Submitted by Mike Appleton, Guest Blogger
John Thompson spent 18 years in prison, 14 of them on death row, following convictions for attempted armed robbery and murder in separate incidents. A scant month before the scheduled execution, an investigator hired by Thompson’s lawyers made a startling discovery in the crime lab archives: a lab report which completely exonerated Thompson on the attempted robbery charge.The report contained results of a test conducted on blood left by the robber on the clothing of one of the victims. The robber had type B blood. Thompson’s is type O.
In Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963), the Supreme Court held that a prosecutor has a duty to disclose exculpatory evidence to the accused. The prosecutor in Thompson’s attempted robbery case deliberately withheld the test results from defense counsel. At his subsequent trial on the murder charge, Thompson understandably declined to testify so that the attempted robbery conviction could not be used for impeachment purposes.
In due course both convictions were overturned. A second trial on the murder charge produced a defense verdict after only 35 minutes of jury deliberation. Thompson thereupon sued Harry Connick, the New Orleans district attorney, under several theories, including a violation of Section 1983 of the Civil Rights Act of 1871. The jury awarded Thompson $1,000,000.00 for each year spent on death row, a total of $14,000,000.00. The verdict was affirmed by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Thompson will never see a dime of his award. In a 5-4 decision announced on March 29th, the Supreme Court reversed the Fifth Circuit. Writing for the majority, Justice Thomas found the evidence of prosecutorial misconduct was insufficient to support a conclusion that the district attorney had been “deliberately indifferent” to his duty to insure that prosecutors in his office adhered to the requirements of the Brady rule.
Justice Thomas reaches his conclusion by framing the issue in a manner which admits of no alternative result. The sole question for the court, he says, is whether Section 1983 liability may be based upon “a single Brady violation.” Of course it can’t. The reason is that a district attorney cannot be held liable for the actions of his subordinates under the theory of respondeat superior. Instead, it was necessary for Thompson to establish a pattern of such violations in Connick’s office sufficient to permit a conclusion that Connick was deliberately indifferent to the need to adequately train his staff on the Brady requirements.
But Justice Thomas ignores substantial evidence in the record that Connick’s office was a virtual cesspool of prosecutorial misconduct. Indeed, at least four prosecutors were aware of the withheld evidence in Thompson’s armed robbery trial. The responsible prosecutor had actually confessed to a colleague that he had withheld the lab report. Connick had had a number of prior convictions reversed for Brady violations. Connick himself openly admitted to never having cracked a law book subsequent to becoming district attorney in 1974.
Justice Thomas finds this record unpersuasive because, as he notes, none of the previous Brady violations “involved failure to disclose blood evidence, a crime lab report, or physical or scientific evidence of any kind.” Accordingly, he concludes, Connick could not have been on notice of the need to train his staff concerning the specific violation in Thompson’s case. Besides, he continues, prosecutors are trained attorneys who can be expected to know and understand their obligations. I don’t know how many potential violations exist in the Brady universe, but presumably Justice Thomas would require that Connick’s prosecutors commit all of them before “deliberate indifference” might be inferred.
The decision in this case is not so much about law as it is about a public policy position intended to impose the most formidable barriers possible to pursuing a Section 1983 claim against a state agency. I prefer to call it the doctrine of prosecutorial impunity.
Brian, you are full of it as usual. Dave Rosenhan is a lifelong friend of mine, so do not toss his name around in vain. I never met Stan Milgram, but we have many friends in common. I not only know their research, but the unpublished back stories that go with it.
Brian, I have forgotten more about deception, misinformation and verbal slight of hand than you will ever know. You have no idea what you are talking about, your “research” is bogus, and you are wandering about in an intellectual thicket getting the briers of multiple fallacies caught in your drawers.
By all means, do not litigate, Please. We will all be the better for it. Courts hate having their time wasted. I hope and pray you never get on the wrong side of the law and have to defend yourself with your incredibly naive notions.
Buddha Is Laughing, Otteray Scribe, and whosoever else is really upset by what I have been doing:
My research interest is centered on socialization traditions and deception.
Major work in this area was done by Stanley Milgram (“Obedience to Authority”), David Rosenhan (“On Being Sane in Insane Places”) and Philip Zimbardo (the “Stanford Prison Experiment” and his more recent book, “The Lucifer Effect”).
Prior to my research, no one I am aware of had found any way to study the root causes of deception without using deception as a research method.
My method is based on my not being deceptive and letting misunderstandings arise without my intending to make them happen. The core approach of my work is not found anywhere in “normal science,” (as in the writings of Thomas Kuhn) because it has been clear to me that the methods of “normal science” developed within the social deception I have sought to study.
