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.
I don’t know this “Pete Smith”. The only “Elaine” I know I haven’t heard from in 30 years. You are obviously not my friend.
You “Budda” are not my friend and apparently not a mental health practitioner. I think you are a retired divorce attorney. That is a profession famous for hurting people and for engaging in malicious injunction and malicious prosecution — i.e. getting criminal prosecutions without a basis in law and fact and requesting their clients to make baseless criminal complaints for the purpose of financial advantage.
Per the Colorado Rules of Professional Conduct
RULE 4.5. THREATENING PROSECUTION
(a) A lawyer shall not threaten criminal, administrative or disciplinary charges to
obtain an advantage in a civil matter nor shall a lawyer present or participate in
presenting criminal, administrative or disciplinary charges solely to obtain an
advantage in a civil matter.
Not appropriate, eh?
Your friends being concerned about your health is not appropriate according to kay.
But perpetually hijacking someone else’s blog is somehow appropriate, isn’t it, kay.
I kind of doubt you understand the parameters of appropriate, kay. That or you don’t understand the parameters of friendship. Maybe both. Probably both. You seem to have an issue with parameters as they apply to your behavior, so that you’d have problems with them as they apply to the behavior of others is not too shocking.
People who do not like you or are indifferent to you have told you that you need to get help.
People who are your friends and do care about you have told you that you need to get help.
What’s the common denominator there, kay?
Kay,
What is not appropriate? We are concerned about you. You have not contacted anyone of us. What do we have to do to make you aware of this concern?
“Pete Smith”
Not appropriate
Kay,
Did you call Ellen? She wants to hear from you. If she does not answer the phone, just go over there. You what she does. Joe and I are very worried about your health. I hope you remember my number. I have lost yours, so please call.
Judicial conduct is involved in criminal procedure as well
This just came in my email
from ATLaw
Legislative committee recommends increasing JQC budget
5:02 pm, April 12th, 2011
The Georgia General Assembly’s House and Senate Conference Committee made a final recommendation this morning to increase the budget of the Judicial Qualifications Commission, the state’s judicial disciplinary agency, by $157,491 in FY 2012 – a 62 percent increase over its current $251,749 annual budget. Provided that the conference committee’s recommendation receives final passage this week and is signed by Gov. Nathan Deal, the JQC’s 2012 budget next year will rise to $409,240.
The anticipated budget increase will be used in the investigation and potential prosecution of judges by the commission, Director Jeffrey R. Davis said. Complaints about judges are increasing, Davis said.
Last year, the JQC received 489 complaints and docketed 33, Davis said. A complaint is docketed and investigated if the alleged facts would constitute a violation of the state Code of Judicial Conduct, if true. This fiscal year, which began July 1, the JQC has already received 400 complaints – 12 of which came in this morning, Davis said. Of those, 75 have been docketed and will be investigated.
Less than four months ago, the JQC faced a $106,000 financial shortfall, having spent more than 90 percent of the agency’s yearly budget for investigations that last year led to multiple resignations, the trial of a probate judge who was suspended and then removed from office, and a public reprimand. Last month, the JQC got a financial shot in the arm when the state legislature appropriated an additional $91,734 to keep its doors open and pay more than $50,000 in back legal bills.
The JQC monitors the state’s 1,800 judges with two full-time employees and a chief investigator who bills the agency hourly – at about a third of his usual rate – for his work.
Davis singled out Georgia Speaker of the House David Ralston, a Blue Ridge attorney, and Rep. Tim Bearden, chairman of the House Public Safety Committee (which oversees the JQC’s budget requests), “and the leadership in both the House and Senate for recognizing the JQC’s critical need for appropriate funding.”
“The legislature appreciates the vital role of the JQC in ensuring public confidence in the judicial system,” Davis continued. “Adequate funding for the JQC is critical if we are to continue to fully investigate and prosecute allegations of judicial misconduct.”
Brian,
Would you care to take a dare…that what you post is what is offensive… if you posted or contributed something substantial other that verbal wordy diatribes people would not be so incensed… You have continually done so and this is what I objected to… To be honest with you I quit reading your posts…why…nothing substantive….You bring neither humor or intellect but yet disrespect to all of the people you profess to represent under color and cloak of permission of the professor…
Let me ask you a question, ok? If you are in church and the choir is singing Bringing in the Sheep and you broke out singing Smoke on the Water… what would you expect to get?
Would you holler fire at the top of your lungs in a movie theater that is crowded? hat if you are the only white person in a room….
