This was the second try at this case after a prior jury hung, but the two years between the charge and the second trial were not enough to get _any_ results back on the substance. Apparently the lead time required is such that they didn't bother to try. Here's how they explained that: "This isn't CSI."
The spin-offs are bad. The suspects are interrogated until they confess, and nobody cares if they have no lawyer or they use dubios evidence.
For the cops, prosecutors, and defense attorneys, the show doesn't give the proper sense of immense caseload. Each episode feels like they're focused 100% on a single thing, when in reality they're probably juggling dozens, and stretched thin.
The cop side of things in L&O is fairly unrealistic, but imo in more minor ways for pacing than anything egregious.
The prosecutors of course don't get called on 4th/5th amendment violations as they normally would, and my memory is the defendant testifies way too frequently (for homicide cases, in that time priod). And it doesn't do a realistic depiction of the rate at which people get completely screwed over by corruption. And it doesn't do a great job pointing out how often prosecutors will take cases prioritized for their own political careers.
I am not a lawyer, and the lawyers I watched L&O with were civil litigators not criminal litigators, so some of my perspective is probably off (though I suspect in ways that are more favorable to the show). Also it was like 25 years ago? Lol
So long as you follow arcane procedure and precedent, the deeper facts don’t matter and don’t get much respect from the system.
Outside of the Anglosphere judges are free to ignore precedent, which they call "jurisprudence". This is a tradeoff: you get justice "in the moment" in exchange for less future surety about how the legal system will react. The legal system might just decide that you doing the exact same thing someone else did and got away with is now illegal.
My personal opinion is that any basis of law can be used for tyranny, and that common law and inviolable rights are less protective than we have been propagandized to think. Even common law legal systems occasionally overturn precedent if they feel like it - remember when anti-abortion laws were a violation of the 4th Amendment until they weren't?
[0] This even extends to the word "franchise", which means "French-ize", as in to be given freedoms by being turned into a Frenchman
[1] What if your enemy seeks to take away your rights?
This case is harder. Medical questions about what happened to a victim are often highly relevant, and doctors are legitimate, credentialed experts qualified to speak on that topic. If they believe based on their training and experience that suchandsuch symptoms mean blunt force trauma, how could a random judge evaluate whether they have enough scientific backing to say that?
It sounds like the appeal is NOT like that, the judge having seemingly ignored the very reasonable challenge to the original witness testimony.
There ceased to be a distinction between the two groups in your original comment when the weight of evidence started to clearly tip away from prosecutions like these.
> In Tribble’s case, the FBI agent testified at trial that the hair from the stocking matched Tribble’s “in all microscopic characteristics.”
> In closing arguments, federal prosecutor David Stanley went further: “There is one chance, perhaps for all we know, in 10 million that it could [be] someone else’s hair.”
It was dog hair.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/dc-judge-exonerat...
This has to be wildly illegal. "perhaps for all we know", followed by a concrete number.
In "Factfulness" the late Hans Rosling mentions how he spent years telling people to not keep babies sleeping on their back, based on science were people believed babies might suffocate more easily.
This turned out to be the opposite of truth, babies are more likely to die when sleeping on their belly. For years, doctors , him included, may have indirectly killed babies trying to save them.
OTOH, the unreliability of our tools makes a strong case against the death penalty, IMO.
[0] Like me, right now, who thinks we should demand copyright term maximums
We have pretty good proposals to deal with this problem that make no changes to copyright. I think the following seems pretty sensible:
https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/4368
I don't know the specifics, though.
>>Partially because fringe people who want to change the law make terrible legal arguments
>No one has ever changed the law to benefit the rich, no sirree.
You followed this up with a link to America's mind-numbingly long copyright terms, so I would instead point out that none of those were extended by judicial fiat. Generally a "legal argument" means something argued in front of a judge about how the law is, rather than something argued to Congress about how the law ought to be. The reason why reformers make bad legal arguments is because they're trying to use the legal system to do an end-run around Congress, because the rich people already own Congress.
