Michael malice did some merciless trolling of Alec Baldwin. I thought it was a little too soon myself but Iâm still chuckling at:
âthe career of Alec Baldwin was mostly peacefulâ
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@Tierneevin1979 The US Justice system 
So much to say on this, it could have gone into about 5 different threads.
One thing to say, can you imagine a black woman accusing a white man that she passed on the street of rape and still getting a conviction after she fails to pick her accused rapist out of the police line-up?
A 16 year sentence and denied bail because he would never admit to something he didnât do.
I supposed that the fact he got acquitted means the system works and isnât racist.
Alice Sebold, the bestselling author of the memoir Lucky and the novel The Lovely Bones, apologised publicly on Tuesday to a man who was wrongly convicted of raping her in 1982 after she had identified him in court as her attacker. The apology came eight days after the conviction of the man, Anthony Broadwater, was vacated by a state-court judge in Syracuse, New York, who concluded, in consultation with the local district attorney and Broadwaterâs lawyers, that the case against him was deeply flawed.
As a result of the conviction, Broadwater, who is now 61, spent 16 years in prison before being released in 1998 and was forced to register as a sex offender. In a statement posted on the website Medium, Sebold, who described the rape and the ensuing trial in Lucky, said she regretted having âunwittinglyâ played a part in âa system that sent an innocent man to jailâ. âI am sorry most of all for the fact that the life you could have led was unjustly robbed from you,â she wrote. âAnd I know that no apology can change what happened to you and never will. It has taken me these past eight days to comprehend how this could have happened.â
Seboldâs publisher, Scribner, said she was not available for additional comment. Scribner said last week that it had no plans to update the memoirâs text based on Broadwaterâs exoneration. But on Tuesday the company said it would cease distribution of Lucky while it and Sebold âconsider how the work might be revisedâ.
Broadwater, in an interview with the New York Times on Tuesday, said he was ârelieved and gratefulâ for Seboldâs apology. âIt took a lot of courage, and I guess sheâs brave and weathering through the storm like I am,â he said. âTo make that statement, itâs a strong thing for her to do, understanding that she was a victim and I was a victim too.â
Sebold was 18 and a student at Syracuse University, in New York State, when the rape that led to Broadwaterâs wrongful conviction occurred. In Lucky, which was published in 1999, she gives a searing account of the assault and of the trauma she subsequently endured. She also writes in detail about the trial and about how she became convinced she had recognised Broadwater, whom she referred to with a pseudonym in the book, as her attacker after passing him on the street months after the rape.
The memoir chronicles mishaps in the case, including the fact that a composite sketch of her attacker, based on her description, did not resemble Broadwater. The book also describes Seboldâs fear that the prosecution might be derailed after she identified a different man, not Broadwater, in a police line-up.
Later, she identified Broadwater as her attacker in court. After a brief trial, he was convicted of first-degree rape and five other charges.
Lucky started Seboldâs career and paved the way for her breakout novel, The Lovely Bones, which also centres on sexual assault. It has sold millions of copies and was made into a feature film. Although Sebold gave Broadwater the fictitious name Gregory Madison in the memoir, he said he had been forced to suffer the stigma of being branded a sex offender even after being released from prison. He had always insisted he was innocent and was denied parole several times for refusing to acknowledge guilt. He took two polygraph tests, decades apart, with experts who determined that his account was truthful. He tried repeatedly over the years to hire lawyers to help prove his innocence.
Those efforts were unsuccessful until recently, when a planned film adaptation of Lucky helped raise new questions about the case. Timothy Mucciante, who was working as executive producer on the film version, said in an interview with the New York Times that he had started to doubt Seboldâs account after reading the memoir and the script earlier this year. Mucciante said he had been struck by how little evidence was presented at Broadwaterâs trial. He said he had been fired from the film production after raising questions about the story. (The feature film was ultimately dropped after losing its financing, Variety reported.)
âIt seemed like Anthony was wronged,â Mucciante said. Mucciante hired a private investigator, Dan Myers, who had spent 20 years with the sheriffâs office in Onondaga County, New York, before retiring as a detective in 2020. After finding and interviewing Broadwater, Myers became convinced he had been falsely accused.
