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Author Topic: AmeriPol thread  (Read 3533414 times)

Vector

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #49650 on: October 11, 2022, 08:51:35 pm »

I had read about this guy before... eating-his-own-eyeballs-guy. I was surprised that the subject of the case was someone I had previously encountered.

He has already been punished. He punished himself. Being incarcerated is known to make mental illness worse and this man is clearly very sick. None of this is just.

This is horrible precedent. I'm shocked, angered, and appalled.
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hector13

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #49651 on: October 11, 2022, 09:46:12 pm »

Oh damn, apparently having longstanding mental illness and GOUGING OUT YOUR EYE WITH YOUR BARE HANDS doesn’t make you insane in Texas.

Just reading the Wikipedia page on him is enough to get incensed. Dude was failed by so many institutions so many times, and continues to be failed.
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Lord Shonus

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #49652 on: October 12, 2022, 04:37:04 am »

Ah well, I see it's been a few weeks since we've had something to sicken the mind and spirit.

Enjoy.

https://twitter.com/jaywillis/status/1579852329628860417?t=ob6g_2b6OudF70Zjxw_UTg&s=19

Quote
An all-white jury convicts a Black man of killing his white wife. Three jurors oppose interracial marriage because people should “stay with their Blood Line.” His lawyers don’t object. Jury sentences him to death. No problem, says the Supreme Court.

The SC has basically said "racial animus isn't enough to invalidate a jury." If their lawyer were worth a damn they would have never been sat on the jury in the first place. But even then, the SC just basically handed the South all the freedom it needs to judge the defendant by just about anything.


Note that this is a denial of certiorari - SCOTUS will not be hearing the case. This is not a SCOTUS decision - it creates no precedent, cannot be cited in any future case at any level of court, and makes no decision about what party is in the right. It does not endorse Texas's position any more than it does Thomas's. It merely states (with no further explanation from the majority) that they do not believe that the Court has grounds to make a decision. The vast majority of cases appealed to the Supreme Court end in exactly this way.

While racial bias issues are the portions being discussed the most, the core nature of the appeal is about the effectiveness of counsel - did the defendant's attorneys represent him competently and according to ethics. The core support for this is that the trial attorney did not do enough to discuss the defendant's mental illness issues, and that the counsel did not do enough to counter racial bias on the jury. The latter is untestable from public information.

Sotomayer, Kagan, and Jackson state in their dissent that they believe the racial issues should have been enough to justify hearing the case, but as far as I can tell "the jury was racist" is not a component of the appeal except as part of the incompetent counsel claim.

Oh damn, apparently having longstanding mental illness and GOUGING OUT YOUR EYE WITH YOUR BARE HANDS doesn’t make you insane in Texas.

The legal definition of insanity has absolutely nothing to do with any other meaning. Delusions, by themselves, do not constitute an insanity defense.

The standard for an insanity plea in the state of Texas is codified as

Quote
Sec. 8.01.  INSANITY.  (a)  It is an affirmative defense to prosecution that, at the time of the conduct charged, the actor, as a result of severe mental disease or defect, did not know that his conduct was wrong.

(b)  The term "mental disease or defect" does not include an abnormality manifested only by repeated criminal or otherwise antisocial conduct.

Acts 1973, 63rd Leg., p. 883, ch. 399, Sec. 1, eff. Jan. 1, 1974.  Amended by Acts 1983, 68th Leg., p. 2640, ch. 454, Sec. 1, eff. Aug. 29, 1983;  Acts 1993, 73rd Leg., ch. 900, Sec. 1.01, eff. Sept. 1, 1994.

Most relevant here is that Texas law does not include the corollary "a defense against a crime that would not have existed if it were not for the mental illness in question" clause that is now adopted by a large number of states. It is a strict M'Naghten rule clause. Additionally, if your mental illness is a result of drug use, it does not qualify.

To simplify this, if you are a lawyer in Texas, you are representing somebody on trial for murder, and you seek an insanity defense, you have to prove three things

1. That your client suffers from a mental illness that affects their perception of the world
2. That drugs did not cause it
3. That this mental illness was active at the time of the murder
4. That, because of this illness, your client believed that they had the right and/or duty to kill their victim

Thomas's attorney did, in fact, try an insanity defense. His suicide attempt after the killing was believed to indicate remorse, and thus a confession that he knew the murders were wrong. Prosecutors also contended that his condition was a result of extensive voluntary drug use, and thus ineligible. Which brings up the great danger of an insanity defense - it is inherently a confession. When you use "Yes, I did it, but here's why it isn't my fault" as a defense, and they reject the why, it becomes "Yes, I did it."
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anewaname

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #49653 on: October 12, 2022, 07:26:02 am »

I'm dropping this post into the mix with some overlap to Lord Shonus's post.

