The article makes it seem like Dixon was just "at a nearby shop buying beer when the gunshots rang out." The police couldn't find the real shooter, so they just grabbed the nearest black guy and convicted him, right?

If you read the article further though, something seems off.

> Mr Dixon said multiple witnesses could have testified he did not fire the gun.

That's an odd formulation.

> "I grabbed the gun," Scott, now 46, told the courtroom in Erie County, New York.

Grabbed it from who?

The article never really explains it, but what actually happened is that Dixon and the real shooter, Scott, were involved in drug dealing. Dixon gave Scott the murder weapon, a semi-automatic Tec-9, and drove with him to the scene of the altercation: http://www.espn.com/golf/story/_/id/24736866/valentino-dixon...

> Scott said he had gotten the gun, a Tec-9 semi-automatic, from Dixon and the two men had driven together to the crowded corner where the fighting broke out. Scott was given a sentence of 8⅓ to 25 years in prison, concurrent with his current term.

This case is a lot more subtle than it seems: it was about figuring out who was the killer, the guy whose gun it was, or the alleged "bodyguard" (Scott).

Now, this is not to excuse the Brady violation or the other flaws in the prosecution. It's a travesty that Dixon was convicted based on that case. But from my first hand experience with the U.S. justice system, it's not random and capricious. If you see a story that makes it seem random and capricious, digging into it will almost always reveal that there was something more to it than the press releases let on.

For example, a few years ago I got an ACLU or Innocence Project email about a "kid" who was convicted for murder because he just "happened to be at the crime scene." In reality, a bunch of 16-17 year old young men robbed a pizza delivery driver, and shot him dead right in front of his wife and kid who were in the back seat. The convicted man "happened to be at the crime scene" in the sense that he was part of the group, but denied being the one that pulled the trigger. As a matter of legal technicality, that conviction was probably wrongful--you need evidence that the accused pulled the trigger, otherwise you just have accomplice liability. But it's a far cry from the press release implying that some jury just pinned the crime on a random kid who happened to be near by!

Also note two other things: 1) Most prosecutions and guilty please are supported by a mountain of evidence. Sometimes you'll look at the record and think "this shouldn't be a crime" (selling Ambien to yuppies) but at the same time you'll see that the guy tried to sell it directly to a cop or something where guilt was similarly unambiguous. 2) For every exoneration, U.S. civil liberties organizations turn away many cases where the prisoner who professes innocence is actually guilty.

At the end of the day, the US has 30-40,000 murders per year. Even if the rate of error is 1%, that’s hundreds of wrongful convictions each year. There are ways to improve, clearly, such as holding prosecutors accountable for Brady violations, getting rid of elected prosecutors, and combining prosecutors and public defenders’ offices. But if the current system is “not functioning” then I don’t think you can achieve a “functioning” system under that rubric. There isn’t a revolutionary amount improvement to be gained.