wrongful convictions
DNA Exoneration FTW
Dec 19th
Following up on the DNA exoneration story from two weeks ago, I can happily point you to this report that Miguel Roman has been granted a new trial and was released from custody today, in time for the holidays.
Judge David P. Gold agreed after a brief hearing today to release Roman, 52, on a promise to appear in court. Roman’s lawyers, citing evidence that appears to exonerate Roman in the 1988 killing of 17-year-old Carmen Lopez, petitioned for a new trial for Roman.
Gold granted that motion today.
Prosecutor David Zagaja noted that the petition for a new trial stems from newly discovered evidence stemming from a technology that “simply didn’t exist” in 1988. It was not immediately clear whether the prosecution will proceed to a new trial or move for a dismissal of the case.
It would be remarkable if the State decided to prosecute him again, so I don’t think that will happen. More likely than not, the charges will be dismissed.
The saddest part of this story is the 20 years of his life that Roman lost.
Close to another DNA exoneration
Dec 6th
The Great State of Seacrest Connecticut might be close to its second DNA exoneration ever. (You know, it’s strange how these things play out. A few weeks ago I remarked to someone that I hadn’t heard anything about the Innocence Project lately and I wondered if they were working on anything.)
Nearly 30 years ago, three women either disappeared or were found murdered. One person linked all three investigations: Pedro Miranda. The police could never get enough to charge him and eventually another man – Miguel Roman – was convicted of the murder of one of them and sentenced to 60 years in prison.
Selection, naturally
Dec 6th
to vote or not to vote
What has always struck me as rather curious about the various jurisdictions in the US is their disparate ways of employing judges and state’s attorneys and public defenders. Some states elect their officials, some states select them.
In Connectictut, I guess one could say that the state’s attorneys, public defenders and judges are akin to civil servants. It is, fundamentally, a merit-based system, where you are appointed and then promoted based on your abilites and performance. Not all states do it this way and I wonder why. Two recent stories would highlight my query:
To the person currently on this blog
Nov 30th
The answer to your question about how much an inmate wrongfully convicted in Texas can get as compensation is $25K per year up to $500k $50,000 per year, or $100,000 per year for people sentenced to death, with no cap. Thank Mark Bennett.
See, I answer questions. It’s not all about me.
Undercover mother: exposing a juror’s lies
Nov 29th
undercover mother
When John Giuca was convicted of murder in 2005 and sentenced to 25 years in prison, his mother was unconvinced. The evidence was weak, perhaps politically motivated and she was sure her son was getting railroaded. So he did what every mother would do: she went undercover.
Ms. [Doreen] Giuliano is the mother of John Giuca, a Brooklyn man who was convicted three years ago along with another man in the 2003 killing of Mark Fisher, a college student from New Jersey who was found beaten and shot five times after a night out in New York City. Ms. Giuliano claims her son is innocent and has mounted an unstinting campaign to free him from prison
She recently gave an interview to Vanity Fair, describing the last two years of her life and “the sting” that she performed to bring down one of the jurors in her son’s trial.
It went like this for a long time, Doreen in a daze, doing what needed to be done and feeling hopeless. Then, one day in early 2006, Doreen awoke from her stupor. The jurors, she told herself. Find something on the jurors. It was a desperate thought. She’d watched television cop shows: if you prove a juror engaged in misconduct, it could overturn the case. She obtained the jury sheet, which listed the names and neighborhoods of the jurors. She got her hands on a transcript of the voir dire, the pre-trial review of potential jurors’ fitness to serve on a case. She even managed, through a contact, to come up with a list of some of the jurors’ addresses.
She started trailing jurors, finding out where they lived or work, tried to get close to them.
Bailout where it’s needed: public defender systems
Nov 14th
The last few months have brought us a crashing economy and massive government bailouts to the tune of 34 trazillion dollars (it’s a real amount). As banks fail and the auto industry fails and the real estate market plumbs the depths of depression, an equally frightening scenario is unfolding in states throughout the country: the crumbling of indigent defense systems.
Just like the economy, however, this failure of the legal system should come as no surprise. Back in May, I wrote about the mess in Minnesota (and followed up with a June post about Florida) [full coverage here] and our sister blog PD Stuff has been covering money problems for years. Nevada will face some problems starting next year. Things don’t look all rosy in Connecticut, either, as legal aid is taking a hit.
