[HN Gopher] Denial of Robert Roberson's Application for Relief i...
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Denial of Robert Roberson's Application for Relief in Shaken Baby
Innocence Case
Author : rossant
Score : 55 points
Date : 2024-09-11 18:17 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (innocenceproject.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (innocenceproject.org)
| darby_nine wrote:
| Heartbreaking.
| Supermancho wrote:
| > "Over the past two decades, since Mr. Roberson's conviction and
| death sentence, the shaken baby hypothesis has been debunked by
| evidence-based science, a fact recognized by courts in at least
| 18 states that have exonerated parents and caregivers like Mr.
| Roberson who were wrongly convicted under the controversial
| theory. Brian Wharton, the Lead Detective who investigated Mr.
| Roberson's case and testified against him, now believes Mr.
| Roberson's daughter died of accidental and natural causes. Mr.
| Wharton has explained that he deferred to a doctor's shaken baby
| diagnosis when he had Mr. Roberson arrested and testified against
| him. He now publicly urges for relief for Mr. Roberson and has
| written, 'I am convinced that [Nikki] was not murdered. Mr.
| Roberson is innocent. There was no crime. <--- forgot to end the
| quotation with a closing quote mark.
| achileas wrote:
| I can't even fathom the utter despair of losing a child, and
| then beyond that to be hounded, "investigated," and arrested
| for it, constantly forced to relive the worst moment of your
| life on top of the unbelievable grief of losing your child.
| rossant wrote:
| I can't either. And yet I know many of them personally. I
| realized there are hundreds if not thousands of grieving
| innocent parents locked up for years or decades because of
| this flawed theory.
|
| See also this book (https://jessicahenryjustice.com/smoke-
| but-no-fire-convicting...).
| throwway120385 wrote:
| Yet another way in the US that we judge parents very harshly for
| anything that goes wrong with their children.
| fakedang wrote:
| I've often been a defendant of the death penalty, but then I come
| across a case like this and my heart utterly breaks down. I hope
| the governor does the right thing and this case is revisited
| (though who are we kidding, it's effing Texas), but with the
| narrow window and an election year, I doubt it's going to happen.
|
| I hope this death stays on as a stain on every soul who advanced
| this forward, especially the vile judge who won't consider the
| scientifically rooted evidence.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| Another reason they might not want to revisit it is because he
| can sue the state for wrongful conviction. Many county
| governments will try to block these kinds of actions because
| they can't afford the resulting wrongful conviction lawsuit.
| purpleflame1257 wrote:
| I think the death penalty should be on the books, but the
| practical application of it is so unworkable that it should
| effectively never be administered. The biggest problem, of
| course, is that there's no way to make a wrongfully sentenced
| person whole.
| wildzzz wrote:
| Why retain it as a potential punishment if the burden of
| proof to obtain it is impossible? There's always a chance the
| evidence is objectively incomplete and even if they confess,
| there's always a chance they were coerced. Putting an
| innocent person in prison for life is awful enough but at
| least there is time for them to appeal or for contrary
| evidence to surface some day. Condemning that innocent person
| to death puts a countdown on proving their innocence. Maybe
| someone else confesses to the crime or some other exculpatory
| evidence is uncovered years after the execution. What does
| the state do at this point? They can't reanimate the dead.
| How do you make family members whole when you've legally
| murdered their parent/spouse/child? Money doesn't replace a
| person.
|
| You also could end up with situations where a particular
| governor is indifferent to the plight of someone professing
| their innocence due to their own bias where next year, a new
| governor comes in that is more sympathetic that would have
| stayed the execution or pardoned that person. The world is
| just too complex to be 100% certain that someone must die for
| their alleged crime.
|
| The law needs to be applied fairly to everyone. You can't
| simply give some people the death penalty and others life in
| prison for the same crime just because a case seems more
| concrete (or more likely, they can afford a better lawyer
| that creates stronger doubt).
|
| And you know what's worse than death? Sitting in a little box
| for the rest of your life separated from friends and family
| while the world passes you by. People commit suicide for
| less.
| fakedang wrote:
| Part of the reason for America's variance in trial
| decisions is related to the jury system, which imo is
| highly flawed. You're essentially putting the lives of the
| innocent and the guilty in the hands of a set of people who
| barely have any training in unbiased analysis. And more
| importantly, with the jury system, you do not have a way of
| establishing precedence.
