"We know now that we get it wrong an awful lot of the time".
A lawyer explains why the Texas legal system has become more open to the
idea of wrongful convictions. It reminded me of discussions about
failures to replicate scientific papers.
[Keith Hampton]: I remember the evolution over the past fifteen years or so. It started out with, “Oh, we’ve got an exoneration in Dallas, DNA has cleared this guy.” The reaction from the prosecutors was, “Well, that’s just one.” The second and the third one came, and their reaction was, “This is proof that the system works. We’re done now.” Okay, then there were more—by the time you got to nineteen, the dam broke. Everyone’s like, “I think we’ve got a problem here, because this is an awful lot of innocent people.” And you would be hearing so much more, there would be so many more exonerees, had Houston saved the forensic evidence that Dallas did. I think you’d easily see double, just extrapolating from how often they get it wrong. We know now that we get it wrong an awful lot of the time. So that attitude has changed.
https://www.texasmonthly.com/politics/i-believe-its-a-heroic-calling/
The Google+ URL for this post was
https://plus.google.com/+MatthewBrett/posts/SPcvZDbYSBq