Police, Prosecutors Used Junk Science to Decide 911 Callers Were Liars (2022)
propublica.org(2022)
Previous discussion(208 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34161214
These kinds of stories seem to have no other effect than to make the world feel darker, scarier, more dreary. It is, at best, another data-point in the argument against the criminal justice system, that it is run by ignorant, ego-inflated bullies looking for anything to make their bullying easier and more total. It goes along with the many auditing videos of LEOs overtly breaking the law, issuing unlawful orders to citizens, assaulting them, arresting them for nothing, knowing how much pain they are causing and knowing they'll get away with it. It goes with the SWAT teams violently entering homes at the wrong address, shooting dogs and leaving with a snide, "Be grateful it wasn't worse."
It paints a picture of an American justice system that is entirely corrupt, where judges, attorneys, police and prosecutors all work on the same team, all operate different levers of the same meat grinder, where the rules are an impediment and treated like a joke. The only people to get any kind of justice are those with deep pockets, and often not even then.
Local police have far too much power, far too little knowledge of the law, and far too often escalate an interaction because of their hurt egos. And they have so many tools: 'officer safety' being a perennial favorite. How does this stop? Why are the police in other countries better behaved? When will people stop being distracted by pronoun wars and get outraged at something real and urgent? What do you do with the legions of unthinking supporters of the meat-grinder, who cannot or will not imagine that one can have societal order without it, and that the lever-pullers are doing God's work? One can play whack-a-mole with this systemic injustice and that one, but the system as a whole is so deeply embedded, it seems impossible to change incrementally. The cops, judges, lawyers, AGs are just too comfortable operating with impunity, and they are too politically connected to ever change.
> * These kinds of stories seem to have no other effect than to make the world feel darker, scarier, more dreary*
No other effect at all? It brings transparency and shines light on a failed prosecution tactic. This can now be easily googled and understood by both defendants and judges.
> judges, attorneys, police and prosecutors all work on the same team
These guys ultimately are desperately wanting a black box computer algorithm, where 1. you type in the suspect's name, 2. the algorithm spits out "guilty" and 3. that is admissible to a jury. If they had this, every single one of their jobs are a piece of cake:
A crime happens. The police can now pick up literally anyone they don't like. The prosecuting attorney doesn't have to do anything--just enter the suspect into the algorithm. The judge doesn't have to do anything. Computer Says YES. The jury doesn't have to do anything. Computer Says YES so I can convict and go home. This is the future of law enforcement. They just have to get that darn black box approved and invulnerable to defense attorneys.
Police always want their jobs to be easier. Everybody wants their own job to be easier.
The problem is that in a free society policing needs to be hard. Places where policing is easy are called police states.
Yes, it's telling how excited I've if the prosecutors in the story was because they got a conviction. Not excited by whether justice was done.
Better yet, now we have to worry about https://deceptio.ai exploiting the laziest and least ethical among the ML crowd to launder their fake knowledge into a product LEOs can wave around in court.
> Prosecutors know it’s junk science too. But that hasn’t stopped some from promoting his methods and even deploying 911 call analysis in court to win convictions. [...] She [Harpster] said she disguised 911 call analysis in court by “getting creative … without calling it ‘science.’”
Unfortunately, prosecutors are not trying to find out the truth, they're simply trying to put whoever is in front of them in prison. It doesn't matter if the suspect is guilty. If the guy goes to prison, they win.
> This judge wouldn’t allow her to continue and cut the testimony short. Faria was acquitted. He’d spent three and a half years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit.
> None of this bothered Harpster, who needed fresh kudos to repackage as marketing material and for a chapter in an upcoming book.
"Justice" system.
> Unfortunately, prosecutors are not trying to find out the truth, they're simply trying to put whoever is in front of them in prison. It doesn't matter if the suspect is guilty. If the guy goes to prison, they win.
Yes, exactly. I still can't wrap my mind around this.
To an extent, everything is pushed to its limits in all human systems, so that it's most efficient. If things operate at random amounts between minimum and maximum, it's not efficient, and also unpredictable.
The same system also allows a lawyer that knows his client is guilty to still defend them (if they wish).
At the end of the day, if someone is dead or something is stolen, there are cases where we know what happened (for example video evidence). In the other cases, where we don't know for sure (hearsay, witnesses, etc..) if we don't convict someone is not getting justice. It can absolutely be wrong but this is where the two pressures of the system have to work as hard as possible and see where it breaks. There is no other way to do it.
> To an extent, everything is pushed to its limits in all human systems, so that it's most efficient
...with respect to which parameters? Efficiency is not an absolute measurement in any sense.
To my mind, an efficient justice system would address crime materially relevant to the median citizen per cost to the tax payer, not the rabid delusions of the average new york post reader.
You seriously cannot think of a single other way to do it?
"Justice" system
Yes. It is not. It is a "legal" system
> A police chief in Michigan said Harpster’s class paid off immediately after a man called 911 and said he had just found his mother and sister dead. “He made the mistake of saying ‘I need help,’” the chief explained.
I can't even...
It'd deeply distressing that these sorts of charlatans steal decades of life from their victims, and the closest thing to a punishment for it they'll ever face is having to say "oops!"