Innocence is Not Enough, says Supreme Court

Oncefa2 · 2022-05-26T13:38:15+00:00

There's been a trend for several decades to get rid of compensatory damages when you're falsely imprisoned.

It used to be you could get so much money per day you were locked up but this was costing the state a lot of money because a lot of people (especially minority men) were being wrongly imprisoned.

I guess this is the federal government stepping in to say that they're not going to compensate people if local states fail to do so. You may still be able to get compensation at the state level and at the federal level independently though, depending on jurisdiction. If I'm reading this correctly.

Cyb3rd31ic_Citiz3n · 2022-05-26T13:30:54+00:00

Christ. America is so fucked. :(

boundarychimps · 2022-05-26T13:51:19+00:00

https://ballotpedia.org/Shinn_v._Ramirez

The question presented: "Does application of the equitable rule this Court announced in Martinez v. Ryan render 28 U.S.C. § 2254(e)(2) inapplicable to a federal court’s merits review of a claim for habeas relief?"[3]

The outcome: The court reversed the decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in a 6-3 ruling, holding that a federal court may not conduct an evidentiary hearing or allow new evidence to be considered in a case based on ineffective postconviction counsel.[1]

Fearless-File-3625 · 2022-05-26T09:31:45+00:00

Conservatives are against abolishing death penalty and then they pass judgements like this. Truly evil.

International_Crew89 · 2022-05-28T20:04:37+00:00

That's not just going to have a detrimental effect on individuals; the consequences for your whole society are rather dire if the justice system can wrongfully convict with impunity. Things could spiral out of control quickly if the authorities decide to abuse that power for say...political gain.

Also, not a fan of the death penalty; but I am on board in certain scenarios: mainly those in which there is absolutely no doubt who the perpetrator was (ie: caught in the act by recording equipment), and only those cases where it's clear that person will never stand a chance of reforming themselves and being safe to have walking around among us (remorseless,combative serial offenders). Frankly, far more attention and funds should be devoted to preventing folks from ever turning into those monsters.

Vandechoz · 2022-05-26T14:41:57+00:00

I guess the idea is that how good the evidence of your innocence is, is not necessarily relevant to how well the counsel did their jobs.

Did they check things as well as another lawyer might have, in similar circumstances? If yes, then how compelling that one piece of evidence that they reasonably missed is unfortunate, but it doesn't by itself mean they didn't do their jobs well.

It may be perfectly reasonable that they didn't look into whatever obscure thing that happened to turn up as evidence, for example if they had no reason to believe a person was in any way linked to a case, but it later came out that this witness had information that could have easily exonerated the defendant had they been found.

There definitely needs to be a guaranteed process for actual innocence to be able to be presented after a conviction, but I don't know that the right to a fair trial is enough for that.

MelissaMiranti · 2022-05-26T22:24:59+00:00

Isn't this more about the federal government saying that since they're not the ones who screwed up, they shouldn't have to pay for the screwups of a state?

Edit: I messed up what this was about, I thought this was compensation for wrongful convictions.

One_Dey · 2022-05-27T00:23:36+00:00

The Supreme Court doesn’t exist to protect the state. If this is what they said- ‘it’s an affront to states power’- then we are all doomed. It won’t be long before all of this comes to a head- for better or worse.

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