A man who spent more than half his life in prison for crimes he didn't commit was freed this week thanks to DNA evidence. Alan Crotzer, 45, was the fifth Florida inmate cleared by DNA in recent years.
Whether in real life or on TV dramas, DNA evidence has proven to be a neutral tool in determining guilt or innocence. It has the potential to establish a person's innocence, as it did with Crotzer, and it can confirm guilt, as it did with Roger Keith Coleman, a Virginia man executed in 1992 for murder.
What we have learned as science becomes increasingly more sophisticated is that the main forms of evidence on which our justice system has relied, including eyewitness testimony and even forced confessions, are too often unreliable.
Well, that's new anyway. Our justice system relies on forced confessions. In fact, they are one of the system's main forms of evidence. The Drunkablog did not know that.
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