Man released from prison after 25 years: the Morton case

The New Neo Posted on by

Call me a bleeding heart liberal if you want (or a bleeding-heart ex-liberal, or whatever suits your fancy). But I am outraged whenever I hear of a miscarriage of justice, especially in a murder case. And although the issue of the death penalty sometimes comes into it—after all, if a person has already been put to death, the remedies for a false conviction leave a lot to be desired—it’s not really about the death penalty. One can favor the death penalty in certain cases and still be very disturbed by incidents in which the evidence was inadequate in the first place and/or the conviction was the result of prosecutorial misconduct.

Case in point: Michael Morton. Morton can’t cry “racism,” because he’s white and his supposed victim (his wife) was also white. But he was falsely imprisoned anyway for 25 years, and it’s only because some DNA was tested that pointed to the guilt of another man that Morton was finally released yesterday at the age of 57 after spending the majority of his adult years in prison. Fortunately for him and his family, both his parents were still alive to see him walk free (or nearly free; he has to remain in Texas until some legal details are cleared up).

So, what happened? It now appears that there was almost certainly prosecutorial misconduct in Morton’s case: suppression of exculpatory evidence. It seems to have been an instance of a terrible murder and a lack of alternative suspects, and so the full court press was on to convict Morton because he was all the authorities had. Morton is especially lucky that some DNA was finally found; without it it would have been almost impossible to prove what’s called “actual innocence,” as the Troy Davis case demonstrated. Morton is also very lucky that the DNA not only matched that of another man with a record, but that it was also linked to a nearby crime with the same m.o., which had been committed after Morton was already in prision. Otherwise Morton would probably still be in prison despite a nearly complete lack of evidence against him in the case.

Did I say “lack of evidence”? You bet:

Michael Morton has always maintained his innocence of the murder of his wife Christine, who was found dead in their home by a neighbor the morning of August 13, 1986. At trial, the prosecution argued that Michael beat his wife to death after she refused to have sex with him upon returning from his 32nd birthday celebration at a restaurant. There were no witnesses or physical evidence linking Michael to the crime. The prosecution relied largely on the fact that Michael left a note to Christine on the bathroom vanity expressing his disappointment with the fact that she fell asleep on him. (The note closed with the words “I love you.”) Michael’s co-workers testified that he arrived at work at about 6 a.m. that morning and didn’t notice anything unusual about his behavior.

In addition, the state of Texas fought and successfully blocked Morton’s request to test the bandana for six long years. The following ought to outrage you, also:

In response to a Public Information Act request, the Innocence Project obtained the transcripts of the state’s chief investigator’s interview with the Christine’s mother that was conducted less than two weeks after the murder. In the transcript, she describes a conversation with the couple’s three-year-old son Eric, who told her in chilling detail that he witnessed an unknown man murder his mother.

The court papers note that this newly discovered evidence was turned over by the state Attorney General’s office in 2008 over the objection of Bradley, who personally reviewed the material and asked that it not be turned over because of the ongoing litigation over DNA testing.

There’s more about the suppressed evidence here.

I don’t see this as a liberal vs. conservative issue, or even primarily as a death penalty issue—although I think that before the death penalty is applied there should be a much higher standard of evidence against the defendant that was present in the Morton case (or Troy Davis’s, for that matter). I would think that conservatives, especially those concerned with the preservation of liberty, would be dedicated to making the legal system as airtight as possible. Not only is it a question of justice, but every single wrongful conviction undermines the public’s faith in that justice system. Preventing these incidents in the first place would be a whole lot better.

Another factor that’s not usually considered in these cases is the reaction of jurors on learning that they voted to convict a person and were deceived by a prosecutor into doing so. One of Morton’s jurors, Lou Bryon, speaks out on that very subject:

“Until this morning when I saw the headline, I thought [Morton] was still guilty,” she said.

News reports of the discovery of DNA on a bandana matching that of a convicted felon in California, coupled with the Innocence Project’s claims of suppressed evidence shocked her to her core.

“It’s criminal that I didn’t know all of these things that were never introduced to us,” she said…

I’ve been crying all day. You know, 25 years is a long time,” Bryan said. “He probably just doesn’t know how to cope what’s going on right this second; I guess I feel the same way. I feel for him. I really do.”

The state has a duty not just to the defendant to get it right and to come as close as it can to meting out justice. It has a duty to the general public, the family of the victim, and even to the jurors, who bear the solemn responsibility and burden of either executing or putting another human being away for life.

