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
OK, but that still doesn't explain the connection between SBS and hypnosis (and Texas for that matter). Is there a particular history of using hypnosis to convict innocent people of shaking babies to death in Texas and impose the death penalty on them? Is this common knowledge?

The original comment to which I was responding still makes absolutely no sense to me. And getting downvoted because I asked for clarification is making even less sense to me. I must be missing something fundamental here. (Either that or HN has jumped the shark, which I fervently hope is not the case.)

>>lisper+PQ
There’s no specific link between SBS and hypnosis except for this particular case.

The problem is: 1. The science seems to point towards ‘Shaken Baby Syndrome’ being able to be caused by several different things, including ones that don’t even involve physical trauma, so physical shaking is only one cause amongst many whereas most doctors and the justice system still mostly confidentially assert it’s always from shaking. Saying SBS is always a result of shaking is junk science.

2. Hypnosis is a way to extract confessions, but it’s probably extremely likely to extract false confessions. Hence why it’s generally disallowed, because it’s pseudoscience.

3. The particular case involving (1) assuming SBS is always from shaking and (2) a false confession from hypnosis happened in Texas.

So that’s the link.