Thanks to Nader, death row inmates cannot get DNA evidence which proves them innocent.

You may know that the Supreme Court said today that inmates, convicted felons, do not have a right to get DNA evidence that proves them innocent, even if they are on death row about to be electrocuted. This was narrowly decided, thanks to justices appointed by Bush*, who was able to squeak by on the margin that Nader provided. This was due to people saying that there was no difference, or little difference, between Bush* and Gore. Thanks to you, people are gonna die.

Oh, and score one for Oasis.

so many Democrats were fed up with DLC, Republican lite politics, that the Democrats cost themselves what should've been an easy election.

WHEN WILL THE DLC LEARN NOT TO TAKE LIBERALS FOR GRANTED? Do they want another Nader to steal the election from Obama in '12?

that they chased people to Nader (as well as continue to post ludicrous topics on left-leaning internet forums), he left the election in contention.

It's pretty outrageous that you are blaming Nader for that; you can offer no solid proof that things would have gone down differently had Nader not been in the election.

"Come one, come all, come join our fucking idiotic, ass-backwards, illogical, asinine, have-no-reason-to-waste-the-air-I-breathe party!"

Mr. Osborne was the wrong person to bring this action. I transcribed his trial, and there was so much evidence connecting him to this crime, the DNA most surely would have found him guilty.

Sure wish we'd see the decision! How come you transcribed the trial?

with the state for transcribing the trials of indigent defendants who appealed their convictions. We also did grand juries, child in need of aid cases, and motion hearings, things like that. We've since had some issues with how the Court System was dealing with us (no raise in over seven years) and dropped the contract, but when this Osborne case first went up to the Alaska Supreme Court, we transcribed the entire trial. It was a horrible case, and I had no doubt that both of these guys were guilty. Since the question has now been raised in the minds of the public, though, I think more advanced DNA testing should be done. If it's his DNA in the condom, it's just one more piece of evidence. If it isn't, as a commenter pointed out at the Anchorage Daily News website, it just proves that someone else used that condom. It doesn't mean Osborne's innocent.

Sometimes I would work on cases and have doubts about a person's guilt, or feel sorry for them, understanding how their situation could have gotten out of hand, but these two guys viciously assaulted this woman and left her for dead, naked in a snowbank, and from what I heard at the trial, I feel sure Osborne was involved. There was too much evidence that he couldn't refute.

Trials are so interesting! (can be, anyway.)

I haven't read the Supremes' decision, but think testing should be generally available, no question. Went to law school to help avoid miscarriages of justice. As you say, this doesn't appear to be one of those. As the saying goes, or something, 'hard cases make bad law.'

:hi:

again that he's guilty?

and I am in favor of DNA testing, but in this case it really wouldn't make much difference anyway. If the semen in the condom belonged to Mr. Osborne, it would only add to the massive amount of evidence already against him, but if it WASN'T his, it would only prove that he wasn't wearing that condom. The area of town where this crime took place is known for backseat fun and games, and I've often seen condoms laying around on the ground there.

But because of this case, there are moves afoot in Alaska to bring us in line with other states that permit DNA testing long after conviction. And, of course, DNA testing is routinely done now in newer cases.

stop blaming Nader for everything.

:) j/k

More logical fallacies than you can shake a stick at.

:popcorn:

I wondered what the system might be. I thought perhaps flash cards, but the mat makes more sense. :thumbsup:

Some kinda screw?

Death penalty appeals cases are kind of confusing for most laymen, because they are rarely based on whether the defendant is innocent or guilty.

Facts are determined by the trial court. All appeals are based solely on the law -- usually on criminal procedure, and whether the defendant had a fair trial and sentencing, whether evidence was excluded, and so on.

Whether the defendant actually did the crime is rarely an issue. The way actual innocence gets affected by the Supreme Court is usually because the original trial was flawed and a new trial is ordered on the facts.

So there is a big conflict in the legal experts about whether a defendant should be able to re-open the factual issues simply because he can now prove his innocence. Most normal, rational, and certainly progressives lawyers think he should.

Iirc, Scalia and Thomas are on record believing that factual actual innocence of a defendant is not a good reason to stop an execution if there have been no problems with criminal procedure and other purely legal issues. They've said innocent people need to die in order to ensure that the appeals process has an ultimate cut off.

