Brickbat: The Wrong Man

The state of Michigan has agreed to pay $1.75 million to Louis Wright, who spent 35 years in prison after being wrongly convicted of the sexual assault of an 11-year-old girl. Wright's conviction was overturned after DNA results ruled him out as the suspect. Police targeted Wright for the crime after an off-duty police officer claimed to have seen him in the area around the time of the attack. They claim he confessed, but the interview was not recorded and he did not sign a confession. The girl was never asked to identify him. Wright pleaded no contest to the assault. He tried to withdraw that plea at sentencing but a judge refused to allow it.

Comments

[AT]

Wright pleaded no contest to the assault.

Pro-tip - if you're not guilty, don't do that.

[Commenter_XY]

50K/year as compensation. Pretty shitty. Hope he invests well.

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[Nazi-Chipping Warlock]

Yeah, but how much is going to be left after they pay it in one lump sum and he's suddenly catapulted into the highest tax bracket... for one year.

[kevrob]

Would that be a taxable judgment ?

[Vernon Depner]

Yep. Pleading no contest to a child rape charge is insane.

[kevrob]

In some states - not Michigan -
Alford plea/a> would have been in order.

[ace_m82]

He sounds like a low functioning individual.

[Vernon Depner]

It's frequently the case that men browbeaten into confessions to serious crimes are mentally retarded.

[mad.casual]

It's also frequently the case that criminal activists will shift personal and/or individual legal responsibility off onto the justice system at large. To the point of obfuscating, if not outright lying in defense of the parts of the system that failed, but they like, in order to impugn the parts of the system that they don't like but functioned perfectly as expected.

If he's so retarded that he doesn't understand a plea of 'no contest', his DA failed him and should be named and shamed and the narrative that police fixated on him while, somehow, managing to collect all the DNA evidence that clearly exonerates him needs to be crammed up the activist narrator's stupid ass sideways.

[ace_m82]

The fact that it happened 35 years later doesn't seem to bother you. It's almost like the DNA was collected and not analyzed for 35 years!
So much for your reasoning...

[Adans smith]

Not only they can indite a ham sandwich and convict one too.

[Fist of Etiquette]

He tried to withdraw that plea at sentencing but a judge refused to allow it.

DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH EXTRA WORK THAT WOULD HAVE CAUSED?

[Don't look at me!]

He tried to withdraw that plea at sentencing but a judge refused to allow it.

It was a SLOPPY PULLOUT!

[ObviouslyNotSpam]

I wonder if he will file any libel suits against social media users who seem to enjoy accusing innocent people of disgusting crimes without having any evidence? Most of them are probably judgment-proof, but surely a few of them must have inherited their parents' modest properties or the like.

One can only hope justice will be delivered.

[Idaho-Bob]

While I sympathize with this guy, he plead no contest. If you are innocent plead not guilty.

[JFree]

He tried to change his plea and the judge refused it. When the police, prosecutor, and judge are railroading you, you are screwed.

[Longtobefree]

"Wright's conviction was overturned after DNA results ruled him out"

How can that be?
DNA no longer can even tell men from women!

[mad.casual]

.

[mad.casual]

DNA results ruled him out as the suspect.

Go fuck yourself with a rusty garden tool Chuck. This isn’t how the courts or DNA works and you’re generating more police officers, jurists, lawyers, and judges who believe that it does by publishing this utterly retarded bullshit.

Wright likely is innocent but there is no DNA sequence that says “Louis Wright didn’t do it.” and, per your own retardation, a jury should weigh all the evidence rather than hanging a wrong verdict and potentially terrible outcome on a single piece of evidence anyway.

You wonder why a jury could indict and convict a ham sandwich? Because shit-for-brains media hacks like you have turned juries into a box full of their peer ham sandwiches.

[Michael Ejercito]

You wonder why a jury could indict and convict a ham sandwich? Because shit-for-brains media hacks like you have turned juries into a box full of their peer ham sandwiches.
There was no jury.

[mad.casual]

The tale of the "ham sandwich" refers to grand juries with the relevant implications about a well-informed populace.

The larger issue of retards like Oliver saying "DNA ruled him out." and presenting a no contest plea as some sort of fuck up purely on the part of the court or police is the issue.

*Obvious* Libertarian solution - Don't plead no contest to something you didn't do. Don't rely on DNA alone to "rule you out".
Libertard Solutions - Forbid people from pleading no contest. Compel police departments to perform full investigations and courts to perform full trials, including ruling everyone out with DNA, for pleadings of no contest. Allow convicts to alter their plea and/or forbid sentencing juries from knowing please at trial.

Between juries, judges, lawyers, cops, and suspects pleading "no contest" to crimes they didn't do and media types trying to pretend like it was some sort of judicial error... it's ham sandwiches all the way down.

[Heedless]

Get a grip.

There was semen recovered from the sexual assault kit, and the DNA doesn't match Wright. That pretty effectively rules him out as a suspect.

The details are here. It took me about 30 seconds of googling to find.

[mad.casual]

There was semen recovered from the sexual assault kit

No shit, Sherlock?! You read that all by yourself?

That pretty effectively rules him out as a suspect.

No, it rules someone else in and makes them far more likely. Wright may've been at the scene and not participated. Wright may've introduced the two. Or he may've been entirely uninvolved. But the DNA doesn't say shit in that sense one way or the other.

I know it's hard for some fucktards to understand that words mean things, but 'no contest' does not mean the same thing as 'guilty' or 'not guilty' and DNA evidence doesn't "rule people out".

[mad.casual]

“Nothing can make up for 35 years in a Michigan prison for something he did not do,” Wright’s attorney, Wolf Mueller, said.

I've been repeatedly assured that this is untrue and that any wrongdoing by the government just short of death can have arbitrarily high piles of taxpayer money thrown at it to resolve it.

[Dillinger]

>>Wright pleaded no contest to the assault.

this is the thing that is not like the others.