zlacker

>>YeGobl+(OP)
The way death row inmates are treated is arguably a reason to be against death row. There was also a case where a person on death row couldn’t present exculpatory evidence to prove his innocence because his last appeals lawyer didn’t do it. The Supreme Court literally decided you can prove you have evidence that proves your innocence, that you were done dirty by an incompetent lawyer, it doesn’t matter, you should still be killed.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinn_v._Ramirez

>>Samoye+Eg
One of the other death row inmates mentioned in the article as having failed the junk science law, Kosoul Chanthakoummane, was partly convicted for hypnosis induced testimony. The appeal response on calling it junk science was, paraphrased, "hypnosis induced testimony was known to be bogus in ~2005, when your trial was. You should have argued it then."

That alone is terrible. But to make that bullshit even worse, Texas continued to use hypnosis induced testimony until 2021.

It makes me wonder when the last death penalty sentence for "shaken baby syndrome" was in Texas.

>>boombo+8j
Why? Shaken Baby Syndrome is a real thing.

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/shaken-baby-s...

[UPDATE] To those of you downvoting me, would you kindly explain why? It seems like a reasonable question to me.

>>lisper+cE
Shaking and child abuse are obviously real things. However, the way to diagnose shaken baby syndrome has been the subject of an ongoing scientific controversy for decades. With several colleagues, we have just published a textbook about this sensitive issue [1]. I've also written about how I, as a neuroscience researcher and software engineer, came into this diagnosis [2]. Finally, an introduction to this fascinating scientific topic can be found here, with many references for those interested [3].

[1] https://shakenbaby.science

[2] https://www.cambridgeblog.org/2023/05/a-journey-into-the-sha...

[3] https://cyrille.rossant.net/introduction-shaken-baby-syndrom...

>>rossan+WL
Hey, can you please post your cambridgeblog.com article on HN?

As you say in your article, there must be hundreds, if not thousands of people in jail for having shaken their babies to death. I can't imagine any harm more horrible that our society can perpetrate than punishing someone for the death of their loved ones when they had nothing to do with it. To think that this is done systematically is inconsolable, insufferable to contemplate.