|
| As proof of this, the most successful legal system in the
| US, the Delaware Chancery Court, is a non-jury trial court.
|
| > Why retain it as a potential punishment if the burden of
| proof to obtain it is impossible?
|
| India has the death penalty, but they use it for the most
| egregious of crimes (brutal rape-murders like the one in
| 2012, terrorists, gangland bosses, etc.).
| wildzzz wrote:
| Just because a crime is especially egregious doesn't mean
| that the accused is more guilty than any other crime. I
| fail to see why a rape-murder should give the accused
| less time to prove their innocence than just a regular
| murder or rape. The punishment should fit the crime
| obviously, a murder is more egregious than petty theft
| but how does society benefit from killing potentially
| innocent people other than revenge that politicians can
| boast about in their campaigns?
| kiba wrote:
| If the death penalty is so rare and never administered, then
| its theoretical deterrence value is going to be zero.
|
| There's no point of keeping around an inhumane law if it
| doesn't save anyone and actually contribute to the death
| toll.
|
| Likewise, with the march of science and technology, I
| expected we will revisit the question of the role of
| punishment in reducing and preventing anti-social behaviors.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| My father worked for the Sheriff's Office in Australia, maybe
| 25 years ago. It should be noted that there, the Sheriff's
| Office is not a police department, but something in between
| the Marshal Service and a process server.
|
| My father's boss was the Sheriff for the state. Australian
| law still had two capital crimes (I don't know if they are,
| currently): high treason, and piracy on the high seas.
|
| Not exactly common crimes, to be sure.
|
| But under law, if someone had been convicted of one, my
| father's boss would have to either have overseen the
| execution (by hanging, and somewhere in the bowels of his
| offices was the equipment), if not conducted it himself.
|
| He was very vocal that the minute someone even stood trial
| for one of those crimes, he was resigning his commission, to
| avoid any chance of that.
| gopher_space wrote:
| The death penalty just looks like public entertainment. I don't
| think the state actually needs the ability to make decisions on
| life or death. It is demonstrably not a good steward of this
| power.
| shaftway wrote:
| I used to defend the death penalty. If we could wave a magic
| wand that told us definitely the guilt or innocence of a
| defendant, I would still.
|
| But we don't.
|
| And our jury trials are a poor substitute.
|
| Wikipedia claims that since 1972 there have been ~190 people
| who were sentenced to death that were exonerated of their
| crimes. 2.2% of people. A 2.2% false-positive rate sucks for
| something like a Covid test, or a speeding ticket. But a 2.2%
| false-positive rate for the state taking someone's life away is
| unacceptable. The Covid death rate was under 1%.
|
| And that's not taking into account cases like this. Defendants
| are sitting on death row because DAs are embarrassed that they
| got something wrong, or because the county can't afford the
| wrongful imprisonment suit, or because the defendant can't get
| a competent lawyer.
|
| Create me that magic wand and I will happily join you in
| defending the death penalty. Until then I can't argue for it
| with a clean conscience.
| rossant wrote:
| More context about the shaken baby hypothesis here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37650402
| zafka wrote:
| @Dang, @Paul Graham
|
| This is where it really helps when people who can affect state
| budgets can really help. I am guessing the Governor of Texas
| would like more Tech investment. This would be a great time to
| speak up and tell him that killing innocent people for political
| gain might keep some ethical people away. Sorry for my rant, but
| this kind of thing is so surreal it shakes me.
| whycome wrote:
| > The hospital staff did not know Mr. Roberson had autism and
| misinterpreted his non-neurotypical demeanor as a lack of concern
| for his daughter.
|
| The nightmare. Being calm and rational during a crisis gets
| interpreted as a "lack of concern"
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Right? I've been a paramedic-firefighter for 15 years. I was
| one of the responders when the Amtrak Cascades train came off
| of a bridge at 85mph onto I-5. One of my partners admired
| traits in me is "how I always remain calm and logical, even in
| stressful situations".
|
| Hm.
| lambdaone wrote:
| Scandalous. It's now up to the governor to act to stop this
| happening; let's hope common humanity prevails over politics.
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(page generated 2024-09-12 23:01 UTC)