Texas may well execute soon an innocent man on the false premise of "shaken baby syndrome". [1] He would be the first in US history.
This article was written by the police officer who helped send Robert Roberson to the death row in 2003. He changed his mind since then.
John Grisham has also written about this case. [2]
Please spread the word. As the retired police officer wrote:
> It would be a terrible legacy for all of us to be associated with executing an innocent man based on a rush to judgment and bad science. We must prevent Texas from making a tragic, irreversible mistake.
I always find the phrasing of these posts weird, as if we have to pretend that Texas has not executed innocent people before and this would be a first.
on edit: not just the post, but the articles, we must pretend that of course this would be a first time event that would otherwise sully the fine nature of the criminal justice system with accidentally murdering someone.
>Texas may well execute soon an innocent man on the false premise of "shaken baby syndrome". [1] He would be the first in US history.
This is pretty clear to me. If you wanted to make it sound like you're claiming, you'd phrase it something like "Texas may well execute soon an innocent man, the first in US history, on the false premise of "shaken baby syndrome.""
As it is, the first sentence very specifically scopes down this case to "shaken baby syndrome."
That's also clear but I don't think the original is odd wording at all... Like I said, two separate sentences. If you read the first one, not sure how you misread the second one as applying to only a portion of the first one.
What is odd about the original wording? If anything, the one you present feels more formal/awkward compared to normal conversational English.
Personally I think it's absolutely ludicrous to believe that anyone would be trying to suggest that only now, in the year 2024, has a possibly-innocent person been executed in either Texas or the US. Like, you'd need crazy strong evidence to make that claim, while the post in question seems very specific to shaken baby syndrome.
It feels like an intentionally un-charitable, adversarial reading.
This may be a regional thing but the second just sounds better to me:
Texas may well execute soon an innocent man
Texas may soon execute an innocent man
“on the false premise” is also strange. I don’t think it’s really a logical argument so much emotional manipulation around an images of a dead and bruised body that was compelling. Kids are tough, the idea of shaking hard enough to damage a neck is plausible but to cause serious bruises is difficult to believe. Add in evidence of a serious medical condition and you get a different picture than just a false premise.
> It feels like an intentionally un-charitable, adversarial reading.
Saying this might be the first isn’t strictly speaking wrong as far as I can tell. I don’t know of anyone proven to be innocent that’s been executed. Sure, it’s likely happened several times, but I can’t exactly put a firm number so it may well be zero.
I don't think it's there to mislead someone on purpose, I just think people feel uncomfortable pointing out Texas is killing people that are innocent and thus end up not pointing it out or accidentally making things sound like "oh no, Texas is going to make a mistake they don't normally make!"
It is clear that it is meant the shaken baby syndrome is what is the first here, but still it could be taken the other way, and it ends up downplaying how contemptible the State's actions are, even though the poster really wants to highlight that.
I guess I would prefer something like -
"Texas, continuing its tradition of executing innocent people, will for the first time use the dubious science of Shaken Baby Syndrome as its cause."
It's not just the post, everybody does it whenever they say "Texas might execute an innocent person" they ignore that Texas has executed people that were extremely likely to be innocent (so likely that it is reasonable just to describe them that way - in case anyone has problems with my phrasing here)
How would you phrase it better. Sorry if it sounds confrontational to ask this question, but I can’t think of spot anything out of sorts with this phrasing.
That seems likes a pretty bold statement to make without backing it up further. To say a state with the death penalty could sometimes get it wrong is one thing, but your phrasing makes it sound more like the state regularly commits murder.
Abbot just pardoned an open white supremacist, who publicly expressed his desire to kill BLM protesters, before actually going out and doing it, so your shock at the questioning of how criminal justice is pursued in Texas seems a bit naive.
I wasn't questioning criminal justice in Texas broadly, the topic was innocent people being put to death.
> From what I understand, Texas executes possibly/probably/definitely innocent people with regularity.
The GP comment seems to imply that Texas is intentionally putting innocent people to death regularly. That had nothing to do with the governor or pardons.
You could help explain the connection a bit more. The original topic is wrongfully execution, your example seems to be wrongful release? Is your issue with the death penalty or governor's pardon power?
IIUC what dragonwriter is saying is that by way of pardoning the murderer, Abbott is condoning the murder, making it in a sense a "private execution".
I think that logic is sufficiently sound, provided we know we are not being precise. I don't know enough about the case to say whether it actually applies here.
I haven't seen anything that clearly lays out Abbott's reasoning or intent, though I may very well have missed it.
Pardons aren't always condoning a person for the crime they were convicted of. The legal system is fallible and writing clear laws to handle ant scenario that comes up is impossible. A pardon can be used to free an individual who seems to have been wrongfully convicted but without sufficient proof or process for an appeal. It can also be used to free individuals who have been rehabilitated, or who the executive believes has learned from their crime and is ready to return to public life.
I have no idea if Abbott was motivates by anything like that or if it was more akin to jury nullification, but I wouldn't assume that a pardon can only mean that the elected official is condoning the crime itself.
I appreciate your taking the time to demonstrate that your arguments throughout this thread were not the product of naïveté, as I had originally suggested, but instead just tedious concern trolling. What motivates Abbot, as well as the murders he sanctions, judicially and extrajudicially, has been quite plainly stated by himself and those doing the killing. Instead of making pointless arguments in the abstract, familiarize yourself with the particulars.
I believe the outrage is not about how good this particular 'martyr' is but because he was found guilty by the same system that decides when a person can reasonably use deadly force in a state that has laws specifically designed to 'stand your ground' and even then he was found guilty by a jury of his peers.
So with everything going for him he was still found guilty, so now someone can undo all of that just because they feel like it?. This spits in the face of the entire state and its judicial system.
Wouldn't that argument extend to every government? Every state has to decide what level of force or violence is allowed and in what situations, and the power given to individuals will never match the power of the state.
It sounds more like an anarchist argument than an anti-Texas argument.
it is pretty difficult to make statements about innocence once someone is dead and everyone involved with the case has moved on, however there are a number of cases in which it is obvious that the standard of beyond the shadow of a doubt was not meant, not even beyond a reasonable doubt - these cases are extremely doubtful and in that case it is reasonable just to describe them as "innocent"
Unfortunately we all agree to live under this rule of law though. "Innocent" legally only means you weren't convicted, and whether standards like beyond a shadow of a doubt was met is up to the jury and later the appeals court.
I agree the system is terrible, if even one innocent person can be found guilty and punished or even killed then the system is broken in my opinion. We can't fix that one-off though, and targeting one state's use of the death penalty is only going after a more obvious symptom while ignoring the root cause.
While I will always support seeing a person wrongfully convicted go free, I'd much prefer a fundamental revisit of our legal system so we don't have to catch mistakes like that after the fact.
I think the point is in this case, it can indeed be stopped since executions, once done, can't be undone. It's not an academic topic, it's a life and death topic, a basic morality issue. The current Texas government is quite corrupt, particularly Ken Paxton, the attorney general, but I'm not sure that matters here other than as a tangential point of data.
I think I'll put my critical but practical trust in government on a grand scale rather than small tribes of anarchist humans with each having their own idea of justice and laws. That didn't go so well for a lot of people in the "Old West" of the US and other examples of that.
We still have different state governments in the US and different country governments around the globe. Are you more confident in those because its larger groups of people deciding, and enforcing, what is right and wrong?
What the 'scale' appears to do, is to sugarcoat things which appears less hurtful for most people:
1)Eliminate individuals targeting other individuals at a personal level on a routine basis.
2) An officially worded notice, as opposed to some thug threatening at you.
3) Some written text that has has a resembles of order call the 'law'. To give an analogy consider why religions texts appeal to people. People have a lot of reverence for the written word including areas where IMO it should not be relevant: example marriage.
To highlight my point, if a thug were to go around extorting people for money verbally on a periodic bases which are _less_ that the taxes currently paid and provided _more_ services than the government then the targeted individual of the extortion would more resentful than he/she would have been of the government.
