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Weinstein victims’ fury as rape conviction overturned as Bragg commits to retry case (www.independent.co.uk)
submitted 9 months ago by IndustryStandard@lemmy.world to c/news@lemmy.world
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The women who came forward against Harvey Weinstein reacted with fury after the disgraced media mogul’s rape and sexual assault convictions were overturned by a New York appeals court on Thursday.

Weinstein, 72, was found guilty in 2020 of raping and assaulting two women, and is serving his 23-year sentence at a prison in upstate New York.

In a 4-3 decision on Thursday, New York’s highest court ruled the original judge made “egregious errors” in the trial by allowing prosecutors to call witnesses whose allegations were not related to the charges at hand.

Weinstein was once one of Hollywood’s most well-connected and powerful producers who made a series of Oscar-winning films. But behind the glamourous facade, it was a different story. More than 80 women have accused him of abuse ranging from groping to rape. Even with his conviction overturned in New York, he remains convicted of rape in California.

The Weinstein revelations launched the #MeToo movement in 2017, which saw women from all corners of society come forward to talk about their experiences of sexual harassment and assault.

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[-] Mostly_Gristle@lemmy.world 104 points 9 months ago

It must be amazing to have that much money and influence.

Coincidentally the podcast I'm listening to as I type this is talking about a man sitting on death row who was convicted solely on the testimony of one "bite mark analyst" who was later shown to be an absolute fraud in a field that is already highly dubious at best. The appeals court in his case feels that just because the "expert" was wrong in all his other cases doesn't necessarily mean he was wrong in his. So that's cool.

[-] dohpaz42@lemmy.world 58 points 9 months ago

Charles McCrory is spending his 38th year behind bars, convicted of killing his wife. The bite mark expert in his case recanted his testimony, saying he now knows he cannot say whether a bite mark on the victim matched McCrory’s teeth. Yet the Alabama courts have declined to free McCrory.

Alabama’s Court of Criminal Appeals ruled earlier this year that the jury was capable of deciding on its own whether the bite marks matched, a finding that ignores science suggesting such perceived visual matches cannot be valid. The court also cited other evidence in the case, including a witness who said he saw McCrory’s truck at the house during the time of the murder. No physical or forensic evidence links him to the crime.

Three years ago, after the bite mark evidence in his case collapsed, McCrory was offered a deal: Plead guilty and walk free. He refused.

“I refused to take it because I didn’t kill her,” McCrory told NBC News from his prison facility. “I did not kill my wife.”

The Innocence Project is now pursuing appeals through the federal courts.

“Prison is hard — a lot of the stories that you see on the news about prisons, particularly Alabama prisons, are true,” McCrory said. “It is a nasty place, and it’s not a place I would wish on anyone.”

“I don’t give up hope,” he said. “And certainly there’s days of disappointment and days when you’re down and out … but I just believe that somewhere there’s a truth in this that will come out, and you can’t give up. That’s just not an option.”

https://news.yahoo.com/bite-mark-analysis-no-basis-204726311.html

That’s disgusting that the courts just can’t admit when they are wrong. Even after the testimony fell through, they still wanted to get a guilty plea out of the guy. I’m not surprised this is in the south. smh

[-] grue@lemmy.world 22 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Three years ago, after the bite mark evidence in his case collapsed, McCrory was offered a deal: Plead guilty and walk free. He refused.

That, right there, is the most disgusting part of the American ~~justice~~ legal system: nobody from the judge on down to the beat cop gives the slightest flying fuck about catching the correct perp; they only care about securing convictions so their records look good. They wanted him to absolve them of having fucked up and imprisoned the wrong person, and his continued imprisonment is nothing but an attempt to force that absolution from him.

[-] homura1650@lemm.ee 14 points 9 months ago

Not just the court. The prosecutor's office as well. Their position is "we are ok with letting you go; as long as we can do it without admitting that we made a mistake".

And this is an institutional problem. The conviction happened 38 years ago. Everyone involved in prosecuting the case is gone. The office of the prosecutor is simply unable to admit that the office made a mistake.

[-] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 32 points 9 months ago

in a field that is already highly dubious at best

A huge amount of so-called forensic "science" is dubious. Blood splatter analysis, bite mark analysis, voice print analysis, handwriting analysis, all bullshit. Even more 'respected' forms of forensic analysis are not slam-dunks like people, including people on juries, are convinced they are. Fingerprints can be misidentified, especially if it's a partial print (and it's a myth that no two are alike anyway). DNA samples can be tainted.

Basically, the entire field of forensics is built on a lot of very shaky ground and, unfortunately, has resulted in a lot of wrongful convictions. It needs to be overhauled by actual scientists.

[-] Grimy@lemmy.world 4 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

As far as I know, there has never been two people with the same fingerprints, it isn't a myth.

Not that we shouldn't be critical of our standards when it comes to evidence and what not.

