Category Archives: Justice

Positive-Law Arguments For The Anthony Outcome

Crime, Criminal Injustice, Justice, Law, libertarianism, Natural Law

Of course, “Caylee’s Law,” Radley Balko points out, is a horrible idea. Stupid too. However, to neglect real evidence because one is against the death penalty is as horrible and stupid, if not more so. These are separate issues.

Alan Dershowitz has been arguing that the Casey Anthony verdict is an embodiment of “our legal system.” In making this case, Dershowitz alludes, curiously, to the positive law, not to any natural-law aspect of the American legal system, or to this woman’s prosecution.

To support his view of the impetus of America’s legal system, Dershowitz (on Huckabee), for example, touted the Exclusionary Rule as exemplifying his view of the impetus of America’s legal system. (I say “curiously,” because libertarians seem not to be distinguishing positive- from negative-law arguments in support of the jury’s innocent ruling.)

The Exclusionary Rule is a technicality tarted up as a real right. Hardly libertarian—at least not if one is a proponent of the natural law.

In the same vein, a procedural violation of the Fourth Amendment, say, an improper search, can get evidence of guilt—-a bloodied knife or a smoking gun—-barred from being presented at trial. Fail to Mirandize a murderer properly, and his confession will be tossed out. Such procedural defaults are very often used to suppress immutable physical facts, thus serving to subvert the spirit of the law and natural justice.

More minted “rights” are “consular rights.” A procedural default such as the failure to apprise a defendant of his consular contacts is never a violation of a natural right. “Consular rights” are of a piece with Miranda rights and the Exclusionary Rule. Again, these are technicalities tarted up as real rights.

Might these gaps of understanding between libertarians touch on the distinction, in our multi-factioned movement, between the hardcore, life-liberty-property classical liberal, and civil libertarianism and “libertarianism lite”?

Dershowitz is a civil libertarian who once conflated the natural law with the law of the jungle.

UPDATE VI: Justice In The Age of YouTube (Innocent whiffs of Chloroform)

Crime, Criminal Injustice, Intelligence, Justice, Law

“If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit” was the jingle that captured the legal argument that undergirded the OJ Simpson case, one of the most notorious miscarriages of justice in the annals of American justice. Here’s the adaptation for the Casey Anthony case: “If it wasn’t uploaded on YouTube you must acquit.”

It took 12 idiots 11 hours to decide to exonerate the (ALLEGEDLY) filicidal Casey Anthony, who was found “not guilty of first-degree murder and the other most serious charges against her in the 2008 death of her 2-year-old daughter,” Caylee Marie Anthony. (CNN)

The evidence was overwhelming, if circumstantial (as in most murder cases). The prosecution presented the more intelligent, rational sequence of events, where motive, opportunity, and evidence all stacked-up against the sociopathic Casey Anthony.

Caylee was last seen on “June 16, 2008, but was not reported missing until July 15, 2008,” and then only by the child’s grandmother, Cindy Anthony, who “tracked her daughter [the accused] down and demanded answers regarding Caylee’s whereabouts.” Casey then led law enforcement officers on a wild-goose chase, during which this wicked young woman implicated another, non-existent, alleged child minder in an abduction.

All the while Casey Anthony was partying like there was no tomorrow.

The defense team was headed by a not-very bright Jose Baez, who threw everything but the kitchen sink at the 12 idiots who decided Casey Anthony’s fate. Wits were well-matched. From sexual abuse by George Anthony (Casey’s father), to the aforementioned grandpa having helped dispose of his drowned granddaughter body—the 12 bought it.

After all, we all know, from watching, CSI, that if a crime doesn’t happen as depicted in such series—where ample samples of DNA and incriminating footage always materialize —you must acquit.

This is the Age of the Idiot. The average individual seldom reads; he knows only what he sees. If he can’t picture something, he certainly cannot think about it in the abstract.

I expect that grappling with circumstantial evidence, which demands some level of abstraction in thinking, will become harder and harder for juries.

As far as living in ignominy goes: Casey Anthony’s jurors have made OJ’s jurors a little less lonely.

UPDATED I: “A reasonable doubt was turned into a reason to doubt”: this is how a CNN analyst put it very succinctly. It is a result, to an extent, of the commercialization of the adversary legal system.

UPDATE II: Judging from the thread on my Facebook Wall, we are doomed.

UPDATE III: Bill, it seems to me that you are mixing your political theories with the facts of the case. You seem to be following a formula that’s designed to please the requirements of a political philosophy, and not to serve justice. The defense always offers a competing theory of the events. And so it should. If the facts contradict this theory, then it is up to the jury to go where the evidence leads, and not where the world of possibilities lies. Divorced from reality is what this decision was.

I do think, though, that a circumstantial case—also what most murder cases are, apparently—should not carry the death penalty. DNA evidence should be required in order to mete capital punishment.

UPDATE IV (July 6): Incredulous on FACEBOOK. G-d help me: an ex-juror thinks that, coupled with the body, the possibility of a mother giving her kid (whose body turned up in a garbage bag) whiffs of chloroform doesn’t go toward reasonable proof of serious malice, in a court of law. This is the first time I’ve researched Chloroform in my LIFE, and I’m a mom. Thing is: I’m honest; people on this thread are engaged in mythical thinking. I know, as a mother, how effing awful a two-year-old can be, and my own daughter was a blessing—a sweet child by comparison to most American kids. As sweet as she was, she could drive me to distraction, and I was an evolved, married, non-partying mom …

UPDATE V: Imported from Facebook:

I’ve never watched Nancy Grace in my life. Now a lot of pundits, without explaining what irked them about the evidence implicating the only plausible suspect in the violent death her of daughter, are using this verdict to show-off their commitment to the Constitution. What a crock. Which relevant sections in this document would a conviction have violated? “The CSI Effect” captures this trial.

