FWIS3

I'm rather boggled, and also disgusted.

http://www.npr.org/2016/06/09/481433854 ... cusal-case

Short version:

Abused 18 year old kid murders someone, gets sentenced to death.

Turns out later, the guy he murdered looks to have been a child molester, and had probably molested said kid. The prosecution had hid the evidence of that earlier, so the sentence is appealed.

Unfortunately the erstwhile prosecuting attorney is now Chief Justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. He does NOT recuse himself, and the Penn. Supreme Court unanimously keeps death as the sentence...

But the US Supreme Court overturns that 5-3, for obvious reasons of bias and unfairness.

Now I think we can all guess who the dissenting voices on SCOTUS were BTW. Any guesses? Never mind, ha ha, we knew: the dissenters were Roberts, Alito, and Thomas. As usual.

But what really boggles me is Thomas' claim:

Justice Thomas, writing for himself alone, said that in his view, once a person has been tried and convicted, he does not have the same rights to due process of law because, after a first set of appeals, the case is over. The defendant, said Thomas, by then has no right to counsel, no right to demand that the state turn over exculpatory evidence that was not disclosed, and no right to a claim of actual innocence.

As far as I can tell, he is arguing for a deliberately unfair system where most appeals will never succeed. I know he's an asshole and all, but good gods, does he not understand the purpose of a judicial system?

I listened to a nice piece on this on NPR yesterday while mowing. It's a complicated case. The prosecutor turned justice campaigned on his great success in getting death penalty convictions. Hiding a little evidence in order to pad your numbers happens now and then. But it sure seemed like a no brainer that he should not be involved in the appeal. The prosecutor and adjudicator shouldn't be one and the same...

Gullible Jones wrote:As far as I can tell, he is arguing for a deliberately unfair system where most appeals will never succeed. I know he's an asshole and all, but good gods, does he not understand the purpose of a judicial system?

He may or may not understand what the civilized world considers justice, but has shown repeatedly that his idea of the purpose of our courts is not "justice" but is more like "vengeance" and "an eye for an eye".

I hate being in the position of defending Justice Thomas, but he's right. Once tried, convicted and after the right of appeal is exercised, a person's legal rights are limited. It has to be that way, otherwise we'd never send people to prison - they'd just appeal and appeal endlessly.

I'd also point out that, while the chief judge of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court should have recused himself, that court delivered a unanimous decision, so it wasn't because of the poor decision not to recuse.

If the prosecuting attorney deliberately withheld exculpatory evidence, he should be disbarred.

i'll save you, geonuc.

one's rights are always limited and appeals go to the conduct of the trial. however, to say that during appeal one does not have the right to demand exculpatory evidence that the prosecution hid stuns me. that doesn't speak directly to the conduct of the trial? hiding such evidence isn't prosecutorial misconduct?

code monkey wrote:i'll save you, geonuc.

[deleted]