The NYT piece is rightly drawing a lot of attention in the blawgosphere. Bob Ambrogi and J. Craig Williams devoted their recent podcast to this problem by interviewing the Miami public defender Bennett Brummer and NLADA research director David Carroll. [The podcast is at the end of this post.]
This is a very serious problem. As funding for indigent defense declines with no corresponding declines in prosecutions, defendants will experience greater wait times for their trials, resources will be stretched thin and the criminal justice system will produce far more wrongful convictions. There will not be enough time to conduct proper investigations, to hire experts and, frankly, to go to trial.
If a public defender has an obscene number of clients, a number which grows every day, there will a lot of pressure to resolve cases without much advocacy. This is where the rest of the justice system needs to step up. Prosecutors need to take their duty to seek justice more seriously and drop the pursuit of “wins”. Judges need to take a more mediation-oriented approach and broker fair deals and not permit the State to demand the moon.
From the NYTimes piece:
Mr. Jones, in between hushed conversations with clients in the hallway or the holding pen, said he wished he had more time to investigate cases and could go to trial more often, rather than accepting the police version of events and then, after a short discussion, helping his clients make a life-altering deal.
“I’d love to have time to visit the crime scene and do more legal research,” Mr. Jones said.
No defendant should ever have to put up with this. No lawyer should ever be in a position where he is advising a client based on incomplete information. This is not only a money issue, but a Constitutional issue. Skimping on public defenders offices now will only postpone the problem, because there will be a greater number of successful habeas corpus petitions or appeals, which will result in new prosecutions.
Or worse: Federal courts will have to step in and force the state to pay for adequate funding, something no one really wants. So you know, might as well bail them out now, right Prez-elect Obama? Seriously, who better to give federal money to? The banks that set up their own downfall? The auto-industry that refused to innovate? Or the hardworking public defenders that protect your and my rights, day in and day out, doing a community service for little money?
But these are tough economic times. Money is drying up. Perhaps this is a very appropriate opportunity to look at truly reforming the criminal justice system. Let’s provide more alternatives to incarceration and true rehabilitation, let’s not keep non-violent offenders in jail any longer than we absolutely need to. As costs of the prison complex go down, there will be more money to fund the defense of the innocent man. We should start to look at the exorbitant sentences handed down by judges. Do we need a 40 year sentence when a 15 year sentence should do? Do we have to be punitive in our punishments? Must people be on probation for 35 years? A true reformation of the criminal justice system would go a long way towards alleviating these woes.
Then, of course, there’s the death penalty.
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Prosecutorial hubris: Ethics, shmethics
Nov 11th
Prosecutors are special. They have their own little section [pdf - Rule 3.8] in the rules of professional conduct. For the most part, they’re people like you and me, trying to do their job, abiding by their special duties and responsibilities.
Then you come across prosecutors like Ben Field of Santa Clara County, so intent on furthering his career that he doesn’t care who stands in his way: defense lawyers, rules of professional conduct, rules of evidence, the U.S. Supreme Court or the bar grievance committee. Here‘s the full investigation conducted by the Mercury News that, in part, led to the following.
Back in May, Field faced a disciplinary hearing, which was based on alleged misconduct in three cases dating back to 1995:
The state bar case includes charges of misconduct in connection with a 2002 murder case, when Field failed to tell defense attorneys that a key prosecution witness may have taken part in the crime. The judge called it a “blatant” violation of requirements that prosecutors hand over any evidence that could help prove innocence.
The bar also has accused Field of misconduct in connection with a 1995 rape charge, which involved questions about whether the defendant was old enough to be tried as an adult. Four times, different judges told Field to file a motion and receive court approval before ordering the physical examination, according to the complaint.
Field went ahead and requested the exam anyway. The evidence was not allowed in court and the case was dismissed. In that case, the complaint alleges, Field “willfully disobeyed a court order.”
In the Auguste case, Emerson told Field that he wanted the prosecutor to turn to him for approval before conducting any further searches for evidence. Four days later, armed with the approval of a Colorado judge, a Santa Clara County district attorney’s investigator joined authorities in searching the Colorado home of Donna Auguste. She was not there at the time.
