Last thing to ponder on your quest for validation.


Your thought process in a nutshell: You just said it doesn't matter if all the people are innocent that are convicted because the chance of being picked up off the street and convicted is so low, ergo, the system is fine. You must be out of your mind.

Sorry, I couldn't let that one pass by.

b

Sorry for the sidetrack.

b

You did. I said that one group of people being free is better than no one being free and you said that people who aren't part of that group would disagree.

And that instantly means:

?

b

No, I'm really not.

Simple math. Okay....I've done the research, but since you want to test me, I dug it up again.


2004 Felony Convictions 1,079,000

US Population: 292,936,109

2006 Felony Convictions 1,132,290

2006 US Population: 293,655,404

Once again if the justice system is 0% accurate or everyone is innocent, an american citizen has less than a 1% chance to be convicted of felony they did not commit. That number decrease exponentially if you take in account the actual number of guilty people that the system convicts.


You are looking at distorted numbers. The odds are astronomical an american citizen being convicted, much less wrongfully. With no bias towards innocence or guilt an approximate 1 Million people are convicted of a felony out of a possible 290 million. My numbers were a little off but still .3% (approx) of the population will be convicted of a felony every year. Obviously the odds of being wrongfully convicted are reduced if you give the system any credit at all.

I stand by my assertion that the odds of being wrongfully convicted are astronomical.

No it is not. You disputed my notion of being wrongfully convicted being astronomical. If you are wrongfully convicted, you obviously have to be randomly picked off the street.



You obviously wont accept the cold hard facts that a wrongful conviction occurs very rarely.

With 95% plead guilty. Logically we can assume majority of those are guilty, if not, they lost any ability to claim innocence and the likely hood of some being innocent that amount is negligible. We are left with approx. 50K people being convicted at trial annually.

With a 95% guilty plea rate, this shows overwhelming indication that prosecutors and police are arresting and prosecuting the right people. Even if you take a 50% accuracy of the system, only 25,000 out of 290,000,000 Americans are wrongfully convicted each year. 25,000 out of 1,000,000. Hell, I'll say all 50K that go to trail are innocent compared with the 950,000 that the states got right. But ,we both know the system gets it right at trial helluva lot more than 50%, making the margin of error less than .5% that you claim.


No they are not. You have 95% of all felony convictions coming from a guilty plea. 95%. You can not logically tell me that there is a large % of people pleading guilty to crimes they did not commit. Besides its the system correcting it self with new tech advances. One would argue the evidence and collection techniques are better today than yesterday and always improving.



Hard to agree when I know the real numbers. You can argue all you want. I have that 95% number that blows any meaningful argument that people are being convicted wrongfully at an alarming rate. If they are, they convicting themselves.

I've have numbers you have insults. 95% of all felons plead guilty.

You can not argue with the numbers....I said this before, and you still cant. You should of stopped when I did not feel like showing them too you.

I'm just making the smart lawyer look stupid. 95% of all felons plead guilty. 950,000 out 1,000,000 say they are guilty. that .5% you were talking about was B.S. Love to know where you got that number.


It gets better........

Quote:

In 2004, the rate was 31 persons convicted for every 100 persons arrested.

Speaking as an astrophysicist, you have a bizarre notion of "astronomical."

What mr. lawyer doesn't know that prosecutors are largely overwhelmed and only prosecute the cases they have the strongest evidence on. (metro areas)

semantics

No.

A) You've included roughly 100 million children, so the chances of any given American adult being convicted of a felony in any given year is more like 1 in 200.

B) Assuming an average adult lifespan of 50 years, the probability of any given person being convicted of a felony is 0.22168, more than 1 in 5, or only 3.5:1 against.

But please, continue on in your fantasy world where wrongful convictions don't matter.

Those are the words, yes...

The type of juror that would nullify is generally screened out during the voir dire process. It would take either a very poor jury pool or extreme case facts for this to happen.

Nullification definitely has a place, but it is so extremely rare I don't think it is even worth debating.

His stat doesn't say that at all fwiw. It's hard to gauge wrongful felony convictions (15000 people get murdered each year, I could see it being close to that)....but I'm not sure wrongful convictions cracks into the top 10 problems with the US justice system.

So you are suggesting that your odds of being convicted increase each year? Why is this? (I truly do not know) What if you put a recidivism of about 65% into that equation. Wonder how many of those people are wrongfully convicted. Plus you still have to deal with the 95% guilty pleas.


Again with the manipulative distortion of my comments. You guys are good at that. If you so right and smart, you do not have to misrepresent my comments. I've never said it does not matter, I've said the problem is not as high or serious as an agenda driven study would suggest. To me the likely hood of a wrongful conviction occurring is inconsequential to the total amount of convictions obtained justly.


About 5 million US citizens have felony record. How does that effect the equation?


I do not want wrongful convictions to occur. I really do not. However, dare I say the numbers are more than acceptable for a successful system that we know that can not be perfect. We know 95% said they committed a felony.

