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code_archeologist t1_j8n59jf wrote

Looks like he was fully exonerated instead of accepting an Alford Plea, and that leaves him open to sue the state for wrongful imprisonment. I hope he receives enough money to be set for the rest of his life.

And fuck those prosecutors who tried to keep him in prison, even after their witness recanted and an exculpatory witness confirmed his alibi. Prosecutors like that should be disbarred.

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jd52995 t1_j8n7kc2 wrote

At least he didn't get the death penalty 🤷‍♂️

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IShouldBWorkin t1_j8n9hb4 wrote

Replying to jd52995 (#1,818,206)

This case is a shining example of why the death penalty is evil. Also an example of how fucked the entire court and policing system is. The cops did everything in their power to coerce a witness into fingering Lamar (the only "evidence" the presented) and didn't contact his alibi for the night. The actually guilty guy plead guilty and got 7 years and Lamar, innocent, was punished for making the court do a little extra work and was sentenced to life. The entire system revolves around forcing people to plea so the court can move on, they don't care about justice just clearing the books.

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code_archeologist t1_j8nbp2z wrote

Replying to Merc931 (#1,818,282)

Much like in the police, the bad apples in the municipal prosecutors office weed out the junior lawyers who want to seek justice... until you have nothing but teams of jaded "factory workers" trying to churn out as many guilty pleas in a day as they can get and punishing anybody who attempts to prove their own innocence.

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Skuddy587 t1_j8ncc19 wrote

Welcome to America! Where the innocent and poor spend thirty years in jail and the rich and guilty walk freely.

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jwillsrva t1_j8niz3i wrote

Uhhhh, why does the guy that admitted to the crime get 7 years?

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Viper_JB t1_j8nj2m9 wrote

Replying to code_archeologist (#1,818,529)

>trying to churn out as many guilty pleas in a day as they can get

Very disconcerting given the amount of private jails and prisons in the country. Guess there's a reason US has the largest amount of their population serving time.

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murl56 t1_j8nnidn wrote

Nope, no systematic racism here. Just move along ...

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Palanawt t1_j8nofr7 wrote

Replying to Viper_JB (#1,819,137)

Over 95% of prisoners in the US plead guilty. These prosecutors will trump up the charges so you're facing hundreds of years and then offer you a plea deal for like 5yrs. The public defender that has a dozen other cases to deal with that morning and doesn't know you from Adam is always gonna push you to take that deal. We have LOTS of innocent people in prison. And like others have said, it's a feature, not a bug.

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KeepAwaySynonym t1_j8noqbj wrote

Replying to Viper_JB (#1,819,137)

While one prison being private is too many....

There is a total of 158 total private prisons holding single digit percentage of the US prison population... thats out of a total of 1,566 state prisons, 102 federal prisons, 2,850 county jails and 1,510 juvenile correctional facilities.

Private prison numbers from: https://study.com/learn/lesson/how-many-private-prisons-are-in-the-us.html

Total number here:

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html

The discussions around private prisons makes it seem like it's a significant chunk... while one is too many, it's not enough.

Remember to contact your elected reps to end state contracting to private prisons!

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Viper_JB t1_j8nqitg wrote

Replying to Palanawt (#1,819,567)

It's incredibly fucked up, guess the result of some many politicians promising to be though on crime. If you win a case like this does the state cover your legal costs?

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Fine-Will t1_j8nsq00 wrote

Replying to Dic3dCarrots (#1,819,849)

Okay now I am intrigued. Where is this angry mob you speak off that is just waiting to tear people from limb from limb? What type of people is it compromised of? Is there a selection process?

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Enlightened-Beaver t1_j8nu0tn wrote

Every single person involved in putting an innocent man behind bars for 28 years from the lawyers, to the judges, to the police, all of them need to be jailed for 28 years. Financial compensation is not enough.

They took his entire life away.

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crimsontape t1_j8nuahh wrote

So, I'm super happy this guy finally gets some justice.