[-] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 19 points 9 months ago

We have no idea if there have never been two people with the same fingerprints. It's never been tested and there's no way to test it since the majority of people who have existed are now dead. I would say that puts that claim squarely in myth territory until there can be some way to show that it's true beyond "we haven't found two matching sets out of the small subset of people we've fingerprinted."

Anyway...

The real problem, Cole notes, is that fingerprinting experts have never agreed on “a way of measuring the rarity of an arrangement of friction ridge features in the human population.” How many points of similarity should two prints have before the expert analyst declares they’re the same? Eight? Ten? Twenty? Depending on what city you were tried in, the standards could vary dramatically. And to make matters more complex, when police lift prints from a crime scene, they are often incomplete and unclear, giving authorities scant material to make a match.

So even as fingerprints were viewed as unmistakable, plenty of people were mistakenly sent to jail. Simon Cole notes that at least 23 people in the United States have been wrongly connected to crime-scene prints.* In North Carolina in 1985, Bruce Basden was arrested for murder and spent 13 months in jail before the print analyst realized he’d made a blunder.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/myth-fingerprints-180971640/

[-] Silentiea 3 points 9 months ago

We have no idea if there have never been two people with the same fingerprints. It's never been tested and there's no way to test it since the majority of people who have existed are now dead.

This is true. Similarly, we haven't tested and have no means to test if two well-shuffled decks have ever matched. But we do understand the mechanisms that underlie these phenomena, and (specific or ballpark) likelihood of an exact match occurring, and from those odds can make a reasonable assertion that a match has (in all likelihood) never occurred.

That being said, the approximate impossibility of an exact match does not make up for the other issues of fingerprinting as you quoted. The chances of finding someone's fingerprint whole and readable to compare to a control may be far more likely than two distinct people matching exactly, but far more often the prints being used are nowhere near "whole and readable"

[-] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago

Okay, please show these odds since they are known.

[-] Silentiea 2 points 9 months ago

From a quora post because IDGAF and I'm not doing any more deliberate research on this than that:

Galton Calculated that the chance of 2 people having the exact same fingerprint is one in 64 billion.

Dunno who Galton is, but there ya go

[-] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

So some random person made a calculation according to another random person on fucking Quora and you think those are actual odds?

That's so amazingly dishonest that I don't know what else to say.

But let's say he's right. Let's say it's 1 in 64 billion. There have been over 100 billion people. That means at least 2 people have the same fingerprints based on the odds you have given me without checking their accuracy.

So thanks for proving my point.

[-] Silentiea 1 points 9 months ago

So some random person made a calculation according to another random person on fucking Quora and you think those are actual odds?

Another two second Google search, it was Francis Galton who calculated those odds.

That means at least 2 people have the same fingerprints based on the odds you have given me without checking their accuracy.

I don't think 1 or 2 pairs of people having had fingerprints that matched from the dawn of humanity to today is sufficient to say it's a myth that "no two people have the same fingerprint". The likelihood that two living people, or even two people who lived at the same time ever, shared fingerprints, is still effectively 0. I'm not trying to say fingerprints are magic, just that they are relatively unique. That's not a myth.

It's clear you have strong feelings on this, and I really don't, so I don't expect I'll be engaging further. I'm sorry for any distress.

[-] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 3 points 9 months ago

it was Francis Galton

Oh, Fancis Galton. Then it must be true. Could a 19th century racist who didn't even understand the concept of genetics possibly be wrong?

I don’t think 1 or 2 pairs of people having had fingerprints that matched from the dawn of humanity to today is sufficient to say it’s a myth that “no two people have the same fingerprint”.

That literally makes that statement false. i.e. a myth.

Seriously, dude... you used the work of a 19th century racist, the literal founder of the racist "science" of eugenics, who couldn't possibly calculate odds accurately, to show, based on that work, the statement about fingerprints was false and you're now saying, "well just because that statement is false, you can't really say that it isn't true."

But please, do show me what Dr. Mengele thought on the subject next.

[-] Grimy@lemmy.world 3 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Imo, something isn't a myth just because it's hard to prove definitely due to a near infinite amount of samples. By the same argument you could pretty much discredit most knowledge. Dna being unique or the speed of light because we haven't tested all individual photons.

Its healthy to always acknowledge the possibility but if there's a mountain of evidence pointing one way, you kind of go with what you have.

Obviously though, it's insane we don't have better standards. It sounds like most times, it boils down to a judgment call from an expert and that is clearly not okay.

[-] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

That's not how science works at all. You don't need to test individual photons to know the speed of light. That involves mass and energy. There's a famous equation that allows you to calculate it if you re-order the variables, E=mc².

You do not present a hypothesis that has no evidence to back it up and pretend it's true. That is not fact, that is folklore. Mythology.

[-] Grimy@lemmy.world 2 points 9 months ago

You don't ignore all the evidence just because every single bit of possible data hasn't been parsed.

There has never been two individuals with the same fingerprint, out of all the fingerprints we have collected, they are all unique. This kind of points to all of them being unique and this will be true until we find one that isn't.

