I thought that I might point out a potential defect with a current court case. It is more than a defect in this case, as it is a defect with the legal system. I refer to the Anthony murder trial in Florida. In case you forgot, the mother killed her young daughter, apparently because her existence was an impediment to the mother’s rather active social life. The evidence is all circumstantial. This means that it will be incriminating towards her, if certain circumstances and contexts are proven as true. The state has called an expert who has devised some kind of test to detect the chemical gases left behind by dead bodies.
In one of the news broadcasts a commentator pointed out a potential weakness to this part of the case. The test has not (yet) been accepted as legally valid. The US legal system has an established principle of established principle. This means that a court is bound by decisions made in other court cases. This seems sort of reasonable, namely that the two sides should be familiar, in advance, with the rules. Of course, at the same time, it is utterly unreasonable. You see why, do you not?
Consider this. At one time fingerprints were not considered a valid way to establish identity. And blood types were not considered facts. And DNA differences were purely a matter of theory. As there had to be a time when these things were not allowed, there also had to be a first time that a court ruled that such things were allowed as evidence. So, somewhere, some court declared that it was not going to stand by precedent. And some defense lawyer said: “You can’t change the rules after the game starts.”
But, of course, this is exactly what happens. Some guy, with no credentials (except what he claims for himself) comes along and says, “I know something others do not.” In this murder case the test will probably be accepted, and be a basis for appeal, later. I simply hope that some higher court ignores the rules, and lets the evidence stand. To summarize and to clarify: the American legal system is bound to obey the rules, except when it does not.
I brought up this simply to strip away the nonsense that the USA is a nation of laws and not of men. The country, like all others, ignores principles when things really matter. In order to prosecute people rules have to be broken, i.e. legal injustice often is the mother of real justice. It simply would be less hypocritical if we acknowledged it. Bu then the USA was founded upon hypocrisy, so this is highly unlikely.
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