Shodan, every time you ask for a fact, I have provided. I can’t do your research for you. For the tenth time, read any article on the case. The crimelibary article says this, that the defense team knew it would be hard to get a conviction without the Satan angle. Again, he cites in his closing argument that Echols does not have a soul- how a can a person opine in a murder trial on whether a person has something that reasonable people agree does not exist? I saw the trial excerpts every night, I’m sure Bricker will allow that this angle was the key point of the prosecution.
You want proof- my friends cousin is a janitor in the building where the judge works. One time when he was cleaning the bathroom, the judge was in there taking a shit, and the judge told him he really wanted the three to be found guilty, and would do anything he could to make sure they were. Stupid? Of course- just like the confessions in this case.
Although I am familiar Dr. Badens work only through his HBO specials I did get to watch him In action during the Ted Binion murder trial locally. He struck me the same way many expert witnesses do , like he was bought and paid for . I’m sure this isn’t the case but that’s the way he came off. YMMV
For what it’s worth, one of the jurors later said that she regretted her verdict, that everyone on the jury had assumed guilt from the start, that she now has doubts and that she hopes the verdicts are overturned. That sounds to me like an admission that the jury was biased from the beginning.
Holmes did, I meant Ofhse. Ofhse (sp?) was allowed to give limited testimony. He was not allowed to state that he believed the confession was coerced, because the judge ruled it was not coerced- and of course, the judge, a non-expert, would know better than an expert.
Also FWIW (nothing), father of one of the three killed believes they are innocent.
You seem to think that degrees are the be-all and end-all when it comes to expert witness testamony. While I think Griffis sounds like a crackpot, there were a bunch of other credentials he proffered that you seem to be ignoring. Plus the defense had plenty of oppertunity to tear apart his credentials and apparently didn’t do enough to convince the jury.
Again: does this give us less confidence in the verdict? Yes.
Does it show the judge was incompetent? No. The admission against interest makes the hearsay admissible. The “negatives” on the witness were either forbidden by doctor-patient privilege or legally irrelevant, collateral material.
I’m saying that you’re not proving anything in the way of bias, malice, or incompetence with that speculation. 90%, eh? You measured this how?
Of course there’s an undercurrent in every trial where the prosecution tries to send a message that the accused is a Bad Guy. And of course that tactic works to some extent.
The problem is that on the record, there is sufficient factual evidence to sustain the guilty verdict. It’s meaningless to point at things like this and say, “I just know the jury was swayed by this!”
They were, eh? Prove it.
That’s the presumption. To overcome that presumption, you need evidence. Facts. Proof. Which you’ve acknowledged you don’t have. So on the basis of your unsupported hunch, you’d have us overturn a criminal trial’s verdict? Great. But who shall we ask on days when you’re too busy to review a trial result?
As it happens, that ruling is precisely correct: experts may offer opinions on events that occurred, but are generally not permitted to “invade the province of the jury” and categorically state their opinions on matters that an ordinary person can equally well reason out.
I don’t know the precise law in Arkansas, but in my home state: “…[E]xpert testimony is inadmissible on any subject on which the ordinary lay person of average intelligence is equally capable of reaching his or her own conclusion.” Brown v. Corbin, 244 Va. 528, 531, 423 S.E.2d 176, 178 (1992), citing Lopez v. Dobson, 240 Va. 421, 423, 397 S.E.2d 863, 865 (1990).
The guy has duped a lot of people, I will given him credit. History is littered with people who duped the masses.
Bricker, the judge let an expert on confessions give limited testimony. He was not allowed to comment on his opinion whether the confession was coereced, becasue the judge ruled it was not. Is this odd, normal, unheard of? A judge giving an opinion on something he is not an expert on, and not allowing an expert to give his opinion?
And also, is there a single case in US history where satanists killed a child in a ceremony, as the expert claimed it was- an expert who doesn’t know where semen is formed, or that eight year olds don’t produce it?
Shouldn’t this apply to phony fields of expertise like “the occult” as well? Can a person be accepted as an expert on Martians? The subjects are equally bogus and unfounded on any legitimate field of study or body of evidence. Can anybody just make up their own field of study and claim to be an “expert” in it?
Not quite what happened. The judge ruled that the expert’s testimony to that issue would invade the province of the jury.
He didn’t say, “I have ruled this confession wasn’t coerced, so the expert can’t testify.”
He said, “It’s the job of the jury to decide if the confession was coerced, and the expert can’t testify to a fact that is ultimately within the province of the jury to resolve.”
There are certainly what appear to be Satan inspired-killings: Richard Ramirez comes to mind. Scott Waterhouse. Ricky Saso, and I’m sure there are others.
Those are individual nutjobs, though. There has never been any documented case of organized, ritual sacrifice. That’s urban legend. There was hysteria about it in the 80’s (helped by Geraldo Rivera) but the alleged phenomenon has never been substantiated (even Geraldo now admits it was bullshit).
I retract the 90%, I forget , exaggerrations have no place in great debates.
Bricker, I see what the law says about experts, but I ask you- a mail order degree in a phony field? Would you want a doctor working on you who got his degree online from the University of Phoenix?
