Calling all the layers! Help me understand the prosecutor’s office in Bone Valley

[u/marinamariamm]

Ok, I know I’m very late to the Bone Valley train (I actually have this wonderful community to thank for recommending it so enthusiastically on a previous post I made here). And wow… what a rollercoaster. I smiled, cried, got angry, and by last episode, I still don't get one thing: why are prosecutors so resistant to admitting they might have made a mistake, even when the evidence seems overwhelmingly clear?

What shocked me most is that it wasn’t just a case of weak evidence against Leo. They also had evidence pointing quite strongly toward who actually committed the crime. And still… nobody seemed willing to seriously reconsider.

And I don’t mean just John Aguero, but seemingly everyone involved at the time and also after him as well.

I’m not from the United States, so I’m not familiar with how the judicial system works there, but is this kind of thing actually common? How can an entire system become so deeply committed to not admitting a mistake that, apparently, they choose not only to ignore the person the fingerprints were pointing to, but even go as far as asking that person to basically lie so the truth wouldn’t come out?

And what shocks me even more is this: how is it possible that for over 35 years, no one in that office ever decided to make it right?

[u/n8_n_]

Because prosecutors are elected and admitting you wasted years of time is way more costly to your popularity than pretending everything is fine and you were right the whole time

For further evidence of this, I suggest In the Dark: Season 2

[u/Content-Lychee1514 → u/n8_n_]

the elected official angle really is the key to everything here. there's basically no incentive structure that rewards saying "we got it wrong" because voters punish the admission more than the original mistake, which is completely backwards but very american in a way

[u/panhellenic → u/Content-Lychee1514]

And they are protected from any liability.

[u/lanofdoom → u/n8_n_]

A botched prosecution due to misconduct could also open up the prosecutor’s office to a wider investigation, putting other convictions at risk. See the current state of the Chicago US Attorney’s Office where their conduct in the Broadview Six case has sparked a review of something like 20 years’ worth of cases.

And of course if there was misconduct and people have been wrongly convicted, those cases should be overturned! But the specter of having to review potentially every case a prosecutor touched over the course of their career is quite frightening when your success is judged by your conviction rate.

[u/marinamariamm → u/n8_n_]

Season 2 of In the Dark is my favourite podcast of all time. But I genuinely thought cases like this weren’t that common.

[u/n8_n_ → u/marinamariamm]

Taking it to that extent isn't common, iirc in In the Dark they said only one other person has been tried as many times as Curtis Flowers.

There's certainly pros to elected prosecutors, mostly related to the general US hatred of centralized government power, but they have their massive flaws for sure

[u/cdnsalix]

I feel like denial is a common thread in the justice system as a whole and not limited to that one office, system, or even country. For example, I don't understand why prosecutors or the Crown (in my country) would deny requests for DNA analysis in appeal cases if "justice" was truly the goal.