The assault on due process

There is an awful lot not to like about Education Secretary Betty DeVos. She wants to get rid of public education. She caters to the for-profit schools that rip off their students. She is opposed to student loan forgiveness.

But, please, her proposed rule changes to the ways schools handle alleged incidents of sexual assault are a good thing.

Colleges are required under Title IX to foster an environment free from sexual, racial and ethnic discrimination and harassment.The rule change under fire from certain quarters is the requirement that the accused is afforded the right to question the accuser.

Yikes! That's certainly a radical idea, isn't it. Being able to confront your accuser. Seems to me there's something about that right to confrontation in the Sixth Amendment. And, you know, that little matter known as due process.

But should you attempt to defend the proposed rule changes, you will quickly be under attack from the mob. They will tell you that these campus hearings aren't criminal matters and that due process doesn't apply. They will accuse you of perpetuating the myth that men are falsely accused of sexual assault.

While these hearings aren't criminal in nature, they are quasi-criminal and they do carry consequences if the panel, arbitrator or judge finds the accused liable. Students can be expelled, suspended or placed on academic probation. Each of those outcomes is a restriction on the student's liberty. Even if we aren't talking about the accused going to jail or being convicted in a court of law, the accused still faces sanctions. And when one party attempts to limit the freedom of another, the concept of due process comes into play.

We conclude that these cases distill to a set of core principles applicable to cases where the accused student faces a severe penalty and the school's determination turns on the complaining witness's credibility. First, the accused student is entitled to "a process by which the respondent may question, if even indirectly, the complainant." Second, the complaining witness must be before the finder of fact either physically or through videoconference or like technology to enable the finder of fact to assess the complaining witness's credibility in responding to its own questions or those proposed by the accused student. 

-- John Doe v. Claremont McKenna College

I get it. Sexual assault is a frightening thing and having to recount details of an alleged assault can be traumatic for the person making the accusation. But it's not a cakewalk for the accused. There is a lot on the line for both parties.

And if a school tribunal wishes to lower the burden of proof on the accuser, then the accused needs due process more than ever. And if that means the accuser has to answer questions from the accused, or his representative, then so be it. If the problem is having the accused asking the questions, then you must afford the accused the right to representation.

Now I'm not going to get into the veracity of the claims or whether the definition of sexual assault in that environment is too loose. I will say, however, that a good many of these claims result from incidents in which one or both parties consumed alcohol and the presence of alcohol (or other intoxicating substances) can bring both parties' accounts of a situation under scrutiny.

Ultimately the opposition of some to due process results from one subsuming the workings of the law to his or her political theory or ideology. Due process is the manner by which we attempt to bisect those tendencies. Yes, it's harder to prosecute when you have to afford the accused due process, but that's the way it should be when one's liberty interest is at stake.

Those who oppose due process in this environment fear that in the crucible of cross-examination that the narrative they so wish to promote will not hold up.

h/t KC Johnson

A word from the readership

Every once in a while I get a comment from a reader that really makes me sit back and scratch my head. This week I got a comment from a reader known as Rowland who took exception to my characterization of Mississippi in my post Mississippi's Still Burning.

Here is the text of Rowland's comment:

When you find something to satisfy your personal bias, it becomes your reality. I moved to Mississippi from North Carolina within my company more than 10 years ago and find your opinion to be the exception in Mississippi. To stereotype Mississippians based on your cited examples makes you no better than the racists you denounce. Should we now assume all Texans are bigots because of your opinions of Mississippians? 

I guess he took exception to my posting of the voter wearing the shirt adorned with the Confederate flag and a noose and the state's senator who said she wouldn't mind attending a lynching if a certain big money donor invited her.

I didn't even bring up the fact that the state uses the Confederate battle flag in its state flag. Now just what is that all about?

I would assume he thinks these are anomalies.

I think he assumes wrong. Just chew on this for a minute or two. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith was first in the election earlier this month with 42% of the vote. A white nationalist (otherwise known as a racist) received 17% of the vote. A run-off will be held next week to decide the race. Mike Espy, an African-American who served in Washington as a representative and Secretary of Agriculture, will seek to become the first Democratic Senator from Mississippi since the 1980's.

So nearly 60% of the votes cast went to a fringe racist candidate or to a senator who's just fine with lynching and voter suppression. That's not just a couple of people as our writer would like for you to think. That, instead, is three out of every five voters in the state.