That is why my methods make no sense to people whose understanding of science and science methods are limited to “normal science.”
What I do does work, and it works because it brings toward conscious awareness the irritations which are the essence of the relationship between deception and conventional psychological defenses.
The more valid my work is, the more “bonkers” I expect it to seem to socially “well-adjusted” people. I do not “gloat,” about what has transpired. Rather, I weep, because what I find I have learned here, recently, strikes me as profoundly tragic at its core.
With your comment of April 12, 2011 at 7:49 pm, Otteray Scribe, I find I have run into the ethical limit of my research method, and will no longer attempt to communicate anything except trivialities on this blawg hereafter.
Though I had no idea what I would find here, what happened has completed my field work on the most critical remaining issue of my thesis and its following work.
If you do not understand my approach, and why I could not find a better one, I do understand that. (By which I mean, why you may not understand my approach, why I do understand my approach, and why I understand why you do not understand my approach to such extent as you do not understand it.)
Alas, I am the one with the bioengineering doctorate, so that all that seems entirely proper and natural to me.
And, I did not come out on the “short end of the stick,” during my court tragedies. The outcomes which happened were the ones I sought, doing so, not for my sake (which would have been selfish), but for the sake of others who asked me to do what I could to solve the problem of what had done such terrible damage to them.
My approach to litigation is simple. I simply do not litigate.
I have found the Revised Edition of John Rawls, “A Theory of Justice” to be informative.
What if there actually is a real world?
What if defeat in “this world” is victory in the real world?
A couple thousand or so years ago, I seem to recall someone suggesting that possibility?
Donald Kraybill wrote a book about that person? “The Upside-Down Kingdom”?
Wonder who it was? Someone who was murdered for sharing views similar to mine, which views I got from studying his life?
Philip Yancey wrote a book anyone who is willing to glimpse something hinting at my world view might risk reading, “Rumors Of Another World: What On Earth Are We Missing?” Zondervan, 2003.
Buddha, I thought before that Brian’s grasp of reality was tenuous, but now am convinced that it is close to nonexistent. I do not follow the leap of (non) logic that got him thinking you called him “evil.” He appears to have trouble differentiating between calling an idea evil and the person as evil. Go figure. And then he gloats at how he thinks he tricked you into revealing something about your feelings toward him. He has not gotten them memo, no matter how clearly stated, that most of us around her regard him as merely uninformed and annoying, not evil.
Another thing, I like to think I have some facility with both reading comprehension and writing, but much of Brian’s ramblings do not follow any known logical sequence known in English grammar or sentence structure. It is as if he took words and threw them at the screen. If his approach to litigation in which he was involved looked anything like what he presents here, it is no wonder he came out on the short end of the stick. I have had a few clients like him and every time I promised myself, “Never again!” I am not a graceful loser, especially when the client insists on snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
Well, once again, you’d be wrong, Brian.
There were two options there.
I don’t think you’re evil. If I thought you were? I wouldn’t be nearly as nice to you.
What I think is you have an inability to see that the pursuit of justice in realistic manners is in your own as well as societies interest. The operative word being “realistic”. None of your ideas are realistic. They are fantasy given the natural state of humans.
As to your grammar question, I meant societies’.
And I’ll stop messing with you the day you quit pimping your unrealistic fantasy trash that undermines justice.
I don’t care how you treat me or what you think of me. There is nothing your hostility can do to harm me. That should be abundantly clear by now. I care that your espoused ideas about the justice system are pro-tyranny and antisocial. As I’ve said before, to you the person I am largely indifferent.
And if I thought you were evil?
I’d hardly be indifferent.
Your cooperation on these matters is greatly appreciated.
Re: Buddha Is Laughing, April 12, 2011 at 5:42 pm
“Or simply being evil is sufficient.”
################################
Now comes the joke.
It has been my suspicion that, sooner or later, you would tell the truth about your belief about me.
I apologize to everyone else on thus blawg for the bother it took to extract this beautiful and direct truth from you.
Resolute persistence has, however, finally paid off…
As you have finally and clearly stated, utterly without any trace of ambiguity, you truly do believe that I am simply evil.
Gotcha!
I am very grateful for your willingness to become truthful.
A testable hypothesis has finally been delivered to me.
For almost all my life, I have hoped and prayed for such a gift.
My prayers have now been answered! Hallelujah!
— I do have a simple question remaining, did you mean “societies’ interests” (plural) or did you mean “society’s interest” (singular)?
