This is a discussion about a legal case, with people expressing views about how the legal process worked.
“Sure, he was technically right. But I have an opinion too!! Waaah!!”
Yes, but…the debate is not about how to legally go about attempting to overturn the case- you can go by the book and be biased. You can go by the book and get someone sent to death for something that you can’t prove they did if you convince 12 hillbillies that the devil is real. A judge can have authority to exclude something and still do so out of bias or preference. They convinced a jury of 12, give them credit- would they have convinced a jury of 12 educated people? Would they have even tried? If a jury convicts an actual guilty person, but there was no real evidence, just the 12 thought he was guilty, does the average person understand this is wrong, and not allowed legally?
The point here is a lawyer can dupe a rube very easily. That makes him a good lawyer, but immoral and unethical. Lawyers get guilty people off every day, and send innocent people to jail every day, as long as they go by the book, this is OK?
Lord Jesus. I agree with everything that Martin Hyde said in his last post.
Is the room spinning or is it just me?
A lawyer who bases his closing argument in a murder trial not on facts, but his OPINION that the defendant is a “Scary guy” with “no soul” should not be allowed to practice law in the US. He’s an idiot. 12 people who can be swayed by such idiocy deserve pity.
Bricker, when was the last time the Supreme Court overruled a muder conviction? How often does that happen? And for that, lacking new evidence, you need to prove gross errors were made, right? I agree it is possible everything the judge did was legal. I am saying you can go by the book and still act with prejudice. You can’t prove he acted with prejudice, a court can’t prove it, but that doesn’t make it right.
Barring new evidence, Wayne Williams, Jeffrey MacDonald and Alberto Desalvo (dead) would never get new trials. Hell, MacDonald has new evidence proving his innocence and can’t get a new trial. That doesn’t mean they’re guilty, doesn’t mean they weren’t railroaded by excluding evidence and dumb juries. Why should the requirement to decide someone’s life be the possession of a driver’s license?
The first 4 posts were about the recent testing going on, and the fact that some famous people are now involved.
In my first post (5) I expressed frustration at what I viewed as inept or biased police and a judge. I was expressing my opinion about what I viewed as lack of evidence, and poor investigation technique, possible bias by police, and what I viewed as a biased judge (based on recollection of reading about various decisions he made). You said it yourself, you would have voted to aquit if you were on the jury. I am saying the same basic thing.
I never (I don’t think) said that there is any technical reason, any clear obvious legal reason (though some, including the defense might argue there was) to have not had the trials or conviction.
My point is, Bricker, that you have turned a discussion about recent events in the case and many peoples’ frustration at what went down into a technical defense of the judge, jury, and prosectutions actions.
Nobody asked any technical questions about the law, some people made some comments that are not legally correct, but you always feel it is your duty to turn any discussion involving anything legal into your own personal classroom in which to teach us morons. You admitted that you would have voted to aquit, maybe you can discuss why you feel that way, maybe give some ideas about how the defense can legally get a new trial, speculate on what the defense and prosectution have been discussing, why the delay in presenting the new results, etc. You know, stuff that would be welcome and usefull to the conversation, instead of arrogantly telling us all how we are not in fact seasoned lawyers.
Good for you, you are very smart.
Uh, yes. This is a freaking discussion board, not a court. People come here cause its fun to discuss opinions as well as facts. So, while you can argue all day that the confession as technically legal (and it may have been), I can still express my opinion that I think the content of the confession was BS. Is that really me crying?
Exactly. The prosecution legally got the confession accepted in the trial. I won’t argue that. But, what many here do argue, is that the police and prosectution are either giant morons for even believing his confession or corrupt assholes for actually using an obviously false confession to put someone on trial.
As a lawyer, Bricker, can you give an opinion on that? It would be a better contribution to the thread than picking apart legal details.
Everyone here agrees OJ is guilty right? Yet a smoothe talking lawyer was able to convince 12 average people that because Furman called someone a nigger once and because OJ acted like he didn’t how a glove works that he was innocent. Would he have been able to dupe 12 smart, well-educated people who worked as professioanl jurors, if such a thing existed?
The fact is that the only evidence against these kids was a demonstrably false confession coerced from a retarded kid without a lawyer present. All of the evidence points to the stepfather of one of the victims. He removed his own teeth to prevent a comparison of his bitemarks to those on his stepson. He gave the filmmakers a knife with his stepson’s blood on it. He virtually confessed on camera to not only these murders but the murder of his wife. It’s fucking obvious to anyone with a brain and a conscience that the WM3 is innocent. They were convicted because they wore black T-shirts and listened to heavy metal and because the jury was composed of credulous, superstitious morons who believed that Satanic ritual murder is real.