So is your argument here that the scale of governments, and their willingness to write down the rules they want to impose, is better mainly due to optics? I.e. we're better off with governments because someone has to be in charge and a government at least appears to be better intentioned thugs due to their use of a pen and paper?
Generally correct. Put another way the government to a large extent are thugs. No, I personally am not sure if we are better of with governments. I have lived in places with virtually no government and those places have generally been better than the ones with the government.
Scale and respect for institutions brings order. Anarchists remind me of one of two things, primitive villages trading with other primitive villages for supplies and goods or post apocalyptic tribes people living off a past of greatness until they become primitive villages trading for supplies and goods of other villages. Anyway that type of life is gone. As soon as a country like the USA goes "anarchist" everything falls apart and another country like Russia or China invades and enslaves the population
I'm not trying to propose anarchism here at all, and agree any shift from the world today to anarchy seems horrible in the short term even if its a long term utopia (trying to be as generous as possible of the upside there).
Respect for institutions is really a sticking point for me though. For one thing, they need to earn and deserve our respect. For another, if respect for institution is the goal then those institutions shouldn't need the power to impose their will upon us.
I don't need someone to that I have respect for to force my hand, and if someone does force my hand I likely won't respect them.
I’m not sure what definition of “criminal” you’re using to make that assessment. All the ones I know are based on laws, which are enacted by states. You have to accept the very framing you’re decrying to call anything criminal.
It's only criminal because those in charge wrote criminal states declaring those acts as such. There's no universal, fundamental code that defines criminal or right and wrong.
Innocent under whose eyes ?
one man’s revolutionary is another man’s terrorist. what morality and code stands the test of time ?
actions which was legal and moral say 200 years ago would be illegal and amoral now , who is to say how 200 years in future would see our framework for ethics from now ?
Taking any sentient life is a crime against nature and humanity.
Societies supporting death penalty are not civilized for the same reasons any cannibals are not.
Killing is killing, what difference does it make if you were hungry or felt scared or vengeance or merely sadistic to justify it .
I think... it has to do with "start with" part of their statement (as in where to start to find what different people can hopefully reach a consensus on), as a more-likely-to-be agreeable thing than the general "killing a person".
what good will consensus on a statement everyone already agrees on help with ? nobody is ok innocents with being executed[2] . Even the Texan criminal justice system responsible for a third of the about 1600 executions since 1976 will say they don't want innocent to be executed. They just say everyone is guilty.
The methods to establish innocence or exonerate[1] in legal systems objectively are extremely difficult or impossible. People will never be able to agree on who is innocent, no matter how obvious it looks to you or me.
DNA evidences have exonerated many in the recent years, many of the executed were mentally ill, a lot of the evidence is circumstantial and based on unreliable testimony which all too frequently is racially colored, there is no certainty they did the act they are accused of, let alone deserve to die for it.
The only meaningful consensus that can actually make a difference is that death penalty should be abolished.
It is barbaric and morally abhorrent,it is also not ineffective as a punishment, is not deterrent, and also extremely expensive.
---
[1] Pardons is not one of them, pardons require admission of guilt
[2] Innocent Americans that is, we are quite fine with "collateral damage" of women and children without any due process in drone strikes or now in Gaza.
> It would be a terrible legacy for all of us to be associated with executing an innocent man based on a rush to judgment and bad science. We must prevent Texas from making a tragic, irreversible mistake.
I believe that this statement is making specific reference to this particular case. (I miss-read this next part, but will leave my mistake here with this comment. See below conversation. Sorry for the confusion) Earlier in the article it is made very clear that this has not been the only execution of an innocent person wrongly accused of shaken baby syndrome:
> According to the National Registry of Exonerations, there have been at least 32 exonerations of those wrongfully convicted under the shaken baby hypothesis.
And then you go to Supreme Court, and SCOTUS says:
> The Constitution, Scalia wrote, does not prevent the government from executing a person who new evidence indicates might be “actually innocent” — that is, someone with the potential to legally demonstrate they did not commit the crime for which they were convicted.
And have locked in on this:
> In Shinn v. Ramirez, the court voted 6 to 3 to overrule two lower courts and disregard the innocence claims of Barry Lee Jones, a prisoner on Arizona’s death row. Importantly, the majority did not rule that it found Jones’s innocence claims unpersuasive. Instead, it ruled that the federal courts are barred from even considering them. Thomas wrote the opinion.
> A proper remedy for claim of actual innocence based on new evidence, which is discovered too late to file a new trial motion, would be not federal habeas relief, but rather to file for executive clemency with the state.
> Shinn does not affect “new factual predicate” claims. If a witness changes their story 5 years after trial, you can still validly raise that claim both as a subsequent state writ and as a 2254 federal petition. Same goes for new scientific evidence, Brady violations, etc. None of those things can be characterized as the defendant's fault for not raising them earlier.
> federal courts should show enormous deference to the states, even when federal judges believe a state court is wrong.
These decisions seems more about federalism? I mean, if you want to blame someone, blame the involved state for not considering the exculpatory evidence. For example Barry Lee Jones is out now - but it is because of an Arizona judge, not a federal one.
The Supreme Court is extremely selective about what cases should be deferred to states and which should be the realm of the federal courts. They needed to federally abolish affirmative action in college admissions, but when a person is being put to death unjustly that's a state issue. If a website designer hypothetically refuses to design a website for a gay couple that's a federal issue.
Eight amendment should trump any states right rigamarole.
Of course Ianal, but come on. States rights is really just wrangling about accounting and tons of grandstanding between opposing sides of our two party system.
> I mean, if you want to blame someone, blame the involved state for not considering the exculpatory evidence.
I do. But I also wonder about the role of the "highest court in the land", when other courts, state or federal, "decline" to hear appeals with factual evidence of innocence.
I don't think "Too bad, that's the law, just lobby to have it changed" is an acceptable response to someone facing capital punishment.
The federalist system is more complicated than that. To justify taking a case to the federal court system, it has to affect relations between US states, relations between any US entity and a foreign entity, events and actions that take place across state lines, federal laws, or Constitutional amendments. IANAL so the specifics aren't perfectly accurate, but that's roughly where the line is.
If the Supreme Court routinely interferes in matters purely inside of a US state where it has no jurisdiction because no national-level question exists, it could well provoke a constitutional crisis.
Well that's where Scalia's statement comes in - he argues that the state has no duty to avoid executing innocent people, only that all relevant procedures were followed. To use an example from history, if witchcraft was a crime, and the townspeople found someone guilty of witchcraft, they have no duty to accept a time traveller's defense that witchcraft is scientifically impossible and the person is therefore innocent. The "due process" was the trial and witch tests, not a modern scientific consideration of the facts. I don't know Scalia's actual opinion, but I would be surprised if he did not find these witch executions judicially justifiable. Presumably he would argue that the proper way to avoid burning witches at the stake would be to change the laws supporting such activities.
They are in part about federalism and in part about the absence of a right to have a verdict reviewed if it was arrived at properly, irrespective of new evidence discovered later.
Were such a right to exist under the Constitutiom, federalism would no longer require the federal courts to stay out of state cases involving such claims, since there would br a justiciable question of federal law.
> someone with the potential to legally demonstrate they did not commit the crime for which they were convicted
that includes everyone convicted of a crime, all of the time.
unless you think due process requires endless appeals, you probably agree with Scalia
Shinn v. Ramirez overturns Martinez v. Ryan, use the state court instead. where in the constitution does it say there is federal jurisdiction for that kind of claim?
"Endless appeals" is such a blatant strawman here. If there is new evidence available (or old evidence that was wrongly excluded), then of course an appeal is justified, no matter how many appeals happened before. Anything else would be mockery of justice.
the system for evaluating whether new evidence is "new evidence" already exists and is not what is being claimed here. read more into the facts and proceedures of the legal system please.
The Constitution is supposed to guarantee us due process of law.
