• Murse@slrpnk.net
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    1 day ago

    I’ve only served on jury duty once, and it was kinda fucked up. Child abuse case, and we were all kinda on the fence leaning toward defendant was guilty, but the evidence presented was just absolute dogshit. Lots of reasonable doubts.

    Found the dude not guilty on the premise that we’d rather let a guilty piece of shit off the hook than risk convicting someone who’s innocent, but it felt real fuckin icky to give that verdict over what was most likely just a lazy investigation by the cops.

    Hope the kid turned out okay… must have absolutely zero faith in the legal system because of that.

    • ShinkanTrain@lemmy.ml
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      19 hours ago

      You wouldn’t believe the amount of cases we shelve because cops are incompetent. Or maybe you will if you know anything about cops.

      • OldChicoAle@lemmy.world
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        4 hours ago

        A lot of true crime stories start with “the cops did nothing for the first 2 weeks” or “a lot of evidence went missing and the lead detective got busy” or "they said it was just a runaway case until a body showed up. Cops are dumb as dog shit and care only about protecting and serving themselves. Sure there are some good cops but not enough.

        • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
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          2 hours ago

          i remember seeing one youtube, where a cousin/friend was suspected of murder, but the cops dint question him or did anything. many people in the comments said the cop was likely related so they ended the INVESTIGATIon of the killing.

      • HCSOThrowaway@lemmy.world
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        17 hours ago

        Though it’s important to remember that modern juries expect CSI-level investigations from the cops, where you can simply “enhance” a photo until the suspect is easily identifiable and all criminals coat the crime scene in semen prior to fleeing, so if there’s no clear footage or DNA evidence, a lot of people think that must mean the cops are incompetent.

        • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
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          2 hours ago

          CSI show exaggerates those things dont really happen in real life at all, they dont have fancy way of detecting blood, footprints, fingerprints, or some microscopic evidence. also fingerprints have been shown to be extremely unreliable as of the latest research.

    • ITGuyLevi@programming.dev
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      21 hours ago

      As one of those kids, he’ll probably turn out okay. As a juror, it’s better to let a piece of shit go free than make an innocent person rot in jail.

      When the kid grows up I would almost guarantee that he would make the same decision.

      • surewhynotlem@lemmy.world
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        19 hours ago

        it’s better to let a piece of shit go free than make an innocent person rot in jail.

        In both cases the piece of shit goes free. Which is somehow really hard for people to understand.

    • Serinus@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      You did the right thing. It’s also important that cops and prosecutors do their job and stop relying on horrible accusations to be enough to convict anyone they want.

      We’re close enough to the French https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reign_of_Terror as it is. I still think Al Franken really didn’t do anything seriously wrong.

    • autriyo@feddit.org
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      24 hours ago

      I don’t remember the name, but some lawyer on YouTube explained that exactly the problem you all had, is why he doesn’t struggle defending someone who is “obviously” guilty.

      You can’t really know that right of the bat. You need at least some good evidence. Basically he is making sure that all the other people do their job correctly.