Take a different approach or please do as a number of folks here have asked….TAKE A HIKE.
I ask you yesterday what something was suppose to mean…Your response to me whatever you want it to mean…. You are ok being taken for an idiot in your circle….I read this site for information…If I wanted to read shit…I could say…read stuff in bathroom walls at a real seedy bar… at least some of that is humorous…As I said you are not..
Get in sync or sink on your own….I have stated that I would ask the professor to spam all of your future postings…. We all have something viable to contribute… Please do your share….
Is not the essence of autism being not socially well-adjusted?
Is anything else a better indicator of autism?
Was being autistic not mentioned repeatedly?
Is there any real “cure” for autism except suicide or being murdered?
Has difficulty with getting words to work been kept hidden?
Is autism a character flaw if it is not actually a willful choice?
Why has no attorney told autistic people how to never violate any law?
Why does no attorney tell autistic people exactly what the law is before it can be violated, so autistic people can avoid any and all violations of law?
What would actually explain the so-called “autism epidemic”?
Why have many autistic people asked me to do what I have done?
Does what has happened here inform anyone as to why no other autistic person has apparently been willing to do what I have been asked to do?
Why do “non-autistic” people “hate” people who are autistic?
As this blawg is for adversarial disputes, have I been insufficiently adversarial and disputatious?
Is being contentious and irksome and adversarial and disputatious and and cantankerous and despicable and demeaning and degrading and judgmental and divisive other than the sole overall way whereby this community enjoys cooperation?
Is stirring things up the essence of cooperation here?
Given the observed turmoil here before I began posting, surely I have cooperated effectively by adding to the turmoil?
Has anyone here learned anything about profound autism in the past few months?
As I am not taken seriously, no one will reply to this?
Brian, you definitely have one thing right: “….many people who, like me, and for cause, are not socially well-adjusted.”
I think you are too modest. Not socially well-adjusted is an understatement. As far as I have been able to tell, you have no real social skills at all. You post long, rambling screeds that have no relevance to the topic at hand. Your favorite words seem to be “I” and “me.” While at times your sentence structure makes some sense, at other times it is little more than word salad. You resist a reasonable exchange of ideas, but plow on with no regard to logic or reason. And if you think that people take you seriously, you are sadly mistaken.
As BIL would say, thank you for your cooperation in these matters.
Oops, typo:
“I choose t o ignore any of those things”
was intended to read
“I choose to not ignore any of those things”
Was that a typographical mistake I could have avoided without taking more time to proofread than I deemed necessary?
Otteray Scribe 1, April 13, 2011 at 12:04 am
Brian, live in your fantasy world of your own construction. I do not care. The only thing you do around here is to be annoying. I do not care if you leave or stay on this blog, but wish you would stop hijacking threads with irrelevant verbal diarrhea. You have now admitted that your version of what you are calling science is not understandable by anyone but yourself. Not true. My committee members all understood my work, or they would not have approved my dissertation.Fine. Go play in your sandbox and do not expect anyone else to be interested. Did it occur to you that if no one but you can commune with your ideas, you have failed, utterly? Not true. I communicate very well with many people who, like me, and for cause, are not socially well-adjusted.
Also, if you do not understand what I meant by things like statistical properties, then you are not a scientist but a self absorbed, uninteresting, and irrelevant person who goes around mumbling to himself. What statistical properties do you mistakenly believe I do not understand? Base rate priors are usually applicable to sets of different populations, while my work was based only on the set of people (or single population) with whom I actually spoke in person. If you do understand these things and deliberately choose to ignore them, then you are a fraud. I choose t o ignore any of those things. Pick one. I know what I think, but that is not important any more.
BTW, do not try to pass your ramblings off as science. They are not science but as BIL said, some sort of speculation and gibberish.
What I have been doing here is not what I would call science, were I using what I guess you understand science is.
Brian, live in your fantasy world of your own construction. I do not care. The only thing you do around here is to be annoying. I do not care if you leave or stay on this blog, but wish you would stop hijacking threads with irrelevant verbal diarrhea. You have now admitted that your version of what you are calling science is not understandable by anyone but yourself. Fine. Go play in your sandbox and do not expect anyone else to be interested. Did it occur to you that if no one but you can commune with your ideas, you have failed, utterly?
Also, if you do not understand what I meant by things like statistical properties, then you are not a scientist but a self absorbed, uninteresting, and irrelevant person who goes around mumbling to himself. If you do understand these things and deliberately choose to ignore them, then you are a fraud. Pick one. I know what I think, but that is not important any more.
