It’s really, really simple.
No-one should be convicted based on uncorroborated, potentially biased witness testimony.
Dunn was convicted based on uncorroborated, potentially biased witness testimony.
Therefore Dunn, being someone, should not have been convicted.
There is no logical flaw there, nothing that is even remotely difficult to understand. You disagree with one of my premises. Fine, that’s your right. That doesn’t make my logic in any way flawed.
I for one am delighted that the topic has become whether I’m lying about autocorrect.
Let the jury decide whether my testimony is credible!
There is additional evidence that supported their testimony. Let’s talk about that evidence – I’m interested in your opinion on the physical evidence and the testimony of Dunn’s girlfriend.
I’m going on about it because I want to talk about it. I’m interested in that topic. I’m interested in having a discussion with you about the evidence in the Dunn case, since that’s what started this conversation. Why don’t we have that conversation?
Because every time I talk about that evidence, and my view that the nature of that evidence makes the conviction unsafe, instead of addressing that, you bring up irrelevancies.
Dunn should not have been convicted because the evidence, the testimony from Davis’ friends that Dunn was not threatened, is uncorroborated and possibly biased.
You claim there is physical evidence that Davis did not feel threatened by Dunn. That’s false.
You claim that Davis’ girlfriend provided evidence that he did not feel threatened by Dunn. That is also false.
So, either dispute my claim that, because of the nature of the evidence, he shouldn’t have been convicted, or drop talking about this case and talk about a relevant one.
I have no real interest in debating a case where the evidence actually points to doubt beyond reasonable doubt, there’s not really anything to discuss there. Hence why no-one’s talking about the attempted murder conviction.
I don’t think a soul would disagree with this.
I think your standard for what constitutes “potentially unbiased” witness testimony is so far out there that the practical consequence of your theoretical philosophy would render the ability to get a homicide conviction almost impossible.
The idea is fine. The implication is nuts.
Thank you – this is part of the discussion I want to have.
Both of these statements are false. There was nothing in the car that could have possibly looked anything like a shotgun. Further, Dunn said he told his girlfriend soon after the shooting that he saw a shotgun – and she denied this. He never mentioned anything about the shotgun to his girlfriend, and that’s an integral part of his claim of reasonable fear for his life. Her testimony corroborated the witnesses’ testimony that there was no shotgun, and nothing that looked like a shotgun – and her testimony calls Dunn’s statements about a shotgun a lie. Without the shotgun, or the belief in a shotgun, there’s no reasonable fear, and therefore no self-defense. This is what the jury, all 12 of them, found beyond a reasonable doubt.
I’m disputing your claims of the nature of the evidence.
Yes, I know. I’ve known that for quite some time. It’s getting rather tedious, and distracts from the actual issue, which is that he should not have been convicted based on uncorroborated, potentially biased evidence. You don’t believe he was. Fine, OK, move on and either discuss the hypothetical or find a case that you do believe fits.
I’ve been looking. I haven’t seen a single case in which the conviction rested on witness testimony and no physical evidence, or other testimony. Have you?
Further, it’s part of the “actual issue”. Why don’t we start with the physical evidence? Dunn said Davis opened the car door and had a shotgun, yet all the bullet holes were either in the car door or windows – none passed through the empty space of an open door to strike Davis. That’s just the very start of the physical evidence.
Moses was a shitty transcriptionist?
No, later translators were shitty. But I assume you know that, and that the commandment attributed to Moses’ transcription is best translated as “Do not murder”.
Moses also made exceptions.
Is there one point you will not quibble? Yikes!
So, nothing relevant to this discussion then.
If the witness testimony is corroborated by other evidence, then the conviction does not rely on uncorroborated evidence, and as such has nothing to do with my claims about uncorroborated evidence.
If your claim is simply that you don’t believe that cases ever do rely on uncorroborated testimony, why open a thread to talk about it?
I believe it is wrong that Dunn was convicted based on uncorroborated evidence. You believe he was convicted on grounds other that uncorroborated evidence, and that the conviction is sound. Fine. But that says nothing at all about convictions based on uncorroborated evidence, and yet it’s that you started this thread about.
It’s hardly a quibble to point out that one of the fundamental underpinnings of many people’s moral systems does not, in fact, forbid killing, when the question is whether or not killing is moral.
Wrong – read the OP again.
I’m challenging your claims about the Dunn case, a big part of why I started this discussion.
Huh? Where did you see the word “uncorroborated” or “corroborated” in my OP? My OP was about your claims about the Dunn case and your philosophy on justice and self-defense. The Dunn case is definitely part of the OP – it was explicitly mentioned.
