An incredible two-part podcast from Generation Why
As suspicious death triggers a bizarre circus as five innocent men are jailed on the word of a drug-addled mentally-ill woman.
Who Killed Jerry Tobias? Part 1 - 311
Who Killed Jerry Tobias? Part 2 - 312
Warning: Listening will almost certainly raise you blood-pressure.
In his book An Innocent Man John Grisham wrote:
The journey also exposed me to the world of wrongful convictions. Something that I, even as a former lawyer, had never spent much time thinking about. This is not a problem peculiar to Oklahoma, far from it. Wrongful convictions occur every month in every state in this country, and the reasons are all varied and all the same-- bad police work, junk science, faulty eyewitness identifications, bad defense lawyers, lazy prosecutors, arrogant prosecutors.
I’ve blogged quite a bit about similar cases and related issues. What is disheartening is that no matter how many exonerations occur, we never see any serious effort to reform the system. The police, prosecutors and judges who created the mess never face any serious consequences. The public never demands meaningful reform. Journalists never learn any lessons and continue to cover criminal cases in a the same way year after year.
Related:
Criminal justice and the Rosenhan Experiment
Novelists and Rosenhan
They trusted the experts
Richard Jewell
We owe Salem an apology
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