Recently, the conviction of Stanley Cohen’s widow, Joyce, has come under question after two of the main witnesses made claims that they were pressured by police and prosecutors to provide false testimony against her. At the time, the murder of Stanley and the trial of Joyce for arranging that murder was one of the most infamous and publicly watched cases in the nation. Now, two of the three main witnesses that led to her conviction and life sentence have recanted their testimony.
Tommy Joslin and Anthony Caracciolo have stated that they were threatened with the death penalty and offered reduced sentences on other charges they were already facing in exchange for testifying that Joyce Cohen, whom they now say they have never even met, had hired them to kill her husband. Both have since been released and wouldn’t benefit in any way from changing their testimony.
The third person that claimed to have been hired by Joyce to carry out the hit back in March of 1986, Frank Zuccarello, was a jailhouse snitch that fingered Joslin and Caracciolo as part of the “murder team.” Not only did he also receive a deal on charges he was already facing, but since the trial, he has failed polygraph exams and told inconsistent versions of what happened the night Stanley Cohen was shot in his sleep.
In spite of this new information and the doubts it has created, Joyce Cohen, who has already served 25 years at the Homestead Correctional Institution in Dade County Florida, will likely end up spending the rest of her life in prison. She has already used up all her appeals and been turned down for parole.
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Kelly is a lifelong resident of Las Vegas, who’s been very active in local grassroots activism, as well as on a national level during his extensive travels. He’s also the founder/main contributor of Nevada Cop Block, served as editor/contributor at CopBlock.org and designed the Official Cop Block Press Passes.
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And now that you did this story what will you do to help?
“he has failed polygraph exams”
Which means absolutely nothing at all, since polygraphs are completely unreliable, which is why they are generally not admissible in court.
You took the words right outta my mouth.
“Completely unreliable” is certainly taking the exaggeration to the next level. I get what you are TRYING to say though.
It is not exaggeration in the least, polygraphs are completely unreliable because they rely on variables that aren’t consistent from person to person, while also relying on human interpretation of the results.
Sounds like you need to educate the FBI on their hiring process.
Once again, they are not looking to prove any single answer is a lie, more to show if physiological responses indicate a pattern of deception. And since people’s reaction to stress varies greatly, they are not reliable. I could lie my ass off during a polygraph, and the operator would not know. Other folks could come across as being deceptive when they were completely truthful on every answer. Technology now under development will be a different story. It is based upon which part of your brain is active when answering a question. The part where actual memories are recalled from, or the part used when making shit up.
It would seem that you should actually consult the role that a polygraph plays in their hiring process. It is part of a general mindfuck that involves a basic questionnaire and an in depth background check. The idea is to check for an overall consistency and pattern of truthfulness, and the background check ups the amount of stress put on the applicant to the point that, more often than not, he or she will voluntarily disclose items that were responded less than truthfully to on the questionnaire.
Hard to tell with stories like this but these stories do pop up. The people that have been released due to project innocence, about 25% were to police misconduct. The others to witness misidentification. It’s in the hundreds. So a story like this is not implausible.
Oh, for sure. I was merely commenting on the polygraph statement because it is such a misleading concept. Polygraphs are meaningless. They have no value, because they don’t provide consistent and independently verifiable results.
The problem is it is believable because cops have no problem with this kind of activity, like the cop recently caught lying about DUI. In their world, as long as they’re sure the person is guilty, then ends justify the means. Remember, there are a lot of cops that a DA won’t even put on the stand, yet cops still let them be cops.
I disagree, they are more reliable than most would like to admit, how many law enforcement agency use it for perspective employees. To keep it out of court is to keep everyone off of it, on all sides.
http://www.apa.org/research/action/polygraph.aspx
So, if that were true, why would law enforcement agencies use it for perspective employees? We certainly can’t have anyone proving that it did work, look at all the corrupt elite that would end up possibly in jail. The unemployment rate which is provided by the people we are suppose to trust, they say is 5.4, when the truth it is closer to 25%. I like that name though, it says a lot about you.
See my comment above. And I’m not even in law enforcement. I work on classified projects.
Yes, and I certainly can understand your answer, but it is not repetitive for most people.
I think you mean “applicable to”, not “repetitive for”. But you are probably correct. I don’t look at it as a lie detector, but as a machine which is recording my blood pressure, pulse, and respiration.
I meant repetitive, because it is not for most people, they take it once and it is over with.
I take one every 2 years. Although they aren’t generally used to check the veracity of my answer to any specific question, the examiners do use them to look for what they refer to as a pattern of deception. However, I’ve taken so many I could probably claim to be Idi Amin and not show any deception in doing so. Now the MRI tech they’re perfecting now, that will be a game changer.
If the polygraph had indicated he was telling the truth, one wonders if you wouldn’t have cited that as evidence of her guilt
Wonder all you want. There’s nothing that would suggest that I would, especially considering I spoke to nothing regarding her guilt, only the reliability of a polygraph.
Given your tendency to give agents of the State the benefit of the doubt, there is enough to suggest that you would not question polygraph reliability if it supported the State’s case against this woman. You might still believe the technology is unreliable, but I doubt you would make a point of questioning its reliability publicly. Of course this is an assumption on my part, but I believe it’s a reasonable assumption
I give “agents of the state” the same benefit of the doubt I give everyone else, I treat them as the humans they are.
It’s an assumption, but it’s hardly reasonable.
Words are funny things. For example, having any two people agree on what constitutes “reasonable”
Because of the amount of messed up evidence and cops being caught lying and fabricating evidence, and DA’s, you would think someone would look into this.
She had her husband murdered. Of course she will spend the rest of her life in prison. Leave it to a copblocker to support a murderer. After all, some of the freekeeners and copblockers have some very serious criminal records.
And the key witnesses claims that their testimony was coerced? Not exactly a first for cops either.
As far as I’m aware, none of them have been convicted of anything involving violence; therefore, nothing serious