And then we have these stats from US News and World Report (hardly a bastion of liberal journalism). Mississippi ranks dead last in the US for health care, which includes access to health care, infant mortality rates and health care enrollment. The state ranks 46th in education, 48th in economic development, 49th in opportunity for citizens to improve themselves, and 49th in infrastructure.

The state's incarceration rate is the 4th highest in the nation. There are three times as many blacks in prison in Mississippi as whites, even though blacks make up just a little more than one-third of the state's population.

I will say, I find his use of the word bigot to be quite funny. It's the kind of thing you would expect to hear out of the mouth of a child of white privilege who's upset that the system he grew up under is fading away.

Walking that fine line

On the day after Christmas in 2009, Albert James Turner went to the home of his in-laws in Fort Bend County and killed his wife and mother-in-law. Two of the couple's four children witnessed the killings and called the police. After a two-and-a-half month long manhunt, Mr. Turner was found in North Carolina. He was brought back to Texas to stand trial for capital murder.

Prior to trial, Mr. Turner's original attorney asked the court to conduct a competency evaluation. Over the course of the next several months, Mr. Turner was examined by three evaluators, a psychologist, a psychiatrist and a neuro-psychologist. All three found that Mr. Turner was competent to stand trial.

After parting ways with his first attorney, two new attorneys were appointed to represent Mr. Turner. The new attorneys were concerned that Mr. Turner's mental condition had deteriorated since the first evaluation and requested a formal competency hearing. The court agreed to another evaluation and appointed a clinical psychologist to perform the examination. The determination was the same, Mr.
Turner was competent to stand trial.

In 2011, Mr. Turner went to trial. His attorneys told him that the state was seeking the death penalty and that the best way to avoid it was to admit to the killings but to argue that he killed his wife in a fit of passion and that he didn't intend to kill his mother-in-law. The hope was to convince the jury that he was not guilty of capital murder because the second killing was unintentional.

In his opening statement, one of Mr. Turner's attorneys told the jury that Mr. Turner had killed his wife in a fit of rage but that he had never intended to kill his mother-in-law. He also told the jury that Mr. Turner was unable to help himself  by admitting his guilt. Mr.Turner was very much opposed to this strategy. Mr. Turner insisted on taking the stand and told the jury that the murders had been committed by, or on behalf of, the mayor of Kendleton (TX), who was having an affair with his wife. Mr. Turner claimed that his two children were mistaken in telling the police that he had killed the two women.

Defense counsel once again told the jury during closing argument that Mr. Turner had killed the women but that he hadn't committed capital murder because the second killing was unintentional. Unfortunately the trial court had denied the attorney's request for the lesser included offenses of murder, felony murder and manslaughter to be included in the charge.

Faced with a choice between guilty and innocent, the jury convicted Mr. Turner and sentenced him to death.

On appeal the Court of Criminal Appeals ordered the trial court to conduct a retrospective competency hearing - despite defense counsels' objection that Mr. Tuner wasn't competent enough for the hearing. Mr. Turner did not attend the hearing by his choice though the hearing was beamed in on a tv monitor and he had the means to communicate privately with his attorneys. The hearing was held and (surprise, surprise), a jury found that Mr. Turner was competent during the time of his murder trial.

The Court of Criminal Appeals then considered Mr. Turner's second direct appeal. The focus was on whether the US Supreme Court's ruling in McCoy v. Louisiana, 138 S.Ct. 1500 (2018) was applicable in Mr. Turner's case. In both cases defense attorneys advised their clients that conceding guilt at trial was the only way to avoid the death penalty if convicted. In both cases the attorneys conceded their clients' guilt to the jury. In both cases the defendants took the stand, denied killing anyone and concocting a conspiracy to explain how they were charged. And, in both cases the defendants were convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death.

The Court of Criminal Appeals held that while trial strategy is the responsibility of counsel, a defendant has the absolute right to insist on his innocence (as well as his right to testify on his behalf). The Court said that maintaining one's innocence is the object of representation and not just a trial tactic.

The case was remanded for a new trial.