BTW, do not try to pass your ramblings off as science. They are not science but as BIL said, some sort of speculation and gibberish.
http://www.aclu.org/blog/capital-punishment/end-line-troy-davis
The End of the Line for Troy Davis?
Tanya Greene, Center for Justice
April 12, 2011
Troy Davis is probably innocent.
Probably innocent — is that the standard we now use to justify executing people?
Last week, the United States Supreme Court ended any real chance Davis had that the courts would stop his execution. He is now at the end of the road, and the state of Georgia could set a new date for his execution at any moment. The last time he had an execution date, in a highly unusual move, the Supreme Court agreed to hear his case just two hours before the execution. But this time, if he gets two hours from execution again, there will probably be no stay.
end excerpt
Otteray Scribe 1, April 12, 2011 at 10:17 pm
OK, sport. What is your base rate? What is the SEM of your so called study? What is the size of your sample group? Can your so called study be replicated?
Base rate of what? (Please specify what base you have in mind.) My study consisted of a single population, the people with whom I spoke and of whom I asked those three questions about mistakes.
What was the standard error of the mean in my research data? Identically zero, because no one could truthfully describe any mistake actually made and also describe or demonstrate the actually achievable process through which the mistake actually made could actually have been avoided. For the dissertation, the population size was about 400 people.
Why not an exact number? Because I began the work unwittingly, simply by talking with my peer psychiatric patients regarding what had happened to us that we were psychiatric inpatients. I had no notion at first that what I was doing would lead to anything other than my spending the rest of my life as a homeless severe chronic psychotic human failure specimen.
The gist of what I find is sent my way here, is that I am such a failure specimen. Alas, I hold a contrasting view.
Were there an irony, my base rate prior for socially well-adjusted people who will, at first, regard my work as junk is 100 percent plus or minus 0 percent.
There is a roughly inverse function between being socially well-adjusted and finding my work of some plausible use.
You all are free to dance around all you wish. You have, however, not refuted the finding of my work to the effect that no one can reproducibly demonstrate how a mistake already actually made could have actually have been avoided through a demonstrably achievable process before it was actually made after it had already actually been made.
When I have the leisure time, I intend to go through my dissertation and fix the most blatant typographical errors which the violation of the University minimum time from thesis proposal to defense ruled out my correcting before my committee members had to approve the dissertation in its seriously incompleted form.
If you stop attacking me, I will stop mentioning my work here. I learned what I came to learn, though what I have learned has been mostly unexpected by me in its details.
To me, atheism and secular humanism are just two of many established religious sects.
Because the work was done during the ordinary course of my life, as a naturalistic experiment in which each person was the person’s own longitudinal control, and because the work was done as an aspect of my being an inadvertent psychiatric patient following a total colectomy with ileo-rectal anastomosis and a morphine-induced psychosis, there is no way on earth or elsewhere to reproduce the naturalistic experiment of my doctorate. What is reproducible is no one ever being able to truthfully describe even one mistake (same bunch of words).
Can my study be replicated? No, it is one of a kind in forever, as best I can discern. Did my research develop a reproducible experiment which would invalidate the research were the research faulty? Absolutely.
What will trash my doctorate forever? One mistake that actually happened, truthfully described, and the method whereby the mistake actually made could have been avoided demonstrated truthfully and unambiguously, such that the mistake actually made did not happen when it happened after it had actually happened.
If your answer to ANY of these questions is “I don’t know” or “Those data do not exist,” then your so called study is just more of that famous barnyard product.
Observe that I have not answered ANY of those questions with “I don’t know,” or with “Those data do not exist.”
Science is studying that which is observable, presenting it to peers and letting them try to replicate it. And any study with no statistical properties is the equivalent of dribbling food on your chin and drooling on yourself.
It is observable by me, as it was to all of my committee members, as it has been with every person with whom I have spoken about my work, face-to-face in person, that no one has ever told me about even one mistake actually made and demonstrated the achievable process whereby the mistake actually made could actually have been avoided. I truly welcome someone demonstrating a mistake actually made (and I mean a real mistake, not a theatrical play of a pretend mistake that is scripted in advance) and demonstrating how the mistake actually made could have been avoided after it had already been made.
Mistakes are necessarily unexpected, if it planned and expected, it is not a mistake because mistakes, by every intelligible definition I have ever heard of, are not fully anticipated by the person or persons who make them, even if someone else, having different circumstances would have avoided making a similar sort of mistake in circumstances not the ones in which the mistake actually happened.