[-] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 2 points 9 months ago

There has never been two individuals with the same fingerprint, out of all the fingerprints we have collected, they are all unique

How many fingerprints have been collected versus how many humans have ever lived?

This kind of points to all of them being unique and this will be true until we find one that isn’t.

Again, that's not how science works.

[-] Grimy@lemmy.world 2 points 9 months ago

So dna isn't unique as well? And I mean, we haven't boiled every drop of water on the planet, how can we know all water boils at 100c at sea level.

There isn't much things we know that was tested to such an extent.

[-] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 2 points 9 months ago

You really do not understand how science works. You are arguing that the test for uniqueness is the same as the test for uniformity.

If someone were to claim that every drop of water is unique, you would have a point. No one is claiming that. That is the claim about fingerprints and it is a claim which has never been tested to the satisfaction of anyone working in that field of science.

[-] Grimy@lemmy.world 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

I'm not saying it's proven beyond a doubt, my point is that something that has turned out true the millions of times we have checked can't possibly be a myth.

You can say there's a possibility of it being wrong but shouldn't lump it in with antiquity gods just for the sake of your argument.

There's a whole range between fantasy and certain beyond a doubt, you should stop assuming I'm an idiot and ask yourself why you are so adamant about defending the extreme in such an abrasive manner.

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[-] baru@lemmy.world 2 points 9 months ago

Its healthy to always acknowledge the possibility but if there's a mountain of evidence pointing one way

You're assuming the fingerprint is perfect. It might not be. In enough cases they do not have the full fingerprint. Then if there's a match, was it actually a match or not?

For above, this caused problems though times. Especially with huge fingerprint databases.

Disagree with your statement that there's loads of evidence pointing that fingerprint are unique. That's not how they're used. And there's enough cases where it went wrong.

[-] Grimy@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago

That's not how they're used. And there's enough cases where it went wrong.

Yes and it has nothing to do with two people having the same fingerprint. We need to be much more precise on how we measure differences and what samples we allow (like no partials) but there isn't an inherent fault in fingerprint evidence because there are multiples of the same one floating around.

I'm arguing against the notion that it's individuals can have the same exact fingerprint and not talking about how we process them.

[-] supamanc@lemmy.world 3 points 9 months ago

Thing is, as with DNA, the whole fingerprint is not examined, just certain reference points. The chances of 10 points in a particular print matching another random person's are much much greater than the whole fingerprint.

[-] harmsy@lemmy.world 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

10 points in a particular print matching

You can run a better match test than that on GIMP just by using the difference blend mode and some rotation. It's absurd that this is what they rely on instead.

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[-] rhacer@lemmy.world 7 points 9 months ago

I hope you read Radley Balko. He has done so much to expose the fraud of things like bite marks and other shit done by MEs.

[-] Burn_The_Right@lemmy.world 6 points 9 months ago

This is why conservatives (or anyone else opposed to science and education) should not be allowed to work in criminal justice or law enforcement.

[-] AFKBRBChocolate@lemmy.world 48 points 9 months ago

I had read at the time that it was considered pretty questionable and people weren't sure it would stand up to appeal. You get accused of a crime, and there isn't much evidence that you did it, but in the trial a bunch of people say that you did the same thing to them, but also without evidence and they didn't report the crime.

The guy is obviously guilty and has gotten away with it because he was rich and powerful, but I can see how the scenario could be abused to convict someone who's Innocent.

[-] cryostars@lemmyf.uk 15 points 9 months ago

Just chiming in to say I appreciate seeing these reasonable takes

[-] TwoBeeSan@lemmy.world 5 points 9 months ago

Love some nuance.

[-] Kyrgizion@lemmy.world 47 points 9 months ago

"Yeah sorry, there were so many victims, even ones that didn't file, that we considered it character assassination"

So I guess the lesson to take away is that, if you want to be a prolific rapist, you better make as many victims as possible, apparently that serves to lower the bar for dismissal.

[-] prole@sh.itjust.works 29 points 9 months ago

I think you're missing the important part: be extremely wealthy.

[-] UFODivebomb@programming.dev 6 points 9 months ago

"Commit so many crimes that the trials for your crimes interfere with the other trials for your crimes. "

  • Trump... Probably
[-] sukhmel@programming.dev 21 points 9 months ago

Just like with stealing money: you steal a grand and it's jail time, you steal a million and you're a respected person

[-] homura1650@lemm.ee 3 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Or, the lesson is: if you want to prosecute a rapist, don't bring up rapes other than the one you are prosecuting.

The defense brought this up at trial not because Weinstein had expensive lawyers, but because any competent defense attorney would. At that point, the judge decided the defense was wrong, and the prosecution decided to take the risk that the defense was right. That risk backfired. Now, every Judge, prosecutor, and defense attorney in the juristiction is on notice about how to correctly apply prior bad acts rules to sexual assult cases, so they should be able to avoid making this mistake again.

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this post was submitted on 26 Apr 2024
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