How an ex-FBI profiler helped put an innocent man behind bars
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:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=12010760" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=12010760</a><p>Edit: it&#x27;s an ironic coincidence that this follow-up feature was published on the same day of the news of O.J. Simpson&#x27;s parole: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.latimes.com&#x2F;nation&#x2F;la-na-oj-simpson-parole-board-20170720-story.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.latimes.com&#x2F;nation&#x2F;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&#x27;s astonishing that this profiler&#x27;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 &quot;Investigation 101&quot;, 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&#x27;s testimony. Can&#x27;t imagine what was going through the jury&#x27;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.