| Atticus Grinch |
01-24-2006 03:09 AM |
Midseason Replacement
Quote:
Originally posted by Pretty Little Flower
If I were a TV exec, I'd come up with a new show based on the simple premise that the criminal justice system is a rigged deck wherein hundreds of innocents get railroaded and go to jail. I would not need to worry about casting, however, as it would be a documentary.
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Translation: Flower has a DUI.
The dirty little secret of the criminal justice system is that while cross-racial eyewitness identifications are particularly unreliable (as the boom in DNA exonerations is now proving), all cases built around victim identifications are inherently troubling and always have been, even though intuitively we believe this is the best, most reliable form of testimony. Both the prosecution and the defense bar were complicit in telling juries that eyewitness testimony was better than "circumstantial evidence" whenever they had it on their side, and juries believed it.
I suppose if you were inclined you could say that a DA who prosecutes a D who was positively, honestly, and erroneously identified by the victim is "railroading" the D, or that the jury of twelve peers who believe the victim are suckers, but I don't see it that way. DAs don't get all insufferably smug about their jobs because they wantonly convict the innocent; on their worst day they're operating on a good faith mistaken belief the D is the perp because a cop or victim told them so. Like there was a better way to know in 1982?
It's fucked up that women who are raped by a person of another race are occasionally wrong about whodunnit. I'm sure they pretty much have the decency to feel like shit when it turns out the wrong guy did eight years; I assume they'd rather the real perp did that time instead, thank you very much. On the other hand, what the fuck was the DA supposed to do when there was an eyewitness ID in the days before DNA? Some cop or judge or DA is a racist because they obtained a conviction in 1982 based on a victim identification? It's not like they made that shit up on purpose.
I'm glad there are DNA exonerations, but they're hardly evidence of "railroading" or the inherent racism of the cops, DAs, judges or juries. (Besides, it's unnecessary: If you want evidence of the inherent racism of juries or cops, just talk to them for five minutes.) Meanwhile, the judges and DAs are pretty much doing what the situation calls for --- prosecuting the person IDed as the perp under the best available technology. That's not a broken system; that's a system that works. I'm personally pleased the technology's changing, but the same defense attorneys touting these DNA exonerations will go to court tomorrow to exclude inculpatory DNA evidence as categorically unreliable. |