You look at the 31 convictions on 100 arrest and that show how little people are prosecuted in the first place. It takes a lot to get someone arrested much less convicted. Add that 95%......its hard to make a case the wrongful conviction problem in this country is so bad to warrant the attention it gets.

Sure the system has problems and makes errors especially with better tech coming available correcting errors from the past.

I've shown my numbers, someone show me how convictions are reversed resulting in an out right acquittal or release.

Here:

14,295,000 felony convictions in state and federal courts from '89-03
28,642 est. Exoneration's from 1989 to 2003 or 2/10th of 1% or 1,909 exonerations a year out of 953,000 convictions – or 1 out of 500. (Bureau of Justice Statistics.)

Much stronger argument is the severity of sentences handed out.

I'm honestly having a hard time following all of the math, but I wanted to throw a few questions out there for discussion and whoever wants to respond can feel free:

1) If jury nullification is to be an effective check on governmental overreach, doesn't it require a mechanism that would signal that the jury acquitted because it objected to the law, and not because they did not believe that the defendant didn't commit the crime he/she was accused of?

If, for example the government has a hard time getting rape convictions, does that mean that it is hard to prove a rape accusation beyond a reasonable doubt, or that the jurors object to the statutory definition of consent? We could speculate, but how do we know?

2) If a jury is free to ignore the law in order to achieve "justice" when it comes to acquitting a defendant, are they also free to ignore the law in the the name of "justice" in a case where the defendant is clearly a shady individual, but the government failed to conclusively establish guilt in this particular case? If this is not ok, why is it acceptable for the jury to ignore the law in one situation but not the other?

lol

I think there's a srong case for analysis of jury determinations but it should be reported on in an anonymous manner and play no part in the particular case.

This seems like a very bad idea. Justice requires a bias in favour of the defendant but in any case you're suggesting a jury should disagree with itself i.e. the jury deciding guilt has not established beyond reasonable doubt and the jury having no reasonable doubt the defendant is guilty.

You are bad at math. 0.995^50 ~ 0.78.

It does if you combine it with his statement that even if everyone who is convicted is innocent, it's still insignificant due to the odds of one being picked up on the street randomly and convicted. Concluding that therfore, the system only needs a little tweaking. Maybe you missed that part of his argument.

His 95% guilty pleas are a joke since he's discounting innocents who plead guilty. But then says, screw them if they do, it's their problem. Which is a result of a thorough misunderstanding of the innerworkings of the process. But again, who cares if they're innocent...

Wrongful convictions are the result of many of the problems within the US justice system. They are one of the glaring results of these problems, not the cause of the problems.

b

Well, yeah. If everybody who is convicted is innocent the system probably needs more than just tweaking. Cool story.

Interesting article

http://partners.nytimes.com/library/...h-penalty.html

That's after initially convicted.

b

I agree fully.

The rate of being picked up and convicted, if everyone is innocent, is n%. Except everyone that is convicted is wrongfully convicted (100%). According to him, that's acceptable, but he does concede that it needs 'little' tweaking, not 'more than just.'

b

They are not mine, you thought wrongly that I made these numbers up and you still seem to not want to accept them as valid.

What does the 31 convictions out of 100 arrest tell you? Is it that surprising that 95% of those plead guilty? It tells me that selective prosecution occurs on cases with the strongest evidence.

What does the .2% exoneration's suggest to you? I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and push that number up to .5% like you initially had it. This would indicate that of all felons that plead guilty 99.5% are in fact guilty. Do we all want this number to be zero? Yes, of course, but to suggest it shows a glaring hole in the system is such a ridiculous argument.

Just say you want a zero defect system and I'll pass your logic off as idealistic ignorance. I am seriously not sure what you expect. I've presented legitimate numbers on how many convictions are made off of arrest, showing just how rare it is to get a conviction in the first place. Then I've shown you how many exoneration that occur over a 10 year period (which likely increased with the advent of DNA). With DNA, one could make a legitimate argument that the system is stronger now than it was back then, and it's correcting its deficiencies. Did the system have problems? I'm positive race was an issue along with less reliable evidence 20 years ago when physical evidence collection was nowhere near as strong as it is today.

But those problem are being corrected. The system is stronger than it was yesterday. I do not doubt wrongful convictions occurred more frequently back in the 60's and 70's but today, I'm not seeing it. Not when less than half of all felony arrest are prosecuted.

Your definition of glaring leaves a lot to be desired. But if you want 100% physical evidence and a zero defect system more power to you as I do not.

I'm curious, what is an acceptable % of innocents convicted, in your mind?

Tha's obviously a function of the sentence. What's an acceptable % of innocents convicted if the penalty is death, FleeingFish? What about a life long prison sentence?

Can you tell me if his study factored in the length of time between crime and the retrial? Can it show how many people were actually guilty that were acquitted? You assume all acquitted people are innocent.

Love the number 75% number. What is the total number of death sentences and how many were set aside.....then put that 75% in perspective. Odd how they do not give that number. 5,760 death penalty convictions but no mention of how many were set aside.

These are the biased numbers I'm talking about. That 75% of what? one? ten? thousand?

Use relevant numbers. This study really wants to present the truth.