For those FOR the death penalty with less safeguards

Yes, but I'm not going to say that unless I am 100% sure with zero doubts. I don't take sending someone to prison lightly.

 

He was in the lineup because she'd already picked his mug shot out of the book. He was in the book because he was already on probation for burglary.

As for whether or not she knowingly lied, the only thing I can find is that she had little reaction when she heard he was out. At 77, living in a nursing home, she may not even have the faculties left to react. So that might not mean anything.

Oddly enough, I have to go with a cross between Hartage and RightHand on what happens to the woman. It seems clear to me that she should be charged with perjury, and face a possible sentence of however long Chatman was in. Put her fate in the hands of the same justice system that he faced. To be practical though, perjury is considerably harder to prove than rape. And 27 years likely makes it impossible. But IF her actions are found to have been malicious, and so blatant as to still be provable, I say let her fry.

While I don't dispute that rape is a very underreported crime, it's also true that it's one of the most commonly made false charges.

Let's not get crazy here. I'd sooner cut off both my legs, and everything in between, than spend the rest of my life in prison. My brother's done a few years. He insists he'll commit officer assisted suicide if he's arrested again. I don't care what you want to call it, the idea that a few hours of torture, at most, is worth the rest of your life, is laughable.

I do agree with you, however, that if I'm raped it'll almost certainly be necrophilia. But that's not because I see rape as worse than death. I'll be fighting to stop them, not to die. I'm not going to kill myself to prevent it.

 

Quigly my position is simple. I put myself in the position of the inocent victim. I just want justice for the guy that did nothing and had 26 years taken from him. 26 of the BEST years of his life he was 20.

 

That is where we are just going to have to agree to disagree. If she was the only person there other than the rapist then identifying starts and ends with her. Nothing short of a brain scanner that does not exist can identify who it is besides her.


Lets look at another angle. If she does say it is someone, what can be done to assure that she is telling the truth ?

The system did not fail, she did. She must be held accountable for her lie.

 

I think you just made my point for me. Nobody but her knows what is in her mind. If she says that is him or not him there really is no way to validate or invalidate that. It starts with her word and ends with her word. So if she is wrong who is the only person at fault ?

 

I think that would be the back side.

 

I think Hartage's point is that it doesn't make much difference whether or not she intentionally put an innocent man in jail. A huge chunk of a man's life was taken away from him, and he thinks she should be held responsible.

In principal, I agree. But it's always been my contention that intent is a requirement of criminality. (the laws USED to say that, too) If she intended no harm, then I don't think there should be any LEGAL recourse against her. Morally, I think she's enormously indebted to him. But that's between her, and her conscience.

Of course, intent is very hard to prove. And since I hold the presumption of innocence to be the foundation of any legal system, I doubt I'd be able to put her in jail, if I were Emperor. (and the world breathes a collective sigh of relief that I'm not. )

One thought that immediately jumped into my head, was the cost of imprisoning him. It's clear that the state will now save a substantial amount of money because he's out early. It seems to me that a basic starting point would be for the state to pay him what they would have payed to keep him incarcerated, for the rest of his sentence. In my admittedly warped mind, that seems like it should be a given, regardless of whether or not he tries to sue for more.

(damned inflation)

 

Well I guess the definition of a lie very much applies. A falsehood. She said he was yet not his stuff left in there so what she said is a falsehood. A lie.

 

If you intend to kill someone and do so we call that murder. If you do not intend to kill someone but do so anyways we call that manslaughter. Even if you don't intend to do something but end up doing it it's still a crime.

She very much intended to do what she did. It is her choice she directed the accusation towards him. What you want is for her to intend to be wrong. How can someone intend to be wrong ?

A drunk driver NEVER intends to go out and kill people. Yet when a drunk driver gets caught they get a set punishment. When they get caught AFTER they kill people (unintentionaly) they get a very much different punishment(much more severe). Intent has nothing to do with it. The only difference is weather they kill people or not while drunk.

 

26 years of life gone for doing nothing. I guess I just put far more weight on that than you do.

 

Drunk driving. Nobody intends to go out and kill others. But when it happens we give a far more severe punishment than driving drunk without killing anybody. If intent was a requirement we would hand out the same punishment to a drunk driver crashing into a rosebush (property damage) as a drunk driver crashing into a van killing 5 people. No drunk driver (knock on wood) intends to go out and kill people. Heck most times they don't intend on driving drunk till the alcohol impairs their judgement.

