DNA evidence casts doubt on Henry Jamerson’s rape conviction after 24 years in prison in Oklahoma. Prosecutors are fighting efforts to clear his name.
DNA evidence casts doubt on Henry Jamerson’s rape conviction after 24 years in prison in Oklahoma. Prosecutors are fighting efforts to clear his name.
A new discovery follows years of claims that the evidence had been destroyed. The victim says doubts about the case always haunted her.
How low of a human being must you be to claim evidence has been destroyed when it hasn't. The cop who told that under oath should be fired and put in jail, like anyone else would.
"When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."
Prosecutors are measured by convictions, regardless of whether they get it right.
The use of metrics to judge competency has always been a shell game.
Cases like these illustrate why the death penalty is such a terrible idea. The process itself is imperfect, and in some places filled with bad actors looking to close cases quickly while maximizing sentences.
I completely agree. Even the slightest chance of a wrongful conviction is reason enough to leave the death penalty in the past. More than that, state-sanctioned killing is motivated by the idea that vengeance somehow provides justice, or at least acts as some kind of sick deterrent. But it ends up implying a level of permissiveness for violence, fatal and otherwise, between everyone. The government shouldn’t get to make an exception for vengeance, sorry “justice,” when murder is held up as one of the worst crimes we recognize.
The fact that the state can just wrongly keep someone in prison for over a quarter of a lifetime really makes me doubt the carceral system as a whole.
The second season of making a murderer illustrates this to a painful degree. Multiple federal judges dismissed the kids confession as coerced but the state just flat refused to admit they’re wrong and let him out until a judge forced his release a couple months ago…after spending half his life behind bars for something he didn’t do.
Prosecution rates > actual human lives
It's the problem with conflict-based justice systems that seek victory instead of the truth. Being wrong is irrelevant to winning.
Prosecutors are pushing back against Jamerson’s efforts. Dubbs described the rape as only taking place for a matter of minutes and never testified the assailant ejaculated, so the sample not belonging to Jamerson doesn’t exclude him from being the rapist, they say. Prosecutors also argue Dubbs’ alleged identification of Jamerson as her attacker in 1991 is still evidence of guilt.
I don't understand this.