Post: #1

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-...story.html

Quote:Someday soon, when you least expect it, a police officer may receive mistaken information from a confused eyewitness or a liar, or circum­stantial evidence that helps persuade him that you might be guilty of a very serious crime. When confronted with police officers and other government agents who suddenly arrive with a bunch of questions, most innocent people mistakenly think to themselves, “Why not talk? I haven’t done anything. I have nothing to hide. What could pos­sibly go wrong?”

Well, among other things, you could end up confessing to a crime you didn’t commit. The problem of false confessions is not an urban legend. It is a documented fact. Indeed, research suggests that the innocent may be more susceptible than the culpable to deceptive police interrogation tactics, because they tragically assume that somehow “truth and justice will prevail” later even if they falsely admit their guilt. Nobody knows for sure how often innocent people make false confessions, but as Circuit Judge Alex Kozinski recently observed, “Innocent interrogation subjects confess with surprising frequency.”

It happens especially in cases when the suspect is young and vulnerable. An analysis of 125 proven false confes­sions found that 33% of the suspects were juveniles at the time of arrest, and at least 43% were either mentally disabled or ill. Another study of 340 exonerations found that 13% of adults falsely confessed compared to 42% of juveniles. And nearly half of the exonerated children were put behind bars because of something they said to police without an attorney present.

In Oakland, police isolated and interrogated a 16-year-old named Felix in the middle of the night without a lawyer and denied his requests to see his mother. Eventually he gave them a detailed, videotaped confes­sion to a murder, allegedly filled with numerous specifics only the real killer would have known. At that point, it looked like there was little chance this young man would be able to avoid a conviction; when a jury hears that someone has confessed, they are almost certain to convict. But fortunately for young Felix, it was later revealed that he had an airtight alibi: He had been locked up in a juvenile detention facility the day of the killing. The charges were dismissed, and he was released from jail.

Eddie Lowery was a 22-year-old soldier stationed at Ft. Riley, Kan., when he was interrogated for an entire workday about a rape and murder he never committed. Like a typical innocent man, he persisted for hours in emphatic assertions of innocence. Like typical police officers, the inter­rogators acted open-minded and unconvinced. Perhaps, he foolishly hoped, he might persuade them of his innocence if he repeated his story over and over again at greater and greater length. After the daylong interrogation, he was worn out and gave them a detailed confession. He served more than 20 years in prison until he was recently released, after evidence proved that he was actually innocent.

So why in the world did Lowery confess to such a terrible crime, when we now know that he was innocent all along? He explained the mindset of someone who has been broken down by seven hours of relentless interro­gation: “I didn’t know any way out of that, except to tell them what they wanted to hear, and then get a lawyer to prove my innocence…. You’ve never been in a situation so intense, and you’re naive about your rights. You don’t know what [someone] will say to get out of that situation.”

One analysis of 44 proven false-confession cases revealed that more than a third of the interrogations lasted six to 12 hours, many lasted between 12 and 24 hours, and the average length was more than 16 hours. The longer you speak to police officers, the more likely it is that you will confess to some crime that you did not commit—isn’t that enough of a reason to avoid speaking to them?

Don’t talk to the police—except to tell them, respectfully, that you will not answer any questions and that you would like a lawyer.

Just confirms what RoK has been writing about.

Post: #2

I wonder what the restitution is like when someone is found innocent after being locked up by the state for 20 years under false conviction.

Being falsely convicted as to be the most sad tragic thing a human being can go through. Having your freedom stripped away unjustly by a system that is supposed to protect you and your liberties. It's some of the ultimate and most inescapable betrayal one can endure. To make matters worse, everyone you know and love gets convinced you are a criminal as well. You literally lose everything for nothing.

Post: #3

This needs to be burned into the mind of every man who values their freedom.

The police are not your friends.

Do not talk to them without a lawyer.

Your catch phrase with them is "I don't answer questions."

Post: #4

(08-26-2016 02:01 PM)General Stalin Wrote:  I wonder what the restitution is like when someone is found innocent after being locked up by the state for 20 years under false conviction.

Being falsely convicted as to be the most sad tragic thing a human being can go through. Having your freedom stripped away unjustly by a system that is supposed to protect you and your liberties. It's some of the ultimate and most inescapable betrayal one can endure. To make matters worse, everyone you know and love gets convinced you are a criminal as well. You literally lose everything for nothing.

It's about 50K a year in Texas. Some states have different rates, some low as 25K.

Post: #5

(08-26-2016 02:01 PM)General Stalin Wrote:  I wonder what the restitution is like when someone is found innocent after being locked up by the state for 20 years under false conviction.

Well I have some info about this. I have a 2nd cousin that plead guilty to manslaughter and got a nine year deal. About five years in someone admitted they had actually done the stabbing.

There are only a few states that have laws on the books for this kind of thing. Hawaii was not one, so the courts used California as an example, like they do for everything else here.

That compensation was $100 a day plus legal fees.

