mistaken witness identification leads to innocents being convicted

This just goes to show how easily a man can be wrongly convicted of rape.

A woman was burglarized and raped in her apartment by an unknown assailant. Police made a composite sketch from the description given by the victim, and then distributed the picture into the community. Another woman saw that sketch and thought she knew a man who looked like that. Police obtained a picture of that man and showed it to the rape victim.

The victim was white and the rapist was black. The plain truth is that a lot of times people are not as easily able to tell different faces apart when they are an unfamiliar ethnicity.

The woman mistakenly identified Winston Scott as the attacker. Long after the man had already served his sentence a DNA test would later indicate that he was not the rapist.

http://www.richmond.com/news/virgin...cle_3d91f9b8-fc19-5348-b93b-d8fd2843e9da.html

 

Granny says, "Dat's right...

... to white folks...

... all blacks look alike."

 

To be fair, it shows how easily innocent people could be convicted in 1975. The system is far from perfect today but the very fact they can and do revisit these old cases demonstrates significant progress in technology, methods and mind-set.

 

Another aspect of this, it might also go some ways to explaining why so many innocent black men get convicted. Because the rate of catching suspected criminals is directly proportional to the rate of crime in the community. If there's more crime in a community it makes more sense that more innocent people are going to be wrongly convicted for crimes they didn't commit. And if the innocent person physically resembles the criminal... if you have one ethnic group that commits more crimes statistically, it's not surprising that there are going to be more people in that group who get wrongfully convicted. White people can get wrongfully convicted too because of witness misidentification, but there are less white people committing crimes, statistically speaking to put it plainly, so a white man is less likely to be misidentified as an assailant.
There's also the issue of darker colored skin being harder to see at night, so misidentifications could be more common if there wasn't adequate lighting at the time of the crime. All these facts congeal together to put innocent black men behind bars.

 

Quote from the link: "Scott’s alibi at the time of the rape was that he had spent the night at a friend’s house. His friend and his friend’s parents all testified that he was with them that night."

The real problem is society's willingness and eagerness to readily accept the notion that all black men are out to rape every white women they can find. As you can see from the article, he had THREE witnesses who attested to his innocence. His accuser had none. Despite that he still got convicted.

This reminds me pf a case in New Jersey made decades ago where an innocent black man had 200 witnesses attesting to the fact that he was in church at the time a white woman who sexually assaulted. She had no witnesses. He had 200. But he got convicted just the same. Years later it was proven he had been innocent.

And, of course, we all remember the Wilding Case where police made up the story that a white woman had been sexually assaulted when she hadn't been. Four innocent black men spent years in jail for a crime they never committed as police made the story up. Today those cops are retired and living on fat pensions financed by taxpayers.


It's time to put the false accusers in jail and to relieve the innocents of their suffering. If you were once such victim, you would readily agree that this is the best course to take.

 

We don't know exactly what happened in this case.We don't know how reliable the witnesses were or how definitive an alibi they offered. We also don't know what other evidence was presented in the case. And while racial bias certainly could have been a factor (especially in '75 America), we can't know it was relevant. You're basically making the same kind of presumptions that lead to false convictions in the first place.

This thread isn't about false accusations though. That's a perfectly valid issue to raise but it shouldn't be use to distract from the real systematic and practical difficulties this case raises and those difficulties shouldn't be used to fling generic accusations around.

 

You likely are not familiar with the many cases of false accusations that resulted in the terrorist lynchings of innocent black men in the South. As with the cases I mentioned (and trust me there are THOUSANDS more), it is society's predisposition to readily accept the myth that black men are all out to rape white women that is the cause of these terrorist attacks. Note that my emphasis was on society's predisposition, not false reports. To suggest that society is not so inclined is utterly ridiculous and nothing more than delusional thinking.

 

I'm perfectly familiar with that and as I said, it's a valid topic of discussion. The point is that in the case this thread is about, the victim was raped by a black man, the problem is that the wrong suspect was identified and subsequently convicted. The issues which lead to that false identification (which could well include racial aspects) need to be addressed (where they haven't already). Turning this thread entirely in the direct you raise failed to address any of those issues.

 

What, more than anything else, leads to misidentification?

Society's predisposition to believe the accuser. That's my focal point. And it is fact whether you choose to believe it or not.

 

Interesting read:


http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/oct/18/rape-accusations-must-be-taken-seriously-but-exami/



We can all agree that rape accusations need to be taken seriously. But claims of innocence need to be given equal weight. Because someone makes an accusation, this should not mean an automatic arrest, news media displays of the accused's face on TV, and putting the burden of proof of innocence on the accused [do you know of any other crime where this is the normal course?]. Far too many innocent men have had their lives and reputations destroyed forever because of mistaken identity or because of false accusations. If it was you or a loved one whose life was destroyed you would readily agree with what you have just read.

 

Oh stop.

The OP also said: To black folk, all Asians look alike. And to Asians, all Indians look alike. And to Indians, all Arabs look alike.

Stop with the neurotic hatin' on whitey already.

 

While people have many assumptions about one another, the one thing on this topic that stands out above all is the fact that far too many people in this society are predisposed to believe all black men are out to rape white women. Nobody says that about Asians, Indians, or whatever else. This is why innocent black men are so often victimized as in the OP.

 

Except... Did you read the original post? The alleged victim alleged that the alleged rapist was allegedly black.

P.S. This case shows why the death penalty is immoral. At least this guy is still alive.

 

You obviously missed that I referred to blacks as victims and why this is often so.

 

Because we know that friends and family of guilty parties always tell the truth.

Hands up, don't shoot and all that.

 

1 simple fact is central to the VAST majority of the cases prior to DNA, or in modern cases with no usable DNA evidence, it is he said vs she said.

The defense is left with only one real defense and that's to attack the accuser, which tends to turn juries off and results in additional convictions.

 

Yeah, I guess so. It's a new one to me. I didn't know that white people believed that.

I guess I always believed white people, in general, viewed black people, in general, as people.

Do black people, generally view white people differently?

We seem to get along alright, when one on one.

 

No need to base this on ethnic appearance. Eyewitness evidence is extremely fallible and should be treated with caution. As the academics tell us, memory is reconstructive. Judges should always warn juries about eyewitness evidence.

 

The testimony of 200 congregants in a church should be ample exculpatory evidence - in a world where logic is the rule of law, one would think so. Evidently, not so in the USA.

 

Yeah that's to bad about the lynching parties and selective enforcement of the law.

 

I'm trying really hard to not respond with the Roll-On-The-Floor-Laughing emoji.

 

Sad that you are too blind to see that innocent people are still convicted every year for crimes they never committed because they are profiled by cops and burdened by society's predispositions.

 

A sad story. This general theme is all too common in the US "justice" system. Last time I read, the Innocence Project had freed 200+ men in a similar situation.

 

It IS against the law to knowingly make a false accusation. It is not against the law and should not be to falsely identify

 

if you make a driving error and kill an innocent pedestrian, you will get punished by the law
ditto if you are trimming limbs from a tree on your lawn

if your initial testimony gets someone thrown into jail and your innocent victim is beaten and gang raped while there to the point that he commits suicide or is murdered, there should be some punishment as well - if you had a family member who was victimized in such a manner you would readily endorse the idea