When Prosecutors Believe the Unbelievable

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2015/07/mark_weiner_conviction_vacated_chelsea_steiniger_text_case_finally_overturned.single.html

by grej • 11 years ago

72 39 11 years ago

slate.com

a3n• 11 years ago

We're just resources for arresting cops and prosecuting attorneys, anonymous metrics on performance evaluations and resumes.

pascalmemories• 11 years ago

Working in the legal system for many years, it was always very clear that these are courts of law, never courts of justice.

The legal system requires minor technical hurdles to be passed to "prove" guilt. Experienced prosecutors know that the facts of a case are irrelevant (as demonstrated here, very starkly). Get enough of your check-boxes filled in and you "win" and you're up for promotion based on all your wins (or election to higher office etc.). That's all a prosecutor is interested in (i.e. their own promotion, building a track record of winning).

Justice, I'm afraid, does not get a look in. Sometimes, by coincidence, it may meet, but that's never by design on the prosecution side.

Zikes2• 11 years ago

I never understood why a guilty verdict is a "win" rather than a truthful verdict.

It really drives home that as far as the justice system is concerned, we all belong in prison.

knowaveragejoe• 11 years ago

If I had to take a guess, it's because that'd require more detailed metrics for prosecutors.

jws• 11 years ago

Why would you have a trial if you already knew the truth?

Edit: I appear to have been overly vague. My point is that you can't reward a prosecutor for producing a "truthful" outcome unless you know the truth to compare with. If you knew the absolute truth then an adversarial trial system would be expensive and redundant.

rm_-rf_slash2• 11 years ago

The takeaway mistake would be to propose technical or legal solutions that would "prevent" something like this from happening again, like adding hoops to jump through or harsh penalizations that could chill legitimate prosecution elsewhere for fear of community retaliation. We have to reexamine our culture of vindictive punishment, winning as an absolute virtue, and the health of the community as a whole. Changing culture is hard, but it's the only aspect where things have lasting change.

sbarre• 11 years ago

So what would be a practical solution here?

This seems like a case of "unchecked power" to me. I am baffled how this prosecutor does not get reprimanded or dismissed given the seemingly obvious evidence that she intentionally did the wrong thing here.

The damage that her choices did to this man's life are shocking and inexcusable, and this kind of behaviour should be terrifying to everyone, law-abiding tax-paying citizens included..

I get that in the end, "the system worked" and his conviction was vacated, but meanwhile this poor man sits in jail, for years? That's horrible.

spacecowboy_lon• 11 years ago

Have a fully professional Judiciary and legal system with No Elections what so ever - which removes most of the perverse incentives to get convictions.

forgingahead• 11 years ago

Simple, arrest and charge the girl for making false accusations, with a minimum of 20 years in prison. Raise a legal fund and sue the hell out of the city, naming the prosecutor as chief in a conspiracy of abuse of power and corruption, also with a minimum of 20 years in prison.

This is nothing but corruption and pure evil, and unless you stamp it out, another poor fellow like this one (who was only interested in being a good citizen to a potentially vulnerable girl; remember Hannah Graham), will get his life destroyed by similarly evil people.

rm_-rf_slash2• 11 years ago

I agree fully. We should use existing laws and the powerful force of social shame to right this wrong. I just wanted to make clear my point that it is always easier to pass a reactionary law to feel better about making a past mistake than to take the time to examine what kinds of bugs the new features introduce.

bryanlarsen• 11 years ago

Prosecutors are immune from civil suits under a doctrine called "absolute immunity"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_immunity

gadders2• 11 years ago

This is Public Choice Theory in action. The prosecutor's priority is not to make her "area" safer by correctly convicting prisoners. Her priority (like all politicians) is re-election.

I have to say though if I was the prosecutor in this case I wouldn't be able to sleep at night.

emodendroket3• 11 years ago

I think something to think about here is that this is a middle-class white guy. While there are obvious and troubling disparities in the justice system based on both wealth and race, the focus on those sometimes, I think, makes it too easy to think of it as a problem that only affects other people.

onetimeusername• 11 years ago

This is the reason why the entire push for "Yes Means Yes" style laws and Title IX prosecution is terrifying. At some point it would simply be optimal to record your own surrounding for your own sake, lest you end up as a juicy target for rising democratic prosecutor or attention hungry "Activists". its not the "Surveillance State" americans should really be worried about, but their own DAs and bureaucrats in Department of "Education".

dudul6• 11 years ago

"At some point it would simply be optimal to record your own surrounding for your own sake"

Well, this article clearly shows how even with evidences, as a man displeasing a woman you are guilty in the system.

Sad, but the morale of this case is simple: don't interact with millennial women.

mattzito• 11 years ago

If the moral of this case that you take away is, "Don't interact with milennial women", I think you have a very skewed view of the world.

dudul6• 11 years ago

Is the girl currently being charged? How many years is she gonna spend in prison?

