A rather interesting article, alarming at times. Perhaps the most alarming thing is this:
Um, excuse me, but if I'm a defendant in a death-penalty case, the attempt to call my legal defense a crime . . . even if it is based on tenuous and objectively illogical legal theories . . . is horsecrap of the first order. I mean, if I shoot the judge or kill a witness or something, then yeah, I'm obstructing the hell out of some justice. But arguing a point of law is, however sadly it can sometimes be, what courts are for.
Also scary in the article is the use of federal law to retry cases where a conviction has already occurred in order to get a harsher penalty. The occurrence of local or state dismissals being retried federally has increased, which seems an obvious case of double jeopardy despite whatever legal loophole arguments are employed. For a case to be retried directly in the way described is even worse on the double jeopardy front.
It seems that there is a lot of convergence these days that would allow a new liberal fascism to develop. Perilous times, indeed.
The U.S. Attorney’s office also added new charges of felony obstruction of justice, citing the disruptive nature of the flesh-and-blood defense. The prosecutors weren’t just rejecting the defense as an argument for innocence. They were saying that it was, itself, a crime.
Um, excuse me, but if I'm a defendant in a death-penalty case, the attempt to call my legal defense a crime . . . even if it is based on tenuous and objectively illogical legal theories . . . is horsecrap of the first order. I mean, if I shoot the judge or kill a witness or something, then yeah, I'm obstructing the hell out of some justice. But arguing a point of law is, however sadly it can sometimes be, what courts are for.
Also scary in the article is the use of federal law to retry cases where a conviction has already occurred in order to get a harsher penalty. The occurrence of local or state dismissals being retried federally has increased, which seems an obvious case of double jeopardy despite whatever legal loophole arguments are employed. For a case to be retried directly in the way described is even worse on the double jeopardy front.
It seems that there is a lot of convergence these days that would allow a new liberal fascism to develop. Perilous times, indeed.