As a citizen, I firmly believe that a legal system that would condemn a man who is likely innocent to die is not "due process of law" in any meaningful sense. Even if you're correct and the precedent is that this is how it is, well then, too bad for the precedent.
If that was his real stance, and someone who does believe in up and down, I think he is burning in hell for being in position of power to stop, but went on to kill innocent people.
Also in subject of death row, recently watched rather good movie based on true events: Trial by Fire. Interesting how that case was based on pseudo-science and even thought the governor knew he still let Cameron to be executed.
> We must prevent Texas from making a tragic, irreversible mistake.
Another tragic, irreversible mistake. The man has already been on death row for two decades. Imagine spending 20 years in a cell waiting to be executed because people believe you murdered your own child. Nothing will undo the kind of damage that does to a person, nor will anything make up for the years lost.
I'd struggle to come up with something more cruel. Honestly I'd consider it merciful to kill someone immediately rather than putting them through decades of psychological torture. At least that would only be barbaric.
Several innocent people die from being imprisoned every day.
No one cares, because they die in the prison infirmary, but they're just as dead and they were killed because of their conviction, just like they were executed. (No, I'm not talking about folks on death row, although innocents on death row also die in the infirmary.)
Not only do we kill more innocents that way in absolute numbers, it's also greater in percentage numbers. (Death penalty cases get lots of review. We can argue about whether it's enough, but it's far more review than life without parole, not to mention lesser sentences which end up being life.)
This kind of argument is exhausting. I don't know if there's a name for it or if there's some kind of "razor" for it, like; "Moving in any direction of bettering things is always going to be confronted by someone who thinks it's not good enough and there's some far bigger problem somewhere else so let me distract from the actual good that's trying to be done here"
To the actual point - I do think there's a difference between inmates dying in prison for other reasons (and we should reduce those) vs. sentencing someone to execution for a crime they didn't commit.
I didn't say anything about doing less or that your concerns were invalid.
My point is that there's more "bang for the buck" wrt saving innocents from being dying due to wrongful "not death penalty" convictions, even if you discount "dying in the infirmary" quite a bit relative to "dying in the chair."
I'm not saying that you shouldn't care about the death penalty.
My comment is addressed to people who care about dying due to wrongful conviction.
> My point is that there's more "bang for the buck" wrt saving innocents from being dying due to wrongful "not death penalty" convictions, even if you discount "dying in the infirmary" quite a bit relative to "dying in the chair."
If the system doesn’t care when an innocent is actually sentenced to death and executed, why would it care if they die at all?
I don’t think there is any predictable “bang for the buck”.
If anything, more “bang” is achieved by shaming the system towards better justice wherever it will be most publicly noticed.
Creating a halo for more change.
The case’s dramatic factors are why people put up their own resources into fighting it, and why we are hearing about it. And why the challenge has any chance.
On top of that, all the people who die in policy custody before they are even convicted of a crime. Or before even being accused of a crime, simply because of trigger happy cops.
Part of the issue is that the United States has 25% of the world's prison population and only 6% of Total population the world. When you are the jailingest country in the world per capita by a large margin - More than Russia, Saudi Arabia, iran - You got the question how flippantly we put people in a cage.
Judged by how effective they are right? At preventing crime and especially recidivism? We compare extremely well against our peer nations on these metrics, the ones who have much less "sane prison terms." Right?
In Ohio, a man was arrested for murder 16 years after being convicted of shaking a baby (and subsequently serving another prison term) when the "baby" died from complications. The "baby" (young adult at passing) was severely disabled their whole life.
Hah. I'm Norwegian, but I get the wish to double check. We also used to - it's not as common any more - often talk about "American conditions". It was often used especially in the 1980's. If you wanted to dismiss your opponents policy, you might imply they might cause "Amerikanske tilstander".
Yes, but the particulars of the case are that the guy decided to seek out a BLM crowd, drove his car up to a side street where the crowd was, shot into the crowd, and managed to kill a guy with a gun. Even WITH clear motive, his behavior to even get into that situation, eyewitness testimony, and a jury conviction, he was pardoned anyway.
> drove his car up to a side street where the crowd was, shot into the crowd, and managed to kill a guy with a gun
Not EXACTLY how it played out.
He was upset the crowd was blocking an intersection. So he ran a red light, driving into the crowd, and then shot a guy who yelled at him for it because the yelling guy was carrying a gun.
I wasn't defending him. Just pointing out that the killer did a lot more than "park on a side street and fire into a crowd". He ran a red light to commit vehicular assault, so he could intentionally provoke a reaction, and then killed the first person that he could think of an excuse to.
Texas is also a "constitutional-carry" state. The other person being merely armed should not be material (if Texas were consistent in applying the law.)
The death penalty should be abolished. You don't get sentenced to death for harming others, you get sentenced to death for being unsympathetic to the jury (because of racism or, as in this case, because you don't appear to exhibit the right emotions) and for not having enough money to afford a good lawyer.
You can die from being poor in a bunch of different ways in this country, but this is one we could easily eliminate.
I think we need to find another way or some kind of middle solution.
Like in the situation where everyone knows this person did crime X or Y (for example lets say murdered several children) we can just immediately execute them via hanging or firing squad (quickly) instead of letting them sit in prison for a decade+ while we "wait" on their lethal injection nonsense to go down.
The tricky part is having a fool proof system where we only execute people where the evidence is 100% and then perhaps multiple independent review panels also agree all evidence points to yeah they did it or the criminal themselves admits to the crimes.
Some kind of system where everyone executed has been universally agreed upon as guilty.
A sentence of death should be swift, agreed upon by all, and not a criminal spending decades in prison wasting tax payers money.
Virtually Western democracies support death penalty besides the US and Japan. It literally puts us in a lot with the countries. We consider it to be backwards (Iran, Saudi Arabia, Russia).
I don't think Americans sometimes realize how radical of an outlier we are to the rest of the world on this and many other issues, including probably most notably, basic social policy.
Yes, the only real argument against the 100% cases that I've ever heard is that there would be fewer people admitting to murder if they knew that they would be killed. But I think this shouldn't bother us, so what if fewer people confess? I think most confessions are already only done when they see themselves having no other choice than admitting what they did.
Also we are talking about the 100% cases, people who e.g publically shot someone or are so mentally ill or stupid that they confess anyway where by definition we might not even need to wait for a confession.
I think most people who are against the death penalty are not fully honest with their opposition, consciously or subconsciously. Outwardly they say that they oppose it due to the danger of innocents being hurt. But inwardly I suspect a far less well intentioned reason because we see an indication for this in the release of murderers from prison after only ~15 years sometimes. What genuinely moral person would ever support the release of a murderer? But see, if we don't execute murderers immediately it starts a whole process in humans. They see the suffering of the murderer in prison and they feel bad. It's automatic, they can't turn it off. This the kind of automatic biological pity when you see someone suffering which is not a good kind of pity in this case. This person murdered another human being, his life should be forfeit. But then an even sicker consideration starts coming into play: The humans who see this other human (murderer) suffering say: Well, this is a waste! This too is inevitable thinking in humans. We see a human being who seems to behave well now, in a cage, and seems to be nice and you can talk normally to them over topics like the weather and family and suddenly the thought comes that this is an economic waste. Then society suddenly has a big, daily economic incentive to release him. This is why I support the death penalty to be carried out immediately, we cannot trust people to be objective about pain and suffering, especially not decades after the committed murder when the wounds aren't fresh anymore. But the victim cannot talk and plead for justice.
I consider your logic and beliefs sick. And if you feel so much for victims what do you think about politicians? Their actions kill people by truckloads with no recourse.
This sounds like legally it would make things even harder.
At the moment, in principle you are only convicted if you guilt is "beyond a reasonable doubt". That already has to be done by a jury.
How do we decide if someone is "universally agreed upon" to be guilty? Bigger jury? Also, it would be weird to have a jury say "This person is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, but not universally agreed upon".
