Tuesday, August 18, 2009

A brief non-usual tangent

Allow me to pause in my usual jocularity to post a quote from Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. You are aware of my reservations about the mind-set of law-enforcement personnel. I think Justice Scalia quite effectively illuminates just exactly what that mind-set is all about. It's better to kill an innocent person than admit that law enforcement made a mistake. This is from a dissenting opinion issued yesterday (along with his Siamese shithead - Clarence Thomas). The majority of the court decided that new evidence in a 20-year-old death-row case suggests the state convicted the wrong man of murder. They believe this warrants - not freedom, but a new trial. Scalia thinks 'innocence' is overrated as a concept, clearly.

"This Court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is "actually" innocent.  Quite to the contrary, we have repeatedly left that question unresolved, while expressing considerable doubt that any claim based on alleged "actual innocence" is constitutionally cognizable."

                     - Justice Antonin Scalia


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