One thing I think is interesting is the fact that Damien is Wiccan - there is no Satan in his religion. Most of his accusers are fundie Christians – they believe in Satan.
That’s completely irrelevant, at least legally. Unless the jury member confesses to outright fraud on the court, such as perjury, bribery, threats, or intimidation, you cannot impeach a jury verdict by interviewing the jurors after the fact and finding changed minds.
Consider: a marijuana possession case goes to trial, and the accused is acquitted. Afterwards, a juror admits that he didn’t care so much about the facts: drug laws are almost always wrong, and he would have voted “not guilty” in almost any circumstance. Should the verdict be nullified and a new trial started?
Yes, that’s true. What’s your point?
We need SOME system to serve as a method to find facts. We have two possibilites in our legal world: a bench trial, in which the judge decides the facts, and a jury trial, in which ordinary citizens serve this function. And we have legal rules that exclude testimony for certain reasons, any of which you may or may not agree with. But simply because you do not like the result in a particular case, you may not call a do-over. You have to point to specific errors as they ocurred under our rules. That’s the way the system works.
So? The defense informed the jury of these facts, right? The jury heard the testimony, and they heard these reasons, above, to disbelieve the testimony. YOU have not heard the testimony. You have only seen it written. Yet you are willing to place yourself in a position to better judge the credibility of the witnesses than the twelve people that actually saw and heard them speak, observed their body language, and watched their eyes.
Even if we grant that, had you been on the jury, you would have reached a different conclusion… do you seriously contend that this information is enough to overturn a verdict? Under your proposal, I doubt we’d see many criminal convictions; the defense, after a guilty verdict, would merely need to find one person in the entire country that believes he’d have voted ‘not guilty’ and the verdict is set aside!
We have a system. Jurors are selected from a random pool, questioned as to their fitness to serve, and twelve are empaneled. We do not change the results of the trial because another guy somewhere feels like the twelve made a mistake, or even if one of the twelve later feels he made a mistake.
- Rick
Would the odds on this “safe bet” change if you were to learn that Echols admitted on the stand that he had a strong interest in, and had practiced, Satanic rituals?
Maybe my career change to law school professor finally has a shot! 
Why, did he? I thought I had read everything about this case, but I must have missed that.
FWIW, though, when I was a kid I practiced Satanic rituals. They never once involved, or advocated, killing children, adults, pets, brain cells, time, me softly with his love, or anything else.
By “everything” I assume you mean every page of the website devoted to proving his innocence, and not the actual transcript of the trial or the opinion of the Arkansas Supreme Court, right?
I honestly don’t remember, it’s been over a year.
If you have a direct link to Echols’ satanic practices, I’d be happy to read it.
I have read the actual transcript and opinion of the Arkansas Supreme Court. I was able to get a copy from one of the supporters who got a copy from a library in Arkansas. The Rule 37 hearings are available online.
http://wm3.org/live/faq/faq_category.php?id=6#faq17
Damien had a great interest in all religions and studied quite a few before settling on Wicca. At one point he planned on becoming a Catholic priest.
From court transcripts:
“During this time period in my latter teenage years, I developed an interest in different types of religions, or what beliefs were you studying. I have read about all different types of religions because I’ve always wondered like how do we know we’ve got the right one, how do we know we are not messing up. Before I studied the Catholic religion, there was not another religion that I really concentrated or focused on. After the time period I were really into the Catholic religion, I focused on the Wicca religion.”
http://www.wm3.org/live/trialshearings/abstracts.php?abstract_Id=34
I’m sure you’re familiar with a little thing called Double Jeopardy? The circumstances of a prejudiced acquittal are not analogous to a prejudiced conviction. There is no Double Jeopardy for the state.
:rolleyes:
Pointing at the jury is a tautological cop out. The jury is this case was wrong. Juries CAN be wrong. This jury was just as backwards and biased and ignorant in its way as the any all white jury of the segregationist south.
There is also the fact that at least two witnesses in this case have said they were forced to give false testimony by the police. The testimony upon which you hang your own conclusion of guilt is shaky and implausible to begin with and since we KNOW that the police destroyed evidence, coerced a false confession from a retarded kid with no lawyer present and threatened witnesses who would not testify according to script, I don’t see how you could give any other witnesses any credence at all.
“The jury believed it” is an extremely weak argument. Are you telling me that you take your cues from juries? You decide that all testimony is exactly as credible as a jury says it is?
Of course. I was merely pointing out that a jury verdict may not be impeached merely because a juror later announces his misgivings or bias.
If you’re pointing to the law of double jeopardy, then I’m happy to draw support from the law as well. The trial was legally sound. The appeals process followed its course. The law has a strong interest in finality of judgement. To prevail now, the accused no longer has a presumption of innocence; he must show a strong probability of actual innocence.
That’s the law.
Sure, juries can be wrong. But you don’t know that they were. You’re merely claiming it.