Also, in closing, you have been amazingly cooperative in helping me accomplish one, exceptionally difficult, research objective…
It seems to me that I could not have accomplished this so soon without your help.
If you stop “messing with me,” I will stop treating you as a “hostile witness research subject”…
Your choice!
No. I just hold contempt for liars, Brian.
And long winded bullshit.
“I have never advocated or suggested doing away with the courts, and I am becoming a little weary of your (stupid?) efforts to tell me that I am doing what I am not doing.”
Really? Because you’ve said just that thing in the past. Of course, today you switched to the position that you wish suspects would magically appear in court of their own volition and confess without compulsion.
Stupid? Well, maybe so, but at least I’m not contradictory, babbling and illogical. You know, nonsense like this: “Of course, within the adversarial system, I don’t know what I am talking about. No one, within the adversarial system knows what is being talked about, that is the intrinsic nature of being adverse to knowing what one is talking about, and being adverse to knowing what one is talking about is the essence of being adversarial.”
I precisely know what being adverse is as does anyone with a legal background.
For example: I’m adverse to anyone trying to undermine the cause of justice.
So when you say “Why do you need to work so hard to defend intelligent people from the silly notions of a really stupid person?”
That would be the reason. A lie or a bad idea unchallenged – especially when coupled with the extreme argument by verbosity that you so regularly practice – is a lie or a bad idea someone might mistakenly adopt as good and true.
You don’t have to be intelligent to be undermining justice. In fact, intelligence has nothing to do with that. Just an inability to see that the pursuit of justice in realistic manners is in your own as well as societies interest. Or simply being evil is sufficient.
I can go back to treating you like a troll if you wish.
Your cooperation on these matters is greatly appreciated.
RE: Buddha Is Laughing, April 12, 2011 at 3:46 pm
Brian,
The only joke is that you think you know what you are talking about in regards to the courts.
As to making judgments? Bullshit. You most certainly do make judgments. You make judgments whenever you express the opinion that society would be better off without courts.
While you may harbor the delusion that I believe society would be better off without courts, I have never had such an absurd view, and likely never will. It is one thing to not have courts and quite another to have courts which promote, by their traditions, forms of dishonesty only recently recognized through social science research, such as the entire field of attribution theory being nearly perfectly excluded in the present U.S. court system.
If you believe in “cooperation” as anything other than bullying intimidation, it might behoove you to pay some scant attention to my actual, oft repeated meaning instead of assigning to me ridiculous notions (often so utterly vapid and stupid as astonish me).
There are alternatives to “the better liar wins” justice. I was never an adversary to our late son’s and daughter-in-law’s mother in law, yet the adversarial system defined my wife, daughter, and myself as adversaries of Laurie Dukes totally against my will, my wife’s will, and our daughter’s will.
Because we and Laurie Dukes were not adversaries except as defined by the court system, great damage was done, including totally destroying any useful relationship my wife and I might have otherwise had with our late son’s son.
Being defined, as you say things are properly defined by the adversarial system, as adversaries, led to my bailing out of the adversarial system and going pro-se, something really stupid to do, as I fully well understood.
You, like the attorneys who profited from the adversarial system by doing everything imaginable to destroy my family, are teaching me that the view you have will, if taken seriously, be used to destroy anyone who is unwilling to play the adversarial game.
You seem, to me, to keep baiting me into becoming my own adversary, by treating my own life with hatred. Perhaps you somehow learned that children are terrible and people are terrible, and everyone but you is dishonest, but I never learned anything like that.
I continue to be astonished as to your skill at attempting to persuade me that you know me better than I know myself.
“Argument by vendetta still doesn’t prove your point.
I have never made “an argument by vendetta. That is, I guess, your method, but I abhor it.
As I actually have no vendetta, the notion of vendetta surely must be coming from you. I simply describe difficulties which have come to my attention, doing so without any expectation that anything “good or bad” will happen as a result of my descriptions.”
Really? If you don’t have a vendetta against the courts and are satisfied with your experiences, why would you want to do away with them? People satisfied with outcomes usually don’t want to do away with the social mechanisms they are happy with.
I have never advocated or suggested doing away with the courts, and I am becoming a little weary of your (stupid?) efforts to tell me that I am doing what I am not doing. There is something which has been called, “dialogue” and it appears to work several orders of magnitude better than trashing one another when there is a disagreement, except for the financial benefit to attorneys who can persuade friends to become enemies and the attorneys walk away with the spoils of a family.,/i>
And I don’t have to twist your words.
