The thought of being falsely accused probably makes everyone as uncomfortable as It does myself. Our legal apparatus, for all of its success and efficiency still fails on occasion, but for such an esteemed device the consequences of failure are utterly tragic. Your good name that has taken your lifetime to acquire dissipating in all the time it takes for a charge to be summoned to court. Crippling legal fees are more of a moot point amongst years in prison apart from your life and loved ones, or in some very rare circumstances being put to death even. This is hard to swallow for those that are actually guilty of the crime they were accused, so how about those accused wrongly under false accusations.
The wrinkles in our system are always trying to be ironed out, and as more efficient sciences replace shaky witness accounts, or at the very least confirm them, the numbers of such things are reducing every year. I am afraid to admit that there will always be such issues. For example, any tool used in the legal process must meet a minimum accuracy of 95 % to be mandated and fully weighed in a trial. Consider that if any said tool is 95% correct, and is used in 100 trials, it will be wrong 5 times, which can lead to 5 innocent people being punished. That being said, scientifically backed DNA sampling and other related methods are at success rates of over 99%, and improving rapidly. Our system is definitely far from perfect, but progress is being made, and hopefully a day will come soon where no innocent people are punished for the crimes of others.
I would like to see where you got the information on the minimum accuracy test. Even though 95 percent seems like it could be pretty low, there are lower tests out there that courts rely on. For example, drug-sniffing dogs. These animals have been trained for years to locate cocaine, marijuana, heroin, and many other types of drugs. However, they are not all that accurate. In a study done by the Chicago Tribune, it was found that the drug-sniffing dogs correctly identified drugs in a suitcase within a car 44 percent of the time. This means that more than half of the times that the dogs identify drugs, they are wrong. These dogs are still allowed to operate and their findings to be kept as evidence. Some may say that the evidence that was found makes the evident 100 percent reliable, but it could very well be found on false precepts. For example, if someone were to get pulled over and a dog searched their car, the dog could be alerting the handler to drugs, but guns were found instead. The guns are allowed to be taken as evidence even though they were found technically illegally.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your great feed-back. I was pretty sure what I stated was correct in regards to accuracy, but please let me know if you find something contrary for certain as It has been several semesters since I have been in my forensics course What I did not state clearly was that there are different types of evidence. Direct evidence, trace evidence, circumstantial evidence, and class evidence. All of these categories hold up differently in the court of law, and are rarely used in single. For the example of your drug dogs, while they do not meet what a certain percent of accuracy, they are not the only evidence used. The car is first identified for several reasons such as being owned by a known offender or an implied due cause such as suspicious behavior . The witness accounts of the police man as well as the footage from the dash cam, surveillance on the vehicle, and then the use of the drug dogs is a combination of many types of evidence. So like anything else such as shoe prints, trace evidence of clothing or body hair, or even a lie detector test, they are allowed to be implemented into a case, but will usually not be the determining factor that a prosecutor will build his case around. in the case of the guns found in questionable manner, that is followed by different guidelines. So if a cop was to pull an individual over for a traffic violation and suspected he smelled alcohol or marijuana, if I am not mistaken is granted the authority to further investigate in other ways such as searching the vehicle with permission or warrant. Whatever he would then find if it was according to due process would be fair game in the court of law. Please let me know if I answered your question in class tomorrow.
ReplyDeleteI must admit I've not heard the 95% standard. Certainly we would love to have a system that relied on evidence that was at least that accurate, but it can be hard to come by. Consider that the traditional form of, testimony, is obviously not something to be taken as 100% accurate, or perhaps even 95%. So, the pursuit of the perfect system continues and shall.
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