Prosecutors were beginning to get up in arms back in May. That was just the beginning. Last month, the grievance committee recommended that Field be suspended for three years. This is shocking to many because it shows that the bar committee has teeth and is downright earth-shattering to prosecutors because they may finally be held accountable for their actions. Here’s what the recommendations said about Field:
Field “still does not understand that he stepped far outside his professional obligations and committed serious misconduct,” states the filing of bar trial counsel Donald R. Steedman and Cydney Batchelor. The bar prosecutors also questioned Field’s claim that he will be more careful in the future, contending that Field “evinced no change in the arrogant attitude” throughout those cases, and up through the disciplinary hearing.
The bar contends the four cases demonstrated repeated “acts of dishonesty and an intent to subvert the proper workings of the criminal justice system.” In one case they cited, Field concealed from defense attorneys that he knew the location of a witness whom the defense was having trouble locating. Instead, he urged that defense efforts to win a new trial be rejected because the witness was missing.
Naturally, they’re not happy. The decibels have gone up several levels. So they’re doing what they do best – appeal try to change the law to restrict the power of the bar to suspend attorneys. I kid you not.
In the wake of a disciplinary hearing against a top local prosecutor, the union that represents Santa Clara County prosecutors and public defenders is asking the California District Attorneys Association to sponsor a bill that would essentially curb the power of the state bar to punish all lawyers.
[T]he draft calls for a two-year statute of limitations for bringing any charges against attorneys.
This two year statute of limitations is quite ridiculous, btw. Many convictions are found to have been wrongful years after they are finalized. In some cases, prosecutorial misconduct may not come to light for a while. If justice is the goal – as prosecutors love to say – then there should be no limit on innocence and certainly no limit on punishment for those that subvert it.
“Are we doing this solely in response to Ben Field? No,” said union president and prosecutor Kevin Smith. “But when a member gets tried, you learn how the process works, and this process is unfair.”
It’s also particularly ironic that the prosecutors are complaining that Field didn’t get a fair trial when he was on trial for depriving defendants of a fair trial.
There’s a reason there is a special section for prosecutors in the Rules of Professional Conduct. It’s not to let them know they are special and exempt from the ethical requirements, but to remind them that their duty is and responsibility is greater than that of the ordinary lawyer and that additional demands will be made of them.
Not whining about being finally held accountable for ethical violations isn’t one of them, but it should be.
Thanks to loyal reader LJS for the tip.
SCOTUS will decide limits, if any, of prosecutorial immunity
Nov 3rd
The Supreme Court will hear oral argument Wednesday in Van de Kamp v. Goldstein, a case I blogged about previously. [Given that tomorrow is election day, I foresee that most of my time will be spent in front of the TV, watching election returns.]
In Van de Kamp, SCOTUS will decide whether the chief prosecutor for L.A. can be held civilly liable for a wrongful conviction, after members of his office failed to turn over ecxulpatory evidence to the defense.
From my previous post:
The lawsuit alleges that the prosecutor’s office failed to set up an intra-office system to disseminate information on the reliability of informants and because of that Goldstein was convicted based on false testimony from an unreliable informant.
Despite this suit’s civil context, the implications for those of us in the criminal world will be immense. If prosecutors will be held liable for failing to turn over exculpatory information that its office possesses (just as information in the possession of cops is imputed to the state), then perhaps they will start to err on the side of caution in what materials they turn over.
One of the biggest problems with Brady material these days is not that prosecutors willingly hold on to it, but that they sincerely don’t believe that some exculpatory material is exculpatory. Whatever the result of this case, hopefully it prompts them to take a closer look at their determinations.
Troy Davis gets a stay
Oct 24th
The 11th Circuit has stayed Davis’ execution – set for Monday – and asked both parties to brief whether Troy can file a successive petition. They also included this interesting question:
It asked the parties to address whether Davis can still be executed if he can establish innocence under the second standard [clear and convincing evidence that no reasonable fact finder would have found him guilty] but cannot satisfy his burden under the first, due-diligence question.
If someone has a copy of the order, please let me know. I’d like to link to it.
Troy Davis is “innocent” because…
Oct 20th
This “rebuttal” of Troy Davis’ advocates does little to dispel any notions of an impending injustice [via Paul Cassell at Volokh].
More disturbing than the weak “rebuttal” (for an extensive rebuttal of the “rebuttal”, see this comment), however, is the post itself by Paul “I used to be a Judge” Cassell, which contains some very disturbing assertions and implications.