You do a quite good job of that yourself.
That I point out both your twisting words, failed logic and contradictions is merely descriptive so that those reading your descriptions don’t get the misconception that you know what you are talking about.
Of course, within the adversarial system, I don’t know what I am talking about. No one, within the adversarial system knows what is being talked about, that is the intrinsic nature of being adverse to knowing what one is talking about, and being adverse to knowing what one is talking about is the essence of being adversarial.
Your cooperation in these matters is greatly appreciated.
Were I to see the slightest indication that you have a clue as to any concern I might ever have, I would allow for the possibility of cooperation. As it is, there is no cooperation to be appreciated because you rule it out by deciding that I have a concern I do not have and do not have a concern I do have.
You might be wise to ignore my ignorance and to allow that other people, except for me, may have enough intelligence to know better than to be taken in by my absurdly mistaken notions.
Yet you apparently so totally distrust people as to need to shield them from someone who, as you point, out, doesn’t know anything. What makes you so remarkably afraid of meaningless, silly nonsense? If you can recognize that I don’t know anything, why would you believe that my not knowing anything is no less obvious to anyone else than it is to you?
It is becoming sadly clear to me that I cannot even comment with a “Good morning,” without your deeming me to have written something terrible. Why the prejudice? Why can I not make the mistakes I need to learn to connect better with people? Why do I have to know what I have yet to be able to learn to meet your standards for my being a human person?
Do you really hold in utter contempt the intelligence of every other person except yourself?
Given as fact that my life, and my work, and my life experiences, are entirely pure garbage, why would that be more obvious to you than to anyone else?
Why do you need to work so hard to defend intelligent people from the silly notions of a really stupid person?
Just wondering?</i?
Brian,
The only joke is that you think you know what you are talking about in regards to the courts.
As to making judgments? Bullshit. You most certainly do make judgments. You make judgments whenever you express the opinion that society would be better off without courts.
“Argument by vendetta still doesn’t prove your point.
As I actually have no vendetta, the notion of vendetta surely must be coming from you. I simply describe difficulties which have come to my attention, doing so without any expectation that anything “good or bad” will happen as a result of my descriptions.”
Really? If you don’t have a vendetta against the courts and are satisfied with your experiences, why would you want to do away with them? People satisfied with outcomes usually don’t want to do away with the social mechanisms they are happy with.
And I don’t have to twist your words.
You do a quite good job of that yourself.
That I point out both your twisting words, failed logic and contradictions is merely descriptive so that those reading your descriptions don’t get the misconception that you know what you are talking about.
Your cooperation in these matters is greatly appreciated.
I decided. finally, that I am getting a bit weary of having my views distorted into atrocities by people who do not understand one single bit of anything about me. Therefore, I am interspersing some comments using, as here, italics.
RE: Buddha Is Laughing, April 12, 2011 at 2:10 pm
But of course then since your personal experience with the courts was bad, Brian, it makes sense to dispose of the courts altogether.
My experience with and in the courts was remarkably close to what I expected, and my experience was not bad because I expected to be treated much as I was treated. I have known people who, in response to court experiences, went out and killed people in revenge. As I never expect anything to happen other than as it happens, I have no vendetta and no resentment. However, people who have learned the ways of resentment and retaliation, way I have never learned, may believe that, because they seek revenge, when I merely describe some of my life experiences, I am also seeking revenge, “because everyone does that.” No, everyone does not seek revenge; I do not seek revenge, and never have done so.
It is one thing to seek revenge and quite another thing to describe experiences of the sort that would lead “most people” to seek revenge and then find such people assigning, presumably out of simple ignorance, revenge intention to me, when I have no revenge. However, when harmful things happen, if no effort is ever made to solve why harmful things happen, there will never be a way to reduce the future likelihood of harmful things happening.
Fallacy of Composition; deductive fallacy
Just because justice didn’t work out to your satisfaction doesn’t mean it has no value to society.
I am completely satisfied with how things work out, and am continuously satisfied, including when I seek to address a concern about danger I observe and am ignored and people are killed. I am satisfied when people are murdered, when nuclear power plants become Level 7 Disasters, when people are jumping out of the top floors of the New York World Trade Center, when airplanes crash and many people are killed. Why would I not be satisfied with what is possible and why would I want the dissatisfaction of wanting what is impossible? The greatest disasters likely have the greatest value to society. So, if value to society is the goal, then we need to maximize terrible disasters of every possible sort. Is that not what is happening?
Argument by vendetta still doesn’t prove your point.
