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Comment by WalterBright | Hacker News Reader

I read about a case once where a man was convicted of rape. The evidence was that the rape was done face-to-face with the victim, and the victim positively ID'd him. How could she not, when she was face-to-face with him? It was a slam dunk.

After some years in prison, the convicted person managed to get a DNA test, which proved he was not the rapist. How could this be?

It turns out the DNA matched a convicted sex offender who had, in the meantime, died in prison. A picture of him showed that he looked just like the falsely convicted man.

The victim, to her credit, profusely apologized for mis-identifying him, but she acted in good faith.

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False suspect identification is historically one of the largest reasons for false convictions. Courts, thankfully, are slowly catching on to this and giving it lesser weight than they used to.

Do you have a link to the case details? At the very least, there has to have been some additional evidence to convict, even if circumstantial. I find it hard to believe that someone can be ruled guilty of a crime as serious as rape based solely on the plaintiff's testimony.

>I find it hard to believe

I find it hard to believe you find it hard to believe. :) There’s a cliche term for such cases, “he said/she said” and they are not at all uncommon.

I dont think this term applies here - usually that term is reserved for one or both parties misrepresenting the situation. Here we have mistaken identity, which i would consider different.

My point stands. These are not uncommon cases. The justice system has obvious flaws and frequently goes awry. Mistaken identity, false testimony, wrongful convictions should be common knowledge.

Here is an example: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-66513959

Sounds like Steven Avery's rape conviction. He was convicted even though he had an alibi.

Was this the case involving Alice Sebold? The man was cleared, but I don't remember whether DNA evidence was involved.

No. Sorry.

Lots of times victims never will. There was a famous case of a guy that just admits to random crimes and the victim refused to believe it.

This indicates that the jury/judge also failed the innocent man. What would have saved him? Are these cases relics before dna? Would it happen again today?

For better or worse, a huge amount of our justice system depends on eyewitness statements.

For example, if my crazy neighbour knocked on my door, pushed their way into my home when I answered then beat me up - the only evidence of who did it would be my eyewitness testimony.

There would be incontrovertible evidence that someone had assaulted me, in the form of my bruise-covered face and body. But only eyewitness testimony as to who.

With the current justice system, that would almost certainly be enough for a jury to convict.

There are tragic miscarriages of justice from time to time, and certainly DNA evidence should be used whenever possible. But would I prefer to live in a world which rejects eyewitness testimony, where a crazy person can barge into my house and beat me up with no consequences? Or a world where I have to have CCTV in my own home? Not really to be honest.

That wouldn't me just your verbal evidence there, as your other neighbors would be able to collaborate that you neighbor was crazy. There would be bruises on his knuckles. His clothing would have your blood on them.

In cases of rape, where there's usually ample forensic evidence, there need not be a complete reliance on someone's testimony.

There were the semen samples taken, but this was before DNA matching.

The manpower involved could also be an issue, they can gather dna and evidence but more likely it’ll be ignored over other cases.

For better or worst, we should accept that our justice system has holes and flaws, and we should do our best to avoid them. There isn’t much to help you and they might not have any suitable punishment or aid to give to the crazy person.

I think it depends on your definition of "failed." An eye witness said it was him. He likely didn't have an alibi that could have withstood an eye witness pointing at him and saying "he did this." Had he been at a convenience store on camera, or some other incontrovertible thing, it would have most likely turned out differently.

I'm not sure how a reasonable judge or jury would have come to any other conclusion given what little we know about this third-person retelling of a case so I don't think they "failed" him at least in the way I typically think of that word being used in these contexts.

Everyone acted in good faith - the lawyers, the judge, the jury, the victim. The problem is a system that believes eyewitness testimony is slam dunk evidence.

From your other comment it seems like this is a relic before dna testing. I’ve heard there are many samples of dna that have yet to be processed. Hopefully the circumstances don’t occur again.

This sort of thing happens all the time. The Innocence Project has a multi-year backlog. If you are a black man with a public defender the prosecution almost doesn't even have to show up to get a conviction. Death row is full of people who were railroaded by the system.

Full of is misleading. If 1%-10% are innocent, 99-90% are still guilty. 21 of the 375 men that were innocent were on death row. https://innocenceproject.org/dna-exonerations-in-the-united-...

Are these cases a relic before dna evidence?

That's just for this one project.

I'm not saying everyone is innocent, but the number of people who were wrongly convicted by a lazy system that let shoddy police work and lax standards become the norm is shocking.

There's the old thought process that even if the guy wasn't guilty of this crime he's certainly guilty of others so they would be doing the world a favor by putting him away. In the end this is just self-justified racism.

>There's the old thought process that even if the guy wasn't guilty of this crime he's certainly guilty of others so they would be doing the world a favor by putting him away. In the end this is just self-justified racism.

I’m sorry, where is race the factor in this? You could make a weak claim for sexism from your post but there is no racism.

I'll give you one guess as to the skin color of the people who "seem dangerous" to these all white judges, prosecutors, and juries.

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