That requires so much trust in the people in power. People who have demonstrated repeatedly throughout history that they don't deserve blanket trust. It's like suggesting lynch mobs never got it wrong.
I guess the bigger problem is jury trial. Jury trial exists when there is a lack of evidence and the prosecutor wants to charge based on his feelings/agenda or whatever. It's a corrupt system and the public is entertaining the whole ordeal.
As I understand it, death penalty cases need a special jury, consisting of people who approve of the death penalty. Also, in practical terms, they need an incompetent defense lawyer.
Death penalty in the US seems like a remnant of slavery more than anything else. I guess the same could be said for much of the US government (polices, judicial system, etc)
Not only convicted under the highly controversial shaken baby syndrome theory (not straightforward to prove; hence erronous) and ignoring medical evidence but his undiagnosed autism led to unfair judgments of his behavior... irreversible errors in the US justice system.
Maybe it's high time to overthink the death penalty?
I have what I believe to be an adequate criteria for inflicting the death penalty:
1. A person has to commit and be convicted of, and sentenced for a (potentially) capital crime.
2. That person has to escape from their final prison.
3. That person must then commit, and be convicted of another capital crime (probably with some mitigating circumstances, like murders that are arguably part of the escape and evasion don't qualify for the death penalty, but escaping, then going out of your way to murder a civilian do).
For most bad crimes, life without parole is more than adequate. And if you escape and dedicate yourself to keeping your nose clean, then the worst you should face is an extended sentence. The death penalty should be reserved for people who pose such a proven, dire risk to society that the goal of the punishment is risk mitigation for society, not justice. Ted Bundy is the best real-world example I can think of.
Life imprisonment in many US prisons is actually worse than killing them quickly, because we believe we must spend a tech worker salary per prisoner per year to make sure they are stripped of dignity and comforts so as to make their imprisonments miserable. Imagine being put in a concrete cage with only dudes, you are literally regimented by force to someone else's early-morning schedule, it takes 3 hours of prison work to buy a bag of chips or make a 10 minute collect phone call to a loved one, your only escape is solitary confinement with nothing but your cloths, hands, and mind, and you are stuck in this building or others like it until you die.
Only politicians and judges should face that possibility, only because they wield the flaming sword of the state!
> to make sure they are stripped of dignity and comforts s
That's the point. You speak as if we do this mistakenly.
> Imagine being put in a concrete cage with only dudes, you are literally regimented by force to someone else's early-morning schedule,
Yes. I can imagine this. My imagination acts as a deterrent. I implore you to continue to urge others to imagine it, particularly those at risk of becoming criminals themselves.
You have sympathy for victims but offer none to offenders, who are often (but not always) victims themselves who have been failed previously.
If deterrance worked, why is the US so imprisoned today? The memes surrounding the tree of liberty did not spring up in a vaccuum, groups of men with power have a long sordid history of atrocities. Those men use magick (psychological trickery) to gain your consent to act on others by force, or the consent of others to act on you by force.
I am a pro- liberal gun ownership and pro- restricted state power kind of girl (especially re: "War on ___"): I have better chances of survival shooting back at criminals than goons in Fashi garb.
> 2. That person has to escape from their final prison.
Tangentially, in some Scandinavian (I believe?) countries, escaping from prison is not a punishable offense. To be clear, you will be looked for, and taken back to prison when found, but their legal system has ruled that the craving for freedom is a natural human urge, and that it's punishing human behavior to punish escapees for escaping.
That's explicitly why I called out crimes committed as part of the escape and evasion as a potential example of "subsequent crimes that don't qualify for the death penalty". There are too many valid mitigating circumstances to just blanket say "he's a convicted murder, and he escaped, now we get to kill him".
I'm not sure I'd go so far as to say that escape shouldn't be treated as a crime (one way to view crime is an explicit rejection of the idea that a government can or should dictate our actions, so in that light, trying to get out of a legal punishment is itself a rejection of that government's right to issue punishments). But certainly, if the only additional crime is the escape itself, then the death penalty is entirely unwarranted.
IIRC the reasoning mainly rests on the right to not have to assist the state in convicting and punishing you. Similar principle as the right to remain silent.
It would also be weird to punish people for a failing of the state.
To clarify, and especially in context of this article:
1. A person has to ~~commit and~~ be convicted of, and sentenced for a (potentially) capital crime. 2. That person has to escape from their final prison. 3. That person must then ~~commit, and~~ be convicted of another capital crime
Of course if a person remorselessly commits a capital crime it changes a lot of things. But one big problem is that justice system can't reliably always determine who committed the crime (or was it committed at all).
And a good criticism to my concept is that if a person is falsely convicted of one heinous crime, then escapes and is accused of some other heinous crime, the original conviction would likely be used as evidence towards motive and means.
I'm not sure of a good solution to that problem, although it would certainly shrink the number of executions of innocent people, it would not completely eliminate them.
Also, another case in which the death penalty could be warranted:
The person has confessed to the crime, does not recant their confession, and accepts (or even desires) the death penalty in lieu of lifetime imprisonment. (Yes, there are cases like this.)
Of course, this reads a bit more like suicide, and may not be necessary if we had appropriate "right-to-die" provisions in general (such that they also applied to prisoners). Maybe we should just give all such prisoners access to a seppuku knife once a year.
> Maybe we should just give all such prisoners access to a seppuku knife once a year.
Honestly, I don't understand the desire to make the death additionally torturous. If we must kill, just give people a gram of fentanyl. They'll enjoy the last few moments of their life, a grace that's traditionally afforded in the form of a last meal, and simply forget to breathe.
Are you telling me that shaking babies doesn't kill them?
> undiagnosed autism
I think autism mild enough to not be diagnosed cannot possibly excuse somebody for shaking a baby, and as somebody with autism so mild that it went undiagnosed for 30 years I'm personally offended that anybody could believe otherwise.
> Are you telling me that shaking babies doesn't kill them?
It sure can, and a number of babies diagnosed with SBS have been abused or killed.
However, the way shaking is typically inferred from a small set of supposedly characteristic medical findings (radiological and pathological evidence of blood in the layers surrounding the brain and at the back of the eyes) has a weak scientific evidence based — determining abuse requires a far more sophisticated approach. [1]
As a direct example, note the lack of neck trauma in the indications.
You would generally expect neck trauma to be involved in shaking a baby so hard their brain starts to bleed. Their necks lack musculature, and are nearly limp. Their vertebrae are what’s eating the force of their head shaking. There would likely be obvious trauma to the neck if the baby had been shaken.
That was the point clearly made in both articles above just to be crystal clear here. Shaking baby syndrome is very real and deadly of course. This is all about the criminal case and the evidence here though.
I also edited my comment to make it very clear as I had just been echoing on what was to read there; no room for confusion in these matters. Fully agreed.
In the case being discussed above, there was also witness testimony saying the accused was seen to shake the baby on several occasions. If that testimony hasn't been recanted (has it?) and we're expected to think that SBS didn't kill the baby then a theory of this man's innocence is in effect a theory about that witness trying to murder him using the legal system, or that shaking the baby on several occasions and the baby dying are entirely unrelated (extremely dubious.)
Maybe the state has failed to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt but unless that witness has recanted I think he's more likely than not to be guilty.
A witness reported observing the accused shaking the baby, therefore you find it safe enough to assume that the baby was killed by shaking. Safe enough that you would murder him with the legal system? Despite knowing that the baby had severe pneumonia at the time of death, and that many cases of SBS that were "proven" by the standards of the time are known to be incorrect?
Dear God, I hope I never get into legal trouble and have you on my "jury of peers". I'd be better off being judged by a panel of... sorry, I can't finish that sentence without venturing into ad hominem territory.