As I actually have no vendetta, the notion of vendetta surely must be coming from you. I simply describe difficulties which have come to my attention, doing so without any expectation that anything “good or bad” will happen as a result of my descriptions. I make no judgments whatsoever. Any judgments regarding what I write come only from those who make judgments. Simple descriptions are not judgments. To me, all descriptions are simple descriptions. Judgments are not descriptions to me.
You may, as far as I am concerned, twist any words I write and any actions I make however you are able to twist them to your satisfaction or whatever. However, you will not twist me into believing that your twisting what I write to your satisfaction has anything to do with me.
I was very resistant to coercion before I began commenting here, and I thank you for helping me learn to effectively resist the most intensive form of coercion I have yet encountered.
To paraphrase what Vinny said to Miss Vito, “You have been a wonderful witness.” And I am grateful for the help you have given me in the furtherance of my work.
One day, perhaps soon, it is my guess that you will get the joke.
Crime Victims’ Rights Act
18 U.S.C. § 3771. Crime victims’ rights
(a) RIGHTS OF CRIME VICTIMS.–A crime victim has the following rights:
(1) The right to be reasonably protected from the accused.
(2) The right to reasonable, accurate, and timely notice of any public court proceeding, or any parole proceeding, involving the crime or of any release or escape of the accused.
(3) The right not to be excluded from any such public court proceeding, unless the court, after receiving clear and convincing evidence, determines that testimony by the victim would be materially altered if the victim heard other testimony at that proceeding.
(4) The right to be reasonably heard at any public proceeding in the district court involving release, plea, sentencing, or any parole proceeding.
(5) The reasonable right to confer with the attorney for the Government in the case.
(6) The right to full and timely restitution as provided in law.
(7) The right to proceedings free from unreasonable delay.
(8) The right to be treated with fairness and with respect for the victim’s dignity and privacy.
(b) RIGHTS AFFORDED.–In any court proceeding involving an offense against a crime victim, the court shall ensure that the crime victim is afforded the rights described in subsection (a). Before making a determination described in subsection (a)(3), the court shall make every effort to permit the fullest attendance possible by the victim and shall consider reasonable alternatives to the exclusion of the victim from the criminal proceeding. The reasons for any decision denying relief under this chapter shall be clearly stated on the record.
(c) BEST EFFORTS TO ACCORD RIGHTS.–
(1) GOVERNMENT.–Officers and employees of the Department of Justice and other departments and agencies of the United States engaged in the detection, investigation, or prosecution of crime shall make their best efforts to see that crime victims are notified of, and accorded, the rights described in subsection (a).
(2) ADVICE OF ATTORNEY.–The prosecutor shall advise the crime victim that the crime victim can seek the advice of an attorney with respect to the rights described in subsection (a).
(3) NOTICE.–Notice of release otherwise required pursuant to this chapter shall not be given if such notice may endanger the safety of any person.
(d) ENFORCEMENT AND LIMITATIONS.–
(1) RIGHTS.–The crime victim or the crime victim’s lawful representative, and the attorney for the Government may assert the rights described in subsection (a). A person accused of the crime may not obtain any form of relief under this chapter.
(2) MULTIPLE CRIME VICTIMS.–In a case where the court finds that the number of crime victims makes it impracticable to accord all of the crime victims the rights described in subsection (a), the court shall fashion a reasonable procedure to give effect to this chapter that does not unduly complicate or prolong the proceedings.
(3) MOTION FOR RELIEF AND WRIT OF MANDAMUS.–The rights described in subsection (a) shall be asserted in the district court in which a defendant is being prosecuted for the crime or, if no prosecution is underway, in the district court in the district in which the crime occurred. The district court shall take up and decide any motion asserting a victim’s right forthwith. If the district court denies the relief sought, the movant may petition the court of appeals for a writ of mandamus. The court of appeals may issue the writ on the order of a single judge pursuant to circuit rule or the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure. The court of appeals shall take up and decide such application forthwith within 72 hours after the petition has been filed. In no event shall proceedings be stayed or subject to a continuance of more than five days for purposes of enforcing this chapter. If the court of appeals denies the relief sought, the reasons for the denial shall be clearly stated on the record in a written opinion.
(4) ERROR.–In any appeal in a criminal case, the Government may assert as error the district court’s denial of any crime victim’s right in the proceeding to which the appeal relates.
