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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   3096 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for July 24, 2026

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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I don't see why Item 1 would cause anyone to question his faith in the justice system.

My wording was too broad. I meant to point specifically at the jury rather than at the justice system as a whole. Quote from Ozy's article:

I was also impressed by the professionalism of the jury. My fellow jury members were thoughtful, intelligent, morally serious people who were conscious of their responsibility as jurors.⁎ Even given how frustrating the experience was, I was impressed by their rationality, how closely they stuck to the evidence, and their determination to follow the norms of good discourse. Sometimes I see people say online “you elites in your epistemic bubbles have no idea how stupid normal people are”. But, judging from my jury-trial experience, normal people are actually pretty smart! At least in Alameda County.

⁎With one exception, whom I haven’t talked about because I don’t like saying mean things about private figures on a blog this big.

Yet the jurors in this case seem to have delivered unanimous convictions on evidence that fell far short of "beyond a reasonable doubt", even with the prior-bad-acts evidence.

Sorry, at first I thought you were implying that the blow to one's faith was caused by the overturning of the conviction of the most obvious suspect in a murder case. As far as your actual concern, I wouldn't worry too much about it for the simple reason that you can't expect jurors to know the law better than the lawyers involved and to not act like humans. The rules of evidence are cognizant of the fact that certain prejudices are so difficult to put aside that we won't even let the jury hear evidence that may inflame them, and in such a situation, I can hardly blame the jury for thinking that these prior offenses were relevant and that fact influencing their conviction. This is an unusual case, where there's no real evidence but also no satisfying explanation. This case can't be conceived of in a way that makes sense, because any angle has some obvious deficiency.

There's also that two other retrials took place in Bucks County and did end with the same result, the original defendant found guilty again and sentenced again. So even though Stark got his retrial and very likely can't be convicted of murder, he may not walk out a free man:

In the last 20 years, at least two high profile murder retrials have taken place in Bucks County.

Richard Laird was retried in 2007 after a federal appeals court cited errors in his original 1987 trial for the murder of Anthony Milano. He was convicted a second time and resentenced to death.

Most recently Alfonso Sanchez was retried in 2023 for a 2007 double homicide in Warminster after it was revealed the prosecution withheld material DNA lab reports. He was convicted again and sentenced to death.

At least in Alameda County.

Yeah, that would do it!

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