Do believe that every Karen has a legitimate beef, then? Every parent who goes out in public and has their child {have a tantrum, demand to have something, make a loud noise} knows that they are being judged, often harshly, by someone with less than a full picture. It is not hard at all to imagine a very concerned and upset observer deciding that what they think they are seeing is in fact what is happening, and it's horrible and must be stopped and they are a noble savior for calling it out. And be full of crap. It happens all the time. It may or may not be what happened here, I don't know enough and I doubt you do either.
> saying the accused was seen to shake the baby on several occasions.
When my son was small, say I don't know, 10 or 11 months, I'd pick him up under his arms, hold him at arm's length, and (gently) shake him while chanting "shake the baby! shake the baby!" and he'd start giggling so uncontrollably he'd be gasping for breath before he stopped. My wife always gave me the stink-eye. I think he still wanted me to do that until he was 3 or 4, he was getting too heavy to be able to do it very well.
Think what would have happened if I'd been dumb enough to do it in public.
I think they are saying that the autism explains his emotional response to the death of his child, not that he shook the baby but the autism 'excuses' it.
I don't think shaking a baby to death should be punished by death, even if it were intentional. Murder of a single individual in general in the US is not usually punished by death even in Texas right?
The general scheme doesn't make a lot of sense; there is no deterrent value in punishing someone for killing their own child. The punishment is that their child dies; nothing you can do will compare to that.
I don’t think that the autism had anything to do with the crime, itself. It had everything to do with how he was perceived by the cops.
Many cops tend to rely on getting a “feel” for the suspect. High-functioning autistic folks often have “resting bitch face.” They don’t come across as “likable,” and people can “get their back up” over it.
I’m a bit “on the spectrum,” and, as anyone in my shoes can tell you, we’re bully magnets. My grade school days were absolute hell. I got the shit kicked out of me, on a regular basis, for no other reason, than “I don’t like the way you’re looking at me!”. I spent many years, training my “resting face” to be fairly open and friendly. People seem to think I look like an idiot, but that’s OK, because they also tend to underestimate me. At least, they don’t think I’m being hostile.
That was neither the point of the posted article, nor the other one shared in comment above. Merely that it's hard to prove and especially so in this case with other medical issues / evidence found.
> Robert Roberson’s case is riddled with unscientific evidence, inaccurate and misleading medical testimony, and prejudicial treatment. In 2002, Mr. Roberson’s two-year old, chronically ill daughter, Nikki, was sick with a high fever and suffered a short fall from bed. Hospital staff did not know Mr.
> Roberson had autism and judged his response to his daughter’s grave condition as lacking emotion. Mr. Roberson was prosecuted, convicted, and sentenced to death under the now-discredited “shaken baby syndrome” (SBS) hypothesis.
Anyways edited and reworded it just to be crystal clear here and keep closer to how article(s) put it in context of a criminal investigation:
> highly controversial shaken baby syndrome theory (not straightforward to prove; hence erronous)
Any parent knows that toddlers are constantly bashing thier heads off things because they’re top heavy and learning to walk they constantly fall over and tumble off things. One of my daughters used to constantly have a lump on her head from smacking it off something. My friends son used to run full tilt into things like brick walls given half a chance, the noise it made was awful. I stand to be corrected on this but if I remember rightly the male scientist who came up with shaken baby syndrome didn’t have kids and hadn’t considered the possibility that these types of injuries could be self inflicted.
I don't know if Norman Guthkelch and John Caffey had kids, but Caffey wrote in his 1972 paper:
> Rhythmic whiplash habits of the infant himself during the first months of life, such as head-rolling, body-rocking, and head-banging may be traumatically pathogenic to his brain and its veins.
More generally, Caffey considered many types of mild shaking to be potentially dangerous, including "toys and recreational contraptions", "playful practices" etc. The notion that shaking had to be "abusive" to be pathogenic came in the 10 years afterwards.
not much you can do about water that's under the bridge, I think at this point he's like to get to step one "get out of prison because I'm innocent", at that point he can get possible compensation, which is pretty low in texas.
This whole article boils down to "it's really stupid to execute people rather than putting them in prison for life". If it's even only "1 person in 1000 is innocent" then I don't see how you can conclude anything else when everything I've read says it's much higher imprisonment of the innocent than 1 in 1000.
I think one of the biggest barriers to your argument, is that prison is more than just a punishment for breaking the social contract and the law. It is supposed to reform behavior so that they don't just reoffend once released. Unfortunately, ex convicts have very limited employment opportunity and do face prejudice. If someone commits a crime, has served their sentence, then they should have the ability to reenter society and earn a living wage without their past mistakes constant haunting them. If they can't find a job and constantly face discrimination for their past that's just pushing them away and toward the prospect of reoffending.
While a lot of people have different stances on drugs or guns, the issue is that what's legal changes over time. Our classification of certain substance or weapons has not been effective, has overall just increased the incarceration rate, and once these people get mistreated because of an old policy or hell even a modern yet useless one, they are more likely to feel like they have less to lose.
Well I'm already in jain for X or Y which means its so hard for me to get a job....and so if they decide to turn back to doing those things because they don't see a viable method of reintegration into society and the workforce they might just accept the fact that they can't get rid of they past or escape it and might engage in more risk behavior.
"Justice" is used rather loosely when talking about the "justice system". Many people explicitly leave the "justice" part off for accuracy. It's just a system. Punishment is more likely than actual justice or rehabilitation.
Life sentences should be capped at a decade, and all charges related to an incident must always be concurrently served (discourages charge stacking). Criminal records should also ghost after 10 years from release (like a credit report).
The death penalty should be abolished; outside of war the state should not possess the legal ability to execute anybody. Reason being is the state screws up; just because the state can pass a law doesn't mean those it victimizes under said law deserve it. Homosexuality and cannabis are great examples of this dynamic. You cannot give back years taken, you can only make them very wealthy and cost taxpayers for continuing to elect unrepentant jailers.
None of these protections should apply to oath-taking elected office holders convicted of treason or other high crimes against the people. Other than for said oath takers: criminal punishment should be made optional, with the other option being expatriation from the nation with the punishment on pause in the event you return. The fact we have a system which acts to make the 'offender' actively miserable, rather than separate the 'offender' but otherwise treat them with dignity, shows we are still a very barbaric society in the West.
There are some seriously deranged people out there. You cannot just release them into society. I think you're looking for solutions to problems caused elsewhere.
The most deranged people should be in well regulated mental hospitals, not for profit prisons. It's insane to acknowledge that there are people too maladjusted to operate in society, then send them to the one place where you know they'll get no help.
The vast majority of prisons are run by governments, and even private prisons are regulated. Using hospitals as a substitute for prisons will result in harm to treatable individuals, as well as more stigmatization of mental illness.
As well as treating mental hospitals as potentially permanent prisons even if the crime itself has a finite sentence. In a world with no bad actors it might make sense but it only takes one bad psychiatrist (or psychiatric facility) to punish a perfectly sane individual indefinitely (or drive them to actual insanity after prolonged confinement and unnecessary psychiatric treatment)
That's far too lenient. I think our current sentences are fine other than the death sentence which is too final. Our prison system needs a complete overhaul and steered towards rehabilitation for those who will be getting back out. However, the criminal punishment time, "the sentence", for most crimes is quite well planned out. The information should never leave your record though.
They might be fine if they were like Norge prisons. Is it really humane to keep someone in normal US style prisons for decades? Really?
Also if you were the victim (or adjacent) and you really think 10 years is too lenient... you're welcome to exact your vigilante justice and eat a potential max of 10 years yourself. :^)
Would be interested to hear what constitute 'high crimes' that should allow more than ten year sentences? On repatriation, I don't know who's going to want to accept each others' criminal exiles. Though perhaps there would be, we do have armies promising freedom in exchange for conscription.
FWIW, Banishment is unconstitutional; from one supreme court decision:
> It is a form of punishment more primitive than torture, for it destroys for the individual the political existence that was centuries in the development. The punishment strips the citizen of his status in the national and international political community. His very existence is at the sufferance of the country in which he happens to find himself. While any one country may accord him some rights, and presumably as long as he remained in this country he would enjoy the limited rights of an alien, no country need do so because he is stateless. Furthermore, his enjoyment of even the limited rights of an alien might be subject to termination at any time by reason of deportation. In short, the expatriate has lost the right to have rights.
Not sure how the same argument doesn't apply to the death penalty given that a dead person presumably has also "lost the right to have rights."
>Not sure how the same argument doesn't apply to the death penalty given that a dead person presumably has also "lost the right to have rights."
Precisely. It is a back justification for a religious notion that universal/cosmic justice is actually a thing and not a product of human psychology in groups. Karma is one example of this pernicious religious thinking. Supreme Court can't come out and say that though or else the magick trick of governance and statehood falls apart. It relies on both your consent and your belief in its inevitability to maintain its existence and influence.
Allowing for banishment will teach the other animals on the farm that the farmer is not god. Separation of church and state is impossible as statism is itself a religion with a god (the state, maybe in proxy for the ephemeral We The People); all the separation accomplished was plastering a neutral color wallpaper on the old system.
Agreed on abolishment of the death penalty. A life sentence can be overturned, death cannot.
Since I don't think anyone can agree on a definition of "high crimes against the people", 10 years is far too little if we're referring to convictions of mass murder.
Seung-Hui Cho who went on to commit one of the deadliest mass shootings in the US back in the mid 2000s killing 32 people (assuming he hadn't taken his own life) would have been out of prison at the relatively young age of 33.
You believe [some] people are born fundamentally evil, I believe such people are sick.
I can think of two systems which are arguably more humane than decades in concrete cages or death:
1) Caste system, so you can create restricted high caste areas where non-criminals can be safe from criminals (with concrete caging in lieu of obeying these laws, so long term imprison is more of a last step than a primary go-to). China is kind-of doing this with social credit scores, I do not like this as it relies on automated surveillance and it is not a replacement for their cages and labor camps. Societies are by nature prisons already, I am advocating the lowest caste (imprisoned criminals) be given much more open access and normalized living conditions in large legally/materially walled off county/parish-size (or larger) Australia-like areas where they can live normal lives with other high risk individuals and away from the high trust low risk individuals. High caste can enter low caste areas, but not vice versa (without a visa and sponsorship, think gated HOA guests).
2) Expatriation with threat of long term caging, hard labor, or death upon return.
We don't do either because statists rely on the fear of the future generated in you when you believe the state is inevitable and omnipotent, and not in any way shape or form a voluntary relationship.
It's not only US. Many justice systems depend on direct witness or experts and expert who can say anything. Witness can be prosecuted for lying, experts not because they only have opinions.
You could punish an expert, but you'd have to prove that they intentionally provided false info, which is nearly impossible to prove for opinions unless you can prove some form of collusion or get a confession.
That's why technically both sides should have experts. A lot of trials where experts are called devolve into simply a "battle of the experts" as the evidence is too close or too complicated.
Sadly, the prosecution often has an unlimited budget for experts and the defendant often has zero. The judge can rule that the state put up some funds for a defense expert, but this is usually a fraction of the cost that the prosecution spend.
Additionally, if you are being defended by a public defender or a cheap defense attorney then they will rarely file a motion for expert fees as they don't have the time to coordinate with an expert and go through the evidence to create a narrative for trial.
Furthermore, lawyers are trained in the law, not in things like forensic science, so if your lawyer knows nothing about the techniques being used to convict you then they won't be able to adequately cross-examine the prosecution's expert nor question their own expert (if they have one).
In France it's even worse as the State experts are assumed to be Right and there is no intended procedure for the defense to hire their own experts, at least not in a way where both sides would discuss on an equal foot.
There's even an obscure article of the law stating that a trial can be adjourned if a witness contradicts a State expert that testified before them.
Though, unlike in the US, the investigators in France are required to seek evidence of both innocence and guilt [0]. So theoretically there's no need for defense experts.
And that's how the justice system breaks down. Prosecutors who pursue a matter with zeal because they can, not because they should. The outward sign of this most often is an emphasis on irrelevant but prejudicial talking points, such as the accused researching lawyers to represent them, or flying a private plane to the Super Bowl to participate in bawdy activities. It starts there and ends with an unjust execution because the police didn't like the way the accused looked at them.
Although I'm not an expert on this case, it's wise to remain skeptical when hearing only one party's perspective on a court decision. The science in question might be dubious, but there could be other evidence, or the story might be more complex than it appears.
I tend to root for the underdog against an institution, but we've already witnessed significant exaggerations and manipulations from the defense in public cases. The Serial podcast comes to mind, as well as the series Making a Murderer.
Thank you, the second document was a helpful counterbalanced context to the original post and helpful in my assessment whether I should write the Texas governor for clemency.
A lot of people have spent a lot of time reviewing this case. It’s not so simple.
>I tend to root for the underdog against an institution, but we've already witnessed significant exaggerations and manipulations from the defense in public cases. The Serial podcast comes to mind, as well as the series Making a Murderer.
None of what you're referring to is new at all, and, unless this idea/concept is new to you (which is OK!), shouldn't really cause a shift in worldview. Parties on each side of cases such as these will often exaggerate and attempt to manipulate the court of public opinion, have done so for eons, and will continue to do so.
The main lesson here is science changes, no matter how incontrovertible it appears. No matter how many experts corroborate your hypothesis and claims, science is evergreen. Don’t let people tell you “it’s settled” it almost never is, especially when it comes to areas that are highly politicized (like SBS was).
And sadly the US justice system isn't designed for post-conviction changes. Typically whatever happened at trial is set in stone, even if it's inherently absurd. Errors of law are easier to get fixed than errors of fact which are normally not touched by appellate courts.
It’s not the US justice system, but Texas has a 2013 law to allow for review when science has changed, and shaken baby syndrome was one of the reason for that law.
Still, when this case was reviewed under that law, the apellate court didn’t reverse the judgement. Having read many additional facts of the case, I am not wise enough in 30 minutes to judge and am happy others have taken time to do so (on both sides).
You make a good point -- my answer actually lacked nuance. States are slowly allowing for post-conviction review of factual matters. Sadly, these steps usually only start once the regular chain (primarily law-based challenges) of appellate review is complete, so it can be five or ten years before you get to make your case.
A lot of this stems from the swathe of exonerations that happened once DNA was introduced and freed a large number of provably innocent people previously found guilty.
When I read stories like this I always think of Norm Macdonald's bit where he said if he were a juror he would not vote to convict a person on the basis of DNA evidence. He said, basically, "I don't know anything about DNA, how am I supposed to convict someone based on what I'm told about it?"
Basically calls into question the whole concept of "expert" witnesses. If a prosecutor cannot explain the evidence to a jury of peers, then he hasn't made an effective case.
The US Justice system is built on precedent. Once precedent is set in a case the science is settled as far as future court rulings. The two systems don't interface together very well.
> If him showing no emotion was a factor in the conviction does that mean that you're not safe with the law if you have self control?
It means humans expect to see what they perceive to be human responses. 99% of people when faced with an accusation of murdering their own child will have an emotional response, not only is it not normal not to, its not admirable and is unhealthy. Its not called self control to not exhibit distress when you're accused of being a monster, that is a time where its very rational to show emotion.
Dissociation under massive stress IS normal, for a significant quantity of the non-monster people among us. I don't think framing it as "self control" was a good characterization by the grandparent, more like shock... a failure of emotional processing.
The US Justice system is built on precedent. If something has been ruled scientifically admissible in court precedent has been set, it is the settled science as far as the US Justice system is concerned. Look at what it took to get lie detectors out of the system (oh wait, they aren't, and while not admissible in court are routinely used as a condition of parole/probation).
In this day and age, an apology is purely an admission of guilt. Everything you do and say will be used against you in a court of public opinion. It is better to say nothing at all and let the 15 minutes of shame pass without stoking the flames.
He literally followed the science, what would you have him do? He did an investigation and believed the experts. We have people every day screaming about how the science dictates this or that (most recently climate science is all the rage). It appeared at the time to be unimpeachably true, based on the best experts of the time. Even in his investigation doctors withheld key evidence which he didn’t learn until later.
But really it’s not even up to him, the state/DA chooses who to prosecute not the lead detective or any police officer. The judge decides if the case has merit and ultimately the jury convicts based on the presented arguments. Placing all the blame solely on the lead detective is disingenuous and unfair.
This is a hard question. It gets to questions of morals very quickly and it is very hard to debate people over morals. There is one side that thinks killing is an appropriate punishment for some crimes and another that doesn't. Little constructive debate can happen around this line. It is much like the abortion debate in this way.
As a practical matter, I personally believe it is almost impossible to implement a state sanctioned death penalty without executing innocent people. Moreover, life and death decisions are handed to people with political power which automatically corrupts their judgment.
I actually can sympathize with some of the positive cases for the death penalty. It has a strong theoretical appeal but I find it impossible to support practically when I think through the implications of any implementation.
I agree it's a hard question. The USA could vote out the death penalty at any time, it's not baked into the constitution. But the USA doesn't, so we have to accept the democratic judgment.
I do think it's literally impossible to have a death penalty without killing innocents. If you look at the stream of criminal convictions that get reversed by appellate courts on a daily basis, combined with all the exonerations handed down to deathrow defendants, it is clear a guarantee of guilt is impossible.
And bear in mind, that reversal of a conviction is usually only possible if there was a trial. Those who enter guilty pleas are often exempt. And 90%+ of defendants enter guilty pleas for a host of reasons. I think Trump's NY judge even commented recently that Cohen entry of a guilty plea wasn't evidence of his guilt (i.e. you might plead guilty and be innocent).
Having spent a lot of time in the justice system, it's clear criminal trial courts don't have the resources to ensure fair verdicts regularly, and don't have high-quality staff to run them.
IMO, no, because killing someone can't be undone. It's a tragedy when someone innocent is sent to prison. Killing someone - and possibly someone innocent - is just unimaginable.
I don't think the solution to excessive sentencing is more excessive sentencing. The individual doctors/nurses presumably had no malicious intent, and it was commonly accepted knowledge within their practice at the time.
But, there do seem to be systemic issues with the justice system at play. As an uninformed non-lawyer, this kind of determination seems like it should necessarily be linked back to an independent study (ideally providing recall and precision, to properly update credence of guilt with Bayes' rule rather than a "finger in air" approach) and not just nebulous common knowledge. Then, if future scientific evidence contradicts that study, review of the cases where it was relied upon should be pretty much automatic.
Dr. John Ross, the pediatrician who examined Nikki the day she
died, testified that she had bruising on her chin, as well as along
her left cheek and jaw. Dr. Ross said she also had a large subdural
hematoma, which he described as “bleeding outside the brain, but
3
inside the skull.” He said there was edema on the brain tissue, and
that her brain had actually shifted from the right side to the left.
He said that, in his opinion, Nikki
Courtney said that she once
witnessed [Roberson] shake Nikki by the arms in an attempt to
make her stop crying. Rachel Cox then testified that [Roberson]
had a “bad temper,” and that she had witnessed him shake and
spank Nikki when she was crying. Rachel said she had seen this
happen about ten times. She also recalled a time that [Roberson]
threatened to kill Nikki.
This case was reviewed under Texas' Junk Science law. It's a more complicated case than a cheap conviction on bad science.
You can read the prosecution's brief. There is ample evidence of terrible behavior.
What about actual hard evidence that Robertson definitely delibrately killed Nikki?
Or is "looks like it" good enough for a death penalty in the US?
It's nortoriously hard to undead people, eg: had Kathleen Folbigg lived in Texas it seems likely she'd be dead by now.
Kathleen Folbigg, who on only circumstantial evidence was famously convicted of killing her four young children and jailed 2 decades ago, had just been pardoned by New South Wales and set free.
> The Dallas hospital records indicate that Nikki also had a clotting disorder of unclear origin, which made her susceptible to bruising and likely increased the bleeding inside her skull.
This misses the point. What you wrote is essentially "witness testifies defendant once shook child in their presence, child died".
The magic third ingredient is that the state was allowed to bring in an expert witness to tell the jury that there's a causal link between shaking of the kind observed by the fact witness and the infliction of fatal injuries like those seen in the child.
If it turns out no such link actually exists, you sort of have a problem, because the jury heard it either way. Also fwiw, that brief is still an adversarial motion, you cannot expect to get a balanced recounting of the facts by reading the state's motion in opposition.
>The magic third ingredient is that the state was allowed to bring in an expert witness to tell the jury that there's a causal link between shaking of the kind observed by the fact witness and the infliction of fatal injuries like those seen in the child. If it turns out no such link actually exists, you sort of have a problem
That medical description of physical symptoms sounds fine as a "magic third ingredient" between "shaking of the kind observed" and the kid dying.
Except if someone who treats a baby like that (as described by the witness) be beyond beating it, or if "bruising on her chin, as well as along her left cheek and jaw, and large subdural hematomas" develop spontaneously...
You mean the ex who was in a bitter custody battle at the time of the death, whose own sister testified against her? The same one whose parents called him to pick up the child the night before she died?
Doesn’t sound like a family that thought he was a child-beating monster.
She had no neck trauma when she died. CT scans showed a single blunt impact to the back right of her head, consistent with a fall and strange for a beating.
More than all of that, the medical evidence doesn’t even look like she died from the blunt force trauma.
She showed up to the ER blue lips, a telltale sign of hypoxia. She had severe undiagnosed viral pneumonia, despite having been to the doctor because we didn’t look at the strain until COVID. Pneumonia impacts breathing function. On top of that, she was prescribed phenergan, an opioid that now carries a warning not to prescribe it to children _because it can make them stop breathing_. On top of that, the day before she died she was prescribed codeine, which now also carries a warning label not to prescribe it to respiratory-depressed children _because it can make them stop breathing_.
Lab results show what we now know to be a fatal dose of Phenergan.
She died, sadly, as a result of multiple respiratory depressing factors due to a societal failure to ensure medications were safe for children in her situation. The blunt trauma isn’t even relevant; the phenergan and pneumonia would have killed her anyways.
This is just the usual villification of an easy target: he’s poor and autistic, he was never going to look good to a jury. They probably could have gotten a conviction for murdering Amelia Earhart if they’d tried.
Neither of them was there, the ex testified that she had seen him yell and shake the child at _other times_. Her sister testified that she had seen never seen that kind of behavior.
Also, if the ex's allegations are true, why the hell would her grandparents call him to demand that he pick her up that night? She was supposed to be at her maternal grandparents that night, they called him. Why not call the baby's mom? Why not just keep the baby anyways? Why not take it to the hospital themselves if they were concerned?
I'm not disparaging them for deciding to break up, nor for being in a custody dispute. These things happen. I just don't trust either party in a custody dispute; people get very emotional and the ends start to justify the means. If she is lying, it would be far from the first time false abuse allegations were made in a custody dispute.
I defer to facts here. There were no medical indications of abuse, nor any direct evidence of abuse of any kind. The child had pneumonia, a lethal dose of opioids, and hypoxia at the hospital. The likely biased testimony of an ex doesn't negate any of that.
"Why not call the baby's mom? Why not just keep the baby anyways? Why not take it to the hospital themselves if they were concerned?"
Because many abusers pass off the kid to blame it on others. That's why childcare providers tend to assess (or are supposed to) the condition at drop off. Otherwise it's a finger pointing game that could result in serious criminal charges based on who was more believable.
While generally possible, it seems unlikely to me given that the baby had been to the hospital 2 days before she died, and to a pediatrician the day before (maybe the day of, the wording is unclear).
It’s possible that something happened in that day or two, or that two separate medical facilities missed signs of abuse, but it seems less likely than that the child just wasn’t abused.