(5) LIMITATION ON RELIEF.–In no case shall a failure to afford a right under this chapter provide grounds for a 2263 new trial. A victim may make a motion to re-open a plea or sentence only if–
(A) the victim has asserted the right to be heard before or during the proceeding at issue and such right was denied;
(B) the victim petitions the court of appeals for a writ of mandamus within 10 days; and
(C) in the case of a plea, the accused has not pled to the highest offense charged. This paragraph does not affect the victim’s right to restitution as provided in title 18, United States Code.
(6) NO CAUSE OF ACTION.–Nothing in this chapter shall be construed to authorize a cause of action for damages or to create, to enlarge, or to imply any duty or obligation to any victim or other person for the breach of which the United States or any of its officers or employees could be held liable in damages. Nothing in this chapter shall be construed to impair the prosecutorial discretion of the Attorney General or any officer under his direction.
(e) DEFINITIONS.–For the purposes of this chapter, the term ‘crime victim’ means a person directly and proximately harmed as a result of the commission of a Federal offense or an offense in the District of Columbia. In the case of a crime victim who is under 18 years of age, incompetent, incapacitated, or deceased, the legal guardians of the crime victim or the representatives of the crime victim’s estate, family members, or any other persons appointed as suitable by the court, may assume the crime victim’s rights under this chapter, but in no event shall the defendant be named as such guardian or representative.
(f) PROCEDURES TO PROMOTE COMPLIANCE.–
(1) REGULATIONS.–Not later than 1 year after the date of enactment of this chapter, the Attorney General of the United States shall promulgate regulations to enforce the rights of crime victims and to ensure compliance by responsible officials with the obligations described in law respecting crime victims.
(2) CONTENTS.–The regulations promulgated under paragraph (1) shall–
(A) designate an administrative authority within the Department of Justice to receive and investigate complaints relating to the provision or violation of the rights of a crime victim;
(B) require a course of training for employees and offices of the Department of Justice that fail to comply with provisions of Federal law pertaining to the treatment of crime victims, and otherwise assist such employees and offices in responding more effectively to the needs of crime victims;
(C) contain disciplinary sanctions, including suspension or termination from employment, for employees of the Department of Justice who willfully or wantonly fail to comply with provisions of Federal law pertaining to the treatment of crime victims; and
(D) provide that the Attorney General, or the designee of the Attorney General, shall be the final arbiter of the complaint, and that there shall be no judicial review of the final decision of the Attorney General by a complainant.”
The rights described in subsection (a) shall be asserted in the district court in which a defendant is being prosecuted for the crime or, if no prosecution is underway, in the district court in the district in which the crime occurred.
(8) The right to be treated with fairness and with respect for the victim’s dignity and privacy.
“No, rather than abolish the courts, I favor everyone who intentionally violates any law having the simple conscientious courage to voluntarily appear before the courts, according to free will of conscience, confess fully to all violations, and be properly punished, so that the law treats those who are caught and those who are not caught with equanimity.”
Good luck with that. Sociopaths and psychopaths have no conscience (or a severely impaired one at best). They will not show up to court unless compelled.
“I object to the social convention that it is not a crime if one does not get caught, because I consistently observe such convention teaching people to be scoff-laws.”
I’ll agree with the fact that such an idea – I don’t think I’d call it a convention within the legal community for lawyers who express such an idea are little better than criminals themselves – most certainly teaches the wrong lesson. However, a crime is still a crime whether the perpetrator is caught or not. They are just an un-convicted criminal.
Some people are as though blind to certain forms of humor, or so it might seem.
No, rather than abolish the courts, I favor everyone who intentionally violates any law having the simple conscientious courage to voluntarily appear before the courts, according to free will of conscience, confess fully to all violations, and be properly punished, so that the law treats those who are caught and those who are not caught with equanimity.
I object to the social convention that it is not a crime if one does not get caught, because I consistently observe such convention teaching people to be scoff-laws.
I sometimes travel with a GPS system which displays my actual ground speed to about a tenth of a mile per hour, and I commonly observe people passing me on hills with double-yellow lines when I am within a tenth of a mile per hour of the posted speed limit.
I have practiced driving into the ditch to avoid being in a three-car collision when people do that and an oncoming car suddenly appears while the car illegally passing me has not gotten in front of my car.
Something has taught many people to hold the law in disdain whenever they believe they can “get away with it.” It is that sense of lawlessness, and its associated dangers, which has led me to work at figuring out why so many people, (who do not include me) are intent on violating laws, regardless of danger to self or others, as though breaking laws is a powerful addiction.
I am actually not the person with any vendetta; I actually do have concerns regarding safety and those aspects of human society which, if made more directly truthful, might improve actual safety of living persons.