 

Pot calling the kettle black, made any new accusations today?

 

Yeah, funny thing two of my friends used to be with SDPD SWAT. (private sector now) They might not exactly share my opinion (again get definitions right, read your dictionary) but they do understand why many people feel that way.


Funny how you troll around across multiple threads....... I guess you're right there are trolls around.

 

Intent dose in fact make a difference, just as you stated, killing a person with intent is murder, killing a person due to gross negligence (drunk driveing for instance) is manslaughter and carries a much lower penalty because there was no intent to commit harm but you chose to act negligently, killing a person with intent to save your own life is called self defense and if that intent can be proven carries no penalty, killing someone in a car crash resulting from a blown tire (say while driveing safely in a maintained vehicle that ran over debries on the road and blew the tire causeing you to loose controle) is called an acident and also carries no penalty. So intent, even in your own example is very definatly a consideration. It is very unlikely that she knew he was not the guy who did it and chose to lie, I woud suspect she would want to see the guy who actualy did it go to prison not just some one at random, but he may well have looked very much like the attacker, police may have suggested that it was him and even if they didnt theres still the fact that a line up is very flawed as a means of identification (a meathod chosen by the police not the victim) since it is basicly a multiple choice question and the mind is trained to assume that the correct anwser is presented in the choices of a multiple choice question. So at worst her actions might be similar to manslaughter (negligence) unless it could be proven she made an intentional mis identification.

Eye witness information is also WELL known for being highly unreliable. Any rookey cop can tell you that if they go to the scene of any crime (or even when mock crimes are staged in the accadamey with the cadets as witnesses) that you will generaly have as many DIFFERENT descriptions of the crime and suspects or vehicles as you have witnesses. You are doing well if the witnesses even agree on the number of people involved, the basic events (kicked in front door or snuck in back door, etc.), and general descriptions like male/female, black/white/hispanic, jeans/shorts/sweats, car/truck/van, late modle/older, dark color/light color (black, blue, green and red to describe the same vehicles color are comon at night as are white, grey, silver, tan). So knowing this, if they didnt have anything to support her ID and they prosecuted the case anyway then it is indeed the prosecutors who hold the larger share of negligence since they would know she could easily be telling the 'truth' as she thought it to be and still VERY likely be wrong and still prosecuted him. Since there it was over a rape then there should have been forensic evidence such as bodily fluid from the attacker, hair from various sources on his body, likely skin and or blood under her nails from a strugle (blood type could be determined and compared even before DNA as well as if she has his skin there should be skin missing from him/scars for some time) as well as most likely finger prints on her and or at the scene. So unless there was a LOT of VERY unlikely coincidences (happened in an area he had recently been, done by a guy who matched his blood type, he was scarred up to resemble haveing been in a strugle, etc) to make further evidence all fit him (in which case it comes more in line with accident the manslaughter just like if it happened to be his double who did it for her ID) then the police and DA would be FAR more responsible for his wrongful conviction than she would.

All of that said, even in the case of an accident you can still generaly be held financialy responsible for repairations, and it could be reasonable for her to be named in a lawsuit but the main target would have to be the ones who accepted her ID and used it to convict him with, presumably, no other evidence.

Something to consider also is that if a person faces life for makeing a bad ID no one is likely to ID a perp for anything and will it be better if someone realises that the person in the lineup that is dressed totaly different then when they saw them for a few seconds (she may well have been blindfolded, hooded or otherwise prevented from seeing her attacker well for most of the time) in a paniced time COULD have a twin or someone that looks just like them and it COULD be that the other person is the one who actualy murdered someone in front of them so even though they know it was the guy in front of them the CHANCE (not reasonable in their mind but possible) that it could have been an evil twin and they could go to prison for life if they ID them and they had a twin then they dont ID them. You find out later it WAS the person they looked at when you see the guy kill your family.

Witness IDs (especialy when its just 1 or maybe 2 witnesses)can NOT be used as the ONLY evidence against a person but if you cant have them IDed to know who to look at and compare the evidence to then we would have to toss open the prison doors and let everyone out and not bother to have courts or prisons or ANY laws since none could be enforced. Those implementing our system in this case dropped the ball in a big way and absolutely owe this man but the witnesses part of that is small at best since the others involved knew her testimoney was unreliable.