That being said, they also own the legal system indirectly. It's staffed by professionals who have a vested interest in a set of rich people paying them money. If SCOTUS said tomorrow that, say, 1A overturns the Copyright Clause, half the legal profession would be homeless by the day after.
Also, trademark as copyright is already precluded by the federal preemption clause of US copyright law; you specifically cannot cobble together other rights into something that looks and quacks like a copyright.
The OP did not say anything about taking ownership of already-existing software without its owner’s consent.
This man was not committed to death row because of one doctor. He was found guilty because multiple people in his life testified he had a history of violently shaking and screaming at a child for crying.
The doctors failed to diagnose the infant with severe pneumonia and prescribed it medications that are no longer considered safe for children. This seems like plenty of doubt to not convict him.
You know the issue with that claim? It would have shown up in autopsy. There would still be inflammation in the lungs.
The child had breathing problems because of SBS. SBS can pinch off the airway.
This is a kid that was repeatedly in a hospital. Not for a diagnosed issue such as Asthma but because SBS damage kept occuring because Roberson kept shaking the child hard enough for her to pass out on multiple occasions.
IANAL, but wouldn't that be against the rule that character evidence cannot be used by the prosecution (unless in countering character evidence from the defence)?
Specifically, I believe what you describe would be in contravention of the following: https://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/fre/rule_404
> (a) Character Evidence.
> (1) Prohibited Uses. Evidence of a person’s character or character trait is not admissible to prove that on a particular occasion the person acted in accordance with the character or trait.
> [...]
> b) Other Crimes, Wrongs, or Acts.
> (1) Prohibited Uses. Evidence of any other crime, wrong, or act is not admissible to prove a person’s character in order to show that on a particular occasion the person acted in accordance with the character.
> (2) Permitted Uses. This evidence may be admissible for another purpose, such as proving motive, opportunity, intent, preparation, plan, knowledge, identity, absence of mistake, or lack of accident.
You can't testify that a defendent was "a jealous man" or "of unsavory character". You can testify that you saw him shake an infant angrily until she passed out.
In other words, you can't argue that given there is evidence that the defendant shook babies in anger before, he is the kind of guy who shakes babies in anger, and therefore this is evidence in favour of him having shaken this baby to death.
Regarding (b)(2), I interpret that the testimony that the defendant shook infants in anger in the past would only be admissible under (b)(2) if the previous acts were "proving motive, opportunity, intent, preparation, plan, knowledge, identity, absence of mistake, or lack of accident". I cannot see how having shaken an infant in the past could provide evidence for any of the above as relates to the separate and specific alleged infant-shaking event for which the defendant was on trial.
Source?
Yes, this article is from 2016 and yes it's in Texas which has a strong law which allows throwing out bad science.
The suspect forensic claim was such a small part of the evidence against the defendent that it didn't survive appeals.
But it also means prosecutors often avoid scientific evidence in favor of witness testimony.
It also creates situations where no DNA test is done on evidence. On appeal the defense says “the prosecution didn’t even do dna testing!” But during the trial the defense wasn’t asking for it (and neither was prosecution) so of course it didn’t happen.
Unfortunately, for the state, taking innocent lives is just an Oopsie.
I’m not saying this from a cynical political perspective. IMHO, the problem is more about the psychology of people in power. They usually believe that the thing they do is the most important thing in the world and sometimes they may screw up(huge material losses or tragic life losses) but that’s not a big deal. Even there endless desire for destroying privacy in the name of security is rooted in this. You can’t let a murderer go free and if you have to you can kill a few innocent people in the process and that’s not a big deal == you can’t let criminals commit crimes and if the privacy is the casualty that’s not a big deal.
On the series Succession, there was a scene where one of the billionaires skit kills a waiter and the father covers up evidence, and says “no real people involved” to justify his actions. I think this very accurately is straight, the thinking of people in power.