He writes:
There has been much ado in the media lately about another “innocent” person about to be executed. Unfortunately, most of the media coverage about the impending execution of cop-killer Troy Davis has spent precious little time discussing the facts of the case.
I guess in Paul “I used to be a Judge” Cassell’s world, no innocent man has ever been sentenced to death, despite, well, innocent people actually being released from death row. Let’s just ignore those that were set free after numerous years awaiting execution.
Further, Paul “I used to be a Judge” Cassell implies that somehow the media coverage has ignored the facts of the case. While it may be true that lately the media accounts haven’t focused on the facts, that doesn’t mean that when the story about Davis first broke, the fact weren’t front and center. Without a link to back up his assertion, I’m disinclined to give him any credit. What else would they focus on right now? The issue is whether an innocent man is about to be executed. The stories should rightly focus on the reasons why he might be innocent and any status updates.
Then, Paul “I used to be a Judge but now I’m a victim’s advocate” Cassell throws out this gem:
Even more poignant is this link, which has information about the victim in this case — Officer Mark Allen MacPhail.
I guess as a standalone link it is fine, but to somehow imply that the saintliness of a victim should be a consideration in the guilt or innocence of a defendant is an affront to the whole judicial system. Would he care less about this case were the victim another drug dealer from the ‘hood? I suspect yes.
Obviously I know nothing of Officer MacPhail, nor do I presume to. By all accounts he lived a good life and was killed in the line of duty – an obvious tragedy. But if we start making determinations about the guilt of the accused based on the character of the victim, well, what sort of criminal justice system would we have?
Even more disturbing is that this is a man who used to be a judge. One of the characteristics required of a judge is to be able to evaluate both sides of an argument, assess the facts, give each one credence and then decide how to apply the law. Paul “I used to be a Judge” Cassell seems to think that these are characteristics that stay with the position of a judge, not the person occupying the judgeship.
Finally, we get this zinger:
Davis was convicted and sentenced to death in 1991. We live in strange times when the claim is made that he hasn’t had due process yet.
I think he may just be advocating for a statute of limitations on innocence claims. I don’t know that that merits any consideration.
This also isn’t the first time Paul “Good thing you’re not a Judge anymore” Cassell has made some outrageous comments.
Troy’s execution date is coming up soon. Read more about him and make your own decision.
Troy Davis given another week
Sep 23rd
CapDefWeekly has the news that Troy Davis’ execution has been stayed another week, at least. He explains:
The stay appears related to his actual innocence claim – the scotusblog.com has the details. The Court appears to be concerned with the question left open in Herrera – whether factual innocence alone is enough to prevent an execution &, assuming the answer is yes, what standard must the condemned show.
Tune in to CDW to get updates.
Georgia almost (and still might) executed an almost certainly innocent man.
Stare decisis ad infinitum (updated)
Sep 8th
So seems to be the State of Utah’s motto. In the midst of a capital case, the A.G. is seeking sanctions against defense lawyers because, get this, they argue that a third of the claims have already been decided by other cases.
[Defense attorney] Brass and attorney Richard Mauro, who represents [the other defense attorney] Donaldson, deny any impropriety or unethical behavior and contend that they only sought to preserve every possible avenue of appeal for [defendant] Archuleta.
Brass said he thought justices should give deference to the 17-page opinion from Judge Donald J. Eyre, who found “there was no deception, there was no unethical behavior that he wasn’t deceived and there wasn’t an effort to deceive him.”
Makes a lot of sense. You raise every avenue of challenge, even if previous cases have decided the issue. Maybe they’ve been decided by state courts, but not by Federal courts. In all post-conviction cases, especially capital cases, it is all about preservation of issues.
But this is not surprising. Since AEDPA, State prosecutors have been on a crusade to curtail post-conviction avenues and rights of criminal defendants. Claims of “abuse” are pretty frequent. Given that courts throughout the country have repeatedly held that habeas corpus petitions are the appropriate venue for challenging trial counsel’s performance (and raising other Constitutional deficiencies), I would sincerely hope that they suggest a viable alternative or let it go.
But back to the curiosity here. What the prosecutors are, in essence, saying is that once a point of law has been decided a certain way, it can never be changed. Not only is this not what stare decisis means, but if such were indeed the case, then almost all issues would have been decided decades ago and we might as well disband all appellate courts.
