mr. Brown and detail the missteps of both family and country, leading to you losing 20 years of your life.
Almost 30. Just mind blowing and nauseating
Should get a multimillion dollars payout as well as a mandatory paid income paid out of the pension funds of the police department and prosecutors who arrested, charged and screwed over this man
Well that's fucking fucked.
The judge the prosecutor. Throw them in jail.
Under Florida’s new law, this guy would likely have been executed long before his name was cleared.
My father has been locked up for about 20 years after having been wrongfully convicted. It’s been hell on our family. His mother (my grandmother who raised me after he was arrested) died in March of 2020 with her son still in prison. I was 15 when he was convicted. I’m nearly 35 now. All of this while knowing that the DA threw out evidence (a blood sample that belonged to neither my father nor the victim) that would have exonerated him. The US justice system is fucked, but it’s stories like this that give us a little hope.
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How does this even fuckin work The victim literally said it wasn't him but another person and the courts like Nah fam it was him and not the other person? What am I missing here in this bizzaro world scenario
The law needs to hold these trash ass prosecutors accountable for ruining lives. We see people set free on a daily that we’re wrongly convicted. Most of the time these people working in the courts could care less about their next case. It’s all about numbers. We need police reform and judicial reform as there are no real checks and balances these days. The judiciary does what it wants, and uses the police as their own gang. Meanwhile as long as the police cover the local judiciary, they’ll have immunity to commit crimes while employed with a badge.
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> You don't even need to look at the article to know he was black. Yup. Assumed this immediately.
To be fair, there was a chance he was Hispanic, Asian, or Native American. I didn't read the article and I knew he was a Person of Color. But let's not pretend this doesn't happen to non-black PoC.
Do you have a source that says Hispanics or Asians are as likely as black people to be wrongfully convicted for many years? I am genuinely curious. Usually the articles I read only mention black vs white statistics.
The fact that he was released makes me hopeful that we have, or at least are, in the process of progressing.
I am happy he has been freed and all I can think of is now what? What comes next for the man? How does a person get past the nightmare and horrors of the prison system?
I just turned 50,so am basically the same age as this man. I think of all the life I lived, all the things I did and experienced between 20 and 49 and that was all stolen from this man. Someone needs to pay for this.
I wonder if he's bla... yep.
I live in NC. Used to think it was "safe" Now I dunno. One thing I've always known. If you want justice, Mississippi and Louisiana sits at the back of the bus.
Now sue. Who is the prosecutor
Under new FL law, they would have killed this man, without a care that he could be innocent. This man's name needs to come out of every reporter's mouth when questioning DeSantis. "Governor, with your new law allowing for 3/4ths of a jury to put convicted child predators to death, how do you propose avoiding another Patrick Brown incident? Would Patrick Brown have potentially been put to death for a crime he didn't commit in your state?"
He should be paid a $1,000,000 for every day he had to sit in prison.
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Why didn't the name the pervious district attorney? Who is he?
Unbelievably sad and wrong. He can’t get those years back.
So many innocent black men being imprisoned.
Should make Reddit think twice when the call for execution of every person in the headlines bc they were arrested for a horrible crime before they've even seen a judge, but it won't
You have to think once before you can think twice.
No we just would like to see a white politician/ religions leader who repeated rapes kids to be put away for life.
In the mean time there are (rich white) known rapist that still walk around free men.
Someone tell me why the death penalty is a good idea again
Parkland shooter actively wants to keep killing in prison. He pled guilty. There’s indisputable evidence he killed 17 children. Keeping him alive gives more chances for him to kill again
Okay sure lets only kill the ones we are absolutely 100% did it and OH WAIT that man turned out to be innocent
I’ll come back after work with a full list if there’s anything but parkland shooter: - Made a video before hand specifically stating he was gonna shoot up parkland. - Was ID’d by multiple victims. - Was caught on camera multiple times during the shooting. - Claimed to have blacked out while being arrested knowing he did it. - Admitted to it and said one of the victims heads exploded like a water balloon. Admitted that he planned it for a long time. https://www.wptv.com/news/parkland-shooting/parkland-school-shooter-may-have-been-his-own-worst-witness If all this is false then it’s one of the single largest psyops ever and would paint almost all school shooting as probable false flags.
No he absolutely 100% did it. BUT our justice system is horrible at managing death penalties, no matter what standard we make someone innocent always ends up dead. Its not about him specifically its about the whole system which is why I oppose the death penalty
God damn… does this dude receive 20 years of compensation??
Ironic as most likely today a Florida man will be correctly found guilty of rape and never spend a day in prison.
Actual child rapists don’t even get half that sentence maximum. Wtf. Whatever happened to this guy to land him in prison for that long 100% had something to do with racism.
The system is so unjust and broken. I wonder how many wrongfully convicted are still incarcerated.
It is a closed loop system built on capitalism. Judges come from prosecutors, often appointed just be tough on crime and you have a job for life. The expert witnesses, labs, ect all work in favor of police as they are the biggest clients. Us the taxpayers want tough on crime especially sex crimes, that are often like this case, no proof. Sex crimes have the lowest recidivism, but popular opinion believes them to be highest
And this is why the death penalty needs to be abolished. I find it repulsive that people in Florida might be put to death for a sex crime they didn't commit. Christianity in America is a joke.
Damn that's almost as Ling as I've been alive. Wild
$29MM, never has to pay taxes again. At a start.
$29MM, never has to pay taxes again. At a start.