Unfair (42 page)

Faces image:
Eberhardt, Dasgupta, and Banaszynski, “Believing Is Seeing,” 368.

In fact, DNA testing:
Kassin, Dror, and Kukucka, “The Forensic Confirmation Bias,” 47.

You've got a feeling:
“What is CODIS?,” National Institute of Justice, July 16, 2010,
http://nij.gov/​journals/266/Pages​/backlogs-codis.aspx
; Joseph Goldstein, “F.B.I. Audit of Database That Indexes DNA Finds Errors in Profiles,”
New York Times
, January 24, 2014,
http://www.nytimes.com/​2014/01/25/​nyregion/fbi-audit-of-database-that-indexes-dna-finds-errors-in-profiles.html?hp&_r=1
.

In one recent study, researchers gave:
Kassin, Dror, and Kukucka, “The Forensic Confirmation Bias,” 47.

They needed to confirm:
Kassin, Dror, and Kukucka, “The Forensic Confirmation Bias,” 47.

As expected, the experts found:
Kassin, Dror, and Kukucka, “The Forensic Confirmation Bias,” 47.

Only one of the seventeen:
Kassin, Dror, and Kukucka, “The Forensic Confirmation Bias,” 47.

Once David was labeled a drunk:
This is what psychologists commonly refer to as a “positive test strategy” by which people search for evidence that confirms what is already believed to be true, rather than looking for evidence that contradicts it. Kahneman,
Thinking, Fast and Slow
, 81. When that supporting information is inevitably found, the existing hypothesis appears to be established.

Interestingly, the first people:
Wilber and Wilgoren, “Medical Condition Suspected.”

Well, perhaps because they weren't looking:
Wilber and Wilgoren, “Medical Condition Suspected.”

As one of the firefighters recounted:
Willoughby,
Summary of Special Report
, 26.

According to the U.S. Department:
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Office of Applied Studies, “Appendix B: Tables of Model-Based Estimates (50 States and the District of Columbia),” accessed February 15, 2014,
http://www.oas.samhsa.gov/​2k8state​/AppB.htm#TabB-9
.

After dinner on a Friday night:
Brief for Appellant,
Jordan
, 18 A.3d 703 (No. 07-CF-340), 2010 WL 7359337, at *2.

But the problem wasn't just that:
Simon,
In Doubt
, 38.

For example, one of the firefighters:
Willoughby,
Summary of Special Report
, 23.

The lack of a bracelet:
Willoughby,
Summary of Special Report
, 23.

Likewise, the Pritchetts:
Willoughby,
Summary of Special Report
, 18.

According to Commander Robert Contee:
Wilber and Wilgoren, “Medical Condition Suspected.”

With a different starting frame:
Willoughby,
Summary of Special Report
, 56.

As it was, the first person:
Willoughby,
Summary of Special Report
, 56.

There was actually plenty:
Willoughby,
Summary of Special Report
, 8, 28, 47.

The failure to appreciate counterevidence:
Kahneman,
Thinking, Fast and Slow
, 84.

The lack of independent assessment:
Kahneman,
Thinking, Fast and Slow
, 85.

This is why when, say, six people:
Kahneman,
Thinking, Fast and Slow
, 84.

They decided to offer:
Milk and Ryan, “Washingtonians of the Year”; Elissa Silverman, “Don't Split Department, Task Force Tells Fenty,”
Washington Post
, September 21, 2007,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/​wp-dyn/content/​article/2007/09​/20/AR2007092000900.html
.

A number of these reforms:
District of Columbia Task Force on Emergency Medical Services,
Report and Recommendations
(Washington, DC: January 27, 2007), 27–33. Unfortunately, there is some evidence that the D.C. government may already be backsliding on certain advances. Andrea Noble, “D.C. Fire Chief's Changes Ignore Earlier EMS Task Force Recommendation,”
JEMS
, August, 28, 2013,
http://www.jems.com/​article/news/​dc-fire-chief-s-changes-ignore-earlier-e
; Tisha Thompson and Rick Yarborough, “I-Team: Seeing Through the Smoke,” NBC Washington, August 27, 2013,
http://www.nbcwashington.com/​investigations/I-Team-Seeing-Through​-the-Smoke-220734681.html
.

