The FBI and U.S. Justice Department have acknowledged that almost all of the experts in a forensic unit dedicated to microscopic hair comparison gave flawed testimony against defendants before 2000, the Washington Post said.I agree with the proposal that The New York Crank put forth: In cases where the perjured testimony sent people to their deaths, those so-called "experts" should, themselves, be executed.
The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and the Innocence Project found that 26 of the 28 examiners in the FBI's microscopic hair comparison unit overstated evidence in more than 95 percent of 268 trials that the groups have examined so far, the Post said.
Defendants and prosecutors in 46 states, along with the District of Columbia, are being advised of the findings, which could result in appealing of convictions, the newspaper said. The cases with overstated evidence included 32 that resulted in death sentences, and 14 of those defendants have been executed or died in prison.
I submit that this proposal should be adopted. Look, if people are going to lie other people into prison, let alone Old Sparky, then there should be some serious motivation applied to them to not do that. A perjury beef, when the object of the perjury was executed or died in prison, is nowhere near enough.
If a cop testilies and is caught doing it during the trial, then that cop should get the maximum sentence for the top count of whatever the defendant was charged. If the defendant was convicted and sent away, then the perjurer should be sent to prison for all of the defendant's sentence, clock set to zero, and nothing less than 85% of the time to be served. If the defendant died in prison or was executed, then the same fate should await the perjurer.
The same penalties should apply to those who knew about it. If the perjurer's boss knew... cellmate. If the prosecutor knew that perjured testimony was being offered and put the perjurer on the stand anyway... cellmate!
Then maybe those fuckers will take their thumbs off the scale of justice.
5 comments:
Quite a few years ago, I was arrested on a controlled substance beef - yeah, I had a bit of a problem in the 80s. I had put a tiny bit of crank - maybe a tenth of a gram or so, just for the evening - in one of those cool aluminum waterproof match containers. The DA weighed the whole thing - the metal container and everything that was in it - and all of a sudden the charge went to felony intent to distribute.
When the judge - a hardass lady but by gawd hones - figured out what was going on, man she was furious. She sanctioned the DA, threw out all the charges and offered me a cheap misdemeanor plea deal.
I'll never forget the look in her fiery blue eyes when she figured out she was being bamboozled into an unjustified felony conviction. Whenever I start to get a little too cynical, I remember that moment, when they were lying and she wasn't going to stand for it...
Now, this, I can completely get behind! I'm skeptical of any chance of this actually becoming law, but it damn well should be.
Behind your punishment idea 100%.... Do the same for false rape accusers as well. Maximum penalty that the accused was looking at.
The fact that I am in agreement with you so often is becoming scary. One of us needs some help.....
The problem is that it would become even more unlikely that such fraud would be uncovered if the institution could protect its servants againt severe prosecution by covering the scandal up.
S O, the fix for that is double the hit for anyone found to be involved in any sort of coverup of one of those crimes. I mean ANYONE. Overheard about it at the watercooler? Better leave a contrail on your way to the nearest judge. Yeah, things will get a bit inefficient at the various copshops and associated offices. So what?
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