What do you think of 8-7 decision in House v. Bell ?

[foolsguinea]

@septimus

While Searching for the name of my very first thread, I came across the very second thread. I think it’s as topical as ever.

I notice that almost no Doper deigned to actually answer any of the three questions I posed:1. Have you read of the case?
2. Were you aware of the peculiar Party correlation?
3. Do you think the Party correlation was just a coincidence?
… so I’ll try again.

I have heard of it. I didn’t know a lot about it.

I didn’t realize the breakdown was so partisan.

That is very, very worrying.

[foolsguinea]

@DSYoungEsq

And your analogy still does not establish what you are about with this “debate”. Are you asserting that judges in this case were outcome-oriented based upon who appointed them? Or are you asserting that judges are appointed by certain presidents because they have particular judicial philosophies?

You’re splitting a hair invisible to normal eyes, there.

[septimus]

DSYoungEsq’s hair isn’t quite invisible, and I’ll hijack my thread slightly to give him a partial answer.

While it’s true that right-wing Presidents tend to appoint judges with fine right-wing values like letting innocent people linger on death row, I think there are other right-wing values, like getting right-wingers elected, that may play a role in judges’ rulings. I refer specifically to Bush v Gore 531 U.S. 98 (2000) where five judges appointed by Republicans decreed that ballot counting must be stopped while Bush was ahead.

I’m sure someone will be along to explain why stopping a recount was the “proper” thing to do, the “conservative” thing to do, and the “constitutional” thing to do, but if anyone thinks Scalia and Thomas would have stopped the recount had Gore been ahead — let me sell you a bridge! (Souter joined the dissenters in Bush v Gore, but he was appointed by a moderate Republican back when there was such a thing.)

[RTFirefly]

@DSYoungEsq

What do you mean by “coincidence?”

The rationale given by the majority is a “conservative” approach to judicial review issues. One would expect judges who were appointed by “conservative” presidents to have “conservative” approaches. The rationales given by the dissenters are “liberal” approaches to judicial review issues. One would expect judges who were appointed by “liberal” presidents to have “liberal” approaches. So in this regard, it is not “coincidence” that the split happened along “party” lines.

I’ve got a question: would you say both approaches are at least consistent with the law?

In another thread (see post 663 and followup posts), there’s a discussion about the role that wisdom and judgment should play in a Supreme Court Justice’s decisions, IOW, how far simply following the law and the facts gets you. This discussion seems relevant to that one.

[UltraVires]

@RTFirefly

I’ve got a question: would you say both approaches are at least consistent with the law?

In another thread (see post 663 and followup posts), there’s a discussion about the role that wisdom and judgment should play in a Supreme Court Justice’s decisions, IOW, how far simply following the law and the facts gets you. This discussion seems relevant to that one.

I know this wasn’t asked to me, but IMHO this area of law is one where judges on both sides are faithfully attempting to apply history and precedent to come to the correct conclusion.

There are two competing interests/thoughts at play:

1. The “correct” or just result should always be continually pursued. A person should not be kept in prison for life, or God forbid executed, if he can show at any point in time different evidence that might possibly cast some doubt on his original conviction. The courts should be open to allow him to keep presenting evidence.

2. A criminal trial is not a warm up to the main event. It is the main event. Under the Constitution a person has a right to one jury trial, so bring your “A” game to that event. If the trial was fair and you lost, then the judicial system needs certainty to carry out your sentence, get your shit off the docket, and move on to new things. If the system says that you are getting a lethal injection or thirty years in prison, society needs to know that such a pronouncement means something certain or else the system becomes a farce.

Now, under both #1 and #2, if a person can prove their actual innocence (something that is disputed in the case in the OP) both sides agree that the person should be freed. The difference is the quantum of proof necessary for this demonstration. Those leaning towards #1 will see the facts in the OP’s case as justifying a new trial while those leaning towards #2 will see the facts as not enough to disturb finality.

This case demonstrates that rift.

[RTFirefly]

@UltraVires

I know this wasn’t asked to me, but IMHO this area of law is one where judges on both sides are faithfully attempting to apply history and precedent to come to the correct conclusion.

That’s all I was really after: that there’s more than one possible conclusion consistent with statute and precedent. And if it’s a particular case, more than one possible conclusion consistent with statute, precedent, and the facts of the case.

In the linked thread, the question has come up of what sort of wisdom, judgment, and life experience a SCOTUS nominee might bring to bear to decide which of those possible conclusions is the right one in a given case. Bricker rejects the notion that the Senate should inquire into such things, because somehow in his mind it’s either one or the other: either you follow the law and the facts to reach a conclusion, or you use wisdom and experience to reach a conclusion. He clearly dislikes the idea that there are instances where the law and the facts don’t restrict the courts to a single decision (if they always did, we could replace the courts with legal software) and that some other factor is needed to reach a conclusion when the law and the facts don’t get you all the way there. (I prefer wisdom/judgment/experience to, say, rolling a die. But to each his own.)