There is no definition of retzach that allows you to shoot unarmed black kids. Sorry big guy.
But I was just making a joke. Bricker is right; the function of these side tracks is to divert from your fundamental wrongness on the main point in question.
So in this case, the “potential bias” of each of the witnesses was clearly different. One set of witnesses might have had a grudge to frame two rival gang members. The other witness was also probably hated by the first two witnesses for being part of that rival gang and he was ratting on his co-conspirators. And yet, their testimony didn’t have any substantive differences. They were consistent in all significant details. But you’re saying that the mere potential of bias - rather than the jury’s judgement that their testimony was untrue - ought to mean the jury should throw out their testimony.
In order for their stories to be factually false but their testimony to be consistent, these three witnesses would have had to conspire to get their stories straight. That would mean a Federal prisoner would have had to reach out to two rival gang members to coordinate stories. Or, the police and prosecutors would have had to conspire to direct them what to say. While those are theoretical possibilities, the odds of either one being the case is not plausible.
Indeed, your view of how the jury ought to have ruled relies on a conspiracy theory without any foundation - that two rival gangs were brought together to coordinate testimony, perhaps with the assistance of the government, leading to the jury being directed to acquit, otherwise an appeal court would overturn the jury’s view of the evidence.
This idea that potential for bias trumps the jury’s ability to draw conclusions on the reliability of testimony is outrageous. Any good defense attorney can find some way to allege potential bias in a witness, but a jury out to be able to decide whether that lawyer is blowing smoke or if the witness is indeed lying. And let me tell you, one of the lawyers in this case was very, very good. His ability to turn straightforward testimony (“On this night those two non-masked men put guns in our faces, held us captive for 20 minutes, and we knew their names from being around the neighborhood”) into reasonable doubt was much more convincing than anything you’ve tried to argue here.
Your OP claims that I state that a jury should disregard witness testimony in self defence cases. That is incorrect on several levels, as I’ve made clear.
The jury should not base a conviction on uncorroborated, potentially biased witness testimony. I’ve corrected you about that repeatedly, and yet you still claim, falsely, that I’ve made claims about what the jury should do in a case where there’s corroborated testimony.
That is what I’m asking you to stop doing. Stop imputing to me views that not only have I never stated but that I’ve repeatedly claimed that I don’t hold, and stop claiming that because, in your opinion, that view is inapplicable to one particular case, my view is invalid.
I’ll try again, one more time.
No-one should be convicted based on uncorroborated, potentially biased witness evidence.
Dunn’s conviction is unsound because it was based on uncorroborated, potentially biased witness evidence.
If you disagree that it was based on that, so what? That doesn’t change my philosophy, and it doesn’t change my belief. If you don’t think the Dunn case is relevant to the issue at hand, the issue from the OP, which is whether uncorroborated evidence from the friends of the deceased can prove beyond reasonable doubt that the killing was not justified self defence.
That is the claim I made in the other thread - specifically, that such evidence cannot prove guilt in a self defence case. In this thread, I expand that to any case. You disagree, but rather than debating my argument, you bring up the possibility that the evidence was corroborated. Why keep bringing it up, other than to muddy the water?
That’s fine. We’ve been discussing that as well.
That’s because you keep applying it to the Dunn case. Every time you’re doing that, you’re making claims about what the jury should do in a case where there’s corroborated testimony, because there was corroborating evidence and additional testimony.
I’ll stop saying that when you stop doing it. You state in factual terms something about the Dunn case that is factually false. So I point that out, every time you say it. And I’d like to discuss that point of disagreement – what do you think about the bullet holes in the car doors? Doesn’t that count as “physical evidence”? It corroborates the witness testimony that Davis never opened the car door.
This second part is factually false.
So I’d like to discuss it.
I do think the Dunn case is relevant to the issue at hand – since part of the issue at hand are facts about the Dunn case.
I’m not trying to muddy the water, I’m trying to discuss the Dunn case. That’s what I want to do – I’m interested in talking about the Dunn case. It’s a real, possible topic of discussion, and part of the OP.
No we can’t.
What if the shooter claims he believed the person he backshot was a ninja assassin who turned his back on the shooter for just a moment so to position himself to deliver a roundhouse death-kick? I mean, I think it’s ludicrous, but that’s what the shooter testifies, after all.
If you’re accepting that it’s reasonable that Dunn felt threatened by an magic, invisible shotgun that, as it turns out, didn’t actually exist, my backshot ninja assassin scenario is positively reasonable by comparison.
This seems a really silly standard for evidence.