In a violent, gun-crazed society of over 300 million people, that doesn't seem that high to me. Especially given our federal drug laws.

Not at all. Only 2066 were found guilty at trial. That means of those who went to trial, over 10% we're found not guilty. Seems absolutely reasonable.

Not to mention many of the plea deals for minor offenses might not even include jail time. Could be time served, community service, etc.

Do innocent people get convicted? Yes. Do innocent people accept plea deals out o fear? I'm sure. There is no perfect system. Trust me there are people in many countries of the world who wish they had a justice system as fair as the U.S.

More like village idiots. You seriously don't think they planted a shred of evidence or tampered with anything related to the investigation?

If so please say why

Lol .2%.

I understand none of the Mantiwoc 3 understand how the criminal justice system works, and thus have no comprehension of its horrible failings.

Exonerations are an extreme outlier because the system was designed that way. The whole appeals process is designed to support conviction. However the system was not designed for the modern day abuse of plea bargains and pre trial deals. It is not a metric to decide if the system is broken or not. That you aren't outraged by the actual high number of exonerations is disconcerting. The number should be nearly zero. Again the system is supposed to err on the side of finding people not guilty versus locking up people who might have been innocent. This is a pretty fundamental misunderstanding. Every time an innocent person is convicted should be considered egregious and met with outrage not "lols it is only a few thousand." Why do you think it is okay if thousands of people wrongly spend years and decades in jail and in some cases put to death? Why do you think these casualties are okay? To what end? We are not talking about honest mistakes. We are talking about police officers who live and die by closing cases and prosecutors who live and die by getting convictions/pleas in those same cases. Mix that with a percentage of bad/lazy/incompetent actors in both police and prosecutors and you have this absolute cluster.

Clearly you believe it's okay if innocent people go to prison in order to assure more of the guilty ones do. The question is why do you believe that to be the right path?

I believe society in general is safer if a few innocent people get convicted over a lot of guilty people being set free. I do think the judicial system should favor the accused and it does. I am outraged when I find out an innocent man is imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit. That is why they are entitled to lawsuits, large ones at that. Sometimes a few million dollars worth. Obviously there is no way to compensate accurately for freedom but there is imo not a better system than the one we have.

There is a few things I would like to address.

1. Kratz is obviously a media whore and a misogynist. The latter can be said about avery as well and to a greater degree.

2.There are several things the doc left out about avery's past.

2a)He was accused of threatening to kill his friends wife if she didn't have sex with him or if she told anyone.
3a)He was accused of raping a 17 year old about a year before this murder took place.
4a)The night before TH was murdered he tried to lure an underage girl to his trailer, asking if she wanted to have sex with him.
5a) The situation with sandy morris was criminally misrepresented. First of all he clearly planned on killing her. The gun he pointed at her was loaded and the whole thing started because she told people about him masterbating in front of her as she drove past his place. not because she was spreading a false rumor. She was scared of him.

3. No, I see no reason for either Lenk or Colborn to frame avery. These are the two boogey men of the show imo. Their involvement in his wrongful conviction and his continued incarceration is misrepresented in the doc.. Here is all the evidence suggests happened.

Colborn received a call in 1998 from a different county telling him that manitwoc county may have imprisoned a man for a rape he didn't commit. Colborn gave the phone call to his supervisor (kocurek) as colborn was just a patrol officer at this time.

Kocurek later informed colborn after being asked about the phone call that he could rest assured that they had the right guy. This is important because Colborn was not being sued by avery. Kocurek was. The whole narrative of the civil suit was this sheriff was ignoring everyone who was trying to tell him avery may be innocent and that gregory allen may have committed the rape.

So fast forward 5 years, avery gets exonerated. Kocurek is retired.. Lenk is colborns new supervisor. Colborn tells lenk about the 1998 phone call and Lenk tells him to file a report. What part of this story would incriminate Lenk or colborn? Would anyone know about the phone call from 1998 had colborn not filed the report after Lenk told him to? Don't you think they were deposed to incriminate Kocurek? I can post court documents to support all of this as well but they are already in the thread.


4. I disagree there was more evidence to convict OJ than SA. There is without a doubt enough to convict both men but I do not see how OJ's is a stronger case. We have the following with avery:

4a) a history of assault both of sexual and physical with women.
4b) the victims car on his property
4c) the victims bones in a burn pit he was running until late at night which he originally denied every having.
4d) His blood in 6 different locations inside her car
4e) a bullet forensically matched to his exact gun that is kept above his bed with the victims DNA on the bullet
4f) and this is not stressed enough itt or in the doc. TH called SA at 2:40. She was seen with him after 3 and was never seen again. There is a very short window in which she could have been murdered. It is certainly possible that someone else could have killed her immediately after she left his company, burned her in another location, dumped her bones in a fire SA ran all night, parked her car in the salvage yard.. Then the police somehow get enough blood from this vial that somehow no one noticed was missing blood, planted it in her car ( and btw his because the stains in his own grand prix were similar to the stains located in her car according to the blood spatter expert) then found a bullet fragment and somehow grabbed some TH dna and sprayed it on the bullet.

All this is possible but doubting that anything other than him killing her is the conclusion with this evidence is not reasonable.

Curious, what crime did you spend time for in jail that you didn't commit?

How about you tell us why they would plant evidence. And how they could have did it. What evidence did they plant? How did they get away with it.. etc..

LOL great way to start posting by making your most stupid point right away.

Avery work in a salvage yard and is a nobody who never asked to be famous but got wrongfully convicted of a rape (and most likely murder)
Kratz is a district attorney that the public has to put is trust into and who is expected to have high standards.