Cue Family Guy flashback gag.

Gore had enough votes in that state but did not realize it until it was too late.

So, by your logic, we should blame Gore for the Iraq war, Katrina, etc.

I mean, let's just go all the way back.

and I think the supreme court was the author of that crappy decision too.

The supreme court installed Bush.

The supreme court has it's head up it's ass now.

Nader....pffft.

And you provide this entertainment on a regular basis.

Thanks Ralph!

That sounds really fishy. Excluding exonerating DNA evidence in all cases? Hard to believe.

Some people just want to bury their heads in the sand on this.

"really bad" over "marginally good" in an election.

11% of Dems who cast a ballot voted for Bush
2% of Dems who cast a ballot voted for Nader

39% of voters were Democrats
35% of voters were Republicans
26% of voters were Indepenents

http://www.ropercenter.uconn.edu/elections/presidential/presidential_election_2000.html

"Al Gore had been elected and re-elected to both the House and Senate from Tennessee. His father had also served for decades in the Senate. Nevertheless, he failed to carry his home state, 47% to Bush's 51%. Nader's 20,000 votes in Tennessee would not have made any difference. The same story happened in Bill Clinton's Arkansas, which Gore lost to Bush, 46 to 51%. Nader's 1% in Arkansas didn't affect the outcome. West Virginia is so Democratic that Republican presidential candidates have carried the state only three times in the previous half century. Nevertheless, Gore managed to lose West Virginia by five percentage points to Bush. Nader's 10,000 votes in West Virginia were well short of the margin of difference between Bush and Gore. Had Gore carried either his own home state, or even West Virginia, he would be president today."

http://www.greens.org/s-r/25/25-03.html

A statement by Al From:

"I think they're wrong on all counts. The assertion that Nader's marginal vote hurt Gore is not borne out by polling data. When exit pollers asked voters how they would have voted in a two-way race, Bush actually won by a point. That was better than he did with Nader in the race."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2000

I have yet to find an ad from the 2000 election made by the Republicans that tried to label Gore as being too moderate or centrist.

ever

The DLC centrists really should take more responsibility for lost votes. How many votes did this approach cost Gore?

You'd think we'd learn our lesson, but Obama made Rahm Emanuel his first appointee, and we're about to drive right back over that cliff again.

The whole reason we're even still talking about Nader, and why he was a force in the 2000 election was the realization among the most politically active Democrats that Nader better represented the traditionally Democratic platform so much better than Gore did.

and it's an opinion. Nothing wrong with having opinions. I have lots of them myself!

You can thank so called "centrist" Democrats in Congress for confirming the justices who made that ruling.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herrera_v._Collins

and all this time it thought it was a supreme court decision ...
i guess all that massive voter fraud was just in my head.
crazy voices.

Then who knows, we might have even had Nader as president at some point. My biggest criticism of Nader is that he doesn't champion this issue more. Other than that though, he hardly deserves the blame for the circumstances that so many others created which gave us Bush...

You can also blame Sandra Day O'Connor that much more too. She probably had just as much power or more to stop Bush than Nader did. Then again, she didn't create that situation either...

... that prevents the progressive's voices from being heard. If we had IRV then, then there would be no way to blame Nader for that then, and perhaps Nader would have gotten more votes and really championed the idea that there's a segment of our community that's not being heard, even with someone like Al Gore then.

Some would argue that when Al Gore moved more towards populist themes towards the end of the election that probably worked against what some of the party insiders wanted ultimately for him to embrace, that they dropped him like a bad habit when it came time for challenging the election, which is why you didn't have any Democrats in the Senate supporting the challenge that might have made a difference then too. Look at how long the GOP contentions to close races have taken before they got resolved for the governor's seat in Washington, as well as the senatorial seat now in Minnesota. Doing it quickly to "preserve our system" was an excuse to keep in place the corporate hegemony that some likely thought was threatened if Al Gore moved more towards populist causes and that Nader really had taken away voters from then.

Until we have a system where the progressives can have a voice to be heard, and aren't taken for granted or cast aside, we really can't blame people that vote for Nader for these problems.