I write what I am able to write, and my concerns get twisted into bizarre forms, and, when that happens, I look into what happened to a real and genuine concern of mine, and how my concerns about actual safety turn into someone’s sincere belief that my concerns are quite the opposite of the concerns I actually have.
It is not my experiences with the courts which concern me, people who have been pushed to and beyond the brink of suicide or homicide are my concern.
My actual experience is so simple that people who believe life has to be complicated are unable to believe that I believe what I believe.
Based on decades of observation, it is my belief that whatever happens, without exception or possibility of exception, is exactly and always what is both necessary and sufficient.
However, it is also my life long observation that people who are aware of danger and do nothing to reduce it may be among the most dangerous people of all.
So, I describe what I have learned, without having any notion of whether what I have learned may be of any use to anyone, including myself.
Yet people seem to insist that I have some sort of agenda which is not an aspect of my life, and when I object to having agendas assigned to me by people who do not know me, sooner or later, someone decides to act as though agendas which are neither mine nor came through or from me are my agendas.
Why on earth are there any thread starting stories on this blawg if everything is perfect in every way, and no one ever breaks any law because they (people) were broken through some prior happening?
Were I to guess, and guesses are meaningless, I would guess that I am more in favor of justice than almost anyone else in the world. But, what, in truth, is justice other than a definition of something brutal which does not actually exist because it is impossible?
But of course then since your personal experience with the courts was bad, Brian, it makes sense to dispose of the courts altogether.
Fallacy of Composition; deductive fallacy
Just because justice didn’t work out to your satisfaction doesn’t mean it has no value to society.
Argument by vendetta still doesn’t prove your point.
Stamford Liberal said: “Incredibly, in writing for the 5-4 majority, Thomas said that Thompson didn’t deserve any money because he couldn’t prove that there was a pattern of similar violations in previous cases, or that prosecutors deliberately set out to violate the Constitution.”
In her dissent, Justice Ruth Ginsburg made clear that “…the trial record in the §1983 action reveals, the conceded, long-concealed prosecutorial transgressions were neither isolated nor atypical.
From the top down, the evidence showed, members of the District Attorney’s Office, including the District Attorney himself, inadequately attended to their disclosure obligations. Throughout the pretrial and trial proceedings …the team of four …hid from the defense and the court exculpatory information Thompson requested and had a constitutional right to receive. The prosecutors did so despite multiple opportunities, spanning nearly two decades, to set the record straight. Based on the prosecutors’ conduct relating to Thompson’s trials, a fact trier could reasonably conclude that inattention to Brady was standard operating procedure at the District Attorney’s Office.
What happened here, the Court’s opinion obscures, was no momentary oversight, no single incident of a lone officer’s misconduct. Instead, the evidence demonstrated that misperception and disregard of Brady’s disclosure requirements were pervasive in Orleans Parish. That evidence, I would hold, established persistent, deliberately indifferent conduct for which the District Attorney’s Office bears responsibility under §1983.”
Here is an excellent article about the case from 30 Mar 2011:
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/03/prosecutors-get-a-mulligan-wrongfully-convicted-man-gets-squat/73197/#
Obviously, John Thomson was wrong to seek compensation; ignorance of fact excuses but ignorance of law does not excuse.
So, what is the law?
The best summary I have yet found is in the Legal Maxims at the back of my copy of Black’s Ninth, as in English:
“The ignorance of the judge is the misfortune of the innocent.”
Is death itself the as-yet-only achievable form of justice?
Surely, I am terribly defective, for I prefer life.
What on earth is wrong with me?
What Does Clarence Thomas Have Against Black People?
Black America Web, Commentary, Tonyaa Weathersbee, Posted: Apr 06, 2011
Maybe John Thompson reminded Clarence Thomas of a childhood nemesis.
Maybe Thompson, who spent 14 years on Louisiana’s Death Row when prosecutors deliberately withheld evidence that would have proved his innocence, reminded the Supreme Court justice of one of the bullies who taunted him about his coal-black skin.
Or maybe, at least in Thomas’ eyes, Thompson quickly morphed into a black man who was looking for a handout instead of justice.
Or maybe it’s all of the above. It has to be. Because there’s no way that any fair-minded jurist would turn the sort of legal cartwheels that Thomas and his four other conservative colleagues on the high court recently turned to side with the New Orleans District Attorney’s Office in tossing out a $14 million verdict in Thompson’s favor.
Here’s what happened. In 1985, Thompson, then 22, was convicted of murder and armed robbery in Louisiana. He was sentenced to death on the murder conviction and came within weeks of being executed in 1999 when his investigators learned that prosecutors failed to turn over evidence that would have freed him.