No, we don’t know that. You believe it, because you give credence to those claims. But that’s not absolute proof, any more than the original testimony was absolute proof. You’re just cherry-picking which version you wish to believe, and stamping that The Truth.
On appeal, that is EXACTLY how it’s done. The jury’s finding of fact may not be dismissed, as long as there is sufficient support in the record.
Take my hypothetical robbery case earlier. In the first scenario, the jury convicted… finding as a matter of fact that the accused was the robber. But the appeals court can overturn that finding, because the record didn’t reflect any evidence that the jury could have used to make that finding. In the second scenario, the jury does hear evidence that could allow them to make that finding, but the evidence was improperly admitted. The appeals court can erase that evidence and examine the resulting record, and conclude from that that there is insufficient evidence for a finding of guilt.
But when it’s just a matter of weight… let’s say that six other people saw you at the baseball game, and they all testified that you were there. But Homeless Bob also testifies and insists you were the robber. The appeals court cannot overturn the jury verdict in that case. There is sufficient evidence on the record; the jury is entitled to believe or disbelieve testimony. You may seethe that the jury plainly made the wrong choice in what testimony to believe… but THAT’S NOT ENOUGH TO OVERTURN A JURY VERDICT.
Same thing here. You have a list of reasons the jury should disbelieve Christy VanVickle and Jackie Medford. But that’s not enough. Sure, the jury could have been wrong. That’s true of every person ever convicted on the basis of eyewitness testimony.
In fact, let’s consider a rape case. The victim testifies and positively identifies her attacker. The accused denies the attack. The jury convicts.
Now, should we revisit this case and discuss how the jury might have been wrong to believe her testimony, because
Yes. That’s the system. In deciding appeals, as long as there is sufficient support in the record for their decision, ALL TESTIMONY IS EXACTLY AS CREDIBLE AS A JURY SAYS IT IS.
If new evidence comes to light – as it has in many a rape case, with DNA – we can revisit it. We then have sufficient reason to overturn the jury’s verdict. That’s not an appeal, of course – as I mentioned above.
Now, in this case, there are reasons to overturn the verdict, but you have to understand how the system works. It is absolutely irrelevant to try to revist the jury’s determination. That’s unreviewable. Stop trying to review it.
Just like Double Jeopardy - that is the law.
- Rick
That’s the problem.
Bricker, from everything you’ve said, I can only draw one conclusion: If I ever get accused of a major crime (falsely, I might add), I’d better damn well spend every last penny I can get my hands on to get a decent lawyer who will get me off the first time around. Otherwise, I’m fucked.
I was thinking the same thing. Now I understand why innocent people take the plead bargin. There’s no way out.
Geez.
That is so true. It’s not funny how true it is.
This country needs a major overhaul in its justice system, and it needs to start with a revisiting of Strickland v. Washington. It is almost a practical impossibility to kick a case of ineffective assistance, and yet you only have to read transcripts to see mistakes being made right and left.
In the current case, I would say, conservatively, that the appeals at least fifteen separate times dismisses an argument on appeal as being waived becuase it wasn’t made at trial. These are not technicalities: these are substantive points that could well have turned the verdict around. But they won’t even consider them, because they were procedurally waived.
And then they dismiss the ineffective assistance claims because no specific prejudice resulted.
If you’re stabbed once with a pin, it won’t kill you. If you’re stabbed 77,000 times with a pin, you’ll die, and the appeals court will probably rule you still alive because you can’t point to a specific pin-prick that killed you.
- Rick
(Now, a decent lawyer may not “get you off” at trial Round One. But a decent lawyer will MAKE HIS RECORD at trial so he has some meat to bring to the appeals court. That’s the difference.)
Well, from what I’ve read so far, he sounds to me like an abusive parent. Now, perhaps in WM, giving a boy “a few licks” with a belt isn’t a big deal, but it sure sounds like child abuse to me. Of course, that doesn’t mean he’s guilty.
But other than Satanism (snort!), what motive would these boys have had?
Bricker, I have a question-admittedly, it stems from an episode of Law & Order, but I wondered how it would work out in real life:
Man is charged with murder, and they go to trial. At the trial, the judge is extremely biased towards the accused, and eventually grants the defense a dismissal of the charges. Now, the prosecutors later find out that the judge was bribed, and acquital or dismissal was certain. Could they try him again, since the trial was a complete farce, or would double jeopardy come into play?
Double jeopardy does not prevent a new trial, since jeopardy never truly attached at the first trial. The accused was never in jeopardy to begin with.
Thanks. That was the conclusion on the show, but I’m not about to take Law & Order as absolute truth.
But the ADA in the end of that episode addmitted that even if he’d gotten a conviction it would never survive an appeal. It was a successful bluff.
Well, I can’t speak for the accuracy of the show. But the fact remains that in real life, an acquittal or dismissal gained by bribing the judge to deliver that result does not serve a bar to reprosecution.
I didn’t know that. Thanks.