Myers, who shares office space with a law firm, recommended that Broadwater hire one of the lawyers there, J David Hammond. Hammond reviewed the investigation and agreed that there was a strong argument for setting the conviction aside. In their motion to vacate the conviction, Hammond and a second lawyer, Melissa K Swartz, argued that the case rested entirely on two flawed elements: Seboldâs courtroom identification of Broadwater and a now-discredited method of microscopic hair analysis.
Muccianteâs production company, Red Badge Films, is now working on a documentary about the case, titled Unlucky, with a second production company, Red Hawk Films. Broadwater and those who helped vacate the conviction are also participating.
In her statement, Sebold expressed sorrow that in seeking justice for herself she had harmed Broadwater beyond the 16 years he was incarcerated âin ways that further serve to wound and stigmatise, nearly a full life sentenceâ. She also sounded anguished about a question that remains unresolved. âI will also grapple,â she wrote, âwith the fact that my rapist will, in all likelihood, never be known.â â This article originally appeared in The New York Times
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To Kill a Mocking Bird how are you? That could never happen today!
Wrongful convictions happen in every country, flawed as it is a trial in front of a jury is still the best system we have. Whatâs the alternative?
I agree that the jury system is as close to the best weâll get. What do you think of the idea of giving defendants access to the same resources that are open to prosecutors?
How do you mean? What resources do they lack?
Would you like to be accused of a serious crime in America and not have the resources to hire a good lawyer? Would you really want to rely on a public defender?
From my limited knowledge there are very competent ones and others not at the races. But thatâs the same with prosecutorsâŚthat increases the luck of the draw element to it except the burden of proof protects the accused moreso. While I do agree with the idea of choosing any defense lawyer, that would create an unrealistic workload Iâd imagine for a few.
seems to work ok in this country
Or defendants in white supremacist murder cases. Who always seem to be curiously well resourced.
And the prosecutors in such cases seem to have a curious habit of being mates with those white supremacist defendants.
Public defenders are qualified attorneys and the state provides them free to those in need. There is no question those with financial means can afford better representation. I donât know how to solve that, other than strict enforcement of prosecutors sharing evidence.
You need to learn to accept jury verdicts. The jury in the Kyle Rittenhouse found him not guilty, case closed. Unlike you they heard and saw all the evidence.
The jury found the Birmingham Six guilty.
Presumably you accept that too.
but that may have its own problems. The evidence gathered is, realistically, gathered for the purposes of prosecution. There is no incentive for investigators to look for evidence that may exonerate an individual.
As with @maroonandwhite, I have limited knowledge, but it just from impressions I have that cases where the accused has been found guilty and, sometimes many years later, exonerated, new evidence has been actively sought and found - I canât recall the name of the organisation which is often involved. @Tierneevin1979 you may know. Usually centred on law school students who take on cases pro bono. Iâd guess the experience is worthwhile too.
Based on flawed evidence and the prosecution hiding evidence. Any rational person looking at the evidence in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial would agree with the jury that the prosecution did not prove beyond a reasonable doubt he did not act in self defense. Unless you feel (you do) he should have surrendered his life to a baying mob.
If you were attacked on the street by a baying mob do you have the right to defend yourself?
Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted based on flawed (to say the least) law.
What sort of law makes it legal to confront protestors armed with an AR-15 and then murder people in a situation that you yourself create?
An ass of a law, thatâs what.
He can only be tried under the law that exists, not the law that you wish for.
The law is a white supremacist, gun nut ass.
It is that way by design.
America has over 14k gun homicides per year. 73% of all homicides in the US.
And right wing politicians are telling other countries that this is âfreedomâ.
Right wing America is a lunatic asylum out of control.
You donât have to tell me about gun homicides. We have had 127 in the city I live in so far this year, including two security guards shot dead this last week by organized looters. Double the number of last year. The great majority are black victims shot by black men, mostly young. Were these homicides due to white supremacy?
What is your proposal to solve this carnage? Make guns illegal? The great majority of guns involved in these homicides are obtained on the black market.