Things Are Scary In The Courts, Too
A Baltimore man was charged with a robbery (after his photo was picked out of an array of photos by the victim).
(Researchers Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons point out in The Invisible Gorilla: How Our Intuitions Deceive Us
The wee snag in this charge against the man is that he was in jail on another robbery charge when the crime took place.
Could there be a better alibi?
Well, no. Not to the salivating prosecutor and lax judge. (As for the judge...apathy? Comatose?)
The prosecutor refused to drop the charge and insisted on trying the man and the judge, disgustingly, went along with this -- agreeing that a trial was needed.
Law prof Jonathan Turley notes:
The real story is the initial position of the prosecutors and the ruling of the court. Exactly what is the trial supposed to show. Could a jury decide that Threatt could have been both in custody and miles away at the same time?
He continues:
There is no mention of any investigation, let alone discipline, for the detective or the prosecutor for such negligence. There is also no mention of the name of the judge who agreed that a trial is warranted when the accused was locked away at the time of the crime.
Those of you who believe that the police are there to solve crimes and judges are there to find justly (or even plausibly), well, please check your naivete at the courthouse door. You'll get it back upon leaving.
More from the Baltimore Sun article by Ian Duncan.
Those of you who believe that the police are there to solve crimes and judges are there to find justly (or even plausibly), well, please check your naivete at the courthouse door.
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Something's missing from that sentence.
lenona at August 15, 2014 6:41 AM
Names, addresses, and phone numbers. That's the old-fashioned way to fix stuff like this.
Cousin Dave at August 15, 2014 6:58 AM
And to add: Yes, visual identification is known to be an unreliable method of identifying suspects. Police departments have known this for a long time, and that's why they usually put ringers in lineups and photo books. But ringers don't catch every case of misidentification.
I know that I have a poor memory for faces. If you show me a person to identify, and then try to make me pick that person out of a lineup of people of similar height, weight, skin color, and hair type, I'm probably not going to be able to do it. Unless it's someone I know well, don't rely on me to identify the suspect.
Cousin Dave at August 15, 2014 7:02 AM
Hope the judge doesn't rule his location to be inadmissible.
Joe J at August 15, 2014 7:58 AM
On the reality series "First 48," when they show a witness a photo line-up, the photos of the non-suspects are always digitally blurred on the video, while the suspect's photo can clearly be seen.
I half-way expect the witness to say, "This is the only photo that isn't fuzzy," and the detective to say, "I'd call that a positive identification."
Fayd at August 15, 2014 1:45 PM
^ LOL
BunnyGirl at August 15, 2014 2:18 PM
That's like being on jury duty and hearing the witness positively identify the guy in the defendant's chair as the perpetrator. Really?
What's worse is I actually heard a juror in the jury room use that as a reason to convict the guy. "The witness identified the defendant!" As opposed to...?
Conan the Grammarian at August 15, 2014 4:15 PM
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