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Actually, yes. But I know that's a tough one to swallow. But my viewpoint on that is born of experience. You have *no idea* how easy it is for an accomplice to go to jail, meet up with someone, and become persuaded (by carrot or stick) to take another path. Any convict will tell you: if you listen to the inmates, there are no guilty people in prison. And everyone has a chip on their shoulder about the "system." So Rule 33 motions for newly discovered evidence and recantations are a dime a dozen. Mean's nothing.

Would it help to hear my story? Here's a real world story that I witness. Guy snitches on a double-homicide. A brutal one. But he's in jail for stuff too. DC correction system screws up and puts him in the jail cell with a friend of the triggerman he testified against! Arghh!: despite an express court order not to do that. So what happens? Well, of course, he changes his mind. But not before a desperate message left to the prosecutor that help! he's in real trouble here!!

What about a defense counsel that goes to a jailcell, sees that the recanting witness is being roomed with a bandit that per court order should *not* be anywhere near this testifying witness, and decides -- rather than to tell the jailers of their error -- to take an affidavit from the witness before we can rescue him? Well, we took an affidavit ("second affidavit") to counter THAT first affidavit, in which he said he was scared becaue of housing. And guess what? No kidding: defense counsel approached the witness again, said that if the first affidavit was false then that was perjury and witness had better sign a *third* affidavit. So, scared again, he does so.

What a witness tells 12 of his peers in open court under oath is a lot more persuasive than what happens in the lonely jailhouse. My mind is filled with many stories. Not all defense counsel are in on it like these guys were, but often there's a paid lawyer somewhere not to far in the background. You might not be pleased to know that your tax dollars paid for the criminal defense attorney's work in the above fact pattern.

Recantations happen all the time. Cross-examination can bring out every motive a witness has to lie. But it can't bring out the motives to recant that don't exist until after the trial. Hence recantations are dubious. That's how the world, in my experience, works.