Here's to the land you've torn out the hear of.That's the refrain of an old Phil Ochs song about the racism and corruption and general backwardness of the Magnolia State. There's still much to complain of in that bit of the deep south. In fact, just the other day, I pointed out that by a 5-4 vote the Mississippi Supreme Court was prepared to let Willie Manning be killed rather than order DNA and fingerprint testing and the like in a case riddled with uncertainty.
Mississippi, find yourself another country to be part of.
But that was so April 25th.
And this is May.
Same court. 8-1 vote. Stay granted.
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Seems Judge Ann Lamar has pissed off P.J. Randolph, which is probably a suitably aristocratic Mississippi old money name, by getting the others to go along.
ReplyDeleteI love the part of the PJ's "objection" to granting a stay where he lionizes the late Judge "Pepper" - I am not making that name up - adopts his reasoning that the expert testimony at trial was merely that "the hair" belonged to an African American. So even if DNA proved that it was not the Petitioner's, that wouldn't undercut the testimony at the original trial! The issue has been "fully litigated", says the PJ.
Assuming, of course, that the hair was a crucial piece of evidence and that the Petitioner is African American, the additional information that it just doesn't happen to belong to the Defendant would, I think, to quote Judge Perry from the Casey Anthony trial, be "highly relevant".
The paragraph right after that reveals a gamesmanship approach to criminal trials that I find hard to fathom from a judge. And apparently this approach is shared by SCOTUS Justice Alito.
Hey, you rolled the dice and lost, so sorry but we're going to kill you?
You think these guys watched a few too many episodes of Star Trek featuring aliens on some planet or other who indulge similar lethal gamesmanship?
He later launches into a fairly politicized rant against the Justice Department.
Sheesh. That guy's a menace.