But, as with McCoy, this case does present the question of what should an attorney do when his or her client wants to shoot themselves in the foot? Mr. Turner's attorneys were two of the most experienced and qualified attorneys you could hope to represent you in a capital murder case. They knew what the odds were that Mr. Turner would be convicted and condemned. They told him this case was about saving his life, not convincing a jury he was innocent. Of course in McCoy the defense attorney screwed up and, in essence, laid a red carpet for the jury to sentence his client to death. In this case the attorneys set out on a strategy that was foiled by the trial court's decision not to put lesser included offenses in the jury charge.

It is sometimes a very fine ledge we walk across.

Execution Watch: 11/14/2018

On Wednesday night, the State of Texas will murder again...

ROBERT RAMOS. The Mexican national, who suffers from mental illness, is to be executed a quarter-century after his conviction. He was found guilty of killing his wife and two youngest children in the Rio Grande Valley in 1992. His attorneys argued that Mr. Ramos was brain-damaged. They also said his execution would violate an international treaty requiring foreign nationals to be told, at the time of arrest, that they may contact their government for legal help.

During the punishment phase of his trial, Mr. Ramos' attorneys didn't cross-examine any of the state's witnesses, offered no evidence of their own and never asked the jury to spare his life.

Over 15 years ago, the World Court found that the United States had violated the rights of 54 death row inmates who were never informed of their right to consult their government for legal help. The World Court determined that each of the inmates deserved to have their cases reviewed. The U.S. Supreme Court, acting under the ideology of American exceptionalism, told the World Court to fuck off and wiped its hands of the matter.

RADIO SHOW PREVIEW

EXECUTION WATCH

Unless a stay is issued, Execution Watch will broadcast live:

Wednesday, November 14, 6-7 PM Central Time

KPFT-FM Houston 90.1, HD 3 or online at:

http://executionwatch.org > Listen

See also:

Blakinger, Keri. "Mexican national scheduled for execution in Texas despite claims of treaty violations," Houston Chronicle (Sept. 1, 2018).

Fine! I'm going to take my ball and go home!

Two juvenile judges in Harris County accounted for one out of every five commitments in the state.  Glenn Devlin and John Phillips, both of whom were voted out of office last week, sent 199 kids, 96% of whom were children of color, to state juvenile detention facilities in 2017.

As much as I'd like to think that the voters' decision to oust them from their seats was related in some way to the wholesale warehousing of poor African-American and Latino youth, I know they were just the "victims" of the blue wave that washed over Harris County.

But (soon-to-be-ex) Judge Devlin upped the ante when he released the majority of juveniles who appeared before him after they answered "No" to his question of whether they would kill anyone if he released them. Now I'm certain that most of the kids in question should have been released to their parents' custody in the first place given Judge Devlin's proclivities, but his actions in court were those of a petulant child who had a toy taken away from him.

And in the civil courthouse, another soon-to-be-former judge, Charley Prine, decided he would go the petty route after being voted out of office. It seems that the judge-elect, Angela Graves-Harrington, in the 246th District Court approached the judge to ask about the transition process. Instead of being graceful in defeat, Judge Prine told her to get out of his courtroom and threatened to charge her with trespassing if she returned. Perhaps someone needs to let Judge Prine know that the courtroom in question doesn't belong to him but belongs, instead, to the residents of Harris County.

These are two examples of the fine jurists Republican voters are lamenting because they lost an election. There are two of the judges who lost their job because voters took the easy way out (according to many soon-to-be-ex Republican officeholders) and cast straight ticket votes. These are two of the fine judges, according to Republicans, who lost their jobs as a consequence of partisan elections.

Needless to say, neither judge had any comment when questioned.

Make of that what you will.

The aftermath

The blue wave hit Harris County (and even our suburban neighbors to the southwest) yesterday. The Democrats swept every county-wide seat, including all of the county civil and criminal benches, the family court benches, the juvenile court benches and every district court bench up for election.

Today should be an interesting day at the courthouse.

Yesterday's results will likely mean an end to the county's lawsuit to fight bail reform. If you'll recall, 14 of the 15 Republican judges were fighting to preserve a system by which poor defendants were coerced into pleading guilty in order to get out of jail. Only Darrell Jordan and Mike Fields, the two African-American judges in the misdemeanor courts, chose the honorable route.

I am sure we will hear quite a bit from a couple of the ousted judges about how much of a revolving door the courts have become since US District Judge Lee Rosenthal issued her ruling. When you hear it, just remember the source.

The judges fighting the lawsuit have cost Harris County over $6 million so far. But, hey, they are all white Republicans and it wasn't their money they were spending.

