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Mississippi's courts determined to carry on proud tradition of embarassing the entire country
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Fury said to a mouse, that he met in the house
"Let us go to the law- I will prosecute you.
Come, we must have a trial- I'll take no denial-
For really this morning I've nothing to do."
Said the mouse to the cur, "Such a trial, dear sir,
Without jury or judge would be wasting our breath."
"I'll be judge, I'll be jury", Said the cunning old fury,
"I'll try the whole cause and condemn you to death."
- Lewis Carroll
The inestimable Radley Balko of Reason Magazine lays out the facts regarding a truly egregious abuse of the courts over here and here. A forensics expert whose methodology includes jabbing dental molds into decaying bodies and claiming that, due to the "West Phenomenon", he can see shapes and imprints that others can't. At all. And if you don't believe him, ask the invisible ghost that only he can hear and talk to. Excerpt;
Using the "West Phenomenon," West once claimed to have found bite marks on a decomposed woman's breast that previous pathologists had missed. In another case, he claimed to have positively traced a half-eaten bologna sandwich at the murder scene to the defendant's teeth based on bite marks in the sandwich. The defendant was convicted, but the case was later tossed out when West admitted to disposing of the sandwich after studying it. Because no one can replicate his methods, West said, the sandwich was no longer necessary.
It would be hilarious if this guy wasn't sending people to death row. Dr. West himself, of course, would just be an odd nutjob if he wasn't getting paid by Mississippi DA Forrest Allgood. Found a good, if a bit dated summary of some of this monster's shennanigans over on the Workingclass Conservative.
Had Allgood not fixated on Brooks after the first murder, he may have been able to prevent the second. Instead, we have two little girls dead, one man wrongly incarcerated for nearly two decades, and another who came perilously close to execution.
But the real kicker in this is the Mississippi Supreme Court, which ruled in 2006, in the case of Eddie Lee Howard, a man convicted of the brutal murder of an 82 year old woman largely on Dr. West's testimony,
Just because Dr. West has been wrong a lot, does not mean, without something more, that he was wrong here.
The supreme court of Mississippi seems, then, unaware of how credibility works.
Although cases of corruption and legal abuse are rife in the developing world, as in the case of Rodrigo Rosenberg, it would be a mistake to think that the justice system in our country is anything like what we see on TV; smart, hard working cops, ethical prosecutors, wise and discerning judges. It's not that people like that don't exist, but there's a wealth of less savory characters as well, from the West Memphis Three, where Arkansas Judge Dave Burnett recently refused to accept new DNA evidence in a case that's become the international poster child for shoddy prosecution, to our own District of Columbia, where the opaque courts have refused to allow cell phone cameras into the courthouses and the court of appeals is not even required to explain it's decisions.
I wonder if it wouldn't be better if we simply had a law; no one, for any reason, could serve more than ten years as a public servant. Total. An absolute term limit. No more dynasties, fiefdoms, or long reigning and increasingly megalomaniacal circuit judges.
Imagine a world without career politicians. It's beautiful, isn't it?
My foray into the arts for today;
I know I already mentioned Chinese artist Kuang Hong, but he's one of my absolute favorites and I just discovered the slideshow function.
Also, I still need like 999,994 more signatures for the Bill of States Rights thing.
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