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naraburns  nihil supernum  3yr ago (text post)   32847 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 12, 2022

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There’s a big difference between these two scenarios: 1. Salas and one or more accomplices invaded someone’s home, and in the commission of that home invasion somebody was shot. Police couldn’t determine, given the evidence at their disposal, which one of the home invaders fired the shot, so they couldn’t pin the murder on Salas specifically. 2. Police could not muster the evidence to actually place Salas at the scene of the home invasion.

With felony-murder rule, they wouldn't need to prove who actually fired the shot at all, only that 1. someone died 2. while Salas was intending to commit a felony 3. the felony had the likelihood of getting someone killed. Given that someone died and that home invasions are inherently risky, the weakest link in that chain seems to be whether Salas was "intent on committing a felony" when the people were killed. So the reason they lacked evidence could also be "3. Police could not muster the evidence to indicate that Salas was at the home with the intent of committing a felony." There are a number of ways this could be the case, and I'm happy to rattle off some hypothetical examples if you're interested. Also, even plain vanilla murder charges don't need proof about who specifically fired the shot. More than one person can be convicted of committing a murder and if you're interested I can look up some real life cases.

I’m aware that there is the possibility that he took a plea deal for a crime which he didn’t commit in order to avoid the possibility of being convicted of an even worse crime that he also didn’t commit. The probability of this just seems far lower than I think you believe that it is.

This is a possibility, yes. What probability do you place on it? My anecdotal experience from my work is that the "factually innocent" client exists but is extremely rare. What probability did you think I placed on it?

Setting aside the questions above about evidence for the moment, if I was to summarize your position it would be: you agree with the felony-murder rule as it is but that you'd rather see the death penalty rather than the current "25 to life" sentence. Is that a fair characterization?

My anecdotal experience from my work is that the "factually innocent" client exists but is extremely rare. What probability did you think I placed on it?

I apologize, I believe I probably imputed to your beliefs that you don’t actually hold. I’m aware of your choice of career and of your left-libertarian/anarchist-adjacent worldview, and I extrapolated that to assume that you’re more pro-defendant/anti-justice-system than you may actually be.

You agree with the felony-murder rule as it is but that you'd rather see the death penalty rather than the current "25 to life" sentence. Is that a fair characterization?

Yes, it is fair, although again I want to stress that my support of the death penalty in Salas’ case is independent of felony murder jurisprudence, and that I would like to see the death penalty expanded to a significantly broader range of crimes than that to which it is currently applied.

No worries, you were at least correct about my worldview and how that might extrapolate to "pro-defendant/anti-justice-system", so that was at least a reasonable assumption. Very very few of my clients are innocent. The main grey area is usually "yes they did the thing, but is it a crime?" scenario, most often self-defense cases. I wrote about how useless I generally am for my cases if you're interested: Eleven Magic Words

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