Photoshop is not for the birds

The New Neo Posted on by

Quite a few people in the comments section on the thread with the gull riding on the eagle’s back thought the image was photoshopped. That was my first thought, too, but I don’t think it’s correct. Here’s the image again; it’s quite lovely and almost painterly, like something out of Audobon:

Here’s a piece about the photographer, a Finn named Markus Varesvuo who’s noted for his bird images and has a new book out that features them, Birds: Magic Moments:

The unpredictability is stimulating. You can make the best of plans and get zero pictures or, by sheer luck, stumble into a fantastic opportunity and get super shots. The success rate is improved in direct relation to the level of species knowledge but success is never guaranteed, there’s always a challenge. It’s a hunt. As a wildlife photographer you get to go to amazing places and see the wonders of the natural world…

My main gear is a 500 mm telelens that I got as soon as it came out nine years ago. Camera bodies have changed many times, even during the digital era, but not the 500mm. Weight of the camera bag is a problem. With two digital bodies, 500mm and 300mm and many smaller lenses, my bag’s soon bigger than me. And tripods. I keep leaving them behind. They should be trained to follow the photographer…

Birds have been my thing since early childhood so I know the species and the behaviour of the Western Palearctic birds. So, as a basis, I am a good bird photographer, and my trademark is action shots. I work without flash, in authentic surroundings. I try to tell it as it is without compromising photography.

So there. I don’t think any of his images are photoshopped. But it is interesting that photoshopping is so ubiquitous that we almost automatically assume it now when we see something improbable in a picture.

Funny quote from MoDo

The New Neo Posted on by

Now whenever I read Maureen Dowd (which is as seldom as possible, although every now and then I succumb) I will be thinking of this nicely devastating put-down by Andrew Ferguson, who was describing her piece on Cheney’s memoir:

Her column might have been written by an upset high schooler, so vast was her rage, so limited was her ability to express it.

“Upset high schooler” pretty much covers it for all of Ms. Dowd’s columns, although perhaps middle schooler would be more appropriate.

And now Dowd takes on Chris Christie’s non-candidacy announcement in her usual unserious and noninsightful manner:

It’s not the puffed up body that’s off-putting. It’s the puffed up ego.

It’s also unintentionally funny; is she really criticizing Christie for being an egomaniac, and ignoring Obama’s proclivities in that direction? Plus, in the very same column she manages to make this risible statement:

Americans who have been hurt want to identify the villains, and Obama is loath to target villains.

Christie can be a bully, but that may seem better than the alternative: a president who lets himself be bullied, and who lets the bullies run wild.

Poor pitiful nice-guy gentleman Obama, so loath to point fingers at those who are out to get him.

Seeing double Obamas

The New Neo Posted on by

This is quite a resemblance:

The guy on the right is Ilham Anas, an Indonesian man of Kenyan/American descent who’s parlayed his resemblance to you-know-who into a career. The guy on the left is…the guy on the left.

The EU/euro concept: going down together

The New Neo Posted on by

I must confess that I didn’t pay a great deal of attention to the way the EU and the euro began. What did it have to do with me, anyway [sic]? The only time it would affect me directly would be when I visited Europe, which happened very seldom. And in that case it would actually help rather than hurt, because the euro would make all those different and confusing currencies go away (especially those wacky non-decimal British ones) and leave me to deal with just one. Simplicity itself.

I did notice, though, on my trip to France in 2006, that there were quite a few rumblings and grumblings about the EU, especially the fact that ordinary voters had so little say in its affairs. The EU seemed to represent the triumph of the “we know better than you little people” European elites, which are even more entrenched and more elite than in the US.

And now that the EU and its euro have been exposed as a stupid concept to begin with, it’s staggering that the system ever got set up in the first place. Who could have thought even for a moment that this sort of thing would work out in the long run? Hey, it’s almost as stupid as thinking housing prices would never go down (oops!):

The guiding principles of the currency, which opened for business in 1999, were supposed to be a set of rules to limit a country’s annual deficit to three per cent of gross domestic product, and the total accumulated debt to sixty per cent of G.D.P. It was a nice idea, but by 2004 the two biggest economies in the euro zone, Germany and France, had broken the rules for three years in a row. It belatedly occurred to everyone that the proposed sanction on rule-busting countries””huge fines””wasn’t the smartest solution for economies that were already having trouble balancing their books. So no sanction was actually imposed.