You dodge a question by asking a question yourself? Lol

1. Just a couple reasons off the top of my head: Law enforcement embarrassment (on a national and world wide scale) over SA exoneration. They believed him to be guilty irt TH murder but had no physical evidence.

2. They are police officers- assumed to be honest people working under the law, but they abused their authority.

3. The key, the bullet, blood in car etc

4. See #2

This is the biggest case of their careers. The world spotlight is on them. They ****ed it up the first SA case, do you honestly think they would be sloppy and narrow sighted a second time concerning the same person (SA) if the police were actually following the rules?!?!

All they had to do was be thorough, be safe, go by the rule book. But time and time again from his arrest, investigation and prosecution there are tons of doubts / holes major errors. False testimony, contaminated evidence, evidence magically appearing in plain site the 5th time searching the same area etc etc. There are way too many major mistakes here to call it simple error / sloppy work or coincidence.

If police plant evidence then the accused walks free. It's that simple.

I'm waiting

Not surprised that team transcripts finds no problem with USA#1 jail system. Not surprised at all.

Good post.

Amen.

Have any of the Manitowoc 3 watched Gideons Army yet? Please do, even though I doubt it'll change anything.

Short version:

Was in college at a party
Girl invited me to her house
We made out, she didn't wanna go any further than that
I got annoyed and left

First she said I tried to rape her, then she said I just forced myself on her. No evidence whatsoever, only other person home was her roommate who was a self reported "light sleeper" and heard no sign of struggle. Girl was known to get around but she gets protected as a "victim" so can't address anytning about her, how her story changed, how she said she only had 1 drink all night (despite multiple people saying they saw her drink more). .. I even texted her friend upon leaving that if she wanted me to come back to give her my number.


They wanted to charge me with felony sexual assault, ended up charged with sexual battery. Got a prosecutor who was new (and female), a judge that according to my lawyer heavily favored women (like, drunk in public for a female was slap on wrist, for a guy was hours of community service and fine etc)


Had to decide whether I wanted to go to trial and have my word against hers to see if I was a sex offender for the rest of my life or not, and ended up taking a plea for assault and battery and spending 45 days in jail.

seems fair

I have a big problem with our laws, especially drug laws which target non-violent offenders.

I am not defending the US legal system as a whole, however in terms of defendants getting a fair trial it's about as good as a system is going to get.

If you want to reduce incarceration rates, end the backwards drug laws and sentencing rules.

Because there is absolutely zero proof they did?

Then defense staked their hopes on the blood test proving the blood was taken from the vial and planted. When that didn't pan out, they said the test was no good. They threw everything they could think of at the wall and nothing stuck, because the evidence wasn't planted.

I see you didn't read any of my post besides the first sentence. Just to summarize, the police planted evidence because they wanted to get a conviction.. Right? that is their motive? I can argue that motive with any case. So in your opinion should every accused criminal be found not guilty?

Also, you were asking me to essentially prove a negative. It is your job to prove evidence was planted, not the other way around. I am rejecting your assertion that evidence was planted because you haven't demonstrated this to be true.

I see, that sucks. Did your sentence get deferred?

It appears he didn't even understand the only part of my post he read. Just to clarify. I am saying avery is a misogynist. not a media whore.

Kratz also prosecuted two people for completely different scenarios for the same victim. He readily acknowledges it.

He made up whatever theory he wanted to ensure convictions. In one trial, he said they was only one participant. In second trial, he said there were two participants.

How can anyone believe him?

And then factor in his own behavior with women. That he only acknowledged after it was going to be disclosed publicly. Even after being presented with evidence, he tried to argue that there was nothing wrong with them.

http://media.journalinteractive.com/documents/scan.pdf

Yeah, SA may be guilty or may not be guilty. Kratz was not the person that should have been leading the trial, or any trial. He was well aware the press conference using made-up evidence poisoned any chance of Avery getting a fair trial. Which Avery (or anyone) deserves regardless of the case against him.

That sucks, I feel for you assuming you really were innocent. But that does not really prove that plea deals are wrong, or that the intent of the deal was to get an innocent person to plead guilty. I don't blame you for not wanting to roll the dice, but that is how plea deals work... offer a lesser sentence to avoid the unknown outcome of a jury.

By the way if you post your story in the Drunk sex and rape thread in politics, you will be insta-labeled a rapist, just so you know. I got slammed and called a rape apologist for suggesting the accused also has rights in that thread.

You continue to dodge questions and their explanations by asking other people more questions... I see how this is going to go..

+1, stop making so much sense

Yeah, no one itt has ever said "might be guilty" = beyond a reasonable doubt.

This will obviously never sink in for you, but the reason he was found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, was the huge amount of evidence connecting him to the crime.

"Maybe the cops planted all the evidence", based on nothing but speculation and conspiracy theories, is not reasonable doubt. You are the one who doesn't understand. Happily for TH's family, the jury had a better understanding than you seem to.

This is not true. Do you understand how discourse and burden of proof are supposed to work? If you make a claim, I have the right to take the default position and ask for evidence. Your claim is that evidence was planted. My position is I don't see evidence that this happened. I do not have to justify my position until you have demonstrated yours, because my position is not "evidence wasn't planted" it is, "I reject evidence was planted" Do you see how that works?

Now if you want me to provide evidence that he is guilty, I feel I already have. I laid out my reasons for thinking this in the very post you responded to but didn't read dude.

I was going to respond to those two but after skimming through the thread it's pretty clear they're ignorant/ stance will not change, plenty of people have clearly already tried