Thursday, September 3, 2009

Damn!

It's nice that this guy is at least getting reimbursed, somewhat. But even if there have been worse miscarriages of justice (executions, twenty and up year sentences), seventeen months at Rikers is no joke.

He was initially convicted on a partial fingerprint, i.e. the kind of evidence that's supposed to corroborate an already strong case. Not one that should condemn a man who had the alibi of being about 800 miles away from the scene of the crime. It does show you something about the arrogance of the system.

2 comments:

susan said...

What did happen to the understanding that a man is innocent until proven guilty? I know. Just another fiction in a bad cartoon environment.

Ben said...

Yeah, I remember 12 or so years ago the uproar when Richard Gewell couldn't be linked to the Atlanta bombing. People seem to have gotten more used to long detentions of the innocent. Of course even then it made a difference that he was white.