Among that evidence was the fact that the main informant had received a reward from the victim’s family and that the eyewitness identification didn’t match. Most of all, prosecutors deliberately concealed blood evidence and a lab report that would have cleared Thompson.
This they hid for 20 years.
Thompson’s convictions were overturned, and he sued Harry Connick Sr., the district attorney for Orleans Parish, for not schooling his prosecutors about their legal obligation to turn over such evidence to the defense. That obligation was laid out in a 1963 case, Brady v. Maryland, in which the Supreme Court said that to withhold such evidence is a violation of the defendant’s constitutional rights.
Connick, in fact, even conceded that he didn’t completely understand what Brady encompassed. A jury awarded Thompson $14 million.
But it seems that Thomas – who wrote the majority opinion in tossing out the verdict – was more than willing to join his white conservative cohorts in trampling the Constitution to give the powerful more ammunition to keep the powerless in their place.
Incredibly, in writing for the 5-4 majority, Thomas said that Thompson didn’t deserve any money because he couldn’t prove that there was a pattern of similar violations in previous cases, or that prosecutors deliberately set out to violate the Constitution.
He and his buddy, Antonin Scalia, basically said it was unfair for the entire prosecutor’s office to be held responsible for one bad act. As if it wasn’t unfair for Thompson, who is now 40, to have spent 18 years of his life – 14 of those on Death Row – locked up for a crime he didn’t commit.
That’s a heartless, wrongheaded decision – and one that flies in the face of what Thomas is supposed to be about.
Thomas is, after all, a man who is supposed to be a champion of individual responsibility for black people.
So then, why doesn’t he extend that expectation of responsibility to powerful institutions, such as district attorney’s offices, to make sure that prosecutors don’t almost cause an innocent person to be put to death because they withheld evidence that could free them?
Why is it that Thomas, a black man who grew up in Georgia during a time of lynchings and other injustices against black men, is so willing to contort the Constitution and human decency to make a decision that will invariably give prosecutors more leeway to get innocent black people like Thompson killed?
I have to believe it’s either a need for revenge against his childhood tormentors or all those blacks who cheered on his adult nemesis Anita Hill. Or maybe it’s a just a need to be different.
Many times, for black people, being different means having no history. It means being willing to sidestep the truth and fairness to show how colorblind they are and how they are not like all those other black people.
And, in the end, it’s a sad place to be.
http://newamericamedia.org/2011/04/what-does-clarence-thomas-have-against-black-people.php
RE: Anonymously Yours, April 12, 2011 at 11:54 am
Brian,
Your posts are shorter…I am reading them….but what did you just say?
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I did not “just say” anything; I did write a few words, however.
The words were not intended to mean anything to those who find them meaningless. For those who did not find the words meaningless, I leave what they may mean to whoever finds meaning.
Like everyone else, what I write is intended for whoever finds what I write in any way useful, and this especially includes those who find the only use for what I write to be about what not to write about.
Perhaps the following point will clarify what I earlier wrote.
.
Brian,
Your posts are shorter…I am reading them….but what did you just say?
RE: Pete Smith, April 12, 2011 at 11:15 am
Kay S.,
Where have you been Joe has been looking for you too. Come on back to the other site. It has not been the same without you. You have been missed, did the Doctor ever get those meds right? I had heard you had another episode. Call Ellen, she wants to hear from you.
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Why does social tradition make hurting more someone who may have experienced harm the proper choice, when listening to a concern might improve shared understanding of what it is to be a person who may have met with harm?
Why is making sure that actual understanding of harm is ruled out considered the only proper way to rule people who may have been harmed?
Buddha Is Laughing 1, April 12, 2011 at 9:56 am
“Even more money could be saved if only one witness is needed for conviction, and the witness is also the judge (no juries, they cost too much and may have a divided opinion) and lawful executioner?”
There are a couple of words that describe such a scenario.
Lawless vigilantism and anarchy.
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“Lawless vigilantism and anarchy”?
You have described my experiences with the Door County Circuit Court in a mere four words far more accurately than any words I have ever been able to find?
Thanks for your help with words, though I would guess that it was not cooperation?
Ain’t super-sarcastic-cynicism (as in my purposefully-ridiculous ultra-absurd posted comment of April 12, 2011 at 6:41 am) a terrific way of improving communication?
I just have a different way of hurling epithets, for I work to make sure that my epithets simply make no sense whatsoever.
Commonplace epithets make no sense to me, either, however.