But, I admit I had me a serious "math lady" moment.

There's a young Canadian actor also named Lamar Johnson.

When googled, I found he was 28 years old. The same length of the served sentence.

Weird...

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code_archeologist t1_j8nx7wk wrote

Replying to Tsquared10 (#1,820,064)

Statutory damage caps like that are questionable in their Constitutionality. Specifically in regards to the 1st amendment clause to a right to petition the government for a redress of grievances and the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment.

By saying that the value to a person's suffering at the hands of the state is capped at $65k a year, it is effectively absolving the state of responsibility for the long term physical or emotional damage caused to that person by their incarceration, the cost of their legal representation, and the cost of them reestablishing themselves in a society that has moved on without them. A responsibility that the state is solely and wholly at fault for.

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Dic3dCarrots t1_j8nzevu wrote

Replying to Fine-Will (#1,819,933)

Nope, the reason I used high falutin language was that comment wasn't meant to be read as a serious purposal, simply an expression of rage and grief. This article literally had me tearing up at work this morning.

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ADarwinAward t1_j8nzj94 wrote

Replying to Skuddy587 (#1,818,572)

And the prosecutor's office will never admit they were wrong even though the people involved in the original conviction have likely moved on to other jobs. Those prosecutors are absolute scum. And it's not even the first post about a prosecutor's office that pushed to convict innocent people. There's another post about a dirty cop who planted evidence on over 100 people and the prosecutor's office protected him for years until one new prosecutor decided that they didn't want to convict innocent people.

All they care about is getting convictions, not justice.

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Politicsboringagain t1_j8o0pgb wrote

I've always hated the jailer or conservative statement "Everyone in prison is innocent", to imply that everyone in jail is a criminal and lying about their innocence.

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Trance354 t1_j8o2wl1 wrote

Dude flipped and turned on an innocent man. Good job, police.

Christ you suck.

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Taysir385 t1_j8o5n1w wrote

Replying to Palanawt (#1,819,567)

> These prosecutors will trump up the charges so you're facing hundreds of years and then offer you a plea deal for like 5yrs.

Friend of mine was once facing eight life sentences without parole. Accepted a plea bargain for time served. Which was admittedly like six months because he couldn't afford the million dollar bail, but that's not all that much better.

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gandalf_el_brown t1_j8o7qkp wrote

At what point can we say we've slided into a police state or fascism?

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VeteranSergeant t1_j8ocqhe wrote

Replying to gandalf_el_brown (#1,821,163)

Never. That would mean that at some point we weren't a fascist police state. We wrote a Constitution that not only allowed people to be owned, but then gave them 3/5ths credit toward representation, just to appease the people who owned them.

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kizzle69 t1_j8oky78 wrote

Replying to PopPopPete (#1,820,188)

Bad apples are born from neglect and lack of care from those who are supposed to be taking care of the trees. And 99 out of 100 times, the problem is fixed at the roots.

The only way change is ever going to happen is if people actually start paying attention to their local politics and improve their areas. These things are happening because everyone focuses on a few people at the federal level and completely neglects their local politics. So people who shouldn't be in office, thrive there. The idea of putting all the responsibility on a few people at the federal level is never going to fix things.

Gotta fix the problem from the ground up, not the top down.

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Bbbybbb t1_j8olok0 wrote

A guy that actually killed him spends less time in prison than the guy that didn't...

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desertravenwy t1_j8ot0zw wrote

There is no amount of money that can make up for this. Almost half of his life was stolen by the state. He'll never get those missed experiences back, ever.

Heads should roll for something like this. But they won't. Just... oops, sorry lol... here's a check.

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CopperNconduit t1_j8ousch wrote

How can a system that at least admits it made a mistake still allow the death penalty?

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gamerdude69 t1_j8pi2e5 wrote

Replying to Enlightened-Beaver (#1,824,696)

Implication 2: nobody would work in criminal justice ever again.

