« Is the economic argument against the death penalty a game-changer? | Main | Key documents as we prepare for "sentencing" former Judge Samuel Kent »
March 10, 2009
Head's up on class plans up through Spring Break
We have two weeks together before Spring Break, and I wanted to make sure everyone knew my plans for these weeks:
1. The first week's classes will have us wrap up our discussion of the death penalty, with Wednesday's class focused on the Ted Kaczynski hypo (details here) and Friday's class dedicated to an "open forum" on whatever capital punishment topics students would like to review.
2. The second week's classes will jump us into the law and policy on non-capital sentencing, during which I want to use the upcoming sentencing of former federal judge Samuel Kent as a focal point for discussion. Look for a series of Kent-related documents and activities posted on this blog over the next few days.
During any (or all) of these classes, I am happy to discuss further my expectation for the mid-term and final papers.
March 10, 2009 in Class activities | Permalink
TrackBack
TrackBack URL for this entry:
https://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d8341c8ccf53ef0112794627f728a4
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Head's up on class plans up through Spring Break:
Comments
Here is a starter reference, with footnotes to real briefs.
http://www.ccfaj.org/documents/reports/dp/expert/Alarcon%20Article.pdf
Why not take recent real death penalty case, and write the first appeal filing to obstruct justice and to immunize the client of the criminal lover lawyer, the mass murdering butcher?
Write a document that will insure a long life for the murderer, to end in the death row nursing home, with a cholesterol level like that of a baby, at taxpayer expense. Start the journey toward $10 mil in lawyer fees leading to nowhere. Carefully go through it and remove any straggling mention of the V word.
As a collateral money maker, prepare a civil right complaint against the prison if a guard calls the client a bad name, for lawyer fees.
Posted by: Supremacy Claus | Mar 12, 2009 1:35:19 AM
SC-
I don't get you. I don't recall whether you said you were a lawyer or not. You definitely seem to have a problem with lawyers, or at least the lawyers who handle death penalty appeals. I don't know your views on the death penalty, but if a state or country is going to have the death penalty, they have to be ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN they are executing guilty people. That certainty requires appellate review. While no one can ever be 100% certain of guilt, the appellate process allows for a higher degree of certainty than a single trial. As our case book stated, a substantial percentage of death penalty cases are later overturned, and occasionally, defendants are proven innocent through DNA or other missing or incomplete evidence.
Also, you should keep in mind that the lawyers who handle death penalty appeals aren't exactly raking in the millions of dollars you mention. Death penalty defendants are often poor, and are usually represented by public defenders. Additionally, there is the Innocence Project, out of the University of Cincinnati, who work on death penalty appeals, which is run primarily by law students who aren't paid. No single lawyer gets the $10 million for handling a death penalty review. That amount is spread out over court and attorney fees and probably includes police, evidence, and prison costs as well. It is unfortunate that death penalty reviews end up costing the government millions of dollars, but that cost is necessary if we are going to have a death penalty. If you disagree, I would be interested to see if you had ideas in ways the significant costs could be reduced other than removing appellate review, which would guarantee that innocent defendants would eventually be put to death.
Posted by: Shawn | Mar 12, 2009 4:48:00 PM
Shawn: I am one of the owners of the law, but with legal training. I know more about the hidden methods of the law then the faculty here, despite their IQ's double mine. That is because I am old, have another intellectual culture, and was totally resistant to the law school indoctrination. The latter did not erase my 10th grade world history nor Western Civ 101, as it did yours and that of your profs. So, I have noted the unacceptable and unlawful origins of the core doctrines. I spotted its hierarchical, oppressive structure. Not a lawyer because it is a criminal cult enterprise. Why am I not in a drug gang? Because I want to arrest the lawyer leadership, not join it. Things are 100 times worse than the public understands. Do you remember the shower scene in Psycho, with that zinging violin music sending chills and sickening feelings down your spine? The turn of every page of every law textbook did that to me. The hierarchy of this criminal cult enterprise must be stopped by a courageous President.
