Many horrible things happen, because a lot of human beings believe in there gut instincts to be always right. The enlightenment only won on the surface, but in daily life, the magic and mystics rule unchallenged still.
And it seems, all the education in the world can not fix that - or is not even attempt to fix that. How would you even name such a subject at school?
Species-wide Training for Self Recognition of inherited Mental-Handicaps?
How do you keep this going after you trained for it?
Imagine you are a medical doctor in a medieval town, specializing on hand surgery. Usually you have to amputate, because you lack the knowledge. But even when not, you can not repair machinery you do know nothing about.
The city church knows about your thirst to learn, and has assigned you a watchmen, preventing the dissection of amputates or the dead.
But he can not stop you from injuring yourself, to find out what works how.
So here you sit in your study, with a sharpened knife and nothing to dampen your situational awareness. You make a incission. It hurts, but you find out how muscles look and how they flex.
Every cut, makes you less of the person you where. You will never be a doctor again, because you destroy a tool in the prcoess.
You hurt your family, financially and by endangering your well beeing.
You might end up a cripple, with nothing to show for it but bloodied notes.
So what if enlightenment is not some glorified endeavor, bringing us all toys like santa brings the presents?
What if it hurts? Like really permanently hurt and scar.
What if that knowledge does not lead to good, but to headhacks for the mighty?
Should you, would you continue?
If you had a retarded kid, that is happy, and might spend a happy and productive live in its little corner - would you tell that kid the truth? How would you do that?
And this immunity was created out of nothing, backed by nothing. One of the front runners for president in 2020 literally argued in an appeals court that her prosecutors should have been allowed to fabricate and withhold evidence during prosecutions. Instead of being a pariah and banished from public life, there's a decent chance she'll bring this same mentality to the presidency.
"Incredibly, the State of California, via Attorney General Kamala Harris, decided to appeal the case. The state's key argument: That putting a fake confession in the transcript wasn't "outrageous" because it didn't involve physical brutality, like chaining someone to a radiator and beating him with a hose."
You have a link that's not an opinion piece? I've searched for this court case and anytime Kamala Harris is mentioned, the articles are blogs or very suspect reporting websites. Also they all have identical content, looking as if each website copy and pasted the content between themselves.
I'm indifferent to her in any regard but it would be interesting to see if this gets more attention as we get closer to 2020. Seems fairly straight-forward that she was defending the right of a prosecutor to get away with fabricating evidence.
This is just nuts. Prosecutors have been given enormous trust and power by the people so they also should have enormous responsibility and be held to the highest standards.
That's not what that wikipedia article says. Do you have a source backing up your claim?
The article says that they have immunity from civil prosecution for claims arising from procedural abuses in initiating a prosecution and in stating the state's case. That doesn't sound at all the same as "complete legal immunity". By my read of that sentence, if they commit a crime, they are still liable to criminal prosecution - you just couldn't initiate a civil prosecution against them.
What processes need to fall in place to systematically reevaluate all the old arson cases? This seems like a data problem that needs indexing and reevaluating. I know it's not that simple, but there has to be a way to undo bad decisions.
It won't happen. If we reevaluate arson cases, people will push for a wide reevaluation of other convictions based on types of evidence that have been shown to be flawed. This includes hair analysis, fingerprint analysis, bite mark analysis, bullet analysis, and eyewitness accounts. Too much added work and a truth too painful to acknowledge.
Also, the criminal Justice system is notoriously confident and resilient to self examination. It's amazing what it can take to get even one person a new trial.
I think a lot of the "confidence" is taken essentially philosophically too. A lot of people who are willing to work on the prosecution side firmly believe in some type of "procedural justice", the notion that a verdict reached by properly following all legal processes, even if factually incorrect, is a just verdict. There's a big "assuming the process is fair" part of that belief, but those people don't go in thinking the process is unfair, and then also contributing to the process being unfair.
State sanctioned violence in the form of imprisonment being enforced by individuals whose egos can't accept that methods change. I find it unsettling to say the least. But then I guess actors like agent Cooper need to hide behind fortresses of self assurance or else they'd never be able to testify against anyone. How else do you take life away from someone? You need the utmost assurance in your methods.
Horrifying. The entire legal system is supposed to be based on the concept that it is better to let the guilty walk than destroy an innocent person. Instead of evidence they used federal agents as expert witnesses providing evidence free accusation. It is almost like prosecutors pursue cases based on the likelihood of winning instead of actual evidence.
> The entire legal system is supposed to be based on the concept that it is better to let the guilty walk than destroy an innocent person.