And, yes, there were some good judges who will be stepping down at the end of the year. But so fucking what? Not one of them was elected because the folks of Harris County thought they were or would be excellent jurists. Not one of them was elected because they presented voters with a vision of how the courts should operate. They took their seats on the bench because they happened to have an R after their name in an election in which the Republican at the top of the ballot won in Harris County.

For every one of these good judges, there was plenty of jetsam and flotsam. As imperfect as our system of selecting judges is in Texas, it certainly beats any of the alternatives. Party affiliations cut down on corruption in the general election because candidates don't have to raise large sums of money (in fact, a judicial candidate doesn't need to spend a dime after winning the primary because he or she will get about the same percentage of the vote as the candidate at the top of the ballot for their party).

I don't think there is anyone who seriously thinks a better system would be to allow the governor to appoint judges who would stand for periodic retention elections.

Good luck to the new judges and may y'all be lamented as good judges done wrong should the pendulum swing back to the right.

Louisiana looks to shed vestige of Jim Crow

In 48 states it takes a unanimous vote from a jury to convict a person accused of committing a criminal act. And, if you think about it, that makes sense given the burden of proof placed upon the state in a criminal trial. Oregon is the only other state that does not require a unanimous verdict -- unless the defendant is charged with murder.

Today in Louisiana, voters will be asked to decide if Louisiana wishes to join the vast majority of states in requiring a unanimous jury vote for a conviction; or if the Pelican State wishes to preserve one of the last overt tools of the Jim Crow era. Louisiana is the only state in which a defendant can be sentenced to life in prison on less than a unanimous verdict.

The so-called "split jury" was written into the Louisiana constitution in 1898 when a constitutional convention was called after the end of Reconstruction.

"It put into place a number of measures in order to — this is a quote from the convention itself — 'to maintain the supremacy of the white race.'"

-- Andrea Armstrong, Professor, Loyola University

The driving force behind the provision was to preserve a system of unpaid labor for white landowners. At the time of the convention, Louisiana had a policy of leasing out convicts for private businesses. The split-jury provision preserved the pool of free labor and made it easier for the state to convict and imprison black men.

The state Attorney General and local prosecutors are opposed to the constitutional amendment because it would make it harder for them to obtain convictions and it would take away some of their leverage when it comes time to plea bargaining. Of course, local prosecutors claim that they just want an efficient criminal (in)justice system and they don't want to have to worry about the time and expense involved in re-trials.

Well, tough shit, Mr. Prosecutor. You are doing your best to defend a system that denies millions of people due process. You are defending a system that is a hold-over from the days of Jim Crow and that was enacted specifically to keep a thumb on black people.

The coalition behind the ballot measure has made for very strange bedfellows with the measure passing the Republican-controlled state legislature with a better than 2/3 majority. George Soros and the Koch brothers have also put their money behind the measure.

If you live in Louisiana and haven't yet voted, please vote Yes on 2.

To what depths will they plunge?

There were a number of things I was thinking of writing about today, but when I saw this flyer in my mailbox there was no way I couldn't write about it.

Stan Stanart is the Harris County Clerk. He is a very inconsequential man. He is nothing more than a hack with an R after his name who was fortunate enough to run in an off-year election in which white republican voters from the suburbs voted en masse because they had a problem with a black man living in the White House.

The front of this mailer reads "EMERGENCY NOTICE." It is designed to look like an official piece of mail - it even has a generic seal with a lone star to hint at the seal of his office.

My favorite line is that democratic turnout has exceeded that of prior years. Let's be honest, there is no way to know that because no one has counted the votes as of yet. While it's a very good bet that the democratic turnout within the city has been high, there is no way to verify that claim (unless ol' Stan's been peeking at the results).

Mr. Stanart tells the old white ladies that voter protections are in danger if he loses the election. He warns that there could be voter fraud, intimidation and lack of transparency if a democrat wins the race for County Clerk.

Now this is where republican candidates such as Mr. Stanart try to spin reality on its head. The only voter intimidation going on in Harris County right now are photo ID requirements that are reminiscent of the poll tax. For instance, his office insists on denying college students the right to vote with their student IDs but folks can use their concealed handgun license as a form of ID to get a ballot.

The ad is misleading. It is designed to stoke fear. And, most importantly, Mr. Stanart is lying.

That is all.