Text 10330, 140 rader
Skriven 2008-01-27 15:36:46 av Roy Witt (1:397/22)
  Kommentar till text 10290 av Michiel van der Vlist (2:280/5555)
Ärende: Tunnel vision
=====================
26 Jan 08 20:55, Michiel van der Vlist wrote to Roy Witt:

 MvdV>>> Yeah, like they told Tim Masters: "We know you did it, I am not
 MvdV>>> asking you, I am telling you. You did it. Now why don't you
 MvdV>>> confess and get it over with, so that we can end this and all
 MvdV>>> go home."

 MvdV>>> Yeah, right...

 RW>> You certainly are naive when it comes to police questioning. They
 RW>> say that to every suspect. It makes sense, really. If they can get
 RW>> you to confess,

 MvdV> People have been known to confess under pressure to things they did
 MvdV> not do.

True...but those are the ones of weak mind and spirit or shear ignorance
of the law. That happened in a murder case in San Diego county. A teen was
pulled into the police station for questioning in the murder of his
12yo sister. Under pressure and with no sleep after days of questioning,
he made a false confession, just to get out of the heat. He finally
walked, but it was probably very scary for him and his parents for while.

That made the police look elsewhere and a vagrant was finally caught with
a bloody sweat shirt and convicted of the murder.

 RW>> their job is done without the difficulty in gathering evidence and
 RW>> proving that you commited a crime.

 MvdV> Yes, it saves lazy and incompetent police officers the effort of
 MvdV> doing their job properly.

I see you have an authority figure problem...not all police are as lazy as
those you seem to be familiar with.

 RW>> If you're stupid enough to do that, then you probably need to be
 RW>> locked up. In a nut house!

 MvdV> Stupidity is not a crime.

I didn't say it was...just that if you confess to something you didn't do,
you're certainly don't have a high IQ.

 RW>>>> If you had read the trial transcripts, especially the appeal,
 RW>>>> you would know that it was the fault of the defense attorneys
 RW>>>> who failed their client horribly.

 MvdV>>> That's too easy.

 RW>> Facts are facts...and yes, the facts make it very easy to understand
 RW>> and believe.

 MvdV> Fact is that the police didn't look further because "he fitted the
 MvdV> profile and so he must have done it".

The fact is, they looked for 12 years before suspecting him.

 MvdV> Had they done their job and found the real killer Tim Masters would
 MvdV> not have needed defence in the first place.

Had the lad reported seeing the body in the field as he passed it on the
way to school, he might not have been suspected at all. Instead, he
ignored it.

 RW>>>> The prosecution did what they always do, convince a jury to
 RW>>>> convict on the evidence provided.

 MvdV>>> Bottom line is that the system failed horribly.

 RW>> Wrong again. The defense lawyer failed miserably to protect his
 RW>> client.

 MvdV> No, the *system* failed.

Wrong...the system isn't infaliable, but the circumstances of this case
don't show it to be true.

 MvdV>>> In innocent person spent years in jail because the
 MvdV>>> investigators did not do their job and the court did not
 MvdV>>> correct it.

 RW>> Wrong the third time. The defense didn't really put up any defense.

 MvdV> In a good system, bad defence would not get an innocent person
 MvdV> convicted.

Semantics...if a bad defense attorney isn't doing his job, it's not the
court's job to wake him up. It's the defendants job to ask the court for a
recess until he finds a new lawyer.

 MvdV>>> Had the investigators doen their job - which is find out what
 MvdV>>> happened - instead of just finding a scapegoat and get him
 MvdV>>> convicted, he would not need to rely on crappy pro deo defence
 MvdV>>> system in the frist place.

 RW>> You're forgetting that the suspect wasn't arrested until 12 years
 RW>> after the murder.

 MvdV> Irrelevant. An innocent man spend nine years in prison.

Then so are your arguements from here on out.

 RW>> The evidence presented wasn't all that conclusive and the defense
 RW>> didn't do it's job. The system put him away because the defense
 RW>> didn't do it's job.

 MvdV> A good system should not have allowed that to happen. It should
 MvdV> have safeguards to prevent that.

 MvdV>>> Unfortunately Tim Masters is not a lone exception. He is #213
 MvdV>>> on the list of convictions since 1989 that had to be reversed
 MvdV>>> after new DNA technology proved their innocence. Won't you
 MvdV>>> agree that there is something seriously wrong with the system?

 RW>> I disagree. What DNA technology did was help the system identify the
 RW>> suspects and release those whose DNA didn't match. Masters was lucky
 RW>> someone cared enough to keep on investigating after he was
 RW>> imprisoned.

 MvdV> In a good system people wrongly accused should not have to depend
 MvdV> on luck.

 RW>>>> I'd say that Dutch forensic experts merely varified earlier
 RW>>>> findings of the CBI...

 MvdV>>> Of course, you will never admit that we are way ahead of you in
 MvdV>>> forensic technology....

 RW>> Of course not, that would be a lie.

 MvdV> It is a simple fact: we *are* ahead.

Not from here, you're not.

                R\%/itt



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