She should have to pay money for a life deprived. V's wife.
Way to piss me off first thing when I get to work in the morning!
Isn't what she did one of the ten commandments?
"You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor."
Not to pick nits, but if you start to hold eyewitness liable for mistaken testimony, it will be even harder to find eyewitnesses to anything. People will just move along, and not talk to the police.
Malicious testimony is one thing. If somebody can be proven to have given false testimony maliciously, have at them. But mistaken testimony offered in good faith should not make one liable for anything. It is the court's and the jury's job to make the determination.
Lost in the discussion is the FACT that the perp, the GUILTY perp, is and has been walking around freely.
Unless of course he was arrested on other charges, or was capped by someone for dissing them.
Now ... what lessons does this story hold for the Duke stripper case????
Eyewitness testimony is some of the most unreliable there is, especially if the witness only saw for a brief moment, or while under stress.
There are always gaps in what you perceive and our brains automatically fill in the gaps, though not necessarily with reality.
When people saw the first "Friday the 13th" many swore they saw a slashing in one scene, however the scene cut away before the knife touched.
I agree
Knowing little of the whole story, I must ask in general: What is a victim truly believes that the suspect she chose (from photos or lineup) IS the criminal? Is that bearing false witness? Suppose the guy chosen looks almost identical to another? That has happened before.
How did he get 21 years? I thought the maximum was 15, and if it is the first offense they usually go half on that. Damn, he must have had one doozy of a lawyer.
More importantly .. does this woman owe anything to Pete Williams?
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No! She has to suffer again for having mis-identified her rapist.
Until there is proof that she maliciously and falsely accused Mr. Williams - she is still the victim of an unsolved crime.
I agree with you that an innocent man who spends 21 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit is owed SOME kind of compensation.
But the woman who made the false identification cannot be tarred and feathered UNLESS it can be proven that she made the identification in bad faith, if her ID of the accused was malicious or intended to protect someone else (the real perp).
Unfortunately, the witness who gave false testimony can cry her eyes out and claim that she 'thought she had the right person' and that she 'didn't MEAN to cause Mr. Williams such hardship' and that would go a long way to innoculate her from any accusation of deliberately misidentifying the party who raped her.
And THAT allows the State of Georgia to say that they 'prosecuted Mr. Williams in good faith' based on the testimony of the victim, and you can see where that leads, everybody saying 'golllleeeee, WE didn't KNOW that Mr. Williams was INNOCENT, we thought he was GUILTY' (as they wash their hands of the whole matter).
Ultimately the State of Georgia has to be held accountable for this, and Mr. Williams is owed compensation. I think that $100,000 for every year he spent in prison would be fair and reasonable. And 2.1 million dollars is quite frankly chicken feed in a time of multi-billion dollar budgets.
My .02 cents.
I'm quite familiar with the process... I was found guilty for a crime I didn't commit on the basis of an eye-witness alone.
I don't think about it much until one of these stories pops up. Or if I need a background check done to work with kids. Or if I need to renew a professional license. Being found guilty for a crime you didn't commit tends to change your perspective and opinion in various ways.
Uh... yeah, the title is just not right.
That title leaves lots of potential!
LOL!!
I think they're both equally bad.
It really is too bad -- awful, in fact -- that this guy spent all that time in prison. But it is not the victim's fault.
If she fingered him wasn't the whole thing consensual?
It's been known for a long, long time in legal circles that eyewitness testimony is among the most unreliable forms of evidence. But the public believes otherwise and prosecutors and police use that to their advantage.
If it's a deliberately false accusation, the woman should spend the rest of her life in prison.
If it's a legitimate mistake, I can't see how or why she should be prosecuted.
In any event, it's radical man-hating femnazis who make the situation the way it is.