Say Anything Blog

Rob.  Yes, there are type II errors.  The alternative is anarchy.  That is a 42.5% rate of the 40 that were chosen to be reviewed.  Now, can we get the total number of criminals in jail that the 40 were chosen from?  My initial guess is that the error rate will be less than 1%.
False rape claims are between 2 and 25% by FBI statistics.  Maybe certain people should stop lying about what “happened” to them.  Certain liberals should stop falsely accusing people of crimes they did not commit (Duke University athletes).

Communism is evil

I think it’s high time we took a long, hard look at our justice system.

Okay, it never hurts to do so.  Your link didn’t work but I assume the review process which corrected this error is now in place.  Therefore the liklihood of this situation repeating itself is greatly reduced.  Also given the number of criminals that are released or never incarcerated, the fact that we are “putting more people in prison per capita than any other country in the world” doesn’t necessarily imply the situation in Texas is representative of our entire justice system.

Rob,

You’re taking this out of context.  They are reopening these 40 cases (out of tens of thousands) because there is reason to believe that each and every one of them was a wrongful conviction.  This came about because the two of the previous Dallas County DAs were “ethically challenged”.  This was discovered after a run of cases where the prosecution relied on a witness who sold the accused ground-up drywall pretending it was cocaine was exposed.  Frankly, I’m surprised that only 17 of the 40 were innocent.  And I hope the one living DA who perpetrated this gets to spend the rest of his natural life in prison.

Oops, I wrongly drew a connection between the “fake drug scandal” (as it has been termed here in the Dallas media) and the wrongful convictions.  It seems that Craig Watkins, the current Dallas County DA, is going through past files and finding cases of prosecutorial misconduct and then using things like DNA to prove innocence (or guilt).

Hopefully the prosecutors involved will be punished, though I doubt it will be commiserately.

kbiel.  Thanks.  It now appears that the problem, yet again is one or two people who are in a position of authority to which they are either not qualified or “ethically challenged”.  This is not too far from the false accusations that put innocent people in jail based on overzealous prosecutors back in the 80s.  The real insult was that they were falsely accused of sexually touching children in day care centers.  The trump card back then and still is:  girls.

Communism is evil

These are cases of prosecutors
forced into court by the
The Innocence Project of Texas

Prosecutors generally fight tooth and nail to keep the convicted out of court.

I’m with Chief on this one.  The 40% rate means very little in terms of total convictions.

You could just as easily state that of those pushed forward for reexamination, most were not found to be innocent.

electnixon.  Good point.  Are you in marketing?

These prosecutors remind me of that racist one in Durham, North Carolina.

He has been disbarred.  Thanks to bloggers, their parents, a good lawyer and a few good men.

Communism is evil