Just in from Orlando Sentinal! You can’t keep a shaggy dog story down… especially when it’s one that ends 
up having people put in jail unfairly – wha? Hang on?
News item from Central Florida, where apparently people were being convicted of violent crimes, based almost exclusively on the “testimony” of a police dog – because his owner claimed he had powers to spot criminals?
Last weekend, we looked at the case of Bill Dillon, the Brevard County resident imprisoned for 27 years before DNA tests set him free…
At least two other men suffered the same fate — and another shared link: a dog.
Not just any dog. A wonder dog helped convict all three men: a German shepherd named Harass II, who wowed juries with his amazing ability to place suspects at the scenes of crimes.
Harass could supposedly do things no other dog could: tracking scents months later and even across water, according to his handler, John Preston.
It all came to a conclusion when Judge Gilbert Goshorn requested a tracking test after a case where the dog supposedly discovered a scent at a scene six months after a murder. And the dog got a big FAIL.
I would suggest that people check out the marvellous blog of ICBS Everywhere where you can learn about Clever Dave, the not-so-mathematically-literate dog and the history of Clever Hans, the horse that also couldn’t actually do math:
Clever Hans performed a similar feat for audiences from 1891 until 1904, when Oskar Pfungst discovered the subtle physical cues that the horse’s trainer was unintentionally giving, signaling when it was time to stop tapping. This finding was so significant that it is now known as the Clever Hans Effect.
Pass on the news enough and perhaps there’ll be some action on the part of the Florida system about how there may be more than 60 people wrongly convicted due to Harass – so far they don’t seem that interested?
“Defendants have had rights in Florida to challenge their convictions through a well established post-conviction process,” the statement said.
A similar response came from Crist’s office, which said: “We believe this is a judicial issue and should be handled on a case-by-case analysis through the judicial system.”
A spokeswoman for the state’s top cop, Attorney General Bill McCollum, simply declared the matter beyond her boss’s “jurisdiction.”
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