On the supreme court's website, the case's journal entries with links to pdfs and the supreme court's dissent pdf.

I'm fairly sure the lawyers who defended during the Texas trial are not part of the same group of lawyers that filed the appeals in the Texas and federal courts. The lawyers who defended during the Texas trial allowed the racist jurors in the jury. This is important because the supreme court majority opinion implies the Texas trial defense lawyers intentionally allowed racists on the jury to form a basis for later appeal.

This spoiler covers the paragraphs explaining how lawyers sought an appeal through the state court, using affidavits from the trial's defense lawyers indicating the jury-selection process was improperly done, and how the state appeal court said they saw “no evidence that the jury’s decision was racially motivated.”):
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

This spoiler covers how a federal appeal was made, just like the state appeal was made, and the supreme court rejected the appeal, "deeming the juror-bias claim “speculative,” and finding that defense counsel’s “decision to forego questioning three of the four jurors about racial bias was simply a matter of trial strategy.”
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I agree with the supreme court's majority opinion that "defense counsel’s “decision to forego questioning three of the four jurors about racial bias was simply a matter of trial strategy." Meaning, the defending lawyers knew their client was not going to be able to overturn the murder evidence so they intentionally allowed racially biased individuals into the jury to form the basis for an appeal, even though other lawyers would file those appeals.

The supreme court's minority opinion spoke to what Nenjin posted, and I agree with this minority opinion also:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

My opinion:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
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Lord Shonus

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #49654 on: October 12, 2022, 08:18:28 am »

That goes a little too far, because ignoring racial bias is not a good thing. The situation is just a fair bit more complex than a lot of the simple takes you see on it are, as is the actual dissent - and it is pretty common for justices to use dissent as a soapbox.
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nenjin

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #49655 on: October 12, 2022, 09:58:23 am »

"You see, he's not incompetent, he's playing 4d chess."

Hell of a strategy letting racists on to the jury so you can lose the case and then get it overturned on appeal. Seems a lot less plausible than either his defense attorney was incompetent or they did the minimum to defend their client.
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McTraveller

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #49656 on: October 12, 2022, 10:10:04 am »

This is one of the oddities that I find particularly confusing about the US legal system: you can be absolutely 100% guilty of a crime, but if it wasn't prosecuted correctly, you can be granted freedom. This isn't justice either - real justice is prosecuting both the crime and the incorrect procedures.

My two cents:  The guy is guilty, but you should disbar the people sustaining the bias; you don't overturn the conviction if the conviction is correct.  You only overturn the conviction if it would have been different if there were no bias.

This also goes for false convictions: if people are convicted falsely because of bias, you both overturn the conviction and fire/get restitution from those abusing the system.
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hector13

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #49657 on: October 12, 2022, 10:36:03 am »

Absolutely if a case was prosecuted incorrectly (at any point from the crime being reported to the end of the court case) the defendant shouldn’t be convicted. They have rights too, and impinging on them does not create justice, regardless of guilt.

His counsel was clearly incompetent enough to not challenge allowing three avowed racists on the jury in a trial involving a black man, and that jury decided against the insanity defense. Had that defense stood, he would’ve been put in a secure psychiatric facility to treat his mentall illness.
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Lord Shonus

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #49658 on: October 12, 2022, 10:50:17 am »


This is one of the oddities that I find particularly confusing about the US legal system: you can be absolutely 100% guilty of a crime, but if it wasn't prosecuted correctly, you can be granted freedom. This isn't justice either - real justice is prosecuting both the crime and the incorrect procedures.

My two cents:  The guy is guilty, but you should disbar the people sustaining the bias; you don't overturn the conviction if the conviction is correct.  You only overturn the conviction if it would have been different if there were no bias.

This also goes for false convictions: if people are convicted falsely because of bias, you both overturn the conviction and fire/get restitution from those abusing the system.

The intent of making any misconduct by the prosecutor or the investigating police grounds for an acquittal to which double jeopardy applies is to prevent misconduct entirely. The protections built into the US Constitution were written in an age where "innocent until speculated guilty" was a default, and it was common practice for people in positions of power to have rivals arrested on grounds so flimsy that nobody would accept them today. The limited degree of success (and make no mistake, it has had success - the sort of hijinks that prosecutors and police get up to today have nothing on the practices of even "civilized" nations not that long ago) has more to do with gradual erosion of the protections by carving out exceptions and limitations, not with the underlying theory. Never mind that if you get "off on a technicality", it generally means the case against you wasn't that strong in the first place.

Absolutely if a case was prosecuted incorrectly (at any point from the crime being reported to the end of the court case) the defendant shouldn’t be convicted. They have rights too, and impinging on them does not create justice, regardless of guilt.

