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    Tired Old FeministKirsten West Savali
    2/02/18 7:34am

    For God’s sake. He lost his entire life.

    The older I get, the more I realize how *subjective* eyewitness ID is. Hell, I can barely remember what my new neighbor looks like. Identifying someone who was attacking me? Maybe their face would be burned into my memory, or maybe I’d be too traumatized to recall specific features.

    Also: What if all those rape kits gathering dust could actually exonerate other wrongfully convicted prisoners?

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      weallfalldownTired Old Feminist
      2/02/18 8:14am

      It is so scary how subjective eyewitness id is! Every criminology class and most police academy classes show this. But it seems like that cops don’t care even now. It hurts people, especially minorities because cops like to find a person and then fit eyewitness testimony to it. Terrifying.

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      skefflesTired Old Feminist
      2/02/18 8:24am

      It is not for nothing that in countries with competent police services and functioning justice systems that they say the only piece of evidence of less worth than an eyewitness is a confession. Eyewitness testimony and confessions are so easy to fake and to generate.

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    Invisible BullyKirsten West Savali
    2/02/18 3:24am

    Thankfully he’s free...but this story still makes me feel like shit.

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      ambInvisible Bully
      2/02/18 4:11am

      Same here - as inspiring as this story is, I can’t help but feel horribly depressed about it at the same time. Here’s to hoping that so many other folks like him get this same opportunity to get their lives back.

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      IvymantledInvisible Bully
      2/02/18 5:17am

      Yes, I can’t wrap my head around how it would feel to have your life snatched away by injustice, incompetence and racist undercurrents. I might go insane.

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    HuskyBroKirsten West Savali
    2/02/18 7:29am

    Tosh was disbarred in 1999 after he was found to be negligent in dozens of other cases.

    and yet, after “finding” out that his assigned lawyer was criminally negligent and trash, Alexander spent nearly two more decades in prison.

    He could have gotten a few more years with his father, watched his grandson grow up on the outside, ate as much of his mom’s favorite snack as he wanted.

    No one thought to go back and look over his cases and say “wow, we should check on this guy who’s doing life?”

    A perfect example of America not giving a shit about Black People

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      The TruthHuskyBro
      2/02/18 8:49am

      True indeed!!!

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      whitemareHuskyBro
      2/02/18 10:23am

      It’s also another example of those facing the most serious charges being denied or prevented access to the resources to defend themselves. The most serious crimes should be when defendents are best protected, but instead, “tough on crime” politicians have limited and even removed basic means of defence for the accused - and often, the falsely accused. Even competent defence lawyers who actually give a damn about their clients can still provide inadequate representation, though not for a lack of trying.

      Justice denied:

      The human toll of America’s public defender crisis

      In 1963, the landmark Gideon v Wainwright supreme court ruling enshrined the constitutional right for indigent criminal defendants – those who cannot afford to pay for a lawyer – to access legal counsel. But 53 years on, as the rate of incarceration across the country has more than quadrupled and up to 90% of criminal defendants in the US qualify as indigent, this cornerstone principle of the justice system has been eroded to breaking point.

      [...]

      In Missouri, for example, where the defender office is funded entirely at the state level, Governor Jay Nixon has repeatedly blocked the passage of state legislation to cap defenders’ workloads and increase their funding. Most recently, in July, Nixon withheld $3.5m of a relief fund approved by the state legislature to hire additional staff. As a result, the Missouri system is chronically overburdened, according to a 2014 study, which found the office was in need of 270 more staff to meet increasing caseloads.

      The deck isn’t just stacked. The cards are handpicked to give the defendant a pair and the prosecution a straight flush.

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    "Hachi"Kirsten West Savali
    2/02/18 6:25am

    I want to be so happy for him and his family but the only thing I feel is hot rage. His life was taken away, having missed his son and his grandson’s childhood. Nearly 40 years, an entire lifetime.

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    Brooklyn_BruinKirsten West Savali
    2/02/18 8:50am

    I am not reading the part where every state employee involved with this crime against this man has been charged/indicted for any crimes.

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      STLOrcaBrooklyn_Bruin
      2/02/18 10:46am

      How was he left in prison for 20 GODDAMN YEARS after his lawyer was found incompetent?

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    Texan2203Kirsten West Savali
    2/02/18 8:04am

    It amazes me how these people who have been through this are not angry. They have lost the one thing no one can replace. When you have a system that counts on convictions as wins then you will keep having these cases. Lord knows how many men and women are sitting in prison right now that are innocent.

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    skefflesKirsten West Savali
    2/02/18 8:22am

    I’m glad he has finally been exonerated, but how many more innocent people are still in jail? Our “justice” system is disgraceful and embarrassing.

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      GWPtheTrilogyskeffles
      2/02/18 9:21am

      I refuse to call our legal system “justice” because cases like this (and virtually every police brutality case) prove that very little actual “justice” occurs.

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      skefflesGWPtheTrilogy
      2/02/18 9:42am

      I used to call our justice system a revenge system, but then I realized it isn’t even functioning well enough to be that. We have a random torture system with a few legalist stage dressings to distract the privileged fools.

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    STLOrcaKirsten West Savali
    2/02/18 10:41am

    The folks at the Innocence Project deserve a Nobel Prize. I’m not even joking. They are doing the Lord’s work.

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    SixSpeedSteveKirsten West Savali
    2/02/18 11:24am

    “Thank you from the bottom of my heart for getting my child out of that place,” Alexander’s mother, Maudra Alexander, 82, told attorneys for the Innocence Project. “He’s been there for so long.”

    Awfully early in the day for someone in my office to be cutting onions...

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    BiturbowagonKirsten West Savali
    2/03/18 12:32am

    This is a huge reason why I am opposed to the death penalty.

    Whatever one can say about this travesty of justice, at least this man was eventually released from prison.

    He could be released, because he was still alive, because he was sentenced to life, not death.

    Reply