Comments on: Oh you ungrateful defendants!

By: Gideon

Gideon — Fri, 29 May 2009 01:32:40 +0000

The island ain’t lonely. As long as Miranda and I are on it together, we’ll be fine.

I’m not quite sure if your comment is an insult or a backhanded compliment, but I’ll take either one. Thanks for reading!

By: avid

avid — Fri, 29 May 2009 01:29:11 +0000

Wow. What an insightful analysis of the Sup Ct. Having been a clerk at the SC, back in the day, I can only marvel at your attempt to rationalize what occurs in the hallowed chambers. What you are trying to rationalize is result oriented decision engineering, which is a largely fruitless task. The court is neccessarily politicized and neccesarily in favor of the prosecution, because that is what the voters always desire. Attempting to analyize decisions, at least at the state level, is both frustrating and laughable because the result is pre-determined and the path to get there is superfluous. The path is easy, anyone can cut down the trees to make the path, if you know where you have to go.

So, I applaud, admire and actually marvel at your scholasticism, but am left thinking to myself, “wow.” That someone could still believe in things like “right” and “wrong” the way you do. It is refresing, but you have to know you are on a very lonely Island somewhere . . .
w
and

By: Miranda

Miranda — Wed, 13 May 2009 16:48:50 +0000

Wow, that’s a long post. Thanks for the writing credit, but it’s totally undeserved. I think only about 1.5% of that is mine, and you (probably wisely) edited out all of my colorful adjectives!

Anyway, just wanted to add that one aspect of the opinion that left me scratching my head was that Sanseverino raised a constitutional challenge to the kidnapping charge – vagueness as applied – which, like a sufficiency claim, would have entitled him to an acquittal, yet the court inexplicably refuses to reach it. While it’s well established that the court will avoid deciding constitutional issues where possible, it is not possible – or proper – to avoid a constitutional claim where it would provide a different and better remedy. Here, the court has decided that an acquittal shouldn’t be the remedy for “an instructional error” based on Salamon (note: this is the court’s self-made claim it is deciding all of the kidnapping cases on, regardless of what was actually raised), but has STILL refused to decide the constitutional issue that, if successful, would provide an acquittal as the remedy!