Well, “the occult” is not a phony field. Clearly, it exists, in that there are people who believe in and exercise practices that fall under the rubric of “the occult.” Santeria priestesses may decapitate a chicken to put a curse on someone. You may argue that the curse has no efficacy, and I’d agree with you, but if a credulous person, afraid of the curse, stole money to give it to the priestess to remove the curse, he might want to have someone qualified to explain to a jury unfamiliar with Santeria what the beliefs are regarding curses placed via headless barnyard fowl.
There are a set of typical questions that are used to qualify someone as an expert in a given field.
This is theoretical for me, because only once in my career as a PD did I ever have occasion to deal with an expert witness, and that was a police officer whose “expertise” was in gang signs, clothes, and lingo. But I’m generally familiar with the process: occupation, degrees (from the general to the specific relating to the area of expertise sought), teaching credentials and experience in the relevant area, duties in the occupation that relate to the expertise, years of experience, member of and/or certified by any relevant professional organizations, lectures given, peer-reviewed studies authored and published, number of times testified previously as an expert in this state/other states/other countries.
So – no. An expert must be able to point to extrinsic evidence of his expertise.
No, i wouldn’t. But why are you focusing myopically on the degree? How about the books written and read, the number of times he’s been admitted as an expert, the lectures he’s given?
Was EVERY SINGLE JUDGE that admitted expert testimony from this guy “biased” or “incompetent?”
Really? Can you give me a scientific or scholarly definition for “the occult?” What counts as the occult and what doesn’t?
,
It’s an academically and scientifically meaningless word. I assure you. I know this stuff.
Under what recognized definition are you categorizing Santeria as an “occult” practice? whether it works are not was never my point. My point is that there is no recognized set of beliefs or practices which are categorized as “occult” by any academic field of study.
If you want to call an expert on Santeria, call an expert on Santeria. There is no such thing as an expert on “the Occult” because that word has no academic definition.
The so-called expert in this case didn’t even know anything about the practices he was asked to offer opinions on. For instance, he did not know the difference between Paganism and Satanism. I’m confident that YOU know the difference between those two things and you’re not even an expert.
If the prosecution wanted to qualify an expert on pagan practices, they should have called one. They called someone who was an expert on nothing and was making it all up as he went along.
Well this guy had none of that. His credentials were fake. His field was fake. His experience was non-existent (and I don’t consider prior experience as a witness to be actual experience in a field of study). He had published books but nothing peer-reviewed.
I repeat. There is no such thing as an expert on “occult” studies because the word “occult” has no academic definition of any kind. It’s sociologically, religiously and scientifically meaningless. Even the dictionary definition just means “hidden.” If you try to define it as practices believed to be associated with supernatural forces, then you have to include every religion in the world. The Transubstantiation of the Catholic host is an “occult” practice, by that definition.
It’s possible to be an expert on “non-traditional” religious movements – sects, cults, etc., but this guy had no expertise or education in those areas either.
The famous “Creation scientist,” Kent Hovind has published books and lectured a lot too. That doesn’t mean he should be accepted as an expert on evolution, and that’s the equivalent of what happened with the “Occult” expert on this case. They admitted the testimony of a huckster peddling pseudo-science as fact. I think it was an irresponsible and probably ignorant decision by the judge, but I blame the jury more for being credulous enough to believe him. He was preaching to a choir.
IMO, yes. I know for a fact – I’m not guessing – that his self-proclaimed field of expertise does not exist in academia. So either the judges didn’t know that or didn’t care.
My problem with the expert, as Dio explains better than I, is that his testimony put wiccans, pagans, satatnists, witches, etc. all under the umbrella group “the occult” and implied they are the same, all have same practices, etc. which we know is not true.
And Bricker, can you answer, after hearing and seeing this guy’s testimony, does he strike you as an expert on anything, other than self promotion? You’ve never read a book that was total shit, and wondered who the hell wrote it? Are there any guidelines for writing a book that say they have to contain facts? Did a reputable publisher put them out? I can publish a book on the occult tomorrow, what does that mean? Smart people fall for Nigerain phone scams every day it means nothing. You’ve never heard a lecturer who was full of shit?
Do you know that Dale Griffis has written a “law enforcement primer” to prevent kids from being recruited into Satanic cults? A book to prevent something that has never happened? My guess is he speaks at police departments in small southern Christian towns. Plus, its not like a judge is going to check his credentials, right?
By the same token, there are no such things as “cults” - right? Yet there’s a common understanding of what we generally mean, even though two reasonable people may differ on the inclusion of a particular faith or practice in the word.
I was using the word in the meaning you suggest: religious movements that are non-traditional in the United States. I rather suspect that the court was using it in the same way, since one aspect of the guy’s qualifications was studying what he called “cause-oriented” and “belief-oriented” non-traditional groups operating in society which have malevolent tendencies. As an example of “cause-oriented” societies he gaves gangs, like the Crips and the Bloods, and as an example of belief-oriented groups he gave Satanists.
He wrote four books, one being “A Primer For Law Enforcement on Non-Traditional Groups.”
So it appears to me he is using the word “occult” not in a academically rigorous manner, but as shorthand for “non-traditional, belief-oriented groups,” and it’s a distinction his voir dire testimony makes clear.
How is the judge supposed to know enough detail about the world of non-traditional practices to make this determination?
Elsewhere in this thread, the judge is excorciated for (presumably) using his own opinion over that of an expert witness. Here, you inveigh against his decision to let the jury weigh the expert’s words and decide for themselves.
Which is it? Or should the judge use his opinion only when it accords with your desired result?