Archive for March 11, 2008
Sex in the stationhouse: What’s the relevance?
Mar 11th
Joshua Mauldin’s legal problems just got a bit more complicated. After being charged with (and confessing to) microwaving his infant for 10-20 seconds, prosecutors are now seeking to have introduced at trial evidence that he had oral sex with his wife in the interrogation room at the police station.
His defense to the charged crime is insanity in that his acts were the result of hallucinations, which he has suffered from since he was 10. Prosecutors want to introduce the tryst as evidence that he is lucid and does not suffer from hallucinations.
Assistant District Attorney Xochitl Vandiver said jurors should know about the alleged sexual encounter between Mauldin and his wife, Eva Marie Mauldin, because it reflected his state of mind. “That piece of information is relevant to the defendant’s guilt,” Vandiver said.
Relevant how? It reflected his state of mind at the time he received oral sex, but what does that have to do with his state of mind at the time that he microwaved the baby?
Sadly, it seems that the judge might entertain the state’s request:
Judge Susan Criss, presiding over the trial, declined to make a formal ruling Monday on whether the couple’s police-station liaison would be admissible during trial. However, she warned [defense counsel] Cammack that he would need case law to back up any argument that the encounter should be kept from jurors.
Case law? How about the Rules of Evidence, specifically the one dealing with relevance? EvidenceProf has the correct analysis, in my opinion:
‘Relevant evidence’ means evidence having any tendency to make the existence of any fact that is of consequence to the determination of the action more probable or less probable than it would be without the evidence. Now, if defense counsel’s argument was that the defendant was catatonic and never lucid, this evidence could potentially be relevant. But defense counsel’s claim seems to be that the defendant was usually lucid but that he suffered from occasional hallucinations, one of which allegedly occurred when he injured his daughter. I don’t see how proving that the defendant was lucid days later when he allegedly had oral sex with his wife, however, is relevant to whether he was hallucinating when he injured his daughter.
I agree. This is nothing but an attempt to portray the defendant as having a bad character – evidence that should be inadmissible, without need for supporting case law. How this is not akin to the widely deplored “slut defense”? In fact, if anything, this is less relevant than subsequent sexual conduct of a victim in a consent case.
The long arm of the law (updated)
Mar 11th
Adam Liptak’s latest Sidebar column in the NYT highlights a new study [pdf] conducted by the Chief Supervising Attorney of the Supreme Court of California, Jake Dear, and Edward Jessen, the Reporter of Judicial Decisions in California. The study, published in the UC Davis Law Review, finds that California’s Supreme Court is the most “followed” state court in the country.
Using the Shephard’s signal “followed by”, the study determined that from 1940-2005, state court decisions were “followed” approximately 24, 400 times by courts in other states. California leads the pack with 1260 such decisions. When you narrow the field to decisions followed 3 times and 5 times, California is still number one.
In each category, California beats New York handily, by 160 to 39 for three or more followed cases and by 45 to 6 for five or more. The race has tightened a little, though, in the last 20 years.
Connecticut is in the top half of the list, having its decisions followed at least once 508 times, three or more follows 28 times (putting it 18th on that list) and five or more follows 3 times.
Whoopee.
I understand that Law Reviews have to fill their pages and someone somewhere is curious about almost everything, but does this study actually help? In other words – so what?
In writing an appellate brief (and those that are far more experienced than me, feel free to chime and tell me how wrong I am), you first seek citations from within your own jurisdiction and perhaps include cases on point from other jurisdictions in a string cite. Only when there’s nothing on point in your own state do you need to look to other states (and even then, perhaps you’d look to your federal circuit court first). And even then, you would cite the sister state opinions you want your court to follow, but the number of times that opinion has been followed by other states may or may not be included in your brief. Wouldn’t you instead just cite to the other state decisions? That can easily be found by Shepardizing the opinion you’re relying on.
So I guess what I’m trying to say is that I don’t see the point of this study – other than to say “look at us”. Maybe there is no point other than to satisfy idle curiosity. Is there a point? What am I missing?
Just seems like the equivalent of whipping out the ruler and comparing.
Update: As Scott rightly points out in the comments, why is this even a column worthy of print in the NYT? Isn’t there something else going on in the legal world? Like, I don’t know, Elliot Spitzer’s mess or the absolute quagmire that is Georgia’s indigent defense system? Have we even seen a column from him on that? Or anyone in the NYT?
Also, in hindsight, I think a cleverer title may have been “The long arm of the law”. In fact, I’m going to go change it now.
Denial is not a river in Egypt
Mar 11th
Allegations of prison overcrowding and inhumane treatment of inmates abound and yet the American Idol Governor continues to turn a blind eye. Take this latest lawsuit for example. Two inmates at Cheshire Correctional filed a lawsuit claiming that they were forced to defecate and urinate in plastic bags because of the severe overcrowding problem.
In the lawsuit, the men say they were let out of the locked day room — designed as a place to read or watch television, not sleep — once per night to use the bathroom, according to their suit. In intervening hours, they have used plastic bags to urinate or defecate, they claim, and suffer from bladder problems as a result of having to hold their wastes.
The Governor’s response was more of the same:
Brian Garnett, a spokesman for the Department of Correction, said he could not comment on pending litigation, but said the state’s prisons are “orderly, humane and safe.”
DOC Commissioner Theresa Lantz has insisted that the prison system can absorb spikes in population, a position that frustrated the correction officers’ union and certain legislators last year when she refused to put a number on the prison system’s capacity.
A few weeks ago I heard about two separate assaults on correctional officers, but couldn’t find any news coverage of it.
This is a real problem, folks. It’s about time DOC did something about it.
Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony (updated)
Mar 11th
Update: Speaking of understanding the fallibility of humans, Anne at Deliberations has this post on who on a jury is more likely to forgive a defendant and why.
The researchers found that people of both genders are more forgiving when they see themselves as capable of committing a similar action to the offender’s; it tends to make the offense seem smaller. Seeing capability also increases empathic understanding of the offense and causes people to feel more similar to the offenders. Each of these factors, in turn, predicts more forgiving attitudes. “Offenses are easier to forgive to the extent that they seem small and understandable and when we see ourselves as similar or close to the offender,” [Exline] said.
Original post: So by now you must have heard of NY Gov. Elliot Spitzer and his escort escapade(s). This from the same man who zealously pursued prostitution rings as a prosecutor and is generally known to give no quarter to others. He now finds himself in the opposite spot at the table, which used to be occupied by people (just like him, apparently) to whom he showed no mercy.
The irony is evident.
Yet, I want to take this opportunity to bang the drum one more time: It could happen to you, it could happen to me. We are people and people are fallible. All criminals aren’t bad people, just as all bad people aren’t criminals. There, but for the grace of God…
This, for me, is the singular reason for doing what I do (that Constitution thing comes in next). Elliot Spitzer may not have been a “bad person”; he made a few mistakes. It’s easy to rub his face in it (HAH!), given the stances he has taken in the past, but that should be no more than a moment of jest. For tomorrow it could be you.
So stop asking “how do you represent those people” or someone will laugh in your face when you get arrested.
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