Jury still out

Here is an argument about how many people are wrongly convicted in American courts. The side that thinks it's all good, led by Joshua Marquis, posits an argument that is the most obvious bullshit: Since rape and murder have had recent high profile DNA exonerations, Marquis extrapolates from the uncontrolled rate of exonerations to all felonies.

Then, when Samuel Gross calls bullshit on this - more politely of course - Marquis says this:

“He correctly points out,” Mr. Marquis, the district attorney in Clatsop County, Ore., said of Professor Gross, “that rape and murders are only a small percentage of all crimes, but then has absolutely no real data to suggest there are epidemic false convictions in, say, burglary cases.”

What Gross is saying, Marquis you numbskull, is that you have absolutely no real data. The mind boggles that you would make such a ridiculous rejoinder in lieu of an actual argument. Gross in no uncertain terms identifies the problem:

Worse, [the frequency of false convictions] can'’t be estimated from any information we do know.

In short, Marquis prefers his made-up and clearly bogus number to Gross's careful and limited estimates. All I can say is don't expect the prosecution in Clatsop County, Oregon, to understand arithmetic.

And, of course, Antonin Scalia buys the bullshit, as he buys anything that appears to lend credence to his legal creed.

More power to ... me!

Taking a cue from the man who appointed him, Judge Jeffrey S. White wildly overreaches. Constitution? That old thing?

Never mind the First Amendment. A Cayman Island bank needs relief.

Live boy or dead girl?

No branch of government is clean in Louisiana. But don't sneer at the Cajuns for Edwin Edwards and Huey Long and now John Weimer - the federal gummint is corrupt, too, by money and by power.

Judge Robert Nader, dissenting, could barely contain his disbelief, saying the initial decision was infected by “approximately $1 million in contributions from a very financially interested individual” to Judge Batchelder, a Republican, and to the local Republican Party.

Make no mistake about this, though, both parties are to blame.

But any state where judges raise campaign cash to run for office is more subject to this obvious conflict of interest.