Of the first seventy falsely-convicted Americans who were exonerated by DNA evidence (unclear if this refers only to
North Carolina, but the numbers are high enough that it is likely the whole country),
sixty-one were
convicted, at least in part, on the basis of mistaken eyewitness identification (see also
here, but I note that this site, which I found via this
thread in the Zodiackiller discussion board, would be improved if they cited their sources; see also
here and
here and pp. 20-22 of the pdf
here). Considering that coroners and forensic examiners often lie to make their police friends happy (and are sometimes caught), fabric evidence is suspect, state appointed lawyers are often incompetent or in a hurry, plea bargains are often forced on defendants who don't understand what is going on, confessions are obtained through various forms of coercion, jailhouse informants are spectacularly unreliable (here is a
long analysis of the problems in pdf format from a
commission investigating a case of wrongful conviction in Ontario), ballistic evidence has
been impugned (see also
here), and even fingerprint evidence has been
questioned as being largely subjective (on fingerprints, see
here and
here and
here and
here and
here and
here, not to mention
ear prints and
bitemarks and
knifemarks!), one has to question whether there is ever enough evidence to really prove that a crime has been committed beyond a reasonable doubt. The entire criminal justice system appears to be an elaborate charade, where police pick up 'bad guys' who may or may not have done the crime but often accept their fate as punishment for other crimes for which they haven't been caught. Occasionally an innocent person
with the massive amounts of money required for lawyers and forensic experts fights the wrongful arrest, and sometimes reveals the tip of the iceberg of all the crap that is commonly accepted as evidence.
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