I do agree with the issue of overreach: the prosecution should have gone with a lesser charge and not sought death. “We’ll never know who killed Calley,” says Sean Hannity. Come again? I hope he gets that interview he’s bookers are probably seeking as I write. So is anyone here going to detail one-by-one the bits of evidence presented which they did not find credible? Is there perhaps a lead that was not followed? Another suspect? A violent boyfriend who was crazy about the narcissistic creep called Casey, and just had to have her for himself?

UPDATE VI (July 7): Some of the comments to this blog continue in this vain: “Rah-rah, revolution man. I’m so cool. I’m anti-government, and anti-authoritarianism. Therefore, the jury is cool. And anyone who goes against the state, even if the state presented the facts, is cool.”

As the libertarian who coined the verb to Nifong, and who was perhaps the only libertarian to defend Michael Vick based on propertarian principles, and one of the few to defend Michael Jackson—readers with attitude don’t impress me much. Facts sway me, not cool factor.

UPDATE II: Right Response to Legalized Sexual Assault (Revenge Searches)

Constitution, Fascism, Government, Homeland Security, Individual Rights, Justice, Law, Politics

HOWL is what this woman does with all the indignation and outrage she can muster, after her breasts were “touched” by the TSA. The woman’s heroic son films the event. All the while he is threatened by the Kapos—Kameradschaftspolizei, “comrade police force”—of Sky Harbor International in Phoenix and ignored by the sheeple shuffling by. I would be very afraid at Sky Harbor. It’s where “The Homeland Security State” came together in all its brutality to extinguish the life of the fragile Carol Anne Gotbaum. And look how brazen they are.

‘It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp’ advised travelers “to name and shame the perpetrators. fliers who’re frisked should document the name of the particular TSA perp who pawed them, and expose him on the Internet. Footage of the victims is everywhere, but the agents—the stars in these horror films—remain nameless and faceless. Name, shame, and dissociate from them.”

NEXT, and before anything else—the debt-ceiling pseudo-debate can wait—our overlords who art in DC must stop this. The Tea-Party “freshmen” are getting stale. They’ve done nothing to make the TSA cease and desist. They must forthwith.

UPDATE I (June 6): Via Shelly Roche: “Congress strikes down body scanners”: “Homeland Security Subcommittee Chairman Robert Aderholt’s (R-AL) proposed legislation, the Fiscal Year 2012 Homeland Security Appropriations Bill, denies the $76 million that US President Barack Obama requested to be used toward the scanners. As per Obama’s request, the funds would provide for nearly 300 additional body scanners being deployed across US airports, as well as the employment of a staff of over 500 needed to operate them. …”

The Politburo and its piecemeal tokenism. A “nuisance and slow”: That’s the stale, utilitarian reason one Tea party freshman uses to motivate against the state’s new meat irradiation program.

Via Shelly Roche: MORE.

UPDATE II (June 7): REVENGE SEARCHES. I made the point that in certain places along the traveler’s US route, he encounters racial revenge. I certainly did. I analyzed it in “Congress: Call Off Your TSA Attack Dogs!”:

America’s airports are ugly, militarized places. As I write, malicious assaults on person and property are underway there, carried out by the detritus of humanity, and with federal imprimatur. The TSA workforce manning crucial sections of the air terminals reflects the federal government’s legislated preference for angry minorities. Each one of these workers seems singularly intent on exacting revenge upon his or her perceived oppressors. The alternative media (Anderson Cooper and his ilk are excluded) must insist that these perpetrators be tagged, collared, and impounded.

Picture Los Angeles, and hundreds of British seniors, who still have some British character left—that typical linguistic acerbic bite included—being molested for hours-on-end in the heat.

[W]hen a handful of the [tourists] questioned whether the lengthy security checks at the port were strictly necessary for a group of largely elderly travellers officials were not amused.
Although they had already been given advance clearance for multiple entries to the country during their trip, all 2,000 passengers were made to go through full security checks in a process which took seven hours to complete.

As tourists and American travelers are assaulted, this country’s Idiocracy continues to entertain Palin’s roving circus, as well as busy itself with the measly contents of Weasel Weiner’s trousers.

S’cuse Me While I Die

Government, Justice, Law, libertarianism, The Zeitgeist

Approved, indubitably, by Mayor Marie Gilmore, the “rescue” guidelines adhered to by members of the pampered oink sector of the City of Alameda preclude rescues that necessitate “water training.” Alameda is in the San Francisco Bay Area!

Since they did not have “water training,” the Alameda pigs chose to stake out a good spot on the sand from which to watch a man drown. The man took an hour to expire. At no time were these pampered pigs overwhelmed by an urge to violate the bureaucratic restrictions imposed upon them. What resolve!

The deceased would be alive had these services been rendered by a private company, where owners would be sued into bankruptcy over such an incident. As it stands, the taxpayers will be penalized: they will pay for ensuing lawsuits. Responsibility for criminal negligence will be collectivized, as in all state-run enterprises. Wait for a statement by the mayor, who’ll announce a commission of inquiry, which is where all issues of culpability pertaining to the State go to die.

As to the libertarian issue of free will and the right to die. I understand that the man was trying to kill himself. But I am not of the libertarian mindset that you leave him to die. Since I cherish life, my position is that it is incumbent on good people to attempt a rescue in this case. Incumbent, but not legally binding. Not in libertarian law. The point here is to alert you to government callousness. If you want rescue services to be effective, private arrangements, neighborhood associations and the like, are most effective.