Just a couple of hours ago, Legal Eagle weighed in on this issue. Devin just can’t get over how insane this whole case is, at one point showing that one of the arguments the prosecution is making is something literally out of a Key and Peele sketch (where law enforcement assumes that rap lyrics are a literal confession or incitement to violence).
It’s a good video.
If that makes you a bad person then count me as one too. I have a sneaking suspicion that we’re going to find out this is far from the first time that this judge has done something like this. I wonder how many defendants might possibly have their sentences overturned because it turns out this judge was a corrupt asshole for a very long time?
ETA: I watched that legal eagle video a couple of hours ago. Very good overview of the incident and Devin points out exactly why this is a problem.
Shouldn’t there be more talk about some sort of sanction on the judge?
I think that may well be coming.
“I am holding you in contempt of court.”
“It’s a fair cop.”
“But society’s to blame.”
“Roight! We’ll be charging them, too!”
The appeals and the requests for judicial recusal and mistrial could well lead to it.
As Devin noted in the video, the appeals court in Georgia swiftly responded to squash the attempt to hold the lawyer in contempt and imprison him for rightfully pointing out that the judge was violating the law and asking for a transcript of what the defense was already supposed to be included in (which a court reporter actually recorded).
This probably isn’t going to go well for either the prosecutor or judge.
It really does sound like the judge and prosecutor were trying to intimidate a witness in secret, and then the judge wanted to know the name of the person who informed, so they could intimidate them as well.
More than recusal… I think an arrest followed by a criminal charge and a jail term for this particular judge may be in order.
God I hope so. I don’t usually make it a habit to follow random news stories that don’t affect me or take place in my neck of the woods. Something about this made me irrationally angry though. This is something I’m going to make an effort to keep an eye on.
I sure hope the judge doesn’t try to intimidate the court reporter into “accidentally” deleting the notes. S/he is in a really uncomfortable position right now.
If it was an illegal/ unethical meeting, why bring the reporter along if you can’t control them?
Because I suspect that this is the type of judge whose guiding principle is “It’s legal if I say it’s legal.” The possibility that someone might challenge his actions probably never occurred to him.
As simple as it sounds I think I have to concur here. Reading back over the story now that I have more information about it, it really strikes me that he just blurted out in the middle of the courtroom and confirmed that an illegal meeting did in fact happen. For someone in his position, that should presumably possess the knowledge of how bad this makes him look, it seems incredibly careless. This seems to be somebody who is used to doing this and is also used to not being called out on his bullshit. Hence my earlier prediction that this will be far from the first time we’re going to find out something like this has happened with this judge.
It’s called “normalization of deviance”.
You get used to coloring just outside the lines now and again and pretty soon that seems normal. So you color a little farther and a little more often outside the lines and pretty soon that too is comfortable and normal whereas it wasn’t before.
Lather rinse repeat enough and you’ll have convinced yourself that you’re omnipotent and immune to any and every concern. Lines? What lines? I don’t care about no steenkin’ lines! They’re for the little people, not meee!
So you let it all hang out all the time. Which works for awhile for most such folks. But eventually if society is lucky they get tripped up and then duly hammered.
Having caused untold damage along the way, most of which cannot be positively identified, much less remediated.
I think this is shown by the fact that when the judge held the defense counsel in contempt, he cited a Georgia statute that generally stated that a judge has wide latitude to conduct his court as he sees fit. Nothing more specific than that. He blatantly said he can do whatever the fuck he wants because he’s the ultimate authority.
Which is bullshit. Nobody is above the law despite what his megalomaniacal pea brain might think. And I think that reality is going to crash down on him.
Nobody: Boy, I sure do love this free, rudimentary word processor that hasn’t changed in 30 years and is strictly intended for making basic notes where presentation isn’t important, but I wish it could be packed full of unnecessary AI bloatware
Microsoft: Hold my beer
Wow. The whole point of Notepad is that it’s bare-bones, without all the bells and whistles, for when you just want something simple.
It looks like a menu item you can choose to use, or not use?
It’s still bloat, though. The fact that it has it built in will make the application larger, and use more memory, and load slower. And it’ll take up space on the menu bar. All of these are sometimes reasons to choose Notepad over Word.
Try Notepad++
https://notepad-plus-plus.org/