The judge was a joke as well. He admitted evidence and testimony he had to have known was bullshit. The so-called “expert” with a mail order degree who testified about a phenomenon that doesn’t exist (Satanic Ritual Murder), who claimed to be an expert on the “occult,” (a non-existent field of study and an essentially meaningless word) but did know the difference between paganism and Satanism.
During the trial, the prosecutor also tried to make it sound sinister that Echols was Catholic, asking him questions like “How long were you into Catholicism?” while the hayseed jury gasped in shock.
The attempts to obfuscate the issue with legal technicalities miss the point (yes, it’s hard to overturn a conviction just because the jury was comprised of imbecile hillbillies. Yes, it may well be that the initial trial can not be demonstarted to have been legally improper). The fact still remains that these kids got lynched because they lived in a culture of stupid, unwashed, unlettered, religious bigots. I don’t care what the process allows for at this point. They’re innocent. period. And everybody knows it.
I don’t know what the educational level of this jury was, and I don’t know if the prosecutor would have “convinced a jury of 12 educated people”. But I do know that determination of guilt and innocence is up to the jury. If the prosecution or judge did something reversable, reverse the verdict. But your argument just seems to be that the defense did a crappy job and that the prosecution’s evidence was weak, in your opinion. Neither of these things is enough to justify reversal.
Bricker, are you personally convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that these kids committed those murders? Yes or No.
But I’m not asking for a reversal. No new evidence, no proof of purposeful misdeeds, no reversal, I know this. I am saying that someone being sent to death should not depend on the ability of a lawyer to scare, smoothe talk, or otherwise sway a jury of 12 mo-rons, legal or not. I am saying they wanted a conviction of some sort, disgarded more realistic targets that may have been harder to convince a jury, and went for the easy target, regardless if they did it or not.
I can only imagine your tears arise from your frustration at being unable to find the correct forum to engage in the type of discussion you wish to have.
See, here in Great Debates, you do have to have facts to back up your views. You cannot expect to come in here and simply “express your opinion” about something without being treated with some scorn if that opinion rests on something other than facts.
Now, if you’ll do just a bit of mouse clicking, you’ll find a couple of possible choices: IMHO, in which the very name of the forum includes the word ‘opinion,’ would be an excellent choice to simpy offer your opinion. And ‘MPSIMS’ is a place where you can speculate all you wish without being held to some impossible standard like “facts.”
Even The Pit would permit you to rant and rave about the unfairness of the verdict without necessarily requiring facts – although the crowd there is tough and might well turn on you for not having them.
But this – this is the one forum where your plaintive cry wishing to be excused for not having actual facts to back up your opinion just won’t wash.
No.
Now ask me the questions that we’re discussing above:
Was the judge biased?
No.
Does the prosecutor deserve to be disbarred?
No.
Is the jury’s verdict wrong as a matter of law?
No.
What more realistic targets?
Are you saying there is STRONGER evidence against someone else?
Who?
Well, this is inarguable- the prosecution said without the confession, they have no case. Therefore, case rests on the confession. Every legal person who has ever read it thinks it was coerced. You think it is, I think it is. The confession gets nothing right with being lead. The confession offers nothing that is not already known. The cops tell him what happened, and he agrees.
You, Bricker, admit you think it was coerced. But you add you can see how a judge would see it as freely given, even though not one other cop or confession expert who has weighed on the subject agrees with this. I ask you, via legalese or plain talk, to put yourself in the judge’s place and explain what brings you to the decision that it was not coerced. IOW, what does this judge see that no one else does. Literally, no one else.
I never claimed any of the above, but I think the first is a possibility. I actually blame the police (who had to have known what a sham Jesse’s “confession” was, even if they sincerely believed these kids were involved when they extracted it) and the culture of the community which allowed such a prejudiced, credulous and easily manipulated jury to decide the case.
Stepfather from Hell? Did you see the HBO Documentaries? Surely your aware of the tons of circumstantial evidence against him?
His alibi is a mess- cite- Echols has an alibi- you can say people are lying for him, but Byers alibi has mucho conflicts.
Knife found in lake- Byers has similar knife in his possession.
Byers said knife never used, later changed story when found to have blood on it, then concocted story on how blood got there.
One child had much more abuse then the other two, showing an anger towards that child- Byers stepson.
Police report shows Byers previously had threatened the life of another family member.
Byers had committed crimes that he did not receive the normal punishment for, implying connection to the police department.
Criminal profile that shows the killer was a similar person to Byers and nothing like Echols.
And oh yeah, the good one- shortly after finding out they were studying a bite mark on Byers stepson’s face- he has all of his teeth pulled out-
Circumstantial, sure, but would you agree much more damning than the circumstantial stuff on Echols?