EVIDENCE OF POLICE DISHONESTY LEADS TO OVERTURNED CONVICTIONS NATIONWIDE

Here are some quotes from a justice of the US Ninth Circuit of Appeals. Justice  Alex Kozinski talks about police misconduct and worse in the Debra Milke case.

“The Ninth Circuit was so disturbed by Milke’s case that the panel referred its opinion to the U.S. Attorney for the District of Arizona and the Assistant U.S. Attorney General of the Civil Rights Division “for possible investigation into whether Saldate’s conduct, and that of his supervisors and other state and local officials, amounts to a pattern of violating the federally protected rights of Arizona residents.”

Kozinski learned through the media that nothing came of the referral.

“They do not consider lying cops to be quite the same priority as shooting cops,” Kozinski said during an interview. “Maybe because they don’t get riots and they don’t get the same kind of public reaction as when police shoot somebody, but in essence it’s the same thing.

“They are helping commit violence against the suspect by words, but words can have the same effect,” Kozinski said. Full article. 

Here is a real blockbuster from Justice Kozinski.

12 reasons to worry about our criminal justice system, from a prominent conservative federal judge

Originally from the Georgetown Law review. Article is written by Eugene Volokh.

“Although we pretend otherwise, much of what we do in the law is guesswork. For example, we like to boast that our criminal justice system is heavily tilted in favor of criminal defendants because we’d rather that ten guilty men go free than an innocent man be convicted. There is reason to doubt it, because very few criminal defendants actually go free after trial.”

One of his sections includes a mention of forensic science’s mythic prominence.

3. Other types of forensic evidence are scientifically proven and therefore infallible.

Full article