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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

#141

Post by vorpalhex »

alright2565 wrote: post #51
vorpalhex wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't even think it matters if he shook this infant or not. The doctors failed to diagnose the infant with severe pneumonia and prescribed it medications that are no longer considered safe for children. This seems like plenty of doubt to not convict him.

The child did not have pneumonia. Roberson CLAIMS the child had pneumonia.

You know the issue with that claim? It would have shown up in autopsy. There would still be inflammation in the lungs.

The child had breathing problems because of SBS. SBS can pinch off the airway.

This is a kid that was repeatedly in a hospital. Not for a diagnosed issue such as Asthma but because SBS damage kept occuring because Roberson kept shaking the child hard enough for her to pass out on multiple occasions.

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

#142

Post by kmeisthax »

Grimburger wrote: post #29
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…

The closed source DNA testing code used daily just raises so many red flags. It's honestly concerning how basically no one in the legal community understands why this is an issue. This stuff is way too important to be proprietary.

Wanting to weaken or abolish any kind of property right - even the non-naturally-derived government-granted monopoly bargains that form copyright, patent, and trade secrecy - makes you extremely fringe in the legal profession. If you want to be a competent and successful lawyer while holding those opinions you have to firewall half your brain off from the other half. Partially because fringe people who want to change the law make terrible legal arguments[0], and partially because nobody wants to hire a lawyer that's arguing that forensic software should be decopyrighted and its source code forcibly expropriated by the state for the sake of avoiding a miscarriage of justice.

[0] Like me, right now, who thinks we should demand copyright term maximums

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

#143

Post by vorpalhex »

Mordisquitos wrote: post #60
vorpalhex wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 he had a history of violently shaking and screaming at a child for crying. IANAL, but wouldn't that be against the rule that character evidence cannot be used by the prosecution (unless in countering character evidence from the defence)? Specifically, I believe what you describe would be in contravention of the following: https://www.law.cornell.edu/…

Re-read (b)(2).

You can't testify that a defendent was "a jealous man" or "of unsavory character". You can testify that you saw him shake an infant angrily until she passed out.

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

#144

Post by cf141q5325 »

dsego wrote: post #84
spamizbad wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's retributive justice, it's not a deterrent. To quote a post I recently found resonating with me: "Look, we don’t necessarily hang murderers to deter other people from committing the same offence. We kill them simply because the punishment has to carry the same weight as the offence. The family of the murderer must go through the same anguish and pain that the murder victim’s family went through. The killer has to…

Its worth mentioning here that many methods of execution are quite sadistic. Shooting or hanging with a sufficient drop are quite a lot more humane then for example the chair. I am hard pressed to see that as a honest mistake.

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

#145

Post by skotobaza »

dsego wrote: post #84
spamizbad wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's retributive justice, it's not a deterrent. To quote a post I recently found resonating with me: "Look, we don’t necessarily hang murderers to deter other people from committing the same offence. We kill them simply because the punishment has to carry the same weight as the offence. The family of the murderer must go through the same anguish and pain that the murder victim’s family went through. The killer has to…

> sending people to jail has never stopped other people from committing the same offences

That's a bold claim. I know people who didn't do illegal stuff because they didn't want repercussion that comes with it. So it is a deterrent.

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

#146

Post by mcpackieh »

jncfhnb wrote: post #129
mcpackieh wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s almost always a deeply frustrated parent or caregiver who is desperate, trying to assert control over a screaming infant, That sounds like malicious abuse to me. > and does not understand that this could kill them, or at least thinks they will not. It would still be manslaughter at least, if not murder. And if shaking the baby was itself felonious abuse, then an accidental death resulting from that is probably…

And… what exactly is achieved by this sort of justice system? Congrats, you killed some undereducated, desperate parents who fucked up and lost their child.

> And… what exactly is achieved by this sort of justice system?

It suppresses the rate of vigilante justice. If the courts can generally do a better job than the vigilantes themselves, then society comes out ahead.

If we were to live in a society where parents can abuse their children to death and receive nothing more than a scolding from the state to be more careful in the future, then we'd have a lot more people killing each other in retribution. And once that starts in earnest, it often forms unending blood feuds. At the very least, imprisonment for manslaughter is warranted. For the state to mete out no punishment at all would be an abdication of their duty to deliver justice so that others don't have to seek it themselves.

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

#147

Post by cf141q5325 »

rPlayer6554 wrote: post #62
Workaccount2 wrote: post #12

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.

Society has made a God out of science. Don't get me wrong, science is a fantastic invention and should be taken seriously. Anyone who dismisses science without thought or reason is crazy. But as you saw during the pandemic and through this, we've lost some sense of reason when a flawed human in a white coat says something. We need to take what they say seriously but with a grain of salt that they get things wrong.

The key term here is confidence. It was bad enough when it turned out that many people who really should understand p-values didnt. But this claiming overwhelming confidence to better manage patients is just despicable, how ever well meant it is. Its incredibly short sighted and ruins trust.

Stuff is just complicated.

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

#148

Post by lisper »

rossant wrote: post #132
lisper wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Shaking and child abuse are obviously real things. However, the way to diagnose shaken baby syndrome has been the subject of an ongoing scientific controversy for decades. With several colleagues, we have just published a textbook about this sensitive issue [1]. I've also written about how I, as a neuroscience researcher and software engineer, came into this diagnosis [2]. Finally, an introduction to this fascinating…

OK, but that still doesn't explain the connection between SBS and hypnosis (and Texas for that matter). Is there a particular history of using hypnosis to convict innocent people of shaking babies to death in Texas and impose the death penalty on them? Is this common knowledge?

The original comment to which I was responding still makes absolutely no sense to me. And getting downvoted because I asked for clarification is making even less sense to me. I must be missing something fundamental here. (Either that or HN has jumped the shark, which I fervently hope is not the case.)

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

#149

Post by anon84873628 »

LargeTomato wrote: post #88
Spivak wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

We make the law "algorithmic" because the alternative is a lawless society. Laws have been written down and procedurally followed all over the world for thousands of years. Societies that fail to follow the rules are prone to instability and decay. I'm not saying it was okay to kill the person. I'm saying we can't throw away laws but your comment continues to advocate for a less "algorithmic" (unambiguous) law. These…

What? The parent isn't arguing for "less algorithmic laws" or not enforcing laws. They are hypothesizing about the worldview of a supreme court justice who doesn't care about the accuracy of the outcome or what happens in edge cases.

Your sentence about people getting radicalized on the internet is non sequitur and bizarre.

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

#150

Post by BeFlatXIII »

jfengel wrote: post #80
lozenge wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's called "just"ice, not "systemish". Getting the right outcome is meant to be a core goal of the system. Besides, there are many legal reasonings that would allow the process to give the right answer - that innocent people should not be killed. Thomas chose to find a different reasoning instead.

All nine of them, and practically every lawyer of all persuasions, will tell you that the only justice is the equal application of the written law. And sense of "justice" to mean "fairness" is a job for the legislature. The fact that legislation is always vague and they can interpret it to mean whatever their ideology wants it to mean is just waiting for more legislation to fix it. If there is an obvious miscarriage…

…and you'd only need a simple majority in the Senate if not for silly procedural rules.
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