We could start by:
Our disgust reactions to certain groups can be amplified by those with an interest in doing so, as genocides throughout history make clear. Harris and Fiske, “Dehumanizing the Lowest of the Low,” 852. One of the reasons that the Nazis were able to perpetrate the Final Solution was because of a powerful propaganda campaign aimed at depicting Jews as disgusting: diseased and akin to vermin. Sandra Kiume, “Disgust and Social Tolerance,”
Psych Central
, accessed February 15, 2014,
http://psychcentral.com/​blog/archives/​2007/01/04/​disgust-and-social-tolerance/
. Thankfully, education can also serve to reduce the disgust we may feel toward outgroups.

Perhaps most important:
Kassin, Dror, and Kukucka, “The Forensic Confirmation Bias,” 49.

He used a shortcut:
Amanda Schaffer, “The Moral Dilemmas of Doctors During Disaster,”
New Yorker
, September 13, 2013,
http://www.newyorker.com/​online/blogs​/elements/2013/09/​the-moral-dilemmas-of-doctors-during-disaster.html
.

In that panicked moment:
Schaffer, “The Moral Dilemmas of Doctors.”

It did not help doctors:
Schaffer, “The Moral Dilemmas of Doctors.”

A DNR simply informs:
“Do Not Resuscitate Orders,” MedlinePlus, last modified February 3, 2014,
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/​medlineplus/ency​/patientinstructions​/000473.htm
.

Moreover, a person may choose:
“Do Not Resuscitate Orders,” MedlinePlus, last modified February 3, 2014,
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/​medlineplus/ency/​patientinstructions/000473.htm
.

The patients abandoned:
Schaffer, “The Moral Dilemmas of Doctors.”

They carried an almost infinite array:
Schaffer, “The Moral Dilemmas of Doctors.”

 

The back door of the apartment:
Brief for Defendant at 3, State v. Rivera, 962 N.E. 2d 53 (Ill. App. Ct. 2011) (No. 2-09-1060),
http://www.law.northwestern.edu/​legaldinic/wrongfulconvictions/exonerations​/documents/RIVERA_Brief.pdf
.

Someone had washed:
Brief for Defendant at 2,
Rivera
(No. 2-09-1060).

And if you walked right:
Brief for Defendant at 2–3,
Rivera
(No. 2-09-1060).

Dawn Engelbrecht knew:
Maurice Possley, “DNA Tests Give Hope to Convict in 1992 Murder,”
Chicago Tribune
, March 26, 2005,
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/​2005-03-26​/news/0503260252_1_dna-tests-test-results-crime-lab
.

Holly Staker was supposed to be:
Possley, “DNA Tests.”

A neighbor had noticed him:
Possley, “DNA Tests.”

No one picked up:
Possley, “DNA Tests”; Brief for Defendant at 3,
Rivera
(No. 2-09-1060). Details about the house and neighborhood were collected using Google Maps and Zillow.

It was locked:
Andrew Martin, “Baby-sitter's Murder Victimizes 2 Families,”
Chicago Tribune
, October 23, 1992,
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/​1992-10-23/news/9204050831_1_apartment-victims-dreams
.

But when she finally turned:
Martin, “Baby-sitter's Murder”; Phuong Le, “Testimony of Girl IDs Defendant in Slaying,”
Chicago Tribune
, September 18, 1998,
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/​1998-09-18/news/9809180232_1​_testimony-apartment-juan-rivera
.

A single white tennis shoe:
“Juan Rivera Exhibit 2,”
Northwestern Law
, 39, accessed May 5, 2014,
http://www.law.northwestern.edu/​legalclinic/​wrongfulconvictions/exonerations​/documents/RiveraPCExhibit2.pdf
.

A chair in the dining room:
Le, “Testimony”; “Juan Rivera Exhibit 2,” 39.

Taylor, the two-year-old:
Le, “Testimony.”

It was not until the police arrived:
Le, “Testimony.”

Eleven-year-old Holly:
Le, “Testimony”; “Juan Rivera Exhibit 2,” 39.

She had been stabbed:
Brief for Defendant at 3,
Rivera
(No. 2-09-1060).

A year later, twelve jurors:
Rivera
, 962 N.E. 2d at 55,
http://www.law.northwestern.edu/​legalclinic/wrongfulconvictions​/exonerations/documents​/Outright-Reversal.pdf
.