For Nader, I'd like to at some point for him to play hardball, when he has enough of the voting populace to make a difference in the election, to negotiate with the Dems to say that he'd pull out and work with them, IF they put in place instant runoff voting, so that independent and third parties could be heard to their fullest extent in subsequent elections, and might even have more of a chance at winning if the two parties in power are doing badly enough in not representing the people. If he were to focus on that, I think that's a goal that might be achievable, and make a big difference, and would be something I think many would sacrifice not voting for him in one election, if they felt they could vote for his voice and many others like him in coming elections with more clout, and less damaging results happening. Now that the Dems have control over congress, arguably they have a choice to make this happen before he runs again.

It was Nader's main point of his campaign that there was little difference between the two main candidates. Here is one of those "little differences". I guess it's a "little difference" that innocent people go to jail and possibly die. You cannot deny that that was the main point of his campaign, and the "statement" that people were trying to make when voting for him.

You say that this argument is generally illogical because you cannot point out the point of failure.

You're being unaccountable by blaming Nader and his 1% of the vote.

Gore lost the election b/c he did nothing to distinguish himself from Bush, and validated Nader's "one-party system" message.

As long as Dems try to be Repub lites, they will lose votes to actual liberals. We should've learned this lesson once, but we're going to repeat it again. Watch those poll numbers for Obama from the left next month. Watch how the right or the "center" doesn't make up the difference in the drop.

By running with Lieberman on the DLC platform. I don't think Nader voters were stupid for not knowing the difference. It sounds like you're the one saying that. Maybe they were a little off base, but they were ahead of the curve on Lieberman, weren't they? Again, Gore could've made them a moot point by making more of a distinction between his values and W's.

emphasis mine



So if he made more of a distinction, they wouldn't have voted for Nader.
Because he didn't make a distinction, they voted for Nader.

They really couldn't tell the difference unless they were fed that information? Obviously, I didn't vote for Nader, nor did most of the people here. You mean to tell me that we knew something they didn't know, that Gore didn't bother to feed to them?

The Nader voters didn't "know" Gore's platform wasn't much different from Bush's because it "wasn't."

You're trying to turn it around like I'm saying Nader voters were too dumb to notice the difference between candidates. I'm saying Gore wasn't different enough to be an appealing candidate to many liberals.

But, hey, if this makes you sleep better at night, keep the hate alive.

Why look relevant and widely known facts, when blind and meaningless hate is so much quicker?

But your argument is a lot of hot air. You assume for example that Gore's appointees would have voted differently than Bush's did. That is an unprovable assertion, and one that may well not have been true in any case due to Gore's moderate tendencies. It is almost a certainty that any nominees he put forth would not be deeply Liberal. As bad as Bush's? Probably not, but not Liberal.

Furthermore if a candidate wants to win an election, it's up to the CANDIDATE to convince voters to vote for them. Gore's campaign sucked, and it sucked in large part due to him being advised by people that sound a lot like you do. You can keep telling the Left to shut up and get on the bus if you want to, but I'm telling you right here and now that isn't going to work. You move too far Right and the Left will stay home or vote for a Nader. You can bitch about it or you can stop whinging and do what it takes to get their vote.

Oh, and don't say nothing will make the Left vote for a Dem. That's just plain crap. Obama proved that, even if he is as Moderate as Gore was when running. It CAN be done, but Gore didn't.

Principled people don't like to admit it, but there it is. Clinton, no lefty at all, had charisma in spades and won, while Gore had little and lost. I was pleased to vote for Kerry, suprisingly liberal for a presidential candidate, but he lacked charisma as well, and lost. Obama has it, and that will count for a lot no matter what.

Or a fraudulent Supreme Court decision, or horrible legal maneuvering in Florida by Gore's camp, or his lackluster campaign, or Gore's desire to distance himself from Clinton, or voting list purges in Florida and elsewhere...

No, it's all Emmanuel Goldstein's Ralph Nader's fault.

I mean, it barely warrants a response.

A populace this stupid will get the health care they deserve.

:shrug:

and "hypocrites" who did not really believe in "free choice."

among other blatant stupidities posted over the years, all evidence of deep-seated, pathological cluelessness.

rolled over on the most appalling legislation, and played a major role in the economic collapse.

Just as Nader predicted that they would.

The Mighty Hoof cares not for Nader! Noted.

Sonia Sotomayor's 'empathy' isn't all it's cracked up to be

By JEFFREY DESKOVIC | 6/15/09 6:18 AM EDT

Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, who grew up poor in the South Bronx, has worked hard to get where she is.

