Have you ever been falsely accused?
Or wondered how it is that prisoners are released after many years imprisonment after being found innocent?
What caused the first investigation to result in the conviction of an innocent man or woman?
How was it that the second investigation was so much more revealing of the truth that the very court which condemned the accused originally now reverses itself and vacates the conviction?
We see this every week in the news, it seems.
What is going on?
How do we correct what seem to be the same mistakes occurring over and over again. Only a fool, they say, trips over the same stone twice.
Lawyers, like prosecutors and judges, many former prosecutors like me, are supposed to be smart people, not fools.
Why do we keep tripping over the same stone repeatedly?
It's complicated.
The answer to the false accusation question lies in competent investigation, which is a lot easier to say than achieve, but essential, nevertheless.
I've been giving talks on the subject of false accusation and competent investigation to prosecutors, defense attorneys and forensic psychiatrists for several years on the subject. It turned out to cover a lot more area than I imagined originally. The job I gave myself was was to boil it down. Because that's what I've learned to do in representing falsely accused clients. You need to simplify in order to sell your ideas to a prosecutor, the judge, a jury, and nowadays, to the press in high-profile cases, of which I've represented more than one.
In order to preserve and pass along what I've learned over half-a-century as a prosecuting attorney, defense attorney, and law professor (Constitutional Law), I compiled a blog, a web site that I call "The Investigation Project," located here.
The main idea is that in order to understand an accusation and evaluate it as true/false, we need to evaluate the investigation on which it is based. "Investigating the investigation" is what I call this.
Then we have to fit this investigation of the investigation into a jury trial under the laws governing the logic of trials.
And pray that the judge or jury sees matters the way you've presented them.
So, to aid in viewing our evaluation, i've developed a way of putting the various parts together in graphic fashion. This is the Greek temple model shown on the site. I also use a two-tablet style diagram to show how this works.
The first of the two tablets requires a competent investigation.
The second calls for the Greek temple to show how the question of the reliability of the investigation fits into a modern trial.
To show the essential elements required for a competent investigation, I've arranged them into two parts with three points in each:
- Moral: (1) Legal (2) Ethical (3) Rational
- Substantive: (1) Who is accusing? Who is investigating? What's in it for them? (2) What happened, if anything? and (3) Who dunnit?
I've developed a diagram of a ship that incorporates the above six elements in the two categories to make them readable at a glance, and, one may hope, memorable.
There are three steps, I've learned, to show an idea:
(1) Describe it in writing;
(2) List the elements that you'd like to get across;
(3) Draw a picture, a cartoon, if you will, of what you are describing and listing.
Check the site and you'll get the picture, here.
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