22: Garrett Phillips

Potsdam is a small college town in New York of around 9,400 residents. It is located around 20 miles from the Canadian border and has an active downtown strip from the 1950s which morphs into the usually combination of strip malls and chain stores. It is predominantly white. In 2010, it was almost 90% white and less than 3% black. On the 24th of October, 2011, a young boy lay dead on his apartment floor as Potsdam village police embarked on an investigation into his slaying. But did that investigation focus solely on one man before other avenues of investigation were adequately pursed?

Long before fingerprints or DNA had even been analysed, Potsdam Village Police zoned in on one man in particular and with an overzealous prosecutor forsaking justice in the name of keeping her campaign promise, tunnel vision took over.

Tunnel vision can set in when a horrific crime takes place and there is tremendous public pressure to find the killer. People can often be hard-wired to find support for their conclusions even when this support does not exist and ignore information that challenges their conclusion. The presumption of innocence is a cornerstone of justice and when tunnel vision takes over, the wheels of justice move even slower.

The case of Garrett Philips had the elements of a classic whodunit, and according to who you ask, it also had the elements of a race-based prosecution.

Show Notes: https://morbidology.com/morbidology-the-podcast-22-garrett-phillips

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Audio Credit:
Ever Mindful, On My Way & Evening of Chaos by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Density & Time - Water Lillies

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