The thing with this guy that really sucked was that in Hawaii they used to send people with longer sentences to private prisons in the mainland. In order to get a visitor, the family person had to fly to arizona. Plus, in order for the person to make phone calls or get commissary money, the time difference screwed it all up.

My cousin basically had to start an appeal process once the prosecutors found out he was the rong guy. Getting to court in Hawaii when your in prison in arizona is hard.

All told, they compensated him a little extra, and he wound up with about 175k, which he has since spent on drugs and what not.

Aloha!

Post: #6

(08-26-2016 02:05 PM)eatthishomie Wrote:  This needs to be burned into the mind of every man who values their freedom.

The police are not your friends.

Do not talk to them without a lawyer.

Your catch phrase with them is "I don't answer questions."

How about you just politely say "I will not answer any questions without legal counsel"?

Post: #7

Here's the Don't Talk to Cops thread:
/thread-10462.html

(02-13-2012 11:38 AM)kimleebj Wrote:  Roosh tweeted a DUI checkpoint refusal. Here are some important related lessons about not incriminating yourself.

This is a talk from Rutger law prof James Duane, who used to be a prosecutor. He gives specific advice about what to do and not do if you are questioned by the police in the US.

Post: #8

Its like ghosting a flaky bitch. Never call them and never talk to them. Police are not there to protect and serve you. They are there to pin charges on you guilty or not.

Post: #9

I don't trust the police but it's the department of public prosecution that really scares the shit out of me.

At least my local cops are mostly men of the world who know what time of day it is.

The DPP is a whore-house of social-justice psychopaths who have never set foot in the real world and draw six figure salaries to stomp on whoever they can get an easy conviction against, bonus points being awarded for destroying the lives of "right wing cis white men" like myself.

Cops can only issue tickets and hold you for a short time at worst. Locally it's the DPP who decides whether you slide for murder or have the book thrown at you for shoplifting.

Post: #10

(08-27-2016 02:23 AM)Leonard D Neubache Wrote:  I don't trust the police but it's the department of public prosecution that really scares the shit out of me.

At least my local cops are mostly men of the world who know what time of day it is.

The DPP is a whore-house of social-justice psychopaths who have never set foot in the real world and draw six figure salaries to stomp on whoever they can get an easy conviction against, bonus points being awarded for destroying the lives of "right wing cis white men" like myself.

Cops can only issue tickets and hold you for a short time at worst. Locally it's the DPP who decides whether you slide for murder or have the book thrown at you for shoplifting.

Right on.

It's the insane prosecutors, many who are vile people only interested in boosting their conviction count, who go on witch hunts and pursue stupid/idiot charges that are the real problem. They don't realize or care that even a bullshit charge can cost a person a ton of money in direct AND indirect cost. They will charge someone on the slightest bit of evidence as oppose to doing some very basic follow-up investigating either themselves or via the police. Nope, it's charge and sort at later and get the poor bastard to take a bullshit deal after many months of mentally torturing the person; where the person just wants the process over and done. 1+ notch for the douchebag prosecutor and on to the next victim.

Many people who have never dealt with the system think their circumstances are special and prosecutors will take careful time and effort to consider the situation before charging/starting a case. At best aside from major cases, they spend probably 1-5 minutes deciding whether to charge or not in the vast majority of cases. They often don't even look at the case again with any scrutiny until right before the trial/pre-trial hearing. The immunity they get from misconduct is insane as well and further incentivizes horrible bad behavior:

Quote:The main problem with absolute immunity for prosecutors is the incentives it creates. The problems with shielding a public servant in whom we grant the enormous powers granted to prosecutors should be pretty self-evident. Now consider that nearly every professional incentive (reelection, promotions, election to higher office, high-paying jobs at white-shoe law firms) points prosecutors toward procuring as many convictions as possible, and that courts and bar organizations are notoriously lax at sanctioning misconduct. You get a system that not only fails to sanction bad behavior, but also often rewards it. If the old Lord Acton axiom is true — that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely — enormous power with no accountability can be enormously destructive.

Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/opin...79ab4d6fb3

It's a shame because you should be able to talk to the police to help them make your neighborhood safer. But any interaction with the police now is a massive liable even if you are clearly and totally innocent.

Post: #11

(08-27-2016 02:23 AM)Leonard D Neubache Wrote:  I don't trust the police but it's the department of public prosecution that really scares the shit out of me.

At least my local cops are mostly men of the world who know what time of day it is.

The DPP is a whore-house of social-justice psychopaths who have never set foot in the real world and draw six figure salaries to stomp on whoever they can get an easy conviction against, bonus points being awarded for destroying the lives of "right wing cis white men" like myself.

Cops can only issue tickets and hold you for a short time at worst. Locally it's the DPP who decides whether you slide for murder or have the book thrown at you for shoplifting.

No coincidence that many prosecutors are man-hating, unnattractive, single post-wall women either.
Just like cops the more felony convictions/arrests that they accomplish the quicker they are promoted. Just the fact that over 90% of cases are disposed of through plea deals shows that our justice system is severely flawed, to say the least.
Not only that but the farce that is the war on drugs is their biggest job security.