Free Talk Live

"After a decade in which DNA evidence has freed over 100 people nationwide, it's become clear that DNA evidence isn't just proving wrongdoing by criminals, it's proving wrongdoing by police and prosecutors. In this show, we look at what DNA has revealed to us: how police get innocent people to confess to crimes they didn't commit and how they get witnesses to pin crimes on innocent people."

When we hear about a nasty crime being committed, the most common reaction is saying, "Oh no, that's terrible!" and then going back to launching birds through the air on our iPhones. But, while most of us think that it's best to leave the crime fighting to those who are actually trained (and paid) for it, sometimes a normal citizen will decide to take the law into his or her own hands ... and end up doing a way better job than the cops.

Allegedly “disgruntled” man has his guns seized, and “voluntarily” surrenders to two SWAT teams and dozens of police officers for a crime that hadn’t been committed.

Prosecutors are arguably the most powerful figures in the American criminal justice system, a system that is not equipped or willing to punish their crimes..
according to attorneys and criminal justice reform advocates, prosecutors across the country are misbehaving -- and getting away with it. While the most common forms of prosecutorial misconduct are hiding exculpatory evidence and engaging in improper examination and argumentation, another form of intentional misconduct is the knowing use of false testimony to win convictions.

Anthony Graber, a Maryland Air National Guard staff sergeant, faces up to 16 years in prison. His crime? He videotaped his March encounter with a state trooper who pulled him over for speeding on a motorcycle. Then Graber put the video — which could put the officer in a bad light — up on YouTube. It doesn't sound like much. But Graber is not the only person being slapped down by the long arm of the law for the simple act of videotaping the police in a public place. Prosecutors across the U.S. claim the videotaping violates wiretap laws — a stretch, to put it mildly.

Federal prosecutors are supposed to seek justice, not merely score convictions. But a USA TODAY investigation found that prosecutors repeatedly have violated that duty in courtrooms across the nation. The abuses have put innocent people in prison, set guilty people free and cost taxpayers millions of dollars in legal fees and sanctions.

Man gets life in prison after repenting for his crime. A Kansas man turned himself in to authorities saying he knowingly committed oral sex on a 4 month old baby. The predator laws in Kansas are some of the strictest in the nation and mandate a life sentence. While the crime is deplorable, should the sentence be lessened because the man admitted his crime to a priest and turned himself in willingly to police?

"IT’S true! According to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting statistics, between January 2010 and September 2010, 31 kops per 100,000 committed homicide and 73 committed sexual assault. In comparison to 100,000 of the general population (this includes blacks, whites, Mexicans, gang members etc) only 5 citizens committed homicide and 29 committed sexual assaults."

About once a week you get a wacky "dumb criminal" story in the newspaper, like the guy who tries to rob a police station, or the dude who sticks up a bank and then boasts about it on his Twitter account. Either crime is apparently way harder than it looks, or else criminals are a whole lot stupider than we previously thought possible.

We're thinking it's the latter. Here are some seemingly easy rules that real criminals have failed to follow, often in spectacularly retarded ways.