Texan declared innocent after 30 years in prison

[sapphi_snake]

HappySqurriel said:

sapphi_snake said:

HappySqurriel said:

If a white man raped this women, or this woman wasn't raped at all, then I would say that the conviction of a black man could be seen as an act of systemic racism ... If a black man raped this women, even if it wasn't this man in particular, I would say that you would need substantially more evidence to make a claim like that.

While it may not be racism, he shouldn't of been convicted bases solely on her picking him out in a lineup (especially considering that the guy who was with her did not also pick him out). The woman was traumatised and probably was probably angry and wanted to put someone in jail for what had happened to her. Not to mention that white people are generally unable to observe the subtle differences in the appearence of black people (and vice versa), making lineups ineffective.

All I was suggesting was that most wrongful conviction cases have several reasons why the person was convicted; and unless there is obvious evidence that the conviction was racially motivated, it is unfair to say that the conviction was based on systemic racism.

We can say today that convicting someone based on a vague description, questionable witness and having the same (very common) blood type as the assailant is unreasonable; but that was more evidence than many cases had back in the day, and the legal system was in an awful position of having to convict people with very weak evidence.

I’m certain a lot of mistakes were made, a ton of people were convicted of crimes that they didn’t commit, and certain ethnic groups may have been disproportionately impacted by wrongful conviction;  but I suspect that the reason for this disproportionate impact (at this point in time) had far more to do with poverty than race, because a decent lawyer could point out how weak the evidence was and poor people couldn’t afford a decent lawyer.

Whike this may be true, I think even the best lawyer in some cases couldn't save an innocent black person (usign To Kill a Mockingbird as an example would be silly, as it's a work of fiction, but I'm sure that there were cases like that in real life).