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Texas death row inmate at mercy of supreme court, and junk science

theguardian.com

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Re: Texas death row inmate at mercy of supreme court, and junk science

#111

Post by JohnBooty »

j_maffe wrote: post #87
Filligree wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Um, no? It’s to achieve vengeance. This doesn’t seem that complicated.

Yes that's usually the motive behind its supporters but not the used argument when it is criticized.

Yeah. People (particularly politicians, in public) are afraid to say that mostly what they want is vengeance.

So they frame it as "deterring others in the future" which sounds sort of noble.

It's like they know the vengeance thing is f--ed up. Why else would they lie?

Perhaps even worse is that the politicians themselves might not even crave vengeance. A lot of the time, they're just pandering to voters who want it.

Re: Texas death row inmate at mercy of supreme court, and junk science

#112

Post by mcpackieh »

yieldcrv wrote: post #99
Scarblac wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that's why it's horrible. The first family is miserable, so in return you make another family miserable as well. Just more misery, not good for anybody. We consider murderers the lowest of the low, therefore we stoop to the same level. That's the thinking? In the US, the same people who think government should not have much power, are against taxes, think that abortion is a kind of murder and should be illegal, t…

[flagged]

My great grandfather came to America because he was traumatized as a soldier in WWI and wanted nothing more to do with Europe. Fuck you.

Re: Texas death row inmate at mercy of supreme court, and junk science

#113

Post by [deleted] »

spamizbad wrote: post #72
SamoyedFurFluff wrote: post #23

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…

That's because the purpose of the death penalty is to function as a sort of secular human sacrifice, to ward off evil-doers possibly doing bad things, due to a belief that deep down bad guys are rational actors and will choose not to do commit capital murder based on punishment.

[deleted]

Re: Texas death row inmate at mercy of supreme court, and junk science

#114

Post by beerandt »

Retric wrote: post #100
beerandt wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except a state judge had already given them the option to a retrial (based on ineffective counsel, not "evidence of innocence") before the appeal was made to the federal courts. They apparently didn't like their chances at retrial, even with "effective counsel".

That’s irrelevant, I expect the both the guilty and innocent to try any argument to get free. Saying you don’t get to make an argument is problematic independent of any specifics because making the argument isn’t winning the argument.

Of course it's relevant.

"We couldn't simultaneously argue two conflicting theories of defense"...

Isn't quite the same argument when your revealed preference shows you not to believe either theory to stand on its own (or together).

"Your honor, we'd like this conviction thrown out because we couldve/shouldve claimed 'defense option B'." Retrial granted. "No! We don't actually want to retry with 'defense option B'! We just needed a reason to throw out conviction based on 'defense option A'!"

Re: Texas death row inmate at mercy of supreme court, and junk science

#115

Post by beepbooptheory »

lisper wrote: post #108
boomboomsubban wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the other death row inmates mentioned in the article as having failed the junk science law, Kosoul Chanthakoummane, was partly convicted for hypnosis induced testimony. The appeal response on calling it junk science was, paraphrased, "hypnosis induced testimony was known to be bogus in ~2005, when your trial was. You should have argued it then." That alone is terrible. But to make that bullshit even worse, Tex…

Why? Shaken Baby Syndrome is a real thing. https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/shaken-baby-s... [UPDATE] To those of you downvoting me, would you kindly explain why? It seems like a reasonable question to me.

https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/hypnosis/about/p...

Re: Texas death row inmate at mercy of supreme court, and junk science

#116

Post by mindslight »

d-z-m wrote: post #66
lapcat wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I actually think that progressive conservative political axis isn't a meaningful one in the current climate, and that the more operative axis is the libertarian authoritarian. Importantly, there can be every combination of these four points on the political compass. I.e. there are authoritarian conservatives, and libertarian progressives; but there are also authoritarian progressives and libertarian conservatives.

Progressive conservative has always been a harmful red herring, but it's been made even worse by the shift to progressive reactionary. Especially as most people continue using the word "conservative" as a synonym of "Republican", when the Democrats have been left as the more conservative party.

Re: Texas death row inmate at mercy of supreme court, and junk science

#117

Post by guraf »

unyttigfjelltol wrote: post #85
SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That could all be true, but folks also testified they personally witnessed him violently shaking at least one kid. You can be against junk science, but entertain the likely possibility he also did it.

No, not really. Let's say the testimony was reliable, which it wasn't. What's the proper inference: that he kept going with bad parenting and escalated to murder? Or, that he recognized what he did was unhelpful and problematic so never did it again? How do you choose between inferences? In this way, the "evidence" comes back, again, to something alarmingly like a popularity contest which turns, quite unacceptably, o…

> What's the proper inference: that he kept going with bad parenting and escalated to murder?

The path is this: he is known to have shook at least one kid before, so maybe that's that happened again with the kid who died in his care. Doesn't mean there was an intent. Just that he shook too hard or the wrong way. So you ask a doctor you check for signs. Doctor says yup, totally SBS. The end.

At no point did he need to "escalate to murder", so there is no leap needed. It's all very straightforward.

Re: Texas death row inmate at mercy of supreme court, and junk science

#118

Post by couchand »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #105
couchand wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, if one party puts forward an unchallenged expert witness, sure, there's not much a judge can do. It sounds like the original case was like that. It sounds like the appeal is NOT like that, the judge having seemingly ignored the very reasonable challenge to the original witness testimony.

Appeals aren’t meant to be a redo of the original trial. The judge ruled that he didn’t prove he was innocent, or that a reasonable juror couldn’t have voted to convict him if they saw his new evidence.

Please explain how "expert testimony has been widely discredited" doesn't count as new evidence?

Re: Texas death row inmate at mercy of supreme court, and junk science

#119

Post by Retric »

beerandt wrote: post #114
Retric wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s irrelevant, I expect the both the guilty and innocent to try any argument to get free. Saying you don’t get to make an argument is problematic independent of any specifics because making the argument isn’t winning the argument.

Of course it's relevant. "We couldn't simultaneously argue two conflicting theories of defense"... Isn't quite the same argument when your revealed preference shows you not to believe either theory to stand on its own (or together). "Your honor, we'd like this conviction thrown out because we couldve/shouldve claimed 'defense option B'." Retrial granted. "No! We don't actually want to retry with 'defense option B'! W…

It’s perfectly reasonable to argue you don’t want to waste time in prison waiting for a trial if you think the evidence is clear enough.

An appeals judge should be able to make that call the same way a trial judge can dismiss charges before trial. That appeals judge can easily say, it’s relevant but not clear enough for me to dismiss the case.

PS: Thus various standards of evidence “beyond reasonable doubt” vs “clear and convincing” vs “preponderance” etc.

Re: Texas death row inmate at mercy of supreme court, and junk science

#120

Post by Arainach »

vorpalhex wrote: post #35
GlumWoodpecker wrote: post #5

Powerful article. What strikes me as a layman (non-lawyer, non-law enforcement), is how prevalent these methods of forensic science have become, without any solid scientific basis backing them up - such as peer reviewed studies with quantifiable evidence. You'd think that in order for the state to take the life of a human being, you'd need to prove it using means that are more thoroughly vetted than "[one doctor] who…

SBS is well supported by the medical literature and extensive studies: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25616019/ (an overview) This man was not committed to death row because of one doctor. He was found guilty because multiple people in his life testified he had a history of violently shaking and screaming at a child for crying.

>He was found guilty because multiple people in his life testified

Source?

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