This is true if you believe that there is a final justice. However, in a secularizing society that doesn’t believe in God or final judgement, if you want justice it has to be here and now since it will not come any other way.
True. Too many people accept the evil of false convictions because they believe in life eternal, that unjust suffering during life will be rewarded afterwards. I'd rather get things right now than roll those dice.
I get the logic here. But in many religions god is the source of justice. Got no idea if OP is a Christian or not but there are plenty of judicial proceedings in portions of the Bible that lots of Christians overlook, particularly about the requirement for at the least two or three witnesses (which doesn't necessitate eyewitness but at least two credible witnesses) before a conviction takes place. There is also plenty of case law in the Hebrew scriptures about not imprisoning or punishing someone if there is no evidence (e.g. establishment of sanctuary cities for accused persons to go to while a just trial is pending).
How can you call that justice when innocents are imprisoned for crimes that did not commit while the criminals go free ?
That concept comes from the belief that it is worse to punish an innocent than to let a culpable go free. Call that utilitarian if you will but it has nothing to do with a hypothetical final judgment.
If you haven't read The New Yorker story about Cameron Todd Willingham, a man (almost certainly innocent) who was executed in Texas based on junk arson science, you should rectify that as soon as possible: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/09/07/trial-by-fire
Amazing book. It's shocking how much of the forensic "science" that the media has conditioned us to see as infallible is actually mostly junk. Even fingerprint analysis has less than stellar experimental track record: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fingerprint#Criticism.
Apart from the particular injustice of this and other cases, it would behoove everyone to be a little more circumspect and humble about what we believe we know.
The problem is there's a harsh disincentive for admitting that in any criminal 'science' because doing anything other than pretending the science is perfect and infallible would undermine the criminal case.
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[ 2.0 ms ] story [ 93.8 ms ] threadGut feelings almost invariably lead to witch hunts. Garrett was the witch this time around, how many others have also been hunted by this guy?
Wow.
We're putting people in prison at 40 to 50 grand a year because, well, "instinct".
And it seems, all the education in the world can not fix that - or is not even attempt to fix that. How would you even name such a subject at school? Species-wide Training for Self Recognition of inherited Mental-Handicaps?
How do you keep this going after you trained for it?
Imagine you are a medical doctor in a medieval town, specializing on hand surgery. Usually you have to amputate, because you lack the knowledge. But even when not, you can not repair machinery you do know nothing about.
The city church knows about your thirst to learn, and has assigned you a watchmen, preventing the dissection of amputates or the dead.
But he can not stop you from injuring yourself, to find out what works how. So here you sit in your study, with a sharpened knife and nothing to dampen your situational awareness. You make a incission. It hurts, but you find out how muscles look and how they flex.
Every cut, makes you less of the person you where. You will never be a doctor again, because you destroy a tool in the prcoess.
You hurt your family, financially and by endangering your well beeing.
You might end up a cripple, with nothing to show for it but bloodied notes.
So what if enlightenment is not some glorified endeavor, bringing us all toys like santa brings the presents?
What if it hurts? Like really permanently hurt and scar.
What if that knowledge does not lead to good, but to headhacks for the mighty?
Should you, would you continue?
If you had a retarded kid, that is happy, and might spend a happy and productive live in its little corner - would you tell that kid the truth? How would you do that?
Never let the truth get in the way of a conviction.
Probably tricky to prosecute though, since you would have to prove intent versus, say, incompetence.
The penalties seem pretty low too, and not correlated with the potential damage.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosecutorial_immunity
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2015/03/08/justice-ho...
This should have ended her career, as it is unforgivable. But she might be the epitome of the downside of "good ol boy" politics.
If you're a Kamala Harris fan, prepare to be traumatized.
https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/2781830/people-v-velas...
The article says that they have immunity from civil prosecution for claims arising from procedural abuses in initiating a prosecution and in stating the state's case. That doesn't sound at all the same as "complete legal immunity". By my read of that sentence, if they commit a crime, they are still liable to criminal prosecution - you just couldn't initiate a civil prosecution against them.
This is true if you believe that there is a final justice. However, in a secularizing society that doesn’t believe in God or final judgement, if you want justice it has to be here and now since it will not come any other way.
It's valuable for understanding the NT, but not considered binding as law.
That concept comes from the belief that it is worse to punish an innocent than to let a culpable go free. Call that utilitarian if you will but it has nothing to do with a hypothetical final judgment.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2014/08/03/fresh-...
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33296669-the-cadaver-kin...
'Science'.
Apart from the particular injustice of this and other cases, it would behoove everyone to be a little more circumspect and humble about what we believe we know.