What I guess may next happen may be the next comment in response to this will being like a tailless dog that does not exist chasing its own tail.
So, laugh away at will.
I have been laughed at for almost the whole of my life by well-adjusted people. Such laughter keeps me going. It may well turn out to be my favorite effort reinforcement.
I doubt that there is more of value about mistakes that I can possibly learn from this blawg. However, I am not going to go away unless Professor Turley, in a verifiable way, asks me to go away. I give to no one else such authority as I hold belongs only to Professor Turley.
And Brian?
You can’t refuse to answer OS’s questions about your study methodology by claiming “it wouldn’t be ethical” either.
Well.
I supposed you could, but it would just make us laugh at that lame excuse again.
“Forensic psychology is firmly grounded in ‘normal science.’ My work is not so grounded, on purpose.”
Yeah, we kinda noticed your work wasn’t grounded in science when you displayed faulty logic, made up terms, made up history, appeals to religious authority and refused to defend (or even properly define) your “work” in the face of criticism.
Purposefully not grounded in normal science?
Your “work” isn’t even grounded in reality, Brian.
It’s opinion and raw speculation backed with nothing of substance when not outright gibberish.
OK, sport. What is your base rate? What is the SEM of your so called study? What is the size of your sample group? Can your so called study be replicated?
If your answer to ANY of these questions is “I don’t know” or “Those data do not exist,” then your so called study is just more of that famous barnyard product.
Science is studying that which is observable, presenting it to peers and letting them try to replicate it. And any study with no statistical properties is the equivalent of dribbling food on your chin and drooling on yourself.
Otteray Scribe 1, April 12, 2011 at 9:37 pm
And one more thing. You talk about have a doctorate in bioengineering. BFD. I have a doctorate too and am a
Board certified diplomate in two specialties, one of which is forensic psychology. And I have a lot of research design experience under my belt. I say again, you have no idea what you are talking about.
####################################
You do not know when to quit?
I do know what I am doing and you don’t.
What on earth give you the belief that you understand my work well enough to believe what you write?
Forensic psychology is firmly grounded in “normal science.” My work is not so grounded, on purpose.
Walter Elsasser, in the Preface of “Reflections on a Theory of Organisms, remarks to the effect that biology is not a field in which people are at home in the mode of thought that underlies the formation of theories, and it is my experience so far that biologists are far more at home in that mode of thought than are folks with social science (including psychology) degrees.
My work is based in biophysics; I was a physics major prior to transferring to bioengineering, and I am at home in the mode of thought that is necessary for theory formation at the scientific revolution level.
If you have not done really original scientific research, of the sort properly described as of exceptional originality, you may not be familiar enough with the mode of thought appropriate for the work I do. That is not anything that makes you a lesser person than I am, but it may limit your ability to fathom the work I do enough to sort out whether or not you have the background necessary for accurately understanding it.
I am quite happy to allow that, within your available frames of reference, my work is nonsense. That, however only addresses the differences between your frame of reference and mine, and not the validity of my work within the frame of reference appropriate to it.
The work of new-paradigm science and the work of conventional science of simple extensions (even if very significant) of settled work contrast profoundly.
My work mostly not of conventional, normal science, as most folks have learned of science and of how to do scientific research.
My committee members were cognizant of the high probability that my work would be summarily rejected by people whose science is not of new-paradigm-formation.
That you sincerely have no idea what I am writing about is not an indicator of anything other than what you believe, and has nothing to do with me, or my understanding of the work I do.
“Theory of mind” is the name I find sometimes used to describe the notion that one person can know of another person what you seem to claim to know of me.
In my work, “theory of mind” is of confabulation.
There is a simple option here. I am willing to stop this process, having learned as much as I deem plausible.
However, I have archived the comments I have made and the ones which relate to the comments I have made, and will use them as I find appropriate, in the public safety interest when the time comes for doing that.
So, for whatever it may be worth, the fact (if it is a fact) that you do not know what I am writing about is in no way whatsoever an indicator of what I do or do not know.
Ego boundary violation is a curiosity in its own right.
I find your seeming attempt to define me in terms of yourself to be a form of ego boundary violation.
And one more thing. You talk about have a doctorate in bioengineering. BFD. I have a doctorate too and am a
Board certified diplomate in two specialties, one of which is forensic psychology. And I have a lot of research design experience under my belt. I say again, you have no idea what you are talking about.