Gather round, Monkeys. I would like to introduce you to my friend Cornelius Dupree. Cornelius spent 30 years in a Texas prison after being convicted of rape and robbery. He was then paroled. After Mr. Dupree was paroled, a non-profit called the Innocence Project got him exonerated by way of DNA evidence (evidence that the Dallas police had kept refrigerated for over 3 decades).
My question to you is this. What do you think is fair for Mr. Dupree at this point? How would you 'make it right'? (Which is impossible). In a community of finance minded folk, how would you repay someone for losing, quite literally, the entire prime of their lives?
There's no way to make it right, you just make sure it doesn't happen again. Judge and DA are disbarred and prevented from ever trying a case again. The highest police officer in charge of the investigation is similarly fired, his pension frozen, and he's no longer allowed to vote. You know what? Neither are the judge and prosecutor.
You do that a few hundred times and the problem goes away.
The only thing this would accomplish is to let every scumbag around run amok. People would be too scared of losing everything that they would never convict anyone. I don't know what the solution is but punishing people for things outside of their control is a bit harsh. Thankfully, with the advances in technology (mainly DNA, fingerprinting databases, internet) these scenarios should be few-er and far-er between than they ever have been.
As far as compensation, it would have to be a lot and I don't think $2.4mm cuts it. It would have to be in the $10mm+ range (tax free, of course) before I could sleep at night without waking up in a sweat drenched tremor wink.
Take this as a lesson though, always bring home random girls and/or rent hookers...that way you have an alibi.
Regards
Where does it go? Oh, I get it! We will start a project for breeding superhuman cops and judges and use them to replace the incompetent overworked fools we currently have! I can't wait to hear your solution to the energy crisis...
By the way, he gets 2.4 million tax free in a lump sum...
so he essentially gets what a tax paying middle class average joe type would have in the bank after 30 years of sphincter spreading cubicle fetishism...somehow...i think all is right with the universe...carry on complex!
That blows. I like monkey's idea, but, man, this guy was unlucky. 2.4 million for 30 years -_-.
Theres no amount of money worth 30 years of your life, he should pull a law abiding citizen and kill everyone who put him there
Or he should go out and actually do the crime since he could do it in a police station and not be sent to prison for it.
You can't do too much to the guys that sent him to prison (particularly the judge) since they were going on eye witness testimony. But I see your point.
Double indemnity doesn't work like that. I like your thinking, but they'd be two separate crimes - he just was wrongly convicted of the first.
I've often thought prosecutors should have to serve the sentences of those they wrongly helped convict.
Sometimes it isn't so much on the prosecutor as it is a poor defense...especially freshly minted JDs serving as court appointed defense counsel.
Regards
Yea, sorry I was thinking of murder.
My proposal: Give the guy a credit card tied to some form of fund set up by the state for these people and let him go to town. Period. Forever.
I don't see how the prosecutor or judge should be punished. The prosecutor is supposed to try and prove you're guilty. The judge doesn't decide guilt or innocence, the jury does. The judge is only there tho make sure the lawyers don't break the rules and good order is kept.
This was a tragedy but making judges and DA's afraid to put people behind bars is a bad idea.
We'd become Gotham city and need a caped crusader to take the law into his own hands and avenge his slain parents...
How about this guy?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/barry-scheck/innocent-but-executed_b_2723…
"Better that one hundred guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer." - Benjamin Franklin
^^^^^^^^^^^^
Benny F also thought that the national bird should be a turkey.
Here's why Franklin preferred the turkey over the eagle (as usual, he was right):
judge is fired, possibly fined some amount(I was first gonna suggest execute the judge, but punishment can't be too harsh since otherwise no-one would want to be a judge).
Jury should receive some sort of punishments as well.
Payment of 50-100million dollars to innocent guy seems roughly right.
Also executing anyone that raped him while in prison seems fair.
This can't be made right obviously.
How can you punish a judge when they aren't the one who decided 'guilt'?
Regards
excuse me your right of course I am not v. familiar with the us legal system.
Just to clear this up for me, jury makes the judgements and judge just chills in court and adminsters trial?
Also on a sidenote how does the jury get chosen?
Tickets to the SB every year for the rest of his life
i actually just watched Conviction the other night and the story is relatively similiar, but he was charged with murder and another crime on top...
not that money ever makes up for 30 lost years... but 2.4 seems small. No penalty on the persons who put him in there would ever be as bad as taking 30 years from them... such a shame.
My only question is that if the Dallas PD had it frozen the whole time... what took so long?
This guy was like the 8th or 10th person released from prison using DNA evidence in the Dallas area over the past 5 or so years. It's not because their criminal justice system is particularly horrible (though it could be, that's not just not the way its being viewed at this point), its because Dallas PD is one of the only department's that has kept the DNA evidence portion of cases refrigerated for the last 3 decades.
I'm not sure of how the financial compensation is determined, but I imagine the best way to determine how much those 30 years are "worth" would be best done through some calculation as a function of age, income, standard of living based on geographic region, expected saving and investment returns, etc, plus some premium for worsened living conditions while in prison. This would mean financially, they are no worse off than they would have been if they lived and worked for the years imprisoned (if not better off, considering this function would mean an idealized savings rate--essentially 100% of disposable income since there are no ways of determining what non-necessities would have been purchased).
From an experience, quality of life, morality, etc standpoint, however, there is no way that 30 years of life experiences lost, time spent with family, friendships, and so on could be made up for, so trying to assign a value to that is a slippery slope, if not impossible.
they should keep a close eye on him.. he might pull a shaw shank redemption
How does that guy have conversations and relate to people outside of the joint? That's worse than coming back from war because there is nobody else in his situation he can talk to. Nothing can make up for the physical and psychological impact on his life. If I were him, I would never think of paying taxes.
You cannot blame the jury, they listened to a case and made the best judgement they could with the evidence presented. They all have to agree to sentence someone in a murder case so i am sure the prosecution was pretty convincing. The only people who should be blamed are the ones who directly benefited from his wrongeful conviction (ie. the prosecutor and DA office).
How did the prosecutor and DA benefit? I didn't realize they were getting bonuses based on how many people they put away for life...
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