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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

#201

Post by dsego »

adfgiionio wrote: post #194
i80and wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I genuinely find this point of view viscerally repulsive. Maybe it's a common perspective, but I pray not. It really seems to be at the heart of a lot of issues with legal systems.

Most people, moral or not, would never kill. Most people rarely feel a desire to kill, and most people know they would feel guilty for killing someone. A person's feelings will keep them in line even if their character won't. The police add an extra incentive. But executions change all that. Whether or not a person supports capital punishment reveals if their morality is a flimsy thing of feelings and self-interest o…

> A good person will refuse to hurt others no matter how badly they want to.

Does this include or exclude killing in self defense? Would a good person allow themselves to be killed rather than harming the attacker? Imagine that the assailant would be rehabilitated after serving 10-15 years for your murder and live a productive life with family and kids, does that change the equation? Is absolutist pacifism the end goal or is there an arbitrary line you are willing to draw?

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

#202

Post by Arainach »

vorpalhex wrote: post #139
Arainach wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

https://www.texastribune.org/2016/06/17/appeals-court-halts-... Yes, this article is from 2016 and yes it's in Texas which has a strong law which allows throwing out bad science. The suspect forensic claim was such a small part of the evidence against the defendent that it didn't survive appeals.

The person alleging he hit the daughter is his ex wife and her own sister testified she is a recurrent liar.

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

#203

Post by hirundo »

Aeolun wrote: post #175
hirundo wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was on a jury last month, an assault and battery case in which the identification of the rusty-colored substance on the grip of a handgun could easily make a big difference. We convicted on the assault and acquitted on the battery because of the lack of the evidence, though I think most of us thought the defendant was guilty of both. This was the second try at this case after a prior jury hung, but the two years be…

If two years is not enough lead time someone is not doing their job.

Agree. I could understand if the expense of a DNA analysis sufficient to identify only the victim could be more than the county could afford for a battery case. But not trying to even identify it as blood, let alone human blood, just seems lazy. Here's what the prosecutor gave us in place of that: "If it smells like a skunk, it's a skunk, you don't have to see it." I was thinking that I smelled one and was looking at it.

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

#204

Post by mcpackieh »

BeFlatXIII wrote: post #153
mcpackieh wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 ki…

If blood feuds become that much of an intractable issue, why not target those regions for fentanyl-powered self-mollification? That's obviously a galaxy brain argument, but what's to stop someone from going Tim McVeigh over a routine miscarriage of justice?

What?

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

#205

Post by adfgiionio »

dsego wrote: post #201
adfgiionio wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people, moral or not, would never kill. Most people rarely feel a desire to kill, and most people know they would feel guilty for killing someone. A person's feelings will keep them in line even if their character won't. The police add an extra incentive. But executions change all that. Whether or not a person supports capital punishment reveals if their morality is a flimsy thing of feelings and self-interest o…

> A good person will refuse to hurt others no matter how badly they want to. Does this include or exclude killing in self defense? Would a good person allow themselves to be killed rather than harming the attacker? Imagine that the assailant would be rehabilitated after serving 10-15 years for your murder and live a productive life with family and kids, does that change the equation? Is absolutist pacifism the end go…

No, no, no, and no. In all of those cases the killing is justified by more than just bloodlust. I am not a pacifist and never have been.

Executions are different. People are not afraid to admit that they support executions because they like knowing that hated people will suffer. That is not something I will consider acceptable under any circumstances. If there were any evidence that capital punishment served a purpose beyond feeling good I might change my tune. But there isn't, so I won't.

You yourself admitted executions serve no practical purpose, so your self-defense hypotheticals are irrelevant.

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

#206

Post by seabass-labrax »

mcpackieh wrote: post #146
jncfhnb wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ki…

I don't quite follow. If a child dies due to abuse by a single parent, who is it who you suppose would become a vigilante? The child is unlikely to have had any adult friends or relations that would want retribution so much that they kill the late child's parent.

If this was manslaughter/murder of an unrelated adult, then I could see that there could conceivably be some friends or relations inspired to vigilantism, but this thread has mainly been about manslaughter of children by parents due to incompetence.

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

#207

Post by kbelder »

Racing0461 wrote: post #152
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…

This is the kind of bullshit that makes me against government death penality. If the supreme court can't throw out "administrative procedure" in favor of a "correct ruling", then where does one go next? Is the only way to get the "correct outcome" a BLM george floyd type protest? It seems like the court system is becoming like getting support from tech companies these days where the only way to get a "normal" level o…

But following proper administrative procedure is a key component of a fair justice system. It's not all that's necessary, but it is necessary, otherwise you have rules being bent on whims of justices, prosecutors, or public sentiment.

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

#208

Post by Omni5cience »

lisper wrote: post #148
rossant wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

AFAICT The Junk Science at play here is not that SBS doesn't exist, but that the triad of symptoms is enough to definitively prove SBS.

The reference to Texas is because the subject of the article is a particular case in Texas (with references to other laws/cases in Texas like the "junk science writ" and Kosoul Chanthakoummane whose case had nothing to do with SBS). The reference to hypnosis is sort of orthogonal to SBS, it's used as another example of junk science in the article.

This section of the article is probably the most relevant:

Paradoxically, Texas is a leader in countering junk science. In 2013, the state introduced a first-in-the-nation “junk science writ” that allowed prisoners – especially those on death row – to challenge sentences on grounds of misused forensic science. It was under this law that in 2016 Sween saved Roberson from imminent death by securing a stay of execution four days before his scheduled lethal injection.

But the hope generated by the new junk science law in Texas has proven a chimera. There have been about 70 attempts by death row inmates to utilize the law and of those the number that have obtained relief is zero.

Kosoul Chanthakoummane was one of those who appealed through the junk science law. He had been put on death row on the back of three different types of junk science: hypnosis of a witness to obtain identification, bitemark analysis and a discredited form of DNA testimony.

In August 2022, Texas executed him anyway.

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

#209

Post by kergonath »

kmeisthax wrote: post #142
Grimburger wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There are alternatives to “decopyrighting”: a government-sponsored development effort, open source from the beginning, for example. Or a government buying an existing piece of software to a willing company. Or sending money to that company in exchange of them publishing their source code.

The OP did not say anything about taking ownership of already-existing software without its owner’s consent.

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

#210

Post by Yoric »

beerandt wrote: post #196
Yoric wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that you got it backwards. As far as I understand, the claim is that internal head/brain/eye trauma can have many causes, so these symptoms do not automatically mean that the baby was necessarily shaken. Sadly, this combination of symptoms have been named "Shaken Baby Syndrome", which means that people naturally assume that the baby has been shaken, which is apparently a crime in Texas. Had this s…

>internal head/brain/eye trauma can have many causes But almost all have corresponding external trauma. The cases that don't have matching external trauma narrow it down considerably. Restrained in a car seat in a rollover wreck? Maybe. Rolled out of her bed? Not really plausible. But might seem like a good excuse for someone looking to cover up abuse. Sort of agree with it being scary that a diagnosis implies a crim…

Well, I have neither the medical knowledge nor any kind of deep understanding of this case necessary to pursue this conversation, so I'll bow out.

Thanks for the details!

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