Decisions are reversed all the time, precedent is overturned with some regularity. If that were not the case, the law would be stagnant, reflecting a time long gone and incapable of dealing with evolving society.
Fortunately for us (and unfortunately for the Utah A.G., I suspect), such is not the case. Lawyers should be free to challenge existing caselaw and should be free to seek reversal of precedent.
I also wonder if the Utah A.G. practices what it preaches. I suspect the A.G. has not rolled over on any cases where there is “caselaw on point”. I bet they still defend post-conviction challenges and other criminal prosecutions. They may do so even in cases where the law is squarely against them. I’ve seen it happen here. It’s annoying, but it’s the way it is. It doesn’t mean that lawyers should be subject to sanctions for merely advocating strongly on behalf of their client and preserving all legal claims. Sanctions are serious – they should be thrown about willy-nilly when defendants do something that irk prosecutors. Sanctions should be reserved for the worst violators of the rules of conduct.
What this disturbing litigation has also caused, perhaps intentionally, is a declining desire on the part of Utah criminal defense lawyers to take on capital cases.
Mauro said the state’s case against Brass and Donaldson has prompted other attorneys to refuse to take other death penalty appeals out of fear they’ll face similar allegations. That could leave some wrongly-convicted death row inmates without a chance for exoneration, he said.
It’s not only those that are wrongfully convicted – those that have been convicted with the assistance of some Constitutional defect. Post-conviction isn’t about getting another shot at the apple; rather it is about making sure that when the State convicts an individual and takes away his/her liberty, it does so in a Constitutionally sufficient manner.
That is of paramount importance – and the A.G. doesn’t seem to care.
Update: The A.G. seems to be in the news for something else as well. This time, the A.G. doesn’t seem to care about the presumption of innocence. The A.G. redesigned his website and launched it anew with a video of the arrest of a sex assault suspect. [He also has a blog.]
Legal Blog Watch reports:
The video shows the Utah Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force assisting local police as they arrest a 26-year-old man suspected of arranging to have sex with an underage girl he met online. Actually all it shows is two men escorting a man in handcuffs through a parking lot. That is followed by the comments of a local sheriff’s detective, who says, “If I was someone who had a daughter, I’d be very scared about what’s going on,” and of a local police officer, who says, “It’s crazy that we have guys like this that would do this type of thing.”
No reason to let the presumption of innocence get in the way of good TV. But the local chapter of the ACLU sees it otherwise. ACLU lawyers showed up at Shurtleff’s press conference announcing the site to register their protest. “We are concerned that by posting the arrest video of an unconvicted person, the attorney general is more interested in political grandstanding than protecting the public,” ACLU lawyer Marina Lowe told the Deseret News. Added ACLU attorney William Carlson, “Guilty before charged.”
Dallas DA wants to punish Brady violators
May 4th
Looks like I wasn’t the only one who had prosecutorial ethics on my mind this past week. From Grits, Dallas DA Craig Watkins has about had it with these exonerations and wants to do something about it. His proposals are serious.
“Something should be done,” said Craig Watkins, whose jurisdiction leads the nation in the number of DNA exonerations. “If the harm is a great harm, yes, it should be criminalized.”
Mr. Watkins said that he was still pondering what kind of punishment unethical prosecutors deserve but that the worst offenders might deserve prison time. He said he also was considering the launch of a campaign to mandate disbarment for any prosecutor found to have intentionally withheld evidence from the defense.
And he has reason to be considering such harsh penalties. Texas has already paid $8.6 million since 2001:
Of the 45 wrongful-conviction cases for which the state has paid compensation, at least 22 of them involved prosecutors withholding evidence from the defense: 19 in the infamous Tulia drug convictions and three of Dallas County’s DNA exonerations. The remainder of the payouts involved exculpatory DNA evidence or other flaws.
The article notes the paucity of sanctions against prosecutors who withhold evidence – one of the only example given is the only case in recent history where a prosecutor was disbarred: Mike Nifong in the Duke lacrosse case.
But as can be expected, there are other prosecutors who take an opposing view. John Bradley, a prosecutor in Williamson County near Austin calls Watkins’ proposal “ridiculous” and “an overreaction”.