Berman likes innovation. Here is some. The entire appellate business is fraudulent and pretextual. The idea is to end the death penalty, not to save innocent people. It is also to generate massive lawyer employment. I am not calling the lawyer academic a liar or a criminal. I am calling him a self-deluded victim of lying indoctrination. The latter is so good, you do not even realize you have been changed by it. You are a modern student who has been made to believe in supernatural doctrines from 1250 AD. You do not even realize they violate the Establishment Clause by their specific church origin. Berman, despite his IQ of 300, never spotted that little problem obvious to 10th grade World History students. Even after pointed out, he has no idea what I am talking about. That is good indoctrination.
1) 90% of us will die rough, in pain, in humiliation, for a long time. There is no cruelty in any quick execution method. If botched, just shoot the condemned in the head. There is nothing wrong with just about any execution method. See the exit of the members of your family. They did nothing wrong, and likely suffered a lot. Why are criminals entitled to easier deaths than 90% of innocent people? They are the client of the lawyer, that is why. I gave you a free appellate point never argued before, the cruelty of the set date. Even the terminal cancer patient is spared that. It should be set randomly, and be unannounced. Walk in, shoot the guy in the head while asleep. It is less cruel.
2) The death penalty is better applied to about 1% of the male birth cohort that are ultra-violent and irremediable. These are not deterred by the 50% murder rate in the criminal world. We are just getting rid of the other half. The aim is solely attrition. The theory is that the deceased have a low recidivism rate. It assumes nothing else. No retribution, no deterrence, no incapacitation, no punishment, no restitution, just dead and gone. It's One, Two, Three violent offenses, Dead, right after the trial, preferably. If the third conviction is absolutely wrong, it does not matter because the person is a bad guy, based on the first two. This is the return of status crime, bad guy = dead. Each of those convictions stands in for 1000 violent crimes the lawyer immunized by his love of the criminal and forbearance. These thousand lawyer immunized violent crimes require death.
3) The defense of the Constitution pretext is fraudulent. I would like to arrest the appellate judges enabling this heist. Beyond the $10 mil in rent seeking, stolen from the public, the protection of the murderous criminal makes the profession hateful and pure evil. There would be no lawyer gotcha for these judges, no accusation of collateral corruption. The sole evidence would be excerpts from the appellate decisions. These decisions are the crimes against humanity demanding summary execution by hanging from the courthouse trees. They would get no opportunity for $10 million appeals, just for $10 ropes.
Posted by: Supremacy Claus | Mar 12, 2009 11:29:02 PM
Pretext is a false use of the law. It is a form of bad faith and lawyer fraud. So, Clinton got impeached because he raised taxes on the wealthy. If he had not done that, no one would have spent $70 million on a lawyer gotcha on a single word in a deposition. Any claim of defending the integrity of the Presidency was a pretext.
The costs of the appeals are to make it hard to execute people, and are pretextual. The constitutional arguments give them the appearance of virtue, as the arguments did for the Clinton impeachment.
There is an infinity of rules. No one on earth can withstand total discovery without finding the violation of a lawyer made up rule. Everyone is subject to the bad faith tactic of lawyer gotcha. Every lawyer, every Supreme Court Justice, and Jesus Christ himself was subjected to lawyer gotcha.
It is time to recognize that all remedies must be proven to remedy an important harm, to not harm others, to actually remedy the harm. In the absence of such proof, all rules should be considered to be unethical lawyer gotcha in bad faith. Sanctions should follow the pretext.
In the case of the death penalty racket, the judges must face accountability for the failure of the criminal law and the resulting 5 million violent crimes a year by the criminals, their customers.
I am going to ask judges to utter the V word, as my next experiment. I bet they cannot, as no one here can.
Posted by: Supremacy Claus | Mar 13, 2009 5:38:21 PM
The comments to this entry are closed.
Recent Comments