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Supreme court over rules judgement

Posted: Thu Mar 31, 2011 2:50 pm
by Pril
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld ... 0668.story

Basically New Orleans man was innocent. Prosecution hid facts during the case like eye witness testimony and blood tests. A few weeks before his execution he is proven innocent. Sues for damages and a jury finds in his favor for 14 million. Supreme court just overturned it finding that "The evidence of their misconduct did not prove "deliberate indifference" on the part of then-District Attorney Harry Connick Sr., Thomas said."

Wow just WOW

Re: Supreme court over rules judgement

Posted: Thu Mar 31, 2011 3:56 pm
by Teflor Lyorian
I'm still not clear after reading the article what was meant by "hidden."

Re: Supreme court over rules judgement

Posted: Thu Mar 31, 2011 4:10 pm
by Corth
Regardless of the legal issues surrounding the civil case, this is the best argument you can make against the death penalty.

Re: Supreme court over rules judgement

Posted: Thu Mar 31, 2011 4:16 pm
by Teflor Lyorian
The absolute power of the death penalty in criminal cases is something that government could probably get along without.

Re: Supreme court over rules judgement

Posted: Thu Mar 31, 2011 6:50 pm
by Corth
The criminal justice system is imperfect at best. I worked on a civil case brought by a prisoner while I was interning for a Federal Judge. He sued the warden of his prison for certain policies they had concerning religious services. His claim had no merit on that case, so I wrote an opinion on behalf of the Judge dismissing the claim. A few years later I buy a newspaper and the guy's picture is on the front page. Turns out he was innocent of the underlying murder conviction and the DA's office joined in a motion to the court to have him released.. I think he spent something like 10 years in jail. More than enough time to have him executed if he was on death row.

Re: Supreme court over rules judgement

Posted: Thu Mar 31, 2011 8:31 pm
by kiryan
I'm pretty much against the death penalty in actual practice. I believe in its principle, I also accept "acceptable losses" (some # of innocents mistakingly put to death is just something you have to live with), but the reality is it costs more to put them to death than to keep them in jail and there are just too many mistakes made.

==

There seems to be something wrong here however with the story and reporting.

A person who spends is sent to jail wrongly is entitled to some compensation in most states as far as I know. As a matter of fact, if I did some brief research and Lousiana has a law that automatically compensates these individuals to the tune of $15k per year to a maximum of 150k. The federal standard is 50k per year no limit and I think that is a fairer level of compensation, but for these articles to make it out like he gets $0 compensation is bullshit and an example of whats wrong with the news.

I suspect that the man turned down compensation (or hasn't claimed it yet) in order to sue, but the problem he has is he is probably suing for negligence and asking for punitive damages... You can't sue the government for punitive damages (because punitive damages are for "punishment" and there is something fundamentally wrong with punishing the tax payers)... while the actions of the government in prosecuting his case does look negligent, I believe it has to rise to the level of gross negligence before you can seriously win in any case... and thats not even considering the higher standard that has to be met when you're suing government workers for "doing their jobs".

The problem here is he got greedy, he should've settled with the state for something more reasonable like 50-100k a year. Instead he got a crazy verdict that the state felt compelled to appeal.