Lying Murderers

What do you call someone who tells a lie in order to get someone else killed? I'd call him a murderer, and so would the law. At the very least, he'd be an accessory to murder. The government calls him an expert witness.

Dr. Dietz testified in 2002 that an episode of "Law & Order" depicting a mother who drowned her children in a bathtub and was found not guilty by reason of insanity had been broadcast shortly before the Yates children were murdered.

There was no such show.

I am absolutely horrified by this. I'm stunned that charges are not being pressed against this man. Let's review. HE LIED on the stand, in order to support a first-degree murder conviction.

It's also typical that the show he's talking about is Law & Order. I have long hated that show, despite it's seductive watch-ability, and I'll tell you why. It is a terribly pro-prosecution show. It portrays a world that does not exist. Over and over again, counsel for defendants convince judges to exclude evidence. Over and over again guilty people almost go free, or do go free, by playing the system. Well, guess what? OJ Simpson notwithstanding, that doesn't happen. Judges almost never rule in favor of defendants, even when there have been egregious cases of prosecutorial and police misconduct. It's maddening, as an ex-public defender, to see this kind of nonsense on TV. It just feeds into the misperception that the system is playable. It ignores the fact that when mistakes are made, there are almost invariably at the expense of the criminal defendant.

We've got two million people incarcerated in this country, a percentage higher than any other Western nation. That's a shameful statistic.