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?
[her lawyer] Greenwood immediately asked Lipps for her bank records. Once they were in hand, Fargo police met with him and Lipps at the Cass County jail on Dec. 19. She had already been in jail for more than five months. It was the first time police interviewed her.
Her bank records showed she was more than 1,200 miles away, at home in Tennessee at the same time police claimed she was in Fargo committing fraud.
What she went through is frightening. I hope she is able to sue them for a whole lot. The article says, “Unable to pay her bills from jail, she lost her home, her car and even her dog.” How is facial recognition software enough to get someone jailed?
Fargo Mayor Tim Mahoney issued a wishy-washy statement, “What I can say is that the issuance of an arrest warrant for Ms. Lipps indicates that a court determined probable cause existed for the charges. While the charges were later dismissed without prejudice, that procedural step simply means the charges may be re-filed if additional investigation supports doing so. The Fargo Police Department continues to actively investigate this matter and continues to follow the criminal justice process.”
In short, “I deny nothing!”
And in what I’m sure is completely unrelated news, “Fargo Police Chief Dave Zibolski is retiring later this month. Mayor Tim Mahoney said he received a letter from Zibolski on Tuesday announcing his plans to retire after his last day on March 27th. Zibolski made the announcement to his officers during a shift change meeting later
that day. In a statement released Wednesday, Zibolski thanked the community of Fargo and called it a privilege to work alongside the men and women of the department. He is retiring after a 41-year career in law enforcement to spend time with his wife, kids and grandkids.”
I don’t see how using facial recognition software alone to make an arrest and detain someone is not unconstitutional. That is not due process.
It needs to be determined who authorized the warrant and why in the wake of this debacle.
So North Dakota police saw a supposed facial match of a random person in Tennessee and had her arrested???
Yup. Sent US Marshals to grab her and take her to North Dakota. Absolutely no evidence of her involvement aside from a facial recognition software match from what I’ve read. And she was in jail for months, with nobody in law enforcement even talking to her.
I don’t see how you not only can get a warrant but detain someone for almost half a year based on nothing more than AI saying “gosh this looks a lot like this person”. That should be fucking terrifying for everyone.
I’ll bet nearly everybody has known two people who could almost be twins, sometimes even in the same city. But to think there couldn’t be two similar people in the entire country?
And note, she has never been in North Dakota. What eventually exonerated her was an ironclad alibi that she was over a thousand miles away when the crime happened. Something that took months to finally get her freed.
After she was freed, she had nothing. They took her entire life away from her. The only reason why she wasn’t homeless on Christmas Day and was able to get back to Tennessee is because a charity organization helped her out.
Fargo police did not cover Angela’s expenses to get home after her release from jail. Local defense attorneys gave her money to pay for a hotel room and food on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.
The day after Christmas, F5 Project founder Adam Martin drove Lipps to Chicago so she could get home to Tennessee. Fargo-based F5 Project is an organization providing services and resources to individuals struggling with incarceration, mental health and addiction.
The other fucked up thing is that she was labeled a “fugitive”. And that is why she was denied bail. A fugitive because she evaded the North Dakota authorities though the canny and clever maneuver of having never set foot in the state.
I hope someone takes up this cause for her and sues the shit out of the abusers in North Dakota.