His counsel was clearly incompetent enough to not challenge allowing three avowed racists on the jury in a trial involving a black man, and that jury decided against the insanity defense. Had that defense stood, he would’ve been put in a secure psychiatric facility to treat his mentall illness.

The issue there is that even the purest jury, following the law, would probably have rejected that insanity defense. Because, under the law of the State of Texas, he very likely did not meet the definition. It is pretty clear that even the insanity defense was nothing more than a Hail Mary - the facts of the case were beyond all doubt, and it was impossible to win.
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Grim Portent

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #49659 on: October 12, 2022, 01:24:02 pm »

The purest jury might have gone with jury nullification or similar as an option. Given the nature of the guy's crimes I doubt many would, but that was an option unless Texas' legal system has something to prevent it.

Really the guy is a shining example of the kind of person who should have been put into psychiatric care a long time ago, to the point that having a trial for him seems almost laughably sad to me.
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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #49660 on: October 12, 2022, 02:28:10 pm »

Neither the judicial system nor the system to treat mental health seems to be able to provide a restorative mechanism at this point. The victims are beyond help, the vicitimiser is beyond being helped. And executing the guy is basically as useless (in dealing with him, and as being a deterrent to others who might come after him) as just throwing away the key to whatever box they'd otherwise have to keep him in.

I'm not sure I have any strong opinions about what happens now. Sending him to 'the next world' (given I'm fairly sure there's no divinely-judged level of torment waiting for those who deserve it) is not my default choice under any circumstances, but neither is any thought about not doing so, in this case, the tale told about his case lacking even the modicum of doubt about his practical guilt. I'm not sure I could arrange for any forthcoming fate that he didn't deserve, but (oxymoronically) I'm definite that I also could not arrange for him whatever fate that he does.

The best outcome (leaving him aside entirely) is to identify all the past-failures and learn from them so that things never get to this stage ever again. Little hope of that, though, as the increased interventionist strategies required are antithetical to both libertarians and liberals, for mostly different reasons, and would just get unfunded/defunded by the small-government crowd at the earliest opportunity (and in entirely the most inconvenient order of steps) even if set up correctly in the first place.


This is entirely through the lense of what the recent messages upon this thread have revealed, with no further personal research into the situation. But it seems to ring true with what I understand of how both the broken and sticking-plastered bits of the justice system (and the rest) actually 'work' in such hard cases. And if I were asked to judge what happens next then I also would tend to say that it's really not up to me and just not let the buck stop on my particular square of the game-board. Yeah, I think this is a rare occasion where I'd do the same as this particular incarnation of SC. Not sure if my motives are fully the same, but ends up the same in the long run.
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nenjin

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #49661 on: October 12, 2022, 03:13:11 pm »

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anewaname

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #49663 on: October 12, 2022, 07:46:20 pm »

More links to court documents from the Texas Appeal Court appeal and response, via the Texas Tribune timeline. Specifically, this 182 page pdf is the Texas court's response to the appeal, and it is also the decision the supreme court upheld. There are statements from several dozen people. "Expert testimony", "witness testimony", "patient treatment reviews", all assessing the defendant and several indicating the patient didn't want to get better and didn't want to be treated. It is a morass and I highly recommend you do not read it... but two choice bits:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
and
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
My ability to interpret this is limited, but I still do not see how anyone in a jury could still have racism on their mind after "cut out their hearts and walked away with them" got into their mind.

@nenjin
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

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nenjin

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #49664 on: October 12, 2022, 09:44:52 pm »

I think the juror's statements take it well beyond the realm of speculation. I think if he weren't a slam dunk from a conviction standpoint, this would be getting treated differently. Can you railroad a guilty man, the same way you railroad an innocent one?

As for abuse of the law, the courts fend off appeals like this all the time. The law gets defended at the lower levels all the time, because the evidence is lacking. Here, I think there is actual evidence of juror bias, clearly stated, and the state is unwilling to address it (because it jeopardizes the conviction of a man everyone wants to see dead, if nothing else) and the SC is unwilling to engage with it.

Again, it's easy to look at Thomas as a guilty murderer trying to weasel out of justice. And ignore the more substantive, I think, part where at least parts of a jury were openly racist and that didn't at least force a new trial at all. They'd find him guilty again anyways but at least "don't let em mix with yer kin" wouldn't be part of the proceedings. Even though this happened a while ago, it feels like this is continuing to normalize people's public racism.
« Last Edit: October 14, 2022, 01:49:51 pm by nenjin »
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Cautivo del Milagro seamos, Penitente.
Quote from: Viktor Frankl
When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.
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Its kinda silly to complain that a friendly NPC isn't a well designed boss fight.
Quote from: Eric Blank
How will I cheese now assholes?
Quote from: MrRoboto75
Always spaghetti, never forghetti
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