Remember people, "war on women".

spacehome• 11 years ago

Why do you think this is because she is a woman? The lion's share of individuals in jail are men, but it still seems like a war on people.

dudul6• 11 years ago

I think that the prosecutor was oblivious to all evidences because the "victim" was a woman.

All such cases follow this pattern, woman is the alleged victim, man is convicted, 2 years later details made public regarding disregarded evidence, man released.

That's my perception. Just like people can say "she was not promoted because she's a woman" or "he was pulled over because he's black" I can say "she was believed unconditionally because she's a woman".

cvick• 11 years ago

Near the end of the article, there's this: "Because we elect our prosecutors, there is no chance of apology, and no admission of error."

Can anybody help me understand this? Does it really work this way?

philip238• 11 years ago

If they admit they made a bad decision, they'll be voted out in the next election.

gadders2• 11 years ago

"This has been a horrific year in Charlottesville, between the loss of Hannah Graham and the Rolling Stone article about an alleged gang rape at the University of Virginia. There are indeed predators everywhere."

That would be the made-up story about a gang rape at the University of Virginia? Not sure how that can prove anything about predators. All it proves is that some journalists are incompetent.

""A Rape on Campus" is an article by Sabrina Erdely published in the December 2014 issue of Rolling Stone,[1] which has since been debunked and retracted by the publisher. " [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Rape_on_Campus

dudul6• 11 years ago

I can't believe the author didn't know the RS article was a scam. I guess the two examples are given to establish a dichotomy between cases where predators were actually involved and those where it's just paranoia, both falling under the umbrella of a "horrific year".

bpyne• 11 years ago

The prosecutor should really be disbarred. The local bar should be quite embarrassed to have such a high ranking member with no regard for ethics. At this point, Denise Lundsford has gravely undermined public confidence in the legal system.

I hope that Mr. Weiner sues that state for compensation for his house, savings, emotional injury, and anything else his attorney can pile on.

wl• 11 years ago

The prosecutor and the state rightfully should pay for this injustice. Unfortunately, prosecutors have absolute immunity for tortuous conduct committed in the course of their job. And for weird historical reasons, governments have sovereign immunity and can't be sued in their own courts unless they waive that immunity.

hrehhf• 11 years ago

undermined public confidence in the legal system.

The real point is that, by and large, most people simply do not care. It is completely irrevelant, or they believe absurd things like a defendant surely did something wrong otherwise the case would not be at trial. Others have mentioned that prosecutors have immunity from civil suits; I would say that could be changed by the legislature explicitly making prosecutors liable. Short of that, prosecutors would need to be stopped by force in order to effect a just system.

sklogic2• 11 years ago

The real question is why anyone in a position of power is allowed to believe anything at all, instead of always acting rationally and always being ready to rationally justify each and every decision?

icebraining2• 11 years ago

A rationally justified belief is still a belief.

sklogic2• 11 years ago

No. It's a hypothesis. And a mindset of choosing to act on a basis of a well-grounded hypothesis (and knowing precisely which facts and conclusions lead to considering such a hypothesis in the first place and what will falsify it) is totally different from a mindset of acting upon some belief.

valar_m• 11 years ago

Infuriating.

A lot of people immediately think of Mike Nifong when prosecutor misconduct comes up, and while that case was certainly disgusting, I think an even better (worse?) example is the prosecution of Mr. John Thompson by Harry Connick, Sr.

Though it receives far less attention, the facts of the case are no less than offensive. Mr. Thompson was prosecuted, convicted, and sentenced to die for a crime that he did not commit. [0] The DNA evidence that would have fully exonerated Mr. Thompson of any wrongdoing was deliberately withheld by the prosecutor, Harry Connick, Sr. (yep, the dad), long-time prosecutor in New Orleans.

Mr. Thompson spent fourteen years on death row. Fourteen years of this man's life were stolen from him by Harry Connick, Sr., years that he can never get back. On seven occasions during his time on death row, he was given the date on which he would be put to death for something he did not do. [1]

Can you even imagine? To lay in bed, reflecting back on the events of a day in which you had been given a time and a place to be put to death for something that you did not do? I cannot. Don't bother asking Harry Connick, Sr. about that, though. He doesn't give one single fuck. [2]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connick_v._Thompson

[1] http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/jury-gave-john-thompson-14-mi...

[2] http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2012/04/former_da_harry_...

teddyh• 11 years ago

Regarding the headline, “When Prosecutors Believe the Unbelievable”: Here’s what I wrote, two months ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9594806), which applies equally to prosecutors:

“Lawyers actually “think” nothing. Or rather, what they write and what they argue is what they are paid to write and argue. It has no actual connection to what they actually think - they might not even have actually personally considered the issue, and may never do so. However, what they write is in many ways meant to be taken seriously and reacted to, just like troll posts. Therefore, take care not to be trolled by lawyers.”

When Prosecutors Believe the Unbelievable

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