What’s ridiculous is that innocent people spend decades in prison and the prosecutors that withheld evidence to put them there don’t get as much as a slap on the wrist. Prosecutors have a duty to do justice and to seek out the truth. To turn a blind eye when they neglect that duty and in fact take affirmative steps to circumvent justice is a big f*ck you to the whole system.
There’s absolutely no reason not to have a mandatory grievance process, at the very least, for prosecutors who intentionally withhold Brady or Giglio material.
The Innocence Project of Texas, a nonprofit legal clinic that worked to free many of the Dallas County exonerees including Mr. Woodard, supports criminalizing Brady violations. Michelle Moore, a board member of the Innocence Project and a Dallas County public defender, said that doing so would reduce the number of violations.
“If he can do 27 years behind bars,” she said of Mr. Woodard, “the prosecuting attorney can face time for hiding evidence.”
Damn straight he can. I know some prosecutors read this blog. What do you think of Watkins’ proposal? Would you be in favor of something like this in your State? If not, why not?
Videotaped interrogations pilot program to start soon
Apr 14th
At the end of June, four police departments in CT will begin to videotape interrogations of suspects of violent felonies.
Supporters think such a policy should have been required in Connecticut years ago, especially in light of two high-profile cases in which police were accused of coercing confessions. Law enforcement officials have remained leery, voicing concerns that suspects will balk at being recorded and that defense lawyers will critique interrogation tactics.
In 2003, Illinois became the first state to enact legislation requiring electronic recording of interrogations. Maine and New Mexico soon followed suit. But even those states were a decade behind Alaska and Minnesota, whose supreme courts mandated taping in the mid-1980s. New Hampshire and New Jersey’s supreme courts have since made similar rulings. Additionally, 500 smaller jurisdictions have adopted recording policies.
Under State v. James, a 1996 CT Supreme Court decision, videotaping interrogations is not required. Despite that, many organizations have lobbied tirelessly for requiring such videotaping.
Rep. Michael Lawlor, the committee’s co-chairman, said the measure has been merged with another bill aimed at compensating those wrongfully convicted. He said a Commission on Wrongful Convictions would evaluate the pilot program and report back in January. “Then next year we’ll talk about expanding” the videotaping program said Lawlor.
Lawlor said he believes Connecticut will eventually require recording statewide.
Won’t be too soon.
Removing prosecutorial immunity
Apr 13th
Update: SCOTUS grants cert.
Original: As highlighted in this L.A. Times article and this Scotusblog summary, the Justices will announce tomorrow whether cert will be granted in Goldstein v. Van de Kamp [9th Cir. decision here]. Goldstein was released from prison after serving 24 years for a crime he did not commit.
Goldstein was ordered released after 24 years in prison after the sole eyewitness recanted and doubts emerged about a supposed confession by Goldstein to an informant. Years after his conviction, Goldstein learned that his jailhouse accuser — a three-time felon — had lied in court when he denied having received promises of special treatment from another county prosecutor in exchange for his testimony.
The lawsuit alleges that the prosecutor’s office failed to set up an intra-office system to disseminate information on the reliability of informants and because of that Goldstein was convicted based on false testimony from an unreliable informant.
The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office, the nation’s largest prosecution office, once made regular use of jail informants, but at the time it had no system for sharing information among prosecutors countywide about which informants were reliable and what they had been promised.
Van de Kamp, the chief prosecutor from ’75 to ’83 has claimed full immunity.
Prosecutors and some observers are all atwitter:
Regardless, the immunity rule should be preserved as an important judicial safeguard, [law prof] Levenson said. “We don’t want [prosecutors] looking over their shoulders. In order to be independent and to make tough calls, they can’t be worrying about whether they will be sued.”
I agree. For the most part. However, given the recent surge in exonerations, why is it not time to reconsider whether prosecutors can be sued in a limited set of circumstances? This seems doubly important given the reluctance of many states to enact compensation statutes for the wrongly convicted.
Consider the scenario where a prosecutor knowingly offers false testimony that leads to a wrongful conviction or hides Giglio material – or even Brady material. Why should that prosecutor (or the State) be immune from suit? Do we want to encourage that behavior? Does that assist in the pursuit of justice? Heck, defense lawyers are regularly sued by clients.
I understand that is not what the lawsuit alleges, but on this lazy Sunday afternoon, it is worth thinking about. What exactly are we protecting when we bar suits that seek to place blame with the appropriate person in appropriate circumstances?
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