Comment by duxup | Hacker News Reader

Comment by duxup | Hacker News Reader

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I don’t know if it is still on but I’m the US there was a show where they followed actual detectives.

The bad guy gets away because they don’t have enough evidence.

People confess when there is hardly any evidence (a lot).

The detectives realize they were wrong.

Lots of things happen.

Detectives being wrong isn’t a very dramatic like you might think. Many operate like scientist, gathering data, testing their theory along the way and adjusting.

One of the most interesting episodes was when they investigated a murder of a local girl in a park. Whole department assigned to work it because her ex and the main suspect was a guy who was a local criminal who had done time for murder before and was suspected in other cases.

Lots of misc evidence pointed at bad guy, but not enough to prosecute him, just lots of elements that pointed to him. Bad guy was smart enough not to talk to the police when they brought him in.

Near the end they got back some cell phone location info ... in the park that night wasn't the bad guy... but her current boyfriend (the local good college boy) phone was there. He claimed he was elsewhere / hadn't seen her that night...

Good boy confessed when they confronted him.

That episode was wild.

You are probably thinking of the show First 48. I was thinking of this exact show when reading the comments here about how Columbo plots rely too heavily on the murderer trying to help out Columbo with his investigation in order to seem innocent. It may seem unrealistic or stupid of them to do so, but if you watch shows like First 48 which follow homicide detectives around and show these interrogations, it happens A TON. More than I expected to be sure. I don't think Columbo is unrealistic in that respect.

I think that was the show.

VERY surprising how many people talk to the cops and give them all sorts of information that the cops then disprove, stories that make no sense, or even hand them info / leads that leas right back to them so on.

I want to say maybe the folks in a Columbo episode wold be more likely to talk to a lawyer first / not talk but ... Martha Stewart talked herself into jail...

I had it happen to me directly - I get accused, have no idea what is going on, accuser get’s in court, makes more accusations that don’t make sense. We follow up to get enough details to try to figure out specifically what is being accused (date and times, for one) - and lo and behold, the evidence (911 call log) when provided + security video on my side (that they knew I had!!!) showed that not only was it completely impossible that it happened, but that the accuser was perjuring themselves and had committed the additional crime of filing a false police report.

I had zero idea of the 911 call before this.

I did jury duty and despite all the complexity of the legal system .... the cases were pretty straightforward and I think we're all very lucky criminals are pretty dumb.

Yup, though it’s just most criminals that are dumb in my experience. There are some that are quite smart and also find themselves committing crimes. They are a real bear to catch and prosecute.

A lot of complexity in the legal system is so that at least most of the time even if someone is smart and can hire someone who has built their career on covering their ass, deflecting blame, understanding and using all the technicalities, obfuscating the facts as much as possible when not in their favor, calls to emotion when it helps them, calls to reason when it helps them, and all the other tricks (aka high end defense attorneys), we still end up with outcomes that aren’t clearly obviously wrong eventually.

And at least most of the time if someone is a real dumbass and can’t afford someone to at least help them pull their foot out of their mouth (aka low end defense attorneys), they don’t get railroaded and we end up with outcomes that are clearly obviously wrong either. Most of the time.

> protagonist has to confront the fact that 75% of his successes were incorrect would be great

I would assume that "successes" here are people in prison who turned out were innocent.

Tough to do a show on that considering the time span involved but it would be interesting if they ever covered an episode where that happened.

Of course the show is not a broad coverage of the detectives process. The detectives featured almost always are the most senior detectives and of course they cover situations on camera where ... maybe somethings won't happen.

The cases featured in the show they almost never actually end up prosecuting anyone without quite a bit of evidence. They're not really the kind of cases you hear about where someone is just prosecuted on hearsay and one bit of evidence and so on, that i'm sure is by design (for the tv show). Detectives show a lot of skepticism about what people too, that was interesting. They follow those leads but those featured seem highly flexible.

I wonder how much of the bad prosecutions / situations are about the prosecutor rather than detectives.

I am not sure now which series you have in mind here. But in many shows, actual evidence is super flimsy, if you think about it. Obvious issue is that such analysis tend to kill the fun, so we don't do it. This is supposed to be entertainment.

The prime example is Sherlock Holmes who points at murder based on bit of dust caught of hat or some such. Any show where capture is based on subtle clues or manipulative trics would likely lead to a lot of false convictions. Or the ones where detectives mistreat suspects until they admit guilt - false guilt of admission from mistreated prisoner is actually a thing (especially when they are also sleep deprived or mentally challenged).

> Tough to do a show on that considering the time span involved but it would be interesting if they ever covered an episode where that happened.

Plenty of cold case shows that start the episode 5 years after the original investigation, when new evidence comes in to clear the convict.

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