Implication 3: we would pay 10s of millions in taxpayer money putting all these people away for that kind of time, on top of still needing to pay the victim. Instead of putting it to use helping more people in greater ways

Not to mention, a judge doesn't decide guilt. Or a lawyer. Jurors do, and they'd vote innocent every time to avoid the risk. People would murder with impunity.

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Calavant t1_j8pie9i wrote

Replying to code_archeologist (#1,820,325)

Unfortunately the Constitution only has as much power as we give it... and most of the time we only use it when it is convenient to the powers that be. If we don't defend our rights they don't exist.

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gamerdude69 t1_j8pkcq2 wrote

Replying to Enlightened-Beaver (#1,824,881)

No, I think you're missing my point. I'm saying if the consequences for a mistake are so severe, people won't even attempt that thing anymore. You're putting prosecuting lawyers (and everyone else you mentioned) in a situation that is too precarious: they risk going to prison for 28 years for messing up their job, but if they get too timid, they let a potentially dangerous criminal to go free and then blood is on their hands.

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cole2468 t1_j8pkgco wrote

I’ve always thought wrongly imprisoned people should get $1million for each year confined.

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Calavant t1_j8pkkj4 wrote

Replying to lazys_world (#1,824,452)

White male property owners who were protestant and not Irish or any of a host of other ethnicities that were arbitrarily decreed not white enough somehow.

It was better than nothing in practice and genuinely good in principle. But we need to remember that it was made in a cruel time as a compromise between flawed people. They needed something to prop up the fragile Republic today rather than something perfect tomorrow.

Still, the ideal of it... buried under all that compromise... is worth recognizing.

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Enlightened-Beaver t1_j8pkqli wrote

Replying to gamerdude69 (#1,824,938)

Putting someone in jail for life is extreme so if you do it you better be 100% sure with zero doubt that you’ve got the right person.

What happens when it’s the death penalty and they execute the wrong guy?

Oopsies? My bad…….

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faceofboe91 t1_j8pm5rd wrote

Welcome to life on the outside and all of the debt he probably has from legal fees and standard prison time debt. Remember that just because you’re locked up and can’t earn a living wage, doesn’t mean you stop getting charged and acquiring debt

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grey_seal77 t1_j8pzbp4 wrote

This is why you should never have the death penalty.

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Coffinspired t1_j8qo3e0 wrote

Replying to Calavant (#1,824,954)

I don't know about all that. This is sounding quite a bit white-washy and idealistic.

> It was better than nothing in practice and genuinely good in principle.

I don't think the people who were considered property instead of humans would agree.

> But we need to remember that it was made in a cruel time as a compromise between flawed people.

We don't live in a fair and just time full of perfect people today either, what is the specific distinction you're trying to make between then and now regarding people or society? Slavery? Slavery is still legal in much of the US...today.

Many of the Founding Fathers themselves were racist slave-owning pieces of shit. Among other horrendous things.

They shouldn't be put on a pedestal or lionized. Ditto for the Constitution.

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GxDoggidyxDog t1_j8qyokg wrote

god damn. 28 years is too long. i wish this man well.

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Good-Duck t1_j8rgizp wrote

Replying to IShouldBWorkin (#1,818,352)

Remember Cameron Todd Willingham in Texas who was executed for supposedly setting his house on fire, killing his children? And was prosecuted with junk science? He’s my top example as to why we should not be executing people.

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imwalkinhereguy t1_j8rm1p5 wrote

Replying to desertravenwy (#1,822,787)

If you want to be very, very mad, look up the story of Chester Weger, who was falsely convicted of the Starved Rock murders in 1960. The man spent 60 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit, and every single person involved in his botched trial is now dead and can't be punished. Despite all the exonerating evidence, the state of Illinois still refuses to vacate his conviction simply because of how bad it will make them look.

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ConscientiousObserv t1_j8utqqr wrote

The fact that Missouri doesn't allow any type of compensation only adds insult to injury!😡😡😡

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