about DNA evidence overturning a murder conviction. It’s commonplace now, it’s not even a surprise any more to learn that a person who has been serving time did not commit the crime. As usual, there is some indication that the police made the conviction happen through, umm, creative interrogation techniques. I’m not interested in the basic story however. We know that innocent people are convicted all the time. What’s disturbing is this seeming throwaway line in the story: “Most of the police files had disappeared…” The files always seem to have disappeared, no? I wonder if anyone is responsible for that part of things – I mean really responsible, with at least civil if not criminal penalties for losing the files. Information is power – in some cases, the power to save a falsely-convicted killer’s life. If the files that could exonerate him (or her) are lost, that would seem to me to be a big problem.
Michael Boyle's weblog
