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Notes -
Yesterday a man named Marcellus Williams was executed via lethal injection in Missouri. He was convicted of the murder of a local journalist. The main points of the case are that
a) no forensic evidence at the scene (the victim's house) connected him to the crime; DNA fragments on the murder weapon (a butcher's knife from the kitchen) were not his; a bloody footprint was not the same shoe size he wore.
b) He sold a laptop taken from the house to someone else;
c) Two people, a former jailmate and ex girlfriend, both told police that he had confessed to the murder. However, they had a financial incentive for doing so.
On balance it seems fairly likely that he did it; being a career criminal, having two unrelated people tell the cops you did it, and having possession of an item from the crime scene is pretty damning. It also can't be that hard to avoid leaving behind forensic evidence - use gloves, shave your head or wear a balaclava, even deliberately wear differently sized shoes. But when talking about the death penalty, we must take the 'reasonable doubt' thing extra seriously. So what do you think mottizens?
Some base rates for callibration: In the United States, about 20 people are executed a year. Every few years, a story like this about a supposedly innocent man who is (about to be) executed gains traction in the media and online. Is it plausible that one out of every 50 or so executions is of someone falsely accused? I think so. I would expect the false positive rate to be about that order of magnitude.
On the other hand, there is an entire legal-industrial complex that exists for the sole purpose of fighing tooth and nail for every single person on death row to be granted clemency. The tiniest procedural hiccups or missing puzzle pieces can be blown up into claims of actual innocence. The only proper description of the evidence is the evidence itself. There is a reason that findings of the trial court are given deference. The judge and jury who tried the case were much more familiar with the evidence than you or me.
Why? There are 21k murders a year in America. The clearance rate may plausibly drop that down to 16k resulting in a trial. Perhaps 14k convicted. Out of 14k, those with the most evidence and evilness become candidates for execution. The amount of inspection that these cases get would not lead to a 2% false positive rate. It is the legal equivalent of building a bridge, the failure rate is more like 1/10,000
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