61–70 of 255 posts
I’m always confused why conservatives tend to support the death penalty. The conservative ethos is to reduce the power of the state to prevent abuse, but giving the state the right to kill a citizen clearly goes against that. How can you mistrust the state in almost every aspect of society, yet trust it to only kill people that “deserve” it?
I'm always bothered by how doctor's word is always taken as gospel. Anyone who's gone through the medical merry-go-round knows that doctors opinions on the same set of symptoms can be all over the place, some even outright idiotic.
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>you can prove you have evidence that proves your innocence, No. This isn't a case of OJ finding the Real Killers(tm). It wasn't even "new" evidence. >Ramirez appealed to federal court where his federal public defenders uncovered evidence of intellectual disability and extensive childhood abuse that hadn't been presented at his initial trial. The ruling only overturned (the 9th circuit precedent) whether the 'default…
You missed the second part: >"Jones also appealed to federal court, where federal investigators found evidence suggesting he was innocent. In both cases, ..."
Just about every single person on death row will suddenly claim to have found yet another round of evidence proving innocence when their previous appeal doesn’t work out. It’s a classic delaying tactic, and in this case I agree with the Supreme Court.
The way death row inmates are treated is arguably a reason to be against death row. There was also a case where a person on death row couldn’t present exculpatory evidence to prove his innocence because his last appeals lawyer didn’t do it. The Supreme Court literally decided you can prove you have evidence that proves your innocence, that you were done dirty by an incompetent lawyer, it doesn’t matter, you should st…
In Illinois you can attempt to present your evidence only after you have exhausted all of your regular appeal routes (appellate court, state supreme court, SCOTUS, state habeas corpus, fed habeas -- there are 11 levels here first) which can take a decade. Then you have to petition the court. But you have to do it yourself, you don't get a lawyer to help you at the first stage. So if you have no idea what you're doing (and certainly a prison is going to do whatever they can to impede you in this by restricting your access to any instructions or legal materials), then you just have to suck it up and take the needle.
In fact, I don't think enough emphasis is put on the fact that these people are generally fighting their cases from prison and it is 1000X harder to do from inside than outside. They have no access to a phone directory to try to call anyone. They might not have any money to make calls. The prison might only give them one free letter a week. And then you need an address to write to - where do you get that? A phone call is probably limited to 20 mins, and if you call and the other person misses it, you can't call back to a prison.
And don't get me started on legal materials in prison. If you are lucky enough where you can actually get to a library (all prison law libraries shut during COVID and many have never reopened) you'll rarely see a computer. Often it is just piles of moldy books. And of course the previous person didn't want to risk the chance they would ever get back to the library, so at the very least they have torn out all the pages they need from the book you wanted to read, or worse, have straight up stolen the book.
And we're not taking into account how much energy is required to fight the system and how exhausting it is for an inmate. It is mentally unbelievable to do all this work locked up. You have to do everything on paper with a pencil too at most places. Copying out huge citations and writing huge motions. Then you have to perhaps write them out another 19 times because that's how many copies the court requires by law and you don't have access to a photocopier. Plus everyone around you at the prison is just running buck wild, screaming, shouting, fighting, gambling. It's no fun.
And these lawyers fighting for death row inmates are awesome, amazing, unbelievable people, but there are very, very few of them. And only death row cases get any real traction. The innocent people who are convicted and get life without parole don't get noticed. The innocent people who get 80 years without parole are way down the list, even though it is a de facto life sentence.
I'm helping a guy now who is inside on a life-without-parole case. No lawyer has stepped up to help him out. I'm trying to help him find a lawyer. I've just been helping a guy reconnect to modern life after getting out from a 40 year sentence for a crime he didn't do.
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> It's not. Limiting the power of government is a central idea in conservative thought, especially in America[0]. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservatism_in_the_United_Sta...
That's what they may claim , but their actions speak much louder than their words. Just look at what happens whenever they take political power. They profess "local control" when they only have control of the localities; when they achieve power at the state or federal level, they immediately place restrictions on the ability of localities to set their own rules and laws. (I've seen this happen over and over.) And tra…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's not. Limiting the power of government is a central idea in conservative thought, especially in America[0]. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservatism_in_the_United_Sta...
That's what they may claim , but their actions speak much louder than their words. Just look at what happens whenever they take political power. They profess "local control" when they only have control of the localities; when they achieve power at the state or federal level, they immediately place restrictions on the ability of localities to set their own rules and laws. (I've seen this happen over and over.) And tra…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The two party system oversimplifies things, so you end up with "small government" and "traditional government" in the same bucket.
Exactly. This needs to be said more. The political party duopoly in the US and some other countries belies a vast range of political beliefs in the population. If you look closely at each party, there are many competing factions within, often vehemently opposed. The words "conservative", "liberal", "right", "left", etc., are practically meaningless, and I'm old enough to have seen them change over the decades, someti…
Liberal vs conservative
Secular vs religious
Governance vs identity politics
The list goes on and on. In an odd historical analogy, the electric charges were originally assigned "negative" and "positive" according to what happened when they were combined, with no hypothesis as to the underlying cause.
I'm always bothered by how doctor's word is always taken as gospel. Anyone who's gone through the medical merry-go-round knows that doctors opinions on the same set of symptoms can be all over the place, some even outright idiotic.
The way death row inmates are treated is arguably a reason to be against death row. There was also a case where a person on death row couldn’t present exculpatory evidence to prove his innocence because his last appeals lawyer didn’t do it. The Supreme Court literally decided you can prove you have evidence that proves your innocence, that you were done dirty by an incompetent lawyer, it doesn’t matter, you should st…
Yes, it's often very, very, very hard to introduce new evidence of your innocence after trial. Trial is the point that you show all available evidence to the jury. In Illinois you can attempt to present your evidence only after you have exhausted all of your regular appeal routes (appellate court, state supreme court, SCOTUS, state habeas corpus, fed habeas -- there are 11 levels here first) which can take a decade.…
Whereas issues like you mention above, and trial reform in general, and prison system reform in general, would have wide bipartisan support.
It really makes me suspicious why activists and the media are not advocating for the things 90% of people would agree with. Is the other stuff just an intentional distraction so nothing gets fixed?
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It's so frustrating because in the twisted universe where Thomas lives the ruling makes sense. To him justice is an algorithm that produces an outcome and only needs some minimum threshold of "overall the justice system locks up roughly the people we think it ought to" and all the appeals and after-the-fact proving your innocence gets in the way of the efficiency and to him, the effectiveness, of that algorithm. And…
But those two are not the same right ? In elections everyone involved (candidates and voters) have agreed to the system. If they feel the system is not working as such they could always check the results. Sometimes something may pop up and we update the results. This is not the case in the justice system you mentioned above where it's not possible to correct any mistakes after the fact