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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?
American should put as much effort into getting capital cases right first time as you do into the interminable post-conviction litigation.
This is the part I genuinely like best about the US justice system. It is a brilliant work alignment which penalizes a partisan investigative and prosecutorial system for misconduct in a way which really hurts their utility function.
If you imposed some penalty on misconduct, the result will be that people who cut corners to secure the conviction will be regarded as heroes who sacrificed their career, money, or liberty to put a murderer behind bars. With 'evidence becomes inadmissible' etc, these people are more likely to be considered assholes who ruined a lengthy team effort and enabled the murderer to get off 'on a technicality'.
Why do these reasons justify punishing the public for the mistakes of the prosecutor? If a guilty man gets released and then immediately victimizes another person (as so frequently happens) am I supposed to believe this is a good outcome because the prosecutor was (hopefully) chastened by this outcome? What if I or a loved one was the person who was victimized? Should I see this as worth it in order to incentivize diligence by prosecutors? Why should I have to suffer for their mistakes?
It creates incentives for the prosecutor not to do this. You or a loved one could also be the person who the prosecutor was discouraged from framing. Of course this is a seen versus unseen fallacy; it's impossible to see that you escaped being railroaded by a prosecutor because he was discouraged from doing so by the rules, while it's easy to see if you are victimized by a criminal who gets let go.
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