Perhaps that was the euro’s original sin””the reality that fiscal and budgetary rules could be broken without consequence. Or perhaps the sin was more fundamental than that: perhaps it was the attempt to create a currency union among countries with different economies, histories, cultures, tax rates, fiscal systems, legal frameworks””and doing so with a European Central Bank to oversee the currency but with no controlling political institution in parallel with that bank. Or perhaps it was a simpler, democratic deficit: the fact that for voters unhappy with pan-European policy there was no direct mechanism to commit the most basic political act of all””throw the bums out. Voters could manage this at the level of their local governments, but the management of the euro was always an uncomfortable compromise between varying, and often competing, national interests.

Duh!

And yet such a system was set up, and now we are faced with a possible (and probably probable) Lehman-like collapse in Europe that could make the 2008 crisis look like a walk in the park. The main question is whether the problems will snowball throughout Europe and especially its banking system, which holds a lot of Greece’s debt as well as that of other threatened countries. Most financial prognosticators seem to think it will be very bad and very widespread indeed (see this, this, and this, for example; this article makes some very specific predictions and then says at the end we just don’t know, and this one is quite succinct).

The problem of what to do is a familiar one to anyone who’s been paying attention during the last few years. Bailout just postpones the inevitable, and lack of bailout hastens it. You pays your money (or not) and you takes your choice.

Yoking all of Europe’s currencies together was supposed to help the weak ones be stronger, not make the strong ones weaker. Now it threatens to bring the whole edifice tumbling down. A while ago I used the 1965 power blackout as an analogy for this sort of situation, but I actually think a better one might be that of mountain climbers roped together and traversing especially threatening terrain:

However, what you would never do is climb with the rope still on and NOT place any protection ”“ if one person slips then everyone is going for a ride.

The reality is that climbers do it all the time. And that is because real mountains are complicated buggers.

And so are countries and their economies—complicated buggers, all.

Non-news story of the day: Christie’s not running

The New Neo Posted on by

Chris Christie has made it official once again: he’s not running for president in 2012.

Did anyone ever think he was?

Christie explains that he’s not throwing his hat in the ring because New Jersey still needs him as governor, and he’s not finished there. Although that may indeed be a reason, I don’t think it’s the whole reason, or even the real reason. Perhaps he doesn’t have the fire in the belly. Perhaps he’s got some skeletons in his closet along with those size XXXL jackets. Perhaps internal polls told him he couldn’t win this year against the Republican contenders, or against Obama. Perhaps he wants to lose some weight first to end all the fatty jokes. Perhaps—well, we’ll never know.

Personally, although I happen to like Christie’s style, I think he would ultimately have been rejected in the Republican primaries as an opportunistic RINO. I don’t happen to think that’s what he is, but I do think it will be fine to let him do his thing in New Jersey and show the public more of who he actually is and what he might do if president.

In 2012 the Republicans will just have to be energized by their desire to vote Obama out of office rather than great love and enthusiasm for his eventual opponent. But I am highly encouraged by the up-and-coming field of possible Republican candidates in 2016 and beyond—that is, if the press doesn’t manage to destroy them first, and if the country is still functioning by then.

Obama the underdog

The New Neo Posted on by

This is a very odd interview from President Obama.

In it, he breaks what I would consider one of the cardinal rules of campaigning for an incumbent, and answers the age-old question “are you better off than before I was elected?” with the truthful “no.” This seems to be an attempt to set himself up as an underdog, which is certainly an odd stance for an incumbent:

“Absolutely,” he said in response to a question from ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos about whether the odds were against him come November 2012, given the economy. “I’m used to being the underdog. But at the end of the day people are going to ask — who’s got a vision?”

Wow. Obama is used to being an underdog? Certainly the 2008 election was hotly contested and close, but never was Obama an underdog except perhaps towards the beginning of the Democratic primaries. As for his earlier elections, he was always in safely Democratic districts, and his only underdog status came in the primaries as well. As far as I know, he lost only one of those, an ill-thought-out 2000 challenge against incumbent Bobby Rush for his House of Representatives seat; the older (and fellow African-American) Rush trumped Obama by stating the following about him during that battle (which I submit that a white man would not have gotten away with saying), “Barack Obama went to Harvard and became an educated fool. Barack is a person who read about the civil-rights protests and thinks he knows all about it.”

In fact, Obama’s main claim to fame in his campaigns prior to the 2008 election was his skill and/or luck in knocking his opponents off the ballots before the election, through means fair or foul, planned or fortuitous (see this and this). Underdog? Don’t think so.

And if Obama is an underdog today (and if he is, it’s by only a tiny bit, and it depends on who he’s running against) he has only himself to blame. But true to form, that’s not who he’s fingering. Why, it’s those Republicans:

“At every step of way, I have tried to get the Republican Party to work with me on the biggest crisis of our lifetime. And each time we’ve gotten ‘No,'” he said.

