What are the different varieties of miscarriages of justice? How do they arise? Is there anything we as a society, and you as an individual, can do to prevent miscarriages of justice?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We’ll cover three very different cases of miscarriage of justice–those of Patrick Dale Walker<\/a>, Amanda Knox<\/a>, and the Penn State leadership team. Through these cases, we’ll see the variety of ways in which a judge or jury can misread a situation, and we’ll explore possible ways to solve the problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n The bail hearings described in the section Judges vs. Artificial Intelligence<\/em> are another exercise in transparency. Judges who look at their defendants make more mistakes in judging character than a computer that never sees the defendants at all. Watching someone\u2019s facial expressions is not a fail-proof way to see how that person is feeling.<\/strong> Someone who is surprised might not show it, and someone who is dangerous might come across as stereotypically demure. This can lead to a miscarriage of justice. A man named Patrick Dale Walker was arrested in Texas for trying to kill his girlfriend. The only reason he didn\u2019t succeed in murdering her was that the gun jammed when he pulled the trigger. The judge presiding over the case set bail at $1 million, and Walker went to prison. But four days later, the judge lowered the bail to $25,000 and Walker was released. The judge reasoned that four days in jail would be enough for Walker to \u201ccool off.\u201d He saw Walker as a polite young man with a clean record. Most important, he saw <\/em>that Walker was remorseful for what he had done. But could he really see something like remorse in a stranger?<\/em> Apparently not. Walker shot his girlfriend to death four months later. In this case, seeing Walker made the judge worse at interpreting his intentions. The information the judge thought he gleaned from observing Walker\u2019s seemingly <\/em>remorseful behavior was actually misinformation, because Walker was not transparent. <\/strong>Clearly, this was a miscarriage of justice. On November 1, 2007, an American college student named Meredith Kercher was murdered in the small, Italian town of Perugia. Kercher\u2019s body was found by her roommate, Amanda Knox. Knox called the police to the scene of the gruesome crime. Almost immediately, Amanda Knox was added to the list of subjects\u2014she was ultimately convicted of murder and put in prison. The arrest and conviction of Amanda Knox was a sensation in the media and tabloids. But it doesn\u2019t <\/em>make sense that Amanda Knox was implicated in the murder. There was no physical evidence that put Knox at the scene of the crime. Nor was there any motive that explained why she would have murdered her roommate. The police botched the investigation of evidence and DNA, and the prosecution relied on fantasy to make the case. But, somehow, eight years went by before the Italian Supreme Court declared Knox innocent. The first decision was a clear miscarriage of justice. How did it happen? There are plenty of articles and books that detail all of the mistakes made by the investigators and prosecutors in Amanda Knox\u2019s case. But the simplest theory of what went wrong with Amanda Knox\u2019s case is this: the police expected Knox to be transparent and she wasn\u2019t. Her case is an example of the consequences of assuming that the way a stranger looks is a reliable indicator of how she feels.<\/strong> Amanda Knox was innocent. But in the months following the crime, the way she acted made her seem <\/em>guilty. She was mismatched, like Nervous Nelly. The investigators on the case drew wild conclusions about Amanda\u2019s role in Kercher\u2019s murder based on the way she behaved. Lead investigator Edgardo Giobbi said that he didn\u2019t even need to rely on any other kinds of investigation because he had observed Knox\u2019s guilt through her psychological and behavioral reactions to the murder. And the prosecutor on the case said that although the physical evidence collected had been very unclear, what was <\/em>clear was that Amanda\u2019s behavior was irrational. Amanda Knox (like most strangers) was a mystery to the people who didn\u2019t know her closely. She was the kind of outcast kid in high school who sang in the hallways and pretended to be an elephant in front of her classmates. Like most misfits, Amanda Knox had learned to be herself even when the people around her couldn\u2019t understand her. So, in the days following Meredith Kercher\u2019s murder, Knox didn\u2019t adjust her behavior to conform to peoples\u2019 expectations. This was a huge factor in the miscarriage of justice. Here are a few examples of how Amanda Knox behaved after Meredith Kercher\u2019s murder:<\/p>\n\n\n\n As Diane Sawyer would later say in an interview with Amanda Knox (after she had been declared innocent), that kind of behavior didn\u2019t look<\/em> like grief to most people. Many people found Knox\u2019s demeanor<\/em> to be cold and calculating. So Amanda Knox spent four years in prison <\/strong>(and another four years waiting to be declared officially innocent) for the crime of behaving unpredictably\u2014for being mismatched.<\/strong> But being weird is not a crime. This was a miscarriage of justice. One day in 2001, Michael McQueary entered the locker room of the Lasch Football Building at Pennsylvania State University. He expected the building to be empty, so he was surprised when he heard slapping sounds coming from the showers. Looking around, McQueary saw Jerry Sandusky<\/a>, retired defensive coordinator of the Penn State football team, showering (naked) with a \u201cminor individual.\u201d McQueary later said that the boy looked to be about ten to twelve years old. Sandusky and the boy were standing close enough to be touching. McQueary didn\u2019t know what to do. He ran upstairs and called his parents to tell them what he had seen. Some days later, McQueary went to Penn State football\u2019s head coach, Joe Paterno, to tell him about what he saw. Eventually, Paterno took McQueary\u2019s story to the university\u2019s athletic director Tim Curley, senior administrator Gary Schultz, and president Graham Spanier<\/a>. A full decade<\/em> later, in 2011, Jerry Sandusky was finally arrested and convicted of 45 counts of child molestation. Eight young men accused Sandusky of sexual abuse. Once Sandusky was behind bars, heat began to fall on Penn State\u2019s leadership team. Tim Curley and Gary Schultz were charged with conspiracy, failure to report child abuse, and obstruction of justice. Previously beloved university president Graham Spanier was fired. Six years later, Spanier was convicted of child endangerment. (Shortform note: A federal judge has since thrown out Spanier\u2019s conviction.) It might seem easy to point the finger at these men and say that they allowed <\/em>Jerry Sandusky to roam free and abuse young boys. You might think that they were putting their own self-interests or the success of the university above the law. But taking into account all the evidence we\u2019ve seen of Truth Default Theory<\/a>, here\u2019s the real question: If you had been president of Penn State at that time, would you have done anything differently?<\/strong> This case isn’t as clear-cut as the others, but it might have been a miscarriage of justice. Imagine how Curley, Schultz, and Spanier must have felt when Joe Paterno came to them with this disturbing and complicated story. What was more likely: That Jerry was being his goofy self with one of the kids he knew well or that he was engaging in some sort of inappropriate behavior that wasn\u2019t even distinct enough to make Mike McQueary step in and stop it? The three men sat around and contemplated the best way to handle the situation. They even reached out to the university\u2019s attorney, Wendell Courtney. Courtney thought he just needed to have a word with Sandusky\u2014to warn him to be careful so he wouldn\u2019t be called a pedophile. Miscarriage of Justice, Case #1: Patrick Dale Walker
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<\/p>\n\n\n\nPatrick Dale Walker<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
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<\/p>\n\n\n\nMiscarriage of Justice, Case #2: Amanda Knox<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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<\/p>\n\n\n\nAmanda Knox and Mismatching<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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<\/p>\n\n\n\nMiscarriage of Justice, Case #3: Penn State’s Leadership Team<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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