In a career that took her from a Bronx housing project to Princeton University, Yale Law School, various jobs and now the federal bench, she has said that she tries to keep in mind the real-life implications of her rulings when meting out justice. Such a high-minded moral standard is what we, as a society, should expect and seek from all our judges, especially a Supreme Court justice. But considering that we are talking about a lifetime appointment to the nation’s highest court, we should see if, in practice, her rulings reflect that.

A review of her record in my case shows that Sotomayor’s practice does not live up to her promise.

At age 17, I was wrongfully convicted of murder and rape, despite a negative DNA test and hair found on the body that did not match mine. My conviction was based upon a coerced, false confession, the fabrication of other evidence, prosecutorial misconduct and fraud by the medical examiner. I was cleared 16 years later — almost three years ago — when further DNA testing reaffirmed my innocence while identifying the real perpetrator, who subsequently confessed and was sentenced.

more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0609/23724.html

Somebody might mistake you for a liberal, or something.

There's a lot more of them than there are Nader voters.

Trust me on this. I've brought it up countless times, only to see the Nader-obsessed idiots pass it right by. It's easier to use Nader as our Clenis than actually think about the Dems who voted for Bush. Nader haters are usually dim bulbs.

The SCOTUS selected Bush.

If Nader had won the election, then Bush wouldn't have gotten in. The same stupid argument. Fuck, we are all dumber for having read this stupid-ass thread.

So why did Democrats vote for George W. Bush's Supreme Court picks and why did Democrats agree to not filibuster George W. Bush's Supreme Court picks when the Republicans threatened to use the so-called "nuclear option" to bypass filibusters?

Care to answer?

Sounds like you're giving "centrist" Democratic Party "Bush enablers" another free pass.

Sorry, moon, but Nader's a dick and now you have to pay!

I've been sooo chastised these last 8 years for "letting Bush win" because I voted for Nader, like bushler wasn't already scheduled to win, no matter how fraudulently, not to mention, what makes you so sure all Nader voters "would have" voted for Gore? I probably would have stayed at home, to tell you the truth.

don't bother taking my vote for granted. That's the DLC strategy, which Bill used so well: fuck the progressives/liberals, because they've got no alternative but to vote Democratic.

Well fuck that bullshit. I see now how I've been used like a doormat, so I'll be voting for whomever is REALLY going to bring change, not some "bipartisan" corporate kowtowing and maintaining of the status quo. If they don't cut the crap with the closed "health care" "hearings," states secrets/torture cover-up, DOMA, "clean coal" mountaintop blasting, massive war budget -- why the hell SHOULD I vote for them?

:applause:

because he cares, or more likely someone is giving him a gift that keeps on giving, every two weeks.

Well, OK not really, but it makes about as much fucking sense as the OP.

If only that Nader (AKA Emmanuel Goldstien) fellow would just get out of thier way!!!!

That's right- the guys who hate "the far left loonies" and who do not want to be percieved as "outside the mainstream" are a Death Row inmates best friend- who woulda thunk it?

How about that Legislative branch? It's Nader's fault that DLCers supported George Bush's major economic & foreign policies for 8 straight years as well. Nader's fault that here in the year 2009, "we dont have the votes" is being vommited up by every lackey in the party.

In any event, you DLC guys didnt have a problem with 3rd parties when Lieberman ran against a good DEM, so I always find your Nader baiting hypocritical as well as hilarious.

The more people that see this pathetic drivel the better.

Leiberman stabbed Gore in the back during the recount clearing the way for the election theft.

See the movie "Recount".

Why the hell did Gore even pick Leiberman as his running mate? To balance the ticket with a right-wing Republican enabler?

Damn, I wanted to vote!

and their proximate motivation was to give Rehnquist and O'Connor the chance to retire under a Republican president and ensure conservative replacements. What does Ralph Nader have to do with that?

while you keep scratching the scab off the 2000 election, i'm concentrating on the present and our current president...

For what it's worth, there are only a few states, Alaska being one, that don't have laws in place re DNA testing. Because of this case, there probably WILL soon be a law in Alaska to do just that. Ralph Nader had nothing to do with this.

Nader's legacy is Bush's legacy. I can't even stand hearing his name.

:puke:

the FIEND.