A couple of bits of good news
Texas Court Halts Execution of Man Who Did Not Kill Anyone: He was party to a robbery but didn’t kill anyone.
Justice Department Says Poor Can’t Be Held When They Can’t Afford Bail: Violates equal protection. So it’s not just freedom for those who can afford it.
August 22nd, 2016 at 8:19 pm
1. Felony Murder Rule. All parties to a felony are equally guilty of murder if someone dies during its commission. That’s how home invaders get charged with murder when the victim kills one of the home invasion gang. But for the crime this guy participated in, the victim would still be enjoying life and paying taxes. If you’re looking for someone to cry over him, look somewhere else.
2. The Constitution prohibits EXCESSIVE bonds. This ruling will effectively eliminate bonds. If you (say you) can’t pay your bond, no problem. Out you go.
Cook County has had this system for 40 years. (They call them I-bonds.) You can see how well that’s turned out.
August 23rd, 2016 at 12:04 am
Accomplice liabily is pretty settled. Otherwise, the mob boses who ordered the hits would escape and the soldiers would fry.
The better argument is that the accomplice who actually was the shooter got a life sentence. Disparate sentencing, and it applies to non-capital cases too. Equal justice under the law should mean equal punishment for the same crime.
August 23rd, 2016 at 1:14 am
Y’all can call me a liberal pinko fag, but on case #1 I’m not convinced. Easy to judge from a newspaper article, but we know how reliable journalists are as a source of details when the issues are ‘complicated’.
There’s no way of knowing that the felon in question (yes, I use the word ‘felon’ advisedly) was party to the decision to commit murder. Reports suggested not. The book “Les Miserables” presents a pretty good argument for paying more attention to the details than just yielding to the portrait painted with a broad brush … especially when the painter wasn’t there and he’s probably influenced by biased sources and a deadline-devoted editor..
Okay, accomplice liability sounds pretty simple, but it’s really not.
No way of knowing what degree of complicity actually existed, but the law is not as black-and-white as some people might assume from watching back episodes of Angie Dickenson and Earl Hollimon on their “POLICE WOMAN” DVDs.
August 23rd, 2016 at 5:39 am
The article conflates a bond with a fine. The bond is a surety to make it more likely that you will turn up for trial. That ruling is one more SJW attack on societal norms.
August 23rd, 2016 at 9:44 am
For the vast majority of cases (I’ve read >90%), after the long & expensive pretrial activities which serve mainly to enrich lawyers, a DA offers a plea deal and reduced charges in order to “process” a criminal through the system without a trial anyway. Without the possibility of holding some poor schlub for extremely long times before trial, the DA loses one of the levers used to pry pleas from those arrested. Good for the defense, I’d say.
At the same time, why should it take 6 months to 1 year to adjudicate simple cases of assault, robbery, drug possession, DUI, and so on? These things seemingly should and could be settled in about 5 minutes with a plea bargain after a defense lawyer checks that the arrest was good, and realizes trial is a losing proposition. Most criminals take the plea for fewer charges because at trial they would lose on all counts, and they and their lawyers know it.
A solution to this entire issue of bonds and plea bargains is to process charged individuals through trial within days, not months to years, in most cases.
August 23rd, 2016 at 9:48 am
As to the death sentence, the issue of concern is the “forensic psychiatry” of a really problematic doctor, not the facts of the case. I’d guess that even with the exclusion of that (likely very biased and tainted) testimony, a death penalty will result again, because the convicted person was participating in a crime where a murder occurred. All participants in a crime are guilty of the same crime, otherwise all getaway drivers would be guilty only of parking violations or speeding.
August 23rd, 2016 at 10:46 am
Pretty soon they’ll be paying people to show up for their own trial.
August 23rd, 2016 at 11:51 am
Mikee:
You’re right, 90+% of all criminal cases never go to trial, they’re settled by plea bargain. In my 30 years in LE, I never once testified in a trial of one of my cases. All my cases were pled out. (I testified as an expert witness in other trials, and in sentencing hearings, though.)
The idea that cases “should and could be settled in about 5 minutes with a plea bargain” is a good idea, but it ignores a few realities. The first is the sheer number of cases. In any large jurisdiction, such as Cook County, LA County, or Miami-Dade County, or even smaller ones like Milwaukee County, dozens or hundreds of arrests are made every day. If you want to adjudicate those cases quickly, be prepared to pay for three times as many judges, public defenders, and courtrooms as you have now.
The second big reality is the delusions of the defendants, who all think they can beat the case in court, and won’t go for a plea until the last possible second. The American Renaissance website had an interesting article a few years ago entitled “Confessions of a Public Defender.” If you can find it, it’s worth a read.