[HN Gopher] I'm Begging the Courts to Stop Citing My Work on Bit...
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       I'm Begging the Courts to Stop Citing My Work on Bite Mark
       Identification
        
       Author : fortran77
       Score  : 49 points
       Date   : 2024-03-20 15:54 UTC (7 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.theatlantic.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.theatlantic.com)
        
       | kbos87 wrote:
       | The way that society is so quick to accept evidence positioned as
       | "scientific" as unequivocally true boggles my mind. Bite mark
       | identification, arson investigation, just how far out on a limb
       | many medical examiners are willing to go in deeming something a
       | homicide when they have so little context... people really must
       | think that wrongful accusations either don't happen, or are never
       | going to happen to them. It seems like the vast majority of
       | people crave a sense of order and justice to a point of willful
       | ignorance about reality.
        
         | sidewndr46 wrote:
         | I listened to the details of a case where a woman was indicted
         | for perjury under the logic that she didn't confess to a crime.
        
           | rand846633 wrote:
           | WTF. In what legal systems does that work?
        
             | hoten wrote:
             | I can imagine plenty of cases where this would be
             | reasonable. We would need more details to say if this is a
             | bad outcome.
             | 
             | For example, if this was in the US, did the woman plead the
             | fifth, or did she assert to something she knew to be false?
             | Was she convicted of a crime and found to have knowingly
             | concealed having committed the crime? Did this conviction
             | come before or after her lying on the stand?
        
             | victorbjorklund wrote:
             | Difference between pleading the fifth and lying. If she for
             | example lied in another case for serious crime to cover up
             | her own crime that is reasonable (she could just have plead
             | the fifth instead)
        
         | rossant wrote:
         | Add shaken baby syndrome to that list. [1]
         | 
         | [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37650402
        
       | ImAnAmateur wrote:
       | >The Nevada Supreme Court rejected all of those arguments,
       | reasoning that Collman would likely have been convicted on other
       | evidence. And they also again refused to specifically rule on the
       | challenges to bite-mark identification, and to Rawson.
       | 
       | This, to me, seems to be the hurdle to clear. These cases are
       | complex and have lots of evidence. The Nevada Supreme Court
       | essentially said that the bite mark evidence in his case is not
       | needed to convict him. The author of the article is seemingly
       | only knowledgeable of the use of teeth "evidence".
       | 
       | I don't even know where to go from here. I'm from Arizona, not
       | Nevada so I don't know their laws. I assume that the effort
       | needed will involve going over this individual's court case,
       | arguing the details in front of a court, traveling to the court,
       | filing and responding to court documents... The whole 9 yards.
       | The biggest hurdle is that freeing this man requires a lot of
       | effort from another man. Who's going to go to bat for this man
       | when maybe there's an easier way to free someone else?
       | 
       | The alternative solution is to campaign for Nevada to change
       | their laws. Or perhaps shame/punish the court for this hypocrisy.
       | The judges are surely accountable to someone else.
        
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       (page generated 2024-03-20 23:02 UTC)