FLOWERS SUPREME COURT REVERSAL.
"Curtis Flowers wins appeal at U.S. Supreme Court." After learning of SC Reversals, I usually start by reading the dissenting opinions. Judge Thomas was one of the dissenting opinions. Interesting read. But the court opinions are public, and I'll focus on my main concern.
Something no one talked about here and is what is rarely rectified is the amount of time it takes to move up and through the Supreme Court. IMO, we need judges whose only role in the courts is to hear all appeals immediately. If we don't, then quick & speedy trials are a mockery of intention and justice. If it means hiring thousands of judges in America to ensure timely justice, then so be it.
Most of us know this, but I'll point it out nonetheless. The Speedy Trial Clause of the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides that "[i]n all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy trial." If the seventh trial is almost three decades after the original information is presented for prosecution, then obviously we have a problem.
Consider how some companies with deep pockets and a lot to hide and pay if held accountable. One example in point: women painting alarm clock faces at the Ingersoll Factory in January 1932 were known as the "Radium Girls." These workers were putting their health at risk by lip-pointing the brush and ingesting radioactive radium.
In 1925 Grace Fryer, one of the workers from the original New Jersey plant decided to sue, but she would spend two years searching for a lawyer willing to help her. She finally filed her case in 1927 along with four fellow workers and made front-page news around the world.
The case, settled in the women's favor in 1928, became a milestone of occupational hazard law. By this time, the dangers of radium were in full view, the lip-pointing technique was