POST: "Sobering lessons from the lone juror in the Etan Patz case," by Dan Simon, published by the Huffington Post on May 15, 2015. (
GIST: "At the end of the day, just a sole juror, Adam Sirios, declined to place faith in Hernandez's confession. In addition to his displeasure with the police investigative work, Sirios parted way with the eleven member majority on two key issues. First, the two factions disagreed over the fundamental question whether an innocent person would ever confess to a crime he did not commit. Sirios insisted that tendering a false confession was not implausible for a person like Hernandez, who had a low IQ and suffered from a personality disorder. The majority, it appears, were skeptical about this possibility. Indeed, 90 percent of surveyed Americans agree that no innocent person would confess to a crime he did not commit. By logical extension, people who confess are routinely deemed to be guilty. However widespread, this intuition is simply wrong. Real world data indicate that false confessions are made with some regularity even by people with greater mental capabilities than Hernandez. The records of the NY based Innocence Project show that in one out of every four DNA exonerations, the defendant had given a confession, the vast majority of which were undoubtedly false. The interrogation protocols commonly used by American law enforcement agencies are surprisingly efficacious. Interrogators are taught to drive suspects into a state of hopelessness and submissiveness. They then work to alter suspects' perception of the available courses of action, making the choice of offering a statement seem more beneficial than non-cooperation (rarely a viable proposition). About fifty percent of interrogative procedures yield incriminating statements, which are habitually admitted into evidence by trial court judges. The problem with the investigative protocols is that they operate similarly on guilty and innocent suspects. In other words, interrogative procedures do not adequately distinguish between true and false confessions. Second, the Hernandez jurors were split over the significance of the fact that Hernandez provided specific physical details of a passageway on Thompson Street where he said he had dumped Etan's body (the body was never recovered). Mr. Sirios offered innocuous explanations for Hernandez's putative knowledge, whereas the majority believed that it corroborated the authenticity of the confession. Once again, the majority's inference dovetailed a popular conception that only true perpetrators can obtain an intimate knowledge of the specific particulars of a crime, especially facts that were not publicly known. But again, real world experience belies this common intuition.........It seems likely that we will never know for sure whether Hernandez's confession was true. But based on the evidence presented in court, there is good reason to believe that the lone juror got it right. The Hernandez case confirms the adage that "confession is the queen of evidence." Even without a shred of physical evidence, an almost unanimous jury voted for conviction based on a 33-year-old statement, given by a man suffering from a personality disorder and limited intelligence. The case also demonstrates the grip that the two misguided intuitions hold on public perception and it begs for their revision: on occasion, innocent people do indeed confess to crimes they did not commit, and they go on to provide richly detailed statements that corroborate their false admissions of guilt."
The entire post can be found at:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dan-simon/sobering-lessons-from-the-lone-juror-in-the-etan-patz-case_b_7269940.html?utm_hp_ref=crime&ir=Crime
PUBLISHER'S NOTE:
Dear Reader. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog. We are following this case.
I have added a search box for content in this blog which now encompasses several thousand posts. The search box is located near the bottom of the screen just above the list of links. I am confident that this powerful search tool provided by "Blogger" will help our readers and myself get more out of the site.
The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at:
