Ah, Justice Scalia. He should go hunt pheasant with Cheney some more.

And dress in as much camouflage as possible.

"Mere innocence is (not) grounds to overturn a conviction." - Scalia

Man, they pick some winners, don't they?

Jesus. Fuck.

"Mere innocence is (not) grounds to overturn a conviction." - Scalia

But some obscure technicality related to evidence against the obviously guilty is??

Here's a good commentary by Paul Campos speculating about Scalia's possible motivations for this wording. Campos translates the objection into non-legal terms thus:

“The defense in this case is claiming that there’s something unusual about Troy Davis’ situation, requiring extraordinary action on the part of the Supreme Court. But there’s nothing unusual about his situation. The American legal system routinely sentences people to long prison terms and even to death on the basis of dubious evidence, in trials featuring overburdened, underfunded, and marginally competent defense lawyers. Obviously under such conditions (a lot of) mistakes are going to be made. If such mistakes make verdicts unconstitutional, then the whole system is unconstitutional.”

^ So instead of working to fix the system, beginning with the examination of the flaws that led to a conviction and death sentence of a possibly-innocent man, he'd rather bury his head in the sand and declare the system flawless?

So instead of working to fix the system, beginning with the examination of the flaws that led to a conviction and death sentence of a possibly-innocent man, he'd rather bury his head in the sand and declare the system flawless?

Why do you make the strange assumption that he isn't interested in helping improve the system? Such 'either/or' perspectives are not particularly nuanced and smack of propogandism.

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:
So instead of working to fix the system, beginning with the examination of the flaws that led to a conviction and death sentence of a possibly-innocent man, he'd rather bury his head in the sand and declare the system flawless?
Why do you make the strange assumption that he isn't interested in helping improve the system? Such 'either/or' perspectives are not particularly nuanced and smack of propogandism.

Quoting from Ornthoron's quote:
"Obviously under such conditions (a lot of) mistakes are going to be made. If such mistakes make verdicts unconstitutional, then the whole system is unconstitutional.”

The problem isn't that the mistakes are going to be made. It's how you deal with those mistakes. If you are forced to say "I'll sacrifice a few innocent people for the sake of the system", you're saying the system is OK as is, and is worth the sacrifice in order to protect it's integrity.

The US court system has a man who was convicted in one court and exonerated in another. Instead of saying "Let's bring this up to the highest level and examine it under a microscope, since there's obviously something fishy about this case", he's saying "Even though a US court found him not guilty, I choose to ignore that fact and execute anyway".

*dead

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