Let me get out my handkerchief.

And then there’s the vision thing. At the end of the day people are not going to ask “who’s got a vision?” That’s very 2008. Now that you have a record, Mr. President, people are going to ask about that.

Dudley Williams, dancer

The New Neo Posted on by

The other day I was doing some YouTube surfing of old dance performances. But try as I might, I was unable to find a tape of one of my favorites, Dudley Williams of the Alvin Ailey Dance company doing the “Rocka My Soul” excerpt from Ailey’s masterpiece “Revelations.”

I’d hate to think that Williams’ ebullient, exuberant yet understated performance is lost to antiquity. I’ve seen many younger dancers try to fill his shoes, but they just can’t, no matter how hard they try.

The following clip of Williams will have to do instead for now. It’s from a different portion of the same piece, his solo “I Want To Be Ready. Williams, a man whose skinny frame belied his considerable strength, didn’t retire from performing until the extremely advanced (in dance years) age of 66, and the YouTube clip I’m about to offer here shows him in his later years, when his technique had diminished considerably.

But Williams was never really about technique. Here’s what he had to say about “I Want To Be Ready,” and about performing itself:

“Revelations” is credited to Ailey, but “I Want to Be Ready” was actually choreographed by James Truitte, an Ailey dancer who, like his boss, had studied with the California dance guru Lester Horton. Williams says the whole dance is just a Horton class exercise: “It’s a coccyx balance””laterals, hinges, laterals, hinges.” In Truitte’s hands, however, it became a dance. When he taught it to Williams, he told him how it was supposed to feel: “He said, ”˜When you start, it’s like someone is on your shoulder, and pushes you back down. You try again, and you go a little higher, and they push you down. You try again, you go higher, and you break out.’ ”

Williams radiates calm onstage, but he says he is a very nervous performer: “I sweat in the palms of my hands””I wish the theatre would burn down.” He sees this as part of the process. “Dancing is about acting, about being a liar, basically,” he says. “Because often you don’t feel like dancing, but it’s your job. So you get out there and you do the movement, and it’s not happening. So you work harder, you work harder, you go deep inside what you’re about.” And what started as an act becomes a reality.

Williams was always ready.

The MSM’s battle plan

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter “southern James” has some observations on the WaPo/Perry/n-word thread that I think worth highlighting:

We all ain’t seen nothing yet. The MSM is going to pull out every possible trick and artifice and propaganda talking points, which will be pounded over and over again until it is perceived by a significant percentage of the populace as the truth ”” in order to try to get this failed President re-elected. “Didja hear that Palin said “she can see Russia from her porch, as her answer to how qualified she is in foreign affairs!!” ”¦.”Yeah, I did ”“ I mean, WTF, Dude? Is she, like, a moron or something?”

“What do you think of that Perry guy?” “Hmm, not sure”¦.wasn’t there something a few month ago about him and the N-word they had on some rock on a ranch of his is or something”¦.I heard that he is kind of a racist.” “Oh”¦.wow”.

Don’t think they can’t do it, either. Don’t let yourself assume that the general public is in any way on top of things, based on exchanges in little echo chambers such as this one.

Whoever gets the GOP nomination will be in for the worst sliming, and repeated talking point attacks, any of us have ever seen in our lifetimes.

President Zero cannot run on his record or on any more Hopey Changey Bulls”“t. And he knows it and the MSM knows it. He is already doing nothing but running for re-election ”“ and it appears to be based on two themes: 1) pretending to still be a Washingon outsider ”“ even tho his party controlled the entire govt for his first 2 years, and he has been president for almost three; and 2) class warfare combined with demonization of Repubs.

It would be an absolute landslide loss ”“ worse than what McGovern suffered in 72”¦”¦but for the fact that the GOP candidate is going to be pilliored from every major media outlet, non-stop.

The most depressing thing about all of this is that there’s every reason to think the tactic has a good chance of working. That’s why it’s so popular with the press.

[ADDENDUM: By the way, the brouhaha over the original name of the rock at the hunting camp that Perry’s father leased is similar to problems around the country, such as this one in Utah, which was solved by obliterating the original offensive place name and adopting “Negro Bill Canyon” as its new moniker. Just shows how hard it is to keep pace with the times; should it be rechristened “African-American Bill Canyon” instead?

And is “christened” now an offensive word?]

[ADDENDUM II: In Texas they’re aware that Rick Perry is no racist. But don’t sit on a hot stove till the WaPo mentions it.]