• AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
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    10 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    Their arguments got more emphatic as the afternoon wore on, with one of them eventually raising his voice in exasperation: “We shouldn’t be sitting here wasting the government’s money!” The other holdouts, all of them Mexican American women, gradually gave in.

    Carlos, who spent weekends tinkering with the shiny black Trans Am his parents had bought him for his high school graduation, joined a car club that met at a parking lot near his neighborhood.

    Nieto saw him again that day after school—he was, she later told the cops, either Anglo or Hispanic, about five foot five, 140 pounds, with a beard, sandy brown hair pulled back in a ponytail, and a dirty gray ball cap.

    Eyewitness misidentification is a leading cause of wrongful convictions, and in 2011 the Texas Legislature passed a law mandating that police departments adopt written rules about photo and live lineups, including making sure they are “blind”—the person running them shouldn’t know who the suspect is so the witness can’t be tipped off, accidentally or otherwise.

    There was no physical evidence tying him to the crime, such as fingerprints or hairs, and Gibson put together a strong case, including an alibi defense based on the testimony of three people Carlos had shown Kirbys to on the day Maria was raped.

    Often when wrongly convicted citizens go free, they emerge from the jailhouse with arms raised, joined by smiling defense attorneys as they meet a crowd of well-wishers and journalists, who ask how it feels to finally get justice.


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