Myths Of The Criminal Justice System: Part 3

Radley Balko completes his look at legal myths.

Myth 8: Sex offenders are more likely to reoffend than other criminals.

There's no set of crimes more plagued by misconceptions and hysteria than sex crimes.

[P]eople have landed on sex offender lists for exposing themselves in public (remember the "streaking" craze in the 1970s?), public urination, or having sex at age 17 with someone who is 15. In Texas, children as young as 10 can be put on the sex offender list.
In some states, you can land on the sex offender list for crimes that have nothing to do with sex.

Because they're usually passed out of anger and passion rather than after careful contemplation, sex offender laws often make little sense. 

Myth 9: Seeing is believing. Eyewitness testimony is a reliable way of solving crimes.

. . . participants were shown grainy video footage of a real case in which a man shot and killed a security guard while robbing a convenience store. They were then given five pictures, and told that the culprit was included in the photo set -- except that he wasn't. Yet every one of the participants still claimed they could positively identify the culprit in one of the photos.

More troubling, when the researchers positively reinforced one group's selection of the culprit, that group became more confident in their identification. Half said they were now “certain” of their identification. Those participants also said they would be more willing to testify against the suspect. They were more likely to describe the hazy security footage as “clear." . . .

Myth #10: Wrongful convictions are tragic, but they're inevitable in an imperfect system. We at least take care of the wrongly convicted once we realize there has been a mistake.

With some notable and laudable exceptions, prosecutors often find it difficult to let go of a conviction -- even once it's clear that they got the wrong man.

Currently in Texas, where there's strong evidence that the state has already executed an innocent man, public officials from the local prosecutor all the way up to the governor are fighting to prevent death row inmate Hank Skinner from testing DNA from his case that could prove his innocence (or clearly establish his guilt). . . .

. . . READ the ENTIRE ARTICLE

Myths Of The Criminal Justice System: Part 2

Radley Balko continues his look a legal misconceptions.

Myth 4: We have appeals courts to check and verify jury verdicts.

Appeals courts review claims that a defendant wasn't afforded his rights under the U.S. Constitution, or the constitution of a particular state. They also review claims that the prosecution or judge did not follow the proper rules of criminal procedure and decide whether those lapses resulted in in an unfair trial. But they almost never second-guess a guilty verdict by reconsidering the evidence.

Myth 5: Due to their position, law enforcement officials are held to a higher standard of conduct than regular citizens.

A strong argument can be made that they're actually held to a lower standard.

Myth 6: Dangerous criminals frequently escape punishment by "getting off on a technicality."

A regular viewer of Bill O'Reilly or Nancy Grace could be forgiven for thinking our criminal courts are heavily stacked in favor of child molesters, drug dealers and cold-blooded killers. In truth, the conviction rate for federal prosecutors is 90-95 percent. For state prosecutors it varies by jurisdiction, but convictions rates generally fall between 60 and 85 percent.

Myth 7: No one confesses to a crime he didn't commit.

False confessions are more common than one might think.

According to the Innocence Project, about one in four convictions that have been overturned by DNA testing involved defendants who at one point had actually confessed to the crime for which they were later exonerated.

Minors and the mentally disabled are especially prone to false confessions, but anyone under considerable duress or who has endured an unusually long or harsh interrogation can be susceptible. Rob Warden and Steven A. Drizin point out in the book "True Stories of False Confessions," an anthology of reports of 48 people who confessed to felonies they didn't commit, the confession often puts a halt to the investigation, even when the confessions "aren't corroborated or don't fit the facts of the alleged crimes."

Myths Of The Criminal Justice System: Part 1

Radley Balko looks at double jeopardy, enhanced sentencing and ignorance of the law. You'll be surprised at what he finds. Here's a taste, click on the link for the complete article.

Myth 1: You Can't Be Tried More Than Once For The Same Crime

There are some exceptions.

Myth 2: The Government Can't Punish You For A Crime Without First Convicting You

Under federal sentencing law, once a defendant has been convicted of any federal crime, when determining a sentence, the judge can consider other crimes he or she may have committed. That includes crimes for which the defendant has never been charged and even crimes for which he or she has been acquitted.

Myth 3: Ignorance Of The Law Is No Defense

Every introductory criminal justice class teaches this one. 
This particular "myth" is mostly true.
But there is one exception to this rule: If you work for the government, particularly in law enforcement, you can be forgiven for not knowing the law.
Prosecutors have absolute immunity from lawsuits related to the decisions they make about whether or not to charge someone with a crime, even when they are clearly wrong about the law.
Police officers and most other government employees don't enjoy the broad absolute immunity afforded to prosecutors and judges, but they do have what's known as "qualified immunity:"

SOME 'Sacred cows' NEED TO BE SACRIFICED

- Laura Helmuth gives us a few in:

Top Ten Myths About the Brain,
at Smithsonian.com.

THIS one is my pet peeve:

10. Men are from Mars, women are from Venus.

Some of the sloppiest, shoddiest, most biased, least reproducible, worst designed and most overinterpreted research in the history of science purports to provide biological explanations for differences between men and women. ... Though there are some differences (minor and uncorrelated with any particular ability) between male and female brains, the main problem with looking for correlations with behavior is that sex differences in cognition are massively exaggerated.

Women are thought to outperform men on tests of empathy. They do—unless test subjects are told that men are particularly good at the test, in which case men perform as well as or better than women. The same pattern holds in reverse for tests of spatial reasoning. Whenever stereotypes are brought to mind, even by something as simple as asking test subjects to check a box next to their gender, sex differences are exaggerated.

Women college students told that a test is something women usually do poorly on, do poorly. Women college students told that a test is something college students usually do well on, do well. Across countries—and across time—the more prevalent the belief is that men are better than women in math, the greater the difference in girls’ and boys’ math scores. And that’s not because girls in Iceland have more specialized brain hemispheres than do girls in Italy.

Certain sex differences are enormously important to us when we’re looking for a mate, but when it comes to most of what our brains do most of the time ... men and women have almost entirely overlapping and fully Earth-bound abilities.

 (emphasis mine)