3 ms·
The title skews quite a lot what happened. Here's the link to the ruling. https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/20-1009.html The quote about innocen
by credit_guy 4y ago
The title skews quite a lot what happened.
Here's the link to the ruling.
https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/20-1009.html
The quote about innocence, is not actually a quote about innocence, and is not given by a judge (justice) on the Supreme Court. Let's look at it:
"reasonable probability that the jury would not have unanimously convicted [Jones] of any of the counts"
This judge does not express a view that in his opinion there's evidence for innocence. He just states that there's some probability that some members of the original jury might have found grounds for reasonable doubt.
In any case, this judge does not say anything about innocence. His opinion was that there was not enough evidence for guilt, not that there was evidence for innocence.
You could say it's all the same, just semantics. After all the principle is "innocent until proven guilty".
It's not just semantics. The title here suggests that the Supreme Court justices have seen actual evidence for the innocence. What could that be?
The uncontroversial fact is that a little 4 year old girl died because of ruptured internal organs. She also had injuries consistent with rape. The jury, after seeing whatever evidence the prosecutors presented decided that the defendant was guilty of rape and murder.
Evidence for innocence would be an alibi. Maybe the defendant was in a different country at the time this all happened. Alternatively, evidence for innocence would be evidence that someone else raped and murdered the girl.
But that's not what was being argued. What was being argued was that somehow the girl was raped and her organs ruptured and then she died, but the totality of evidence leaves some room for reasonable doubt that the defendant was the rapist and murderer (but with no alternative perpetrator).
So, the whole ruling of the Supreme Court is about various technicalities about incompetent counsel, and when a retrial is warranted. But nobody in the Supreme Court ever said that "evidence of innocence is not enough".
[1] https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/20/20-1009/166813/20210120132018645_Ramirez%20Jones%20Appendix.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/20/20-1009/166813/202...
- ethics13 4y agoThis should be at the top of this topic's thread.
- psd1 4y agoYour hedge about "no alternative perpetrator" assumes competence on the part of the police.
- klyrs 4y agoYou're avoiding the point of this case altogether, and focusing on the salacious details of the crime to distract from the very technical matter before the court. The accused had, through no fault of his own, unconstitutionally inept representation for his first case, and, through no fault of his own, unconstitutionally inept representation for the second case. The matter before the court is that the courts will not admit evidence of innocence. If the accused is innocent, and has evidence of such, it was never allowed into the court record. Do we have evidence that the accused is innocent? No, not in the public record, because the court won't allow it. The ruling, instead, focuses on the salacious details of the crime to distract from the technical matter at hand. Because, apparently, blind pursuit of justice is simply too expensive, and it's preferable to kill the innocent when the state provides incompetent representation and the accused cannot afford better.
- credit_guy 4y agoI’m not avoiding thay at all. I stated that the SCOTUS ruling is about procedure, the right for competent council, etc. But what the article implies is that the justices have seen the evidence that a man is innocent and is being put to death, and they just don’t care. And that is simply not true.
- klyrs 4y agoYou're right, they didn't see any such evidence. But that's a moot point because the accused is procedurally blocked from presenting it.
- credit_guy 4y agoWho's "they"? The judges? Are you kidding? When someone appeals, they present the new evidence to the court. The judge then determines if a new trial is warranted or not, and if the evidence is to be presented to a jury or not. In any case, you can find the "evidence" described in [1], pages 31-37. And you can also find there pages and pages of gruesome details. The guy was guilty as sin. [1] https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/20/20-1009/166813/20210120132018645_Ramirez%20Jones%20Appendix.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/20/20-1009/166813/202...