But I do feel a need to comment on this:

2. A criminal trial is not a warm up to the main event. It is the main event. Under the Constitution a person has a right to one jury trial, so bring your “A” game to that event. If the trial was fair and you lost, then the judicial system needs certainty to carry out your sentence, get your shit off the docket, and move on to new things. If the system says that you are getting a lethal injection or thirty years in prison, society needs to know that such a pronouncement means something certain or else the system becomes a farce.

In a world where everyone had the resources to bring their ‘A’ game to any criminal trial, I’d agree with you completely. But that’s rarely the case. Most people on trial for their lives, let alone merely terms of years, can’t afford the best legal talent - many can’t afford lawyers at all, and are dependent on whatever quality of representation the state is willing to pay for. People have been sentenced to death despite their court-appointed lawyers falling asleep during their trial.

The system is filled with people who can’t muster any more than a ‘D’ game, and that’s why you get all sorts of motions filed on behalf of those whose execution is imminent: the nonprofits that try to ensure that people aren’t unjustly executed have the resources to show up at the relative handful of instances each year where a convict’s execution date is imminent, but they don’t have the resources to be present at more than a handful of the trials that might ultimately lead to such a moment.

We could ensure through our tax dollars that people being charged with serious felonies have decent-quality representation, but we don’t. And until we do, you can tell people all you want that they need to bring their ‘A’ game to the trial, but that’s about as reasonable as telling a paraplegic he needs to quit relying on crutches and wheelchairs, and stand up and walk.

[septimus]

@RTFiefly

In a world where everyone had the resources to bring their ‘A’ game to any criminal trial, I’d agree with you completely. But that’s rarely the case. Most people on trial for their lives, let alone merely terms of years, can’t afford the best legal talent - many can’t afford lawyers at all, and are dependent on whatever quality of representation the state is willing to pay for. People have been sentenced to death despite their court-appointed lawyers falling asleep during their trial.

Yes.

House is not an isolated example of justice miscarriage.

I recall a New York man being convicted of murder because the public defender felt the budget was insufficient to interview his alibi witness. I Googled for it just now, but instead found two other similar stories. (I combined two news accounts for the Rosario excerpts, using italics to distinguish one source.)

*He was a thousand miles away when somebody he didn’t even know was murdered. While that homicide was a tragedy, what makes the situation even more tragic is that Richard Rosario was convicted of the murder of Jorge Collazo, even though he was eight states away from the scene when the slaying took place.

That was 20 years ago, and Rosario has been behind bars ever since for the crime, even though he had more than a dozen witnesses, including two law enforcement officers, who could prove that he was far from the scene of the crime when it was committed.*

Neither police nor his court-appointed defense lawyers talked to most of the alibi witnesses he listed. A judge OK’d a request for funding by his initial attorney to send a private investigator to Florida, but she never did so, a 2010 appellate decision noted. Subsequent defense counsel mistakenly thought funding for the PI had not been approved.

*In June of 1996, Rosario had been picked out of a lineup of mug shots compiled by police after the murder of Collazo, 16, in the Soundview section of the borough. However, during all of the month of June that year, Rosario lived with family friends in Deltona, Florida — 1,063 miles away.

“I’ve been in prison for twenty years for a crime I didn’t commit,” said Rosario in court on Wednesday. “My family didn’t deserve this, I didn’t deserve this, nor the victim’s family or the victim,” he said in his statement to the judge.

After he’d gotten word that detectives were looking for him, Rosario voluntarily traveled by bus back to the Bronx and interviewed with police. He also provided them with a list of 13 witnesses, including two Florida law officers, who could prove he was in their state when the shots rang out.

However, Rosario’s court appointed attorney didn’t end up interviewing any but two of the alibi witnesses, despite the fact that the attorney had secured government funding to do so.

Prosecutors on Wednesday admitted that Rosario’s situation was flawed, through no fault of his own.*

More than 20 years ago, Fleming attempted to defend himself from homicide charges by telling jurors he was in Florida. According to CNN, he claimed to have made calls from a Florida hotel room on the night of the victim's murder, but the prosecution convinced a jury that the alibi was baseless.

However, the Brooklyn district attorney's Conviction Review Unit determined that police had found a receipt for Fleming's phone records and corroborating testimony from his ex-girlfriend supporting his Florida alibi. The prosecution is required to turn over exculpatory evidence to the defense in a criminal case, so it seems fishy that police would not have revealed what they had found.

One of the prosecution's main witnesses in Fleming's case, who testified to seeing Fleming shoot the victim, later recanted weeks after his conviction. CNN reports that she said police had coaxed her into testifying against Fleming "to avoid going back to jail."

An on-going debate in America is whether people who weren’t smart enough to buy Apple stock when it was cheap are worthy enough to receive health care. Is it the same people on respective sides of this debate, whether the indigent should be entitled to justice?