More than 2,000 false convictions in 23 years.

This just makes me sick inside. This happens everywhere around the world not just the USA.


By Elizabeth Chuck, msnbc.com

In 1984, two North Carolina girls, age 4 and 6, were molested. They told police their abuser was Sylvester Smith, who was dating the mother of one of the girls, and he went to prison for the crime.
Twenty years later, the victims recanted, saying their grandmother told them to blame Smith, and his conviction was overturned.
But the person they say who really molested them -- their cousin, who was nine at the time -- could not be prosecuted because he was under age at the time of the alleged crime. He is, however, serving a life sentence for another crime he committed in the meantime: murder.

Read the rest of the article here:
http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/05/21/11756575-researchers-more-than-2000-false-convictions-in-past-23-years?lite

i hate hearing stories and facts like these...
can you fucking imagine sitting behind bars for years for a crime you didn't commit?? i think i'd kill someone to earn me some time... it's got to be probably the most fucked up thing you can do to a person imo..
to sit there an know you're innocent, yet serving a bid of however many years?? no way.. that's why i love shawshank redemption as much as i do.. took him 19 years to dig his way to freedom through a stone wall and 500 yards of a shit filled pipe, a lil under a half of mile, five football fieds...

that line is complete bs though, 500 yards is way short of a half mile, barely over a 1/4 mile, but other then that one error, i home run of a movie it is..

Winter Woman said:

This just makes me sick inside. This happens everywhere around the world not just the USA.


By Elizabeth Chuck, msnbc.com

In 1984, two North Carolina girls, age 4 and 6, were molested. They told police their abuser was Sylvester Smith, who was dating the mother of one of the girls, and he went to prison for the crime.
Twenty years later, the victims recanted, saying their grandmother told them to blame Smith, and his conviction was overturned.
But the person they say who really molested them -- their cousin, who was nine at the time -- could not be prosecuted because he was under age at the time of the alleged crime. He is, however, serving a life sentence for another crime he committed in the meantime: murder.

Read the rest of the article here:
http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/05/21/11756575-researchers-more-than-2000-false-convictions-in-past-23-years?lite

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I totally agree! The thought of a really long prison term is pretty nightmarish, but a really long prison term for an innocent person????????? I can't imagine.

plus i've heard lots of instances like this story where the true criminal was in many crimes already serving time for another crime he committed ..

i did time with a guy who said he was innocent.. (of course everybody in jail is innocent) he had a life sentence for rape..seen on the news a year or so back that he was and was out..still he spent over 15 years rotting in prison

Child molesters get the worst of the worst treatment in prison, from guards and inmates. Imagine being in the system for that long when your innocent.

9, i dont know if a guys(he's probably got people who depend on him to think of as well) life should be ruined because of something done when so young. a 9 year old cannot understand what he is really doing and how bad it is like you or i could. it is awful that a man was wrongfully incarcerated. i do agree 100% there. we've come a long way in the last 20-30 yrs and usually they can kind of sheild them from such influence or reveal them better than in the past. we've got a ways to go though, i agree. we just need to keep working on the system, eyewitness testimony has come under alot more scrutiny in regards to its value in some cases and its value as proof. someone else posted an article pretty similar to the one you did but it also said something about a texas man being wrongfully executed(although imo it was misleading as they tried to make it sound like dna proved texas executed an innocent man but that is not the case. ) and that led to another article about eye witness testimony that looked like a good step forward in evidence. now our next move should be to start making examples of prosecutors who withhold evidence to gain convictions. no slap on the wrist shit, make em do 4 or 5 years at least. some of the people they convict do their whole lives or close to their whole lives in prison yet they never have to answer for these injustices. i think as a whole the country has probably improved on it in the last few decades but we need to stamp it out entirely.
the police bias reminds me of the memphis 3, 3 teenage boys were convicted of raping and killing 3 13 yr old boys in a satanic ritual and were sentenced to death. the whole case for them being investigated was by one of the teens probation officer who was extremely biased from the start "look like damien echols finally killed someone" or something to the effect was a comment he was heard saying the second he got on the scene and he then kept insisting it must of been him and that he should be allowed to interview him about it. i can only imagine the lies and threats that were uttered to get him to confess but it is sickening. worse yet they got him to implicate 2 of his friends and then proceeded to "interview" them. long story short-all 3 were convincted and sentenced to death. in the time they were in jail and prison they were beaten and raped quite often, with prisoners being proud to say they had done so and guards just looking the other way as they were believed to be guilty of such a horrible crime. their was evidence that pointed to them being innocent ignored as well, the rape charge being of particular controvery as the medical examiner said herself it was frequent for anuses to dilate after death and wasnt a sign of rape for sure and that no dna was found in the bodies and should of made the jury and everyone realize that the confession was like the boys claimed at trial coerced. since then all 3 have been released. the evidence had been building steadily on many front and they were close to getting it thrown out when it was found that genetic material not from the victims or the suspects was finally tested. they were not pardoned or their cases thrown out however. they are still considered guilty of it but have been released.(as far as i know, its been 6 months or so since i looked into it but i think i would see it in the news if they actually got the cases thrown out or pardoned as it is pretty controversial case.
another area we need to work on is paid informants or jailhouse informants who are testifying to get their case reduced or dismissed. they are pretty biased to testify the way they do.

id imagine that # of only 2,000 is a bit thin if you ask me...

