A somewhat interesting case now confronts the Black robe Posse (aka US Supreme Court): SCOTUS will be deciding on where responsibility lies in instances of wrongful convictions. One Goldstein, wrongfully convicted for Moider, recently won an appeal to 9th District (scumbags, regardless of a few PC decisions), and now some LA lawmen are rallying to appeal the decision at SCOTUS (meaning they disagree with 9th court decision). SO SCOTUS, if they ratify the 9th District's ruling, will have given some support to wrongful conviction actions.
Libertarians, authentic gauchistes--- or would-be August Spies--- concerned with the tyranny of the judiciary should not get their hopes up: Scalia & Co have consistently shown their Marshallian colors (ie Tory-rightist colors), and will most likely approve the appeal, and thus protect prosecutorial immunity: to do otherwise lessens the power of the Posse (opposing judiciary does NOT equate to Steinbeckian populism, either: OR, if it does, Viva e-Steinbeck! JS took on ID politics and faux-liberal PCness from way back). Chair-clown Ahhhnuld himself, official Mascot for the Cali-Oligarchy, recently vetoed wrongful conviction legislation.
Caiaphas (or Tony Scalia, circa 30 ad)
By David G. Savage, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
April 13, 2008
""""WASHINGTON -- Prosecutors have long been shielded from lawsuits brought by people who were wrongly convicted. Even if a defendant is later shown to be entirely innocent, the prosecutor who brought the charges cannot be held liable for the mistake.
The Supreme Court has ruled that "absolute immunity" is needed so that prosecutors -- and judges -- can do their jobs without fear of legal retaliation.
But a California case that the high court is considering taking could open a back door for such lawsuits. Prosecutors in Los Angeles are urging the court to block a suit from a man who was wrongly convicted of murder because, they say, it will allow "a potential flood" of similar claims across the nation.
Last year, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals set off alarms among prosecutors in the West when it ruled that supervising prosecutors could be sued for alleged management failures that led to a wrongful conviction. Its ruling cleared the way for Thomas L. Goldstein to sue former Los Angeles Dist. Atty. John K. Van de Kamp.
The suit does not allege that Van de Kamp, the county's chief prosecutor from 1975 to 1983, played a direct role in Goldstein's wrongful conviction for a shotgun murder in Long Beach in 1979. Indeed, Van de Kamp said he was unaware of the details of this case until decades later when the conviction was reversed......""""
LATimes/WrongfulConviction
J.A.I.L>
4 comments:
Ah Bozonius of BYU wuz lying as usual, or mebbe the usual krak-fueled paranoia rant.
I actually kind of liked this post. The liberally sprinkled nicknames and JG-slang didn't quite obscure the point of the post. Of course you blew it with the comment rant, as usual, but obsessions are obsessions.
That's rather amusing: your own ethics of commenting (if this be who I think it is) pretty much defines hypocrisy. Let some little irrationalist insult and rant away, and then prevent the person being insulted from responding.
Besides, I am the one who KNOWS the skeptical tradition, and can offer a few powerful anti-theological arguments (as with that Klassic of Candide regarding the "best of all possible worlds," a point most Americuns never quite savor): yr Meyer Lansky-wannabe palsie just simply grabs the chessboard and flings it. Vulgar.
Better to checkmate a fundie with a few precise moves (though with some dweeb like Senrab that only requires about 10 moves)
Look at the mote in your eye.
And you have yet to realize real argument and disputation should not proceed from 1st person. Your experience is not Reality. And even intelligent skeptics must deal with the "mystic problem" (as James Madison did in a few letters): what to say to the William Blake who insists that he communicates with God, or even sees Him? I sort of doubt it, yet at the same time, you make the vulgar atheistic mistake of conflating Jerry Falwells with ALL of Christianity.
Blake is not a Falwell. For that matter, Descartes (whose belief seems fairly genuine, really) and that entire tradition is not Falwellian xtianity. Cartesian disputation is a thing of beauty, even if one ultimately disagrees with it (and one might recall Descartes really as powerful a thinker--even in terms of math and science--as any Englishman. Newton would not have happened without DesCartes).
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