Law & Justice: December 2006 Archives
I've written before that one of the few crimes worse than rape is making a false accusation of rape, and now it looks like the accuser in the Duke rape case, Crystal G. Mangum, did just that. The charges have been dropped for lack of evidence, and the tragic thing is that prosecutor Mike Nifong knew he couldn't make the case a year ago but decided to put the accused young men through hell anyway.
The district attorney dropped rape charges Friday against the three Duke University lacrosse players after the stripper who accused them changed her story again. But the men still face kidnapping and sex charges that could bring more than 30 years in prison. ...In dropping the rape charges, Nifong filed court papers that said the accuser told an investigator Thursday that she is no longer certain whether she was penetrated vaginally with the men's penises, as she had claimed earlier. Nifong previously said he would rely on the woman's account because of a lack of DNA evidence against the players.
Lacking any "scientific or other evidence independent of the victim's testimony" to corroborate that aspect of the case, the district attorney said in court papers, "the state is unable to meet its burden of proof with respect to this offense." ...
The defense has complained that the stripper has given authorities at least a dozen different versions of her story. Among other things, she has given conflicting accounts of the number of attackers _ anywhere from three to 20 _ and the ways in which she was supposedly assaulted.
So did Nifong just screw up? How do we know it was malicious prosecutorial misconduct that should land him behind bars? Don't forget this story from last week:
The head of a private DNA laboratory [Brian Meehan] testified Friday that he and District Attorney Mike Nifong agreed last spring not to report DNA results favorable to Duke lacrosse players charged with rape. ...In court Friday, Meehan said his lab found DNA from unidentified men in the underwear and body of the woman who said she was gang-raped at a lacrosse party in March. Nurses at Duke Hospital collected her underwear and samples from her body a few hours after the alleged assault. Meehan said the DNA did not come from Reade Seligmann, David Evans, or Collin Finnerty, who have been charged with rape and sexual assault in the case. ...
"Had Mr. Nifong said, 'We want a report on everything,' that is what we would produce," Meehan said.
"You violated the protocols of your own lab," Bannon said.
"Correct ... I don't have a legal explanation for it," Meehan said. "I was just trying to do the right thing."
Do the right thing by ignoring the evidence that suggests that a rape accusation was completely false? How is that justice?
Mike Nifong needs to face criminal charges and should be removed from his elected position as soon as possible. How many other cases has he manipulated during his tenure? They'll all have to be revisited.
And as for Crystal G. Mangum, if that is her real name, she should be put in jail for a term no less than what her victims would have faced if they had been convicted.
Daniel Muniz has a brief post about preferential traffic enforcement for beautiful women that concludes with several comments by law enforcement officers who swear up and down that they've never let a woman off a ticket they would have otherwise given to a man. Maybe it's just a cliche. Do any beautiful women out there have any experiences to share?
It's hard to care about Florida's so-called botched execution of the murderer of Joseph Nagy. You might be confused -- where did I get the name of the victim, Joseph Nagy? He isn't mentioned in the article anywhere! Instead we're treated to pictures of Angel Nieves Diaz's family crying because their murdering kinsman is being put to death 27 years after his crime.
In Florida, medical examiner Dr. William Hamilton said Wednesday's execution of Angel Nieves Diaz took 34 minutes - twice as long as usual - and required a rare second dose of lethal chemicals because the needles were inserted clear through his veins and into the flesh in his arms. The chemicals are supposed to go into the veins.Hamilton, who performed the autopsy, refused to say whether he thought Diaz died a painful death.
"I am going to defer answers about pain and suffering until the autopsy is complete," he said. He said the results were preliminary and other tests may take several weeks.
That seems like a waste of money. Despite his protests of innocence, even Angel Nieves Diaz's entry on Amnesty International admits that he is at least an accomplice to murder, which carries the same penalty.
Angel Diaz’s former girlfriend testified that on the night of the robbery, he had told her that Angel Toro had shot a man during the robbery. The testimony of two other witnesses, who had been in the bar at the time of the robbery, indicated that Angel Diaz was not the gunman. However, a jailhouse informant testified that when they had been held in the same jail, Angel Diaz had indicated that he had shot Joseph Nagy. Jailhouse informant testimony is notoriously unreliable.
It doesn't matter. If you rob a strip club and your partner shoots someone, you're both guilty of murder and should both be executed.
I really do feel sorry for Diaz's family -- it would be terrible to go through such an ordeal over one of my loved ones -- but I feel worse for the family members of Joseph Nagy who have gone without him since 1979.
It's sad that Rachael Bown was shot, but can you imagine anything more pathetic than a law enforcement officer begging a thug not to shoot because the government won't let the good guys carry guns?
Probationary Pc Rachael Bown suffered life-threatening injuries when she was gunned down by 24-year-old Trevon Thomas in the Lenton area of Nottingham on February 14, the city's crown court heard. ...hat night, she said, she was chasing a burglary suspect with her more experienced partner Martin Foster when they came face to face with a young black man they had already been told by colleagues was believed to be armed.
She said today: "I saw a black object in his right hand... I assumed it to be the firearm.
"He kept on running towards us. We were both shouting: 'Stay where you are. Stop, don't shoot'."
Pc Bown said the gunman opened fire with the first shot within seconds of Pc Foster spraying him with CS gas. He kept running towards us and Martin then CS'd him. I was trying to get on the radio and say he was there."
When the good guys are armed with pepper spray and the bad guys have guns, guess who runs the show and who begs for their lives.
Too late to catch OJ but still a potentially significant advancement in law enforcement: using artificial intelligence software to predict killers before they strike.
University of Pennsylvania criminologist Richard Berk, a trained statistician, never met a data set he didn't like.Now, using fresh data from the Philadelphia probation department, Berk and three colleagues have built an innovative model for predicting which troublemakers already in the system are most likely to kill or attempt a killing.
With the homicide rate in Philadelphia outpacing last year's by at least 7 percent, a computer model for "forecasting murder" is in the works, Berk said, to be delivered to the probation department in the new year, with clinical trials of the new tool to begin in the spring.
Initial research suggests the software-based system can make it 40 times more likely for caseworkers to accurately predict future lethality than they can using current practices.
The project is funded with a private grant and the software is in the public domain, so the product will be delivered to the city free.
I think we should apply this sort of software to everyone with a criminal record, not just those on probation. There's no difference between using AI software and using human intelligence to reach the same conclusions, except that software is cheaper and less biased than are humans, so the results should be more accurate.
Remember, the system doesn't predict specific murders, only which people are likely to commit murders in the future. So what do we do with those people once we think we've found them? Keep a close eye on them till they get too old to cause trouble, I guess. I wouldn't be adverse to attaching ankle monitors to petty crooks who are predicted to eventually escalate.
(HT: Slashdot and Nick.)