more like 20,000...

the more convoluted and messed up the system gets, the more and more this will happen, as they really dont care which "body" gets thrown in jail... because each and every "per capita" they have... puts more dollars from tax payers and investors in the "legal system" and keeps adding into the "revenue" stream, and who's guilty or not... it seems as if that, isnt such a "priority" with the so called "justice system"...

they just want to put more bodies in the cells... because each prisoner is a piece of commercial commodity to the legal/prison industry...

cannofbliss said:

id imagine that # of only 2,000 is a bit thin if you ask me...

more like 20,000...

the more convoluted and messed up the system gets, the more and more this will happen, as they really dont care which "body" gets thrown in jail... because each and every "per capita" they have... puts more dollars from tax payers and investors in the "legal system" and keeps adding into the "revenue" stream, and who's guilty or not... it seems as if that, isnt such a "priority" with the so called "justice system"...

they just want to put more bodies in the cells... because each prisoner is a piece of commercial commodity to the legal/prison industry...

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what makes me sick is when i hear of judges and shit on the take from the prison systems..
there was just these 2 i think in pennsylvania that got busted recently for taking bribes from this guy who owned a prison system and therefore made money each time that judge convicted someone and sent them to one of his prisons...
how fucked up is that shit? and what kind of fucked up person would take money in exchange of someone's freedom.. money is an evil fucking thing it's incredible what some people are willing to do to get some of it...

hope you don't mind me putting up a link in your thread ww.. not trying to hijack as it's pretty closely related to what you are talking about imo..

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/2/17/penn_judges_plead_guilty_to_taking

This is the reason that after working inside Folsom Prison for 25 years, I'm against the death penalty.
Can you imagine being exicuted for a crime you know you didn't commit but no one would believe you?
You can always overturn a life sentence

peace
doublejj
P.S. I never said I didn't think some people should die for what they did, but spending every day of the rest of your life in prison, isn't a lighter sentence. That's a hellish death. Prison is fucked-up!

doublejj said:

This is the reason that after working inside Folsom Prison for 25 years, I'm against the death penalty.
Can you imagine being exicuted for a crime you know you didn't commit but no one would believe you?
You can always overturn a life sentence

peace
doublejj
P.S. I never said I didn't think some people should die for what they did, but spending every day of the rest of your life in prison, isn't a lighter sentence. That's a hellish death. Prison is fucked-up!

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I agree with both these sentiments. cn

doublejj said:

This is the reason that after working inside Folsom Prison for 25 years, I'm against the death penalty.
Can you imagine being exicuted for a crime you know you didn't commit but no one would believe you?
You can always overturn a life sentence

peace
doublejj
P.S. I never said I didn't think some people should die for what they did, but spending every day of the rest of your life in prison, isn't a lighter sentence. That's a hellish death. Prison is fucked-up!

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i agree as well, plus my problems with the death penalty is you're telling someone that killing is bad and oh so wrong, no one should do it, so to show you how wrong it is to kill, we in turn are now going to kill you...
kind of hypocritical imo..

the system is fucked up i seen it first hand wit my bois and my brother it makes me sick

If I was guilty and in prison I would live with it and do my time, if I was innocent though I would pull some Gerard butler law abiding citizen shit and kill everyfuckingone who had anything to do with it

Perfextionist420 said:

If I was guilty and in prison I would live with it and do my time, if I was innocent though I would pull some Gerard butler law abiding citizen shit and kill everyfuckingone who had anything to do with it

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yah, there's a good movie with the guy who played magnum pi called an innocent man of all things, and he got set up by i think it was some cop, and the whole time he spent in prison he spent thinking about how he was going to set up the cop who set him up..
it was pretty cool revenge themed movie, and the end is pretty sweet as well..

Bloke in the UK was just the other day released after 7 years for murder after it was found the only evidence against him had been 2 unreliable witness testimonies putting him at the scene, and that the police had failed to follow up investigating his alibi which proved he was elsewhere at the time of the murder.

Bloody disgrace. How in hell can you even begin to compensate for that kind of thing, a handful of money does not make up for 7 year etc locked away under rather unsavoury conditions, let alone compensate the family of the imprisoned. Or of the family of the victim for that matter.

It's almost as if people are being found guilty simply to give some form of closure and success story to the case regardless of the actual truth of the matter. Imagine that, it can't be true.

tip top toker said:

Bloke in the UK was just the other day released after 7 years for murder after it was found the only evidence against him had been 2 unreliable witness testimonies putting him at the scene, and that the police had failed to follow up investigating his alibi which proved he was elsewhere at the time of the murder.

Bloody disgrace. How in hell can you even begin to compensate for that kind of thing, a handful of money does not make up for 7 year etc locked away under rather unsavoury conditions, let alone compensate the family of the imprisoned. Or of the family of the victim for that matter.

It's almost as if people are being found guilty simply to give some form of closure and success story to the case regardless of the actual truth of the matter. Imagine that, it can't be true.

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Is there anything he can do about what happened to him?

Winter Woman said:

Is there anything he can do about what happened to him?

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He will most likely get a huge sum of money in way of an apology, and while money is good for certain things, it does not in any way compensate years of misery and confinement. If it were me they could offer all the money they wanted, and i'd still be angry as a swarm of bees.

and sadly the money that they made off of him being in prison those years... will still greatly outweigh the "compensation" he would receive...