The autopsy didn’t show clear signs of abuse either. Again, it’s possible there were no indications, but we’re starting to stack up an awful lot of unlikely events.
I won’t deny a possibility, but I would deny a probability and would certainly deny that it meets the “reasonable doubt” standard.
I'm not saying abuse took place, just that the grandparents not calling the hospital isn't really indicating anything, and the passing off scenario is relatively common. It doesn't even have to be abuse, it could be stuff like an accident and the grandparents passed the kid off to the father because they panicked or felt ashamed if they admitted it kor cognitive dissonance that it couldnt be that bad). Again, not that that necessarily happened, but just that it's not an unusual scenario.
> she had seen him yell and shake the child at _other times_
Which she was there for... Her sister never seeing that means nothing.
Being in a custody dispute also means nothing; it's a wash between "she would lie because she was fighting for custody" and "she was fighting for custody because she wasn't lying". I think it can neither lend nor detract from her credibility, so we're left with default credibility of an eye witness. And although eye witness testimony often fumbles details like the order of events, I think seeing somebody shake a baby is probably pretty credible testimony; not something that could be innocently mistaken. If it really didn't happen then she's essentially attempting to murder him using the courts.
Assuming it did happen several other times, it was probably going to happen again and each time it happens is another round of Russian Roulette. You can get lucky once, or even a few times, but somebody who shakes a baby on several different occasions is very likely to eventually kill that baby.
You're welcome to believe whatever you want, but no, eyewitness testimony is not very credible.
Go look up Aaron Scheerhorn; 6 eyewitnesses testified that he stabbed someone to death in public and he was convicted... right up until they did DNA tests.
Or look at the Satanic Panic [1]. ~12,000 people made allegations that they were involved in some kind of satanic abuse or ritual, and police haven't found any evidence for any of them. Several claimed that they watched someone die, and then it turns out that person is still alive.
Eyewitnesses are wrong in far more significant ways than misordering events. Psychology studies have repeatedly shown that it is trivial to implant memories in eyewitnesses, and that eyewitness recall accuracy floats around 85% even for events they did actually see. Seriously, Google it. There are hundreds of cases made on eyewitness testimony that were later overturned by direct evidence like DNA, it's not hard to find one.
She may not even be lying, just wrong.
Even presuming "default credibility of an eyewitness", that's a very, very low standard of evidence. ChatGPT will answer you correctly more often than eyewitnesses recall things correctly.
"Assuming it did happen several other times, it was probably going to happen again"
Yes, and that assumption is the big question. The factors you think make it a wash might be reasonable doubt to another. Lies run rampant in domestic issues or family court. Without real evidence to back up a person, I would have a doubt that anything unverifiable is likely a lie/exaggeration/etc.
The biggest piece of reasonable doubt to me are the other medical issues. Sounds like she was medicated to death related to the pneumonia. But that's just my armchair opinion.
That's one of many possible reasons. Many custody issues are financial in nature due to the way the government mandates support, divides assets, etc. Then there's stuff like wrongful death suits. So there could be other motives. That's why the evidence is so important.
Promethazine (Phenergan) is not an opioid. It is sedating, and a respiratory depressant by the same anticholinergic mechanism as diphenhydramine (Benadryl).
This doesn’t mean it’s benign in all cases, but do try for accuracy.
Except if she had a clotting disorder as indicated that might make her bruise and get edemas with much less trauma and say she fell on her face/chin, all of those could happen comparatively easily. I don’t know what happened here and thats the point.
I assume you're referring to the claims made by the prosecution listed in the Introduction of the document? AFAIK, that's not "evidence" of abuse, but what the prosecution is alleging. Big difference.
...but even if that were the case, being a shitty parent - even to the point of physical abuse, doesn't justify the end result here given that the evidence cited in TFA makes a solid argument that the conviction is unsound.
Ever seen "12 Angry Men"? If not, you should.
-----
(Also, as someone on the spectrum with low-affect, even before reading about this case a few years ago, I was (and still am) terrified of being falsely convicted of something solely on my mannerisms - so I suppose I'm biased towards the defendent here)
Exactly. I can relate. I am like you, and I was once suspected of shaking my nanny (the nanny would later be prosecuted before being cleared after 4 years). After the interview with social services, where they said with a smile "everything would be okay", they wrote I had a one stringed voice, showed little emotion and didn't cry while talking. They wrote it was suspicious of abuse and used that to recommend removing my 5 month old baby for a couple of years. The judge followed. That's the most devastating thing I ever had to endure. I was lucky enough that the lawyer was so pissed off by this that he fought like hell to bring us our baby back in less than a month. But that specific episode made me swear on my child that I would spend the rest of my life undoing this wrong somehow. I'm still here 8 years later.
Christina Robinson (coincidence!) was found guilty of shaking her son to death and jailed for life. She admitted meting out corporal punishment, including caning and other instances of child abuse. It seems that after reading about a number of SBS cases my innate reflex of assuming that historic child abuse is evidence of murder has completely dissolved and I must look even at cases like this one with skepticism. What do you think?
Edit: to be perfectly clear: I grew up with constant corporeal punishment by parents and teachers and I consider the practice abhorrent. But the same people who beat me up for misbehaving, horribly misguided though they were in thinking that's a way to raise a child, were not murderers and would never have gone as far as to cause life-threatening injury. I think this experience also colours my perception of cases like Christina Robinson. There's a sliding slope reasoning in many of those accusations that is very dangerous.
I often fail to emote properly, for whatever reason, and more than one person has told me I'm obviously lying (usually about something trivial) because of it. I can't watch the show Unbelievable - it makes me too upset.
Trial lawyers will expound at length about how juries' perception of what witness behavior means is completely unrelated to reality.
Note that this is the problem that was solved by reference to a "jury of your peers". Your peers are familiar with you in specific and know how you behave. But the evolution of the US legal system has actually banned being tried by a jury of your peers; you're required to be judged by strangers who have never heard of you.
The kid was guilty in that movie though. The only other possible explanation is that he had a brother that no one ever mentions or interrogates with video game-like levels of precognition to know perfectly how to frame his brother.
> Let's start with the fact that there was no other known suspect.
That's not for a jury to decide. There was no other suspect presented.
> Yet there was no sign of a forced break-in and no indication of robbery or theft.
Is that actually mentioned in the movie? I'm rereading the screenplay [0], and the only mention of any motive is the fight between the dad and the kid, which seems to be undisputed. The prosecution isn't going to tell us about all the other pieces of evidence that don't fit the case they're trying to present. The defense could have done so, but let's be honest, it was probably some overworked public defender because a 16-year-old is probably not the sort who can afford a first-rate criminal defense lawyer.
The claim that you can take these pieces of circumstantial evidence and do some math on them to arrive at some probability above 90% is... not really how arguments are constructed. Juror #8 had serious concerns with each of the core pieces of testimony, which could have been enough to consider each of the witnesses untrustworthy. If the jury is not willing to accept any of the evidence, then there's simply no case.
> This "demonstration" hardly diminishes the strong inference of guilt raised by the fact that the defendant could remember nothing at all about the movie he claimed to have just seen. And nobody saw him at the theater. His alibi, therefore, is highly suspect.
Sure, his alibi (along with the rest of the cited testimony from the defendant) is not very believable. But the absence of an alibi does not automatically prove guilt.
.. you mean.. in your opinion? I don't remember the narrator stating the kid was guilty. Heck, even a flashback about the kid murdering his father wouldn't make it canon, since it can have inworld refutation, such as robots, aliens, shapeshifters, FBI hypnosis program or such.
> The only other possible explanation is that he had a brother
No, there are several possible different explanations, with varying levels of likeliness. The murderer had an identical knife, the murderer stole or picked up the kids knife, the murderer wanted to frame the kid specifically, the murderer wanted to kill someone else and frame someone (for example, one of the eye witnesses, or both of them were the murderer), and the kid and his father were a good candidate, and so on.
