Worth noting that the submitter of this story, user ClintEhrlich, played a main role in freeing the wrongly-convicted man. He posted about it on HN a couple years back, in a highly upvoted and discussed thread (500+ upvotes, 200+ comments): <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12010760" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12010760</a><p>Edit: it's an ironic coincidence that this follow-up feature was published on the same day of the news of O.J. Simpson's parole: <a href="http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-oj-simpson-parole-board-20170720-story.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-oj-simpson-parole-board-...</a><p>Simpson is being paroled for a robbery conviction 9 years ago but of course his most famous run-in with the law was when he was acquitted of double-murder despite a huge amount of forensic evidence linking him to the homicides (he later lost a civil suit, which has a lower standard of evidence).<p>In the case described by the OP, the jury voted to convict in the total absence of physical, forensic evidence. It's astonishing that this profiler's beliefs were enough to sway the jury beyond a reasonable doubt but even more grotesque is how a clusterfuck of dumb, unverified assumptions led the profiler to his conclusions. He blames the detectives for not doing "Investigation 101", and says he would not have testified if only he had known the detectives were so negligent.<p>As much blame as the profiler deserves (he basically comes off as reliable as a psychic), seems like a large portion of blame should go to the district attorney, who presumably knew he was so short of evidence that he had to base his case on the profiler's testimony. Can't imagine what was going through the jury's heads; prosecutors often complain how modern juries demand the presence of DNA because of how TV dramas like CSI portray and hype DNA and other evidence as ubiquitous and unimpeachable, but this jury seems to have had the completely opposite mindset.
Profiling, like much of "criminal science" such as Arson Investigation is a large part unsubstantiated bullshit. It's amazing how poorly regulated all of it is and how many innocent people are in prison, or executed, because of it.
This Safarik guy sounds like a real piece of shit. Absolutely zero remorse for telling a tall tale in front of a judge and jury which led to a man spending 11 years in prison for something he didn't do.<p>> “Like other killers I’ve known, he’s also arrogant and narcissistic — fatal traits that led to his demise,” Safarik says. “This was all his doing…. Ultimately, he was responsible for it.”<p>I only see arrogance and narcissism coming from one person in the story told, and it wasn't from Jennings.
I've been skeptical of FBI profilers ever since they declared that the Unabomber had attended college or trade school but not graduated. [1] It turned out that he had a PhD and had been a professor.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Mixed-Success-for-FBI-Agents-in-Profiling-2987140.php" rel="nofollow">http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Mixed-Success-for-FBI-Age...</a>
The big crime is how little epistemological support there is for some of the big forensic tools (fingerprints, DNA, bite marks, arson spread, etc), how little interest there is in researching these areas, and how trusted they are.<p>But I am curious: apart from TV shows, how important is this kind of evidence in most trials? Is it actually uncommon?
Is there any possibility of this man Safarik being punished? Can Safarik be sued and held accountable for destroying eleven years of an innocent man's life?<p>I feel like some sort punishment is due towards ruthless opportunistic people like these. (I would say the same about the people who pursued Swartz even after MIT & JSTOR dropped the case.)
What is fair compensation for innocent victims put behind bars?<p>When wrongly convicted inmates are freed from prison, I think it reasonable to remunerate them per year of jail time, with accelerating penalties (as more years are lost to jail, opportunity is taken away at an accelerating rate; 20 years lost to prison is far more than 10 times worse than 2 years lost to prison, for example).<p>The base rate of $550,000 tax-free per year for lost work/family/life opportunity and pain/suffering seems eminently fair to me, with escalating amounts per year, as stated before. Probably could get behind a permanent waiver of personal income tax for life on any income under $200,000/year as well.
"Safarik spent more than a decade studying serial killings, sexual assaults and stalking cases."<p>no history of gang crime, "didn't have a boyfriend or a criminal record", "wallet left", "Mustang wasn’t taken", "parking lot was lighted and patrolled", Her tube top was pulled down exposing her breasts." -> "sexual assault”. "wipes his hand over his brow" -> guilty.<p>Imagine Safarik was a Machine Learning algorithm. More than a decade's worth of training data led to a model that predicted Jennings to be guilty.<p>The counter-evidence (phone missing, no scratch marks) wasn't part of the model.<p>In his defence, Safarik denies "assigning too much weight to [evidence]. It was the totality of things that shaped his finding."<p>Likewise, it is difficult to fix errors in a Machine Learning model once it is trained. The "totality of things" is the history of other crimes the model has investigated.<p>Can Deep Learning do the same job as criminal profilers? Are they as accurate? Should their predictions be trusted, when the consequence of failure is 11 years of prison for an innocent man?
Evidence handling and testing should be independent of law enforcement and prosecution. It should be handled the way environmental testing or weights-and-measures are tested by state authorities - with no incentive to "win" on behalf of prosecutors.
I remember this case from when it happened. I can't believe it's been that long. It seemed pretty obvious at the time that the parking lot guard was innocent. The DA was stuck on the idea that if he was doing his job he would have made her leave. And if he didn't make her leave, he must have murdered her. It just didn't pass the sniff test.