Juan—a petty criminal:
Andrew Martin, “The Prosecution's Case Against DNA,”
New York Times
, November 25, 2011,
http://www.nytimes.com/​2011/11/27​/magazine/dna-evidence-lake-county.html?pagewanted=all
; “Juan Rivera,”
The National Registry of Exonerations
, accessed May 8, 2014,
https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/casedetail.aspx?caseid=3850
.

Guilty:
Rivera
, 962 N.E. 2d at 55.

And so it went at the second trial:
Rivera
, 962 N.E. 2d at 55–56.

It had always been there:
Andrew Martin, “Illinois: Inmate Cleared by DNA Is Freed,”
New York Times
, January 6, 2012,
http://www.nytimes.com/​2012/01/07/us/​illinois-inmate-cleared-by-dna-is-freed.html
; Martin, “Prosecution's Case.”

A vaginal swab had been collected:
Rivera
, 962 N.E. 2d at 60.

But after being labeled:
Rivera
, 962 N.E. 2d at 56.

The semen in the sample:
Rivera
, 962 N.E. 2d at 59.

It took four more years:
Andrew Martin, “Court Reverses Conviction of Man Jailed for 19 Years in Rape and Murder,”
New York Times
, December 10, 2011,
http://www.nytimes.com/​2011/12/11/us​/illinois-court-reverses-conviction-of-man-jailed-in-rape-murder.html
.

With the lab test:
Rivera
, 962 N.E. 2d at 62.

The prosecution didn't back away:
Martin, “Court Reverses Conviction.”

The problem for the prosecution:
Rivera
, 962 N.E. 2d at 63.

Semen tends to drain into underwear:
Rivera
, 962 N.E. 2d at 59.

That meant that the prosecution:
Rivera
, 962 N.E. 2d at 63.

The account seemed implausible:
Rivera
, 962 N.E. 2d at 63.

When they returned, they were met:
Lisa Black and Ruth Fuller, “3rd Life Sentence for Girl's Murder,”
Chicago Tribune
, June 26, 2009,
http://www.chicagotribune.com/​news/local/breaking​/chi-090626juan-rivera,0,3431141.story
.

Juan, on the threshold:
Black and Fuller, “3rd life sentence.”

It was a verdict that:
Black and Fuller, “3rd Life Sentence.”

It wasn't just that none:
Rivera
, 962 N.E. 2d at 59–60, 62; Brief for Defendant at 38,
Rivera
(No. 2-09-1060).

There were also phone records:
Brief for Defendant at 22, 26,
Rivera
(No. 2-09-1060); Martin, “Prosecution's Case.”

Yet, despite Juan's alibi:
Rivera
, 962 N.E. 2d at 57, 61-62; Brief for Defendant at 17,
Rivera
(No. 2-09-1060).

As Holly's sister later:
Martin, “Prosecution's Case.”

Indeed, the esteemed father:
John Henry Wigmore,
A Treatise on the Anglo-American System of Evidence in Trials at Common Law
, 2nd ed., vol. 2 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1923), § 835.

The potency of this assumption:
Experimental evidence shows that people place great weight on confessions. Saul M. Kassin and Gisli H. Gudjonsson, “The Psychology of Confessions: A Review of the Literature and Issues,”
Psychological Science in the Public Interest
5 (2004): 56–59; Saul M. Kassin, Christian A. Meissner, and Rebecca J. Norwick, “ ‘I'd Know a False Confession If I Saw One': A Comparative Study of College Students and Police Investigators,”
Law and Human Behavior
34 (2005): 211–227; Kassin et al., “Police-Induced Confessions: Risk Factors and Recommendations,”
Law and Human Behavior
34 (2010): 24–25. For an overview of some of that research, see Dan Simon,
In Doubt: The Psychology of the Criminal Justice System
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012), 160–62. The power of the confession is not lost on members of the judiciary. According to Supreme Court Justice Byron White, “the defendant's own confession is probably the most probative and damaging evidence that can be admitted against him. Though itself an out-of-court statement, it is admitted as reliable evidence because it is an admission of guilt by the defendant and constitutes direct evidence of the facts to which it relates. Even the testimony of an eyewitness may be less reliable than the defendant's own confession. An observer may not correctly perceive, understand, or remember the acts of another, but the admissions of a defendant come from the actor himself, the most knowledgeable and unimpeachable source of information about his past conduct. Certainly, confessions have profound impact on the jury, so much so that we may justifiably doubt its ability to put them out of mind even if told to do so.” Bruton v. United States, 391 U.S. 123, 139–40 (1968) (White, J., dissenting).