Not having grown up in the US, I listened in fascination to the first episodes of Serial season 3, “... Cleveland. Not for one extraordinary case; instead, Serial wanted to tackle the whole criminal justice system. To do that we figured we’d need to look at something different: ordinary cases.”
After a few episodes I had to take a break. It is so upsetting. Justice is not a reality.
““Charge stacking” is a process by which police and prosecutors create a case with numerous charges or numerous instances of the same charge to convince the defendant that the risk of not pleading guilty is intolerable. The defendant may be convinced to plead guilty to a few of the charges in return for not being prosecuted for the remaining charges.“
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Courtroom_Workgroup
If you want to learn more about the US judicial and prison system you should listen to the third season of Serial.
>Serial is heading back to court. This time, in Cleveland. Not for one extraordinary case; instead, Serial wanted to tackle the whole criminal justice system. To do that we figured we’d need to look at something different: ordinary cases.
>So we did. Inside these ordinary cases we found the troubling machinery of the criminal justice system on full display. We chose Cleveland, because they let us record everywhere — courtrooms, back hallways, judges’ chambers, prosecutors’ offices. And then we followed those cases outside the building, into neighborhoods, into people’s houses, and into prison.
Serial season 3 - where they hang out at a courthouse for a year, learning all of the ins and outs - illustrates all of this very well.
There's a lot of injustice tied up in expediting cases. Massive backlogs of work, not enough people to do the work, and massively asymmetric funding for prosecution and defense.
There's a podcast, by the name: 'Serial', in season two they go into regular courtrooms with non-fancy cases - fights, etc.
In one episode after the defendant has been found not guilty, the judge presiding over the case berated them for not accepting a plea deal, and wasting the court time. This is after the person has been found not guilty.
Ive just listened to the first two episodes of the new Serial season which tackles the justice system from inside a courthouse. Coming from another justice system, it sounds absolutely insane to me.
The whole season is to see typical courts and judges. This is just the most shocking thing that happened which I could tell in a short time, but there was some racism coming from judges, there is complete indifference throughout, they also speak of difference between paid and public defense attorneys.
I think it's best to not get fixated on that one event, and listen (if you listed to podcasts) to the entire season, which is apparently season 3, not 2 as I thought.
Serial is the original true crime podcast, and IMO, nobody since has done it as well as they did.
And holy shit. What an incredible piece of news. I think, though, that if the state vacates a conviction, then they lose the right to prosecute you again. Being let out and then having to relive your nightmare trial with the possibility of going back? That’s sadistic by any definition.
Ta will definitely give it a look, one nice thing about Serial is it put me onto This American Life which I'm enjoying (in parts, some of it puts my teeth on edge).
The depressing bit about the system is even when it's clear there's been a potential miscarriage of justice, and some poor sod has spent years behind bars on very shaky grounds, the system still tries its best to keep them there without retrial.
Related note: the latest season of the podcast Serial touches on a case where a kid was arrested and beaten over a joint. He thought he was in Cleveland, where you won’t be arrested for such a small amount of weed... but he was actually in a neighboring suburb called Euclid, and he wasn’t aware of the prosecutorial difference.
I found serial interesting for a few episodes, then she started spending hours analyzing the memories and text messages of high school students and it quickly became exhausting to listen to. I hope the guy gets a fair trial but it was simply a slog to listen to.
I remember that episode. It's mind boggling that you have all these people in the justice system going through their procedures but nobody does anything when something goes blatantly wrong.
/Perry Mason/ always struck me as a rather subversive inversion of the usual police procedural for this reason. Since the protagonist is a defense lawyer, every episode that I know about is one where the cops and DA accuse a totally innocent person of a capital crime. They are then exposed and humiliated when Perry gets the real guilty party to confess in open court, usually under oath on the witness stand.
I agree the older crime statistics are a little suspect, but it's all we really have to go on. And, yeah, the US was a much bigger and much newer nation back then. The Apache Wars and other associated wars against the native Americans didn't wrap up until 1924! Crime statistics just weren't that important.
> as The Wire taught us, and we all know The Wire is all true... /s
I could never get in to The Wire.
The very first scene of the very first episode is a courtroom where a woman changes her testimony on the stand, and the prosecutor doesn't: a) show the woman her sworn deposition, b) request an immediate continuance (surprise testimony is one of the things that warrants one), and c) threaten and then carry out charges of perjury against the woman for refusing to testify according to her statement. Instead, the prosecutor keeps asking questions over and over, driving into the jury's mind the woman's changed testimony. I'm not a lawyer, but I feel like I know something of courtroom procedure. This was just so unbelievable that it made me angry that the writers expected me to believe it. It would be like someone hacking a System/360 Model 30 from their iPhone in 10 seconds.
I understand it was for dramatic purposes to lead to the other witness's murder, but it broke my suspension of disbelief so badly I had a hard time watching the rest of the episode. I don't remember if I ever watched the second episode.
Maybe premature to think about this, but once the full story can be told, this seems like the perfect candidate for Serial Season 3...I'm really fascinated to know what jurors, detectives, and prosecutors were thinking.
Serial is still one of the best true crime podcasts, because the case has so much more underneath the surface.
One example is this podcast going over a cleared suspects apparently falsified alibi records (his mom who was a manager at his store chain and may have doctored his work record to prevent police going after him): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0l6dApX2rIY
1. Two new suspects that were not properly ruled out.
2. One of the suspects had a) threatened to kill the victim and b) provided motives for the threat.
3. The victim's car was located directly behind one of those suspects relative's house.
4. One of the suspects attacked a woman in her vehicle, engaged in serial rape and assault, engaged in violence against women he knew, and was improperly ruled out.
5. Incoming call data was determined to be completely unreliable, as the network sends the signal through multiple towers and the billing records can show the last tower a phone connected to instead of the one it is currently on.
6. Kristina Vinson said she would not have missed a class at the same time she said Jay and Adnan were at her house, which showed that her recollection of what day Jay and Adnan had visited was wrong.
7. Because Jay had told numerous lies and versions of events to detectives, his testimony was only relied upon because the cell records and Vinson's testimony corroborated it. Without those, his testimony does not stand on its own. Thus, they could not have secured a conviction.
8. One of the lead detectives on the case engaged in egregious misconduct in another case, resulting in a wrongful conviction and 17 years of incarceration.
It's been a long time since I've listened to the show so I may be way off here, but it did demonstrate that the prosecutor's timeline was flawed, the cell phone data was unreliable, and that Syed's counsel overlooked a potential alibi witness.
In any case Serial was a landmark in the fields of true crime and podcasting, so it holds some merit as a historical piece if nothing else.
I think the only real genius of Serial was using a slick style and conversational tone as a gloss for what was quite poor (and arguably irresponsible) reporting. As an example, the whole Best Buy charade was only reenacted either out of their unfamiliarity with the facts of the case (the court transcripts reveal the exact location of the phone), or with more cynical intentions, depending on how generous you want to be.
I don't know about the justice system, but blaming 'Serial' is bullshit. Damn it every piece of art doesn't have to be about shedding light on some societal problem. How does someone even decide what the purpose of a podcast/movie/painting/song etc. "should" be? No one except the creator has that right.
After a few episodes I had to take a break. It is so upsetting. Justice is not a reality.
https://serialpodcast.org/season-three/about
““Charge stacking” is a process by which police and prosecutors create a case with numerous charges or numerous instances of the same charge to convince the defendant that the risk of not pleading guilty is intolerable. The defendant may be convinced to plead guilty to a few of the charges in return for not being prosecuted for the remaining charges.“ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Courtroom_Workgroup
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