Forget it, Jake. It’s Texas.
I saw a Youtube short where a defendant was being ill-served by his public defender and the prosecutor kept delaying the trial and he stayed in jail. When he finally got a day in court on some preliminary hearing after a year he told the judge what was happening. The judge got angry at the defendant telling him how he should have notified the judge and if he knew what was going on he would never allow that to happen. The defendant said he had notified the court … numerous times. The judge said not my fault and somehow still tried to victim blame the defendant.
Oh wait no. I saw that twice, same judge, different defendant.
DEI at work?
Well, it is promoting diversity I guess. Let’s wrongfully kill innocent people from all walks of life.
Just like, “I’m not racist because I have a black friend.” it’s “We’re not racist because we killed a white dude.”
I contemplated putting this in the evil mofo thread or the stupid mofo thread. But the sentence clinched it for me.
This is definitely a miscarriage of justice.
Read the article for more mindboggling revelations.
Come to think of it, this could even fit in the alternative to juries thread.
US Supreme Court rules that child-abuser should have been able to confront his 4-year-old daughter in court instead of her being behind a screen, because the original trial court didn’t make a special finding that the screen was necessary, they just went ahead and provided it to save the girl further trauma.
Lower court can still decide that conviction would have occurred nonetheless, but who knows what will happen?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/11/24/supreme-court-screen-mississippi/
WaPo gift link: https://wapo.st/48h7SVW
The Supreme Court on Monday morning sent the case of a Mississippi man convicted of abusing his daughter back to the state courts for another look.
In the case of Jeffrey Pitts, his daughter testified at his trial – over Pitts’ objection but pursuant to a state law – from behind a screen. When Pitts was convicted, he appealed, arguing that the Sixth Amendment’s confrontation clause, which gives defendants in a criminal trial the right to confront the witnesses against them, required the trial court to find that the screen was necessary in his specific case.
The Mississippi Supreme Court ruled against him, but on Monday the Supreme Court reversed and sent the case back for a new look. The confrontation clause, it explained in a five-page, unsigned opinion, “tolerates screening in child-abuse cases only if a court ‘hear[s] evidence’ and issues a ‘case-specific’ finding of ‘[t]he requisite . . . necessity’” – something that did not happen in this case.
In February 2021, a Rankin County jury found Pitts guilty of sexual battery. He was sentenced to 30 years in prison. But Pitts argues the trial court made no finding that the screen was needed. Instead, Pitts said, prosecutors invoked a Mississippi law that gives child witnesses the absolute right to a screen that allows them to testify without seeing the defendant. That violated his constitutional rights, necessitating a new trial, Pitts said.
Stuart Banner, Pitts’s attorney, was pleased with Monday’s order. “The Court corrected an egregious error that took place at Mr. Pitts’s trial,” Banner, who works with the UCLA School of Law Supreme Court Clinic, said in an email.
Was this 4 year old in a courtroom, on the stand, testifying about sexual abuse???
What the fuck world do I live in???
This has been the case since basically the founding of this country. It goes back to the Bill of Rights.
How is a friggin’ law passed by the legislature that requires screens not a finding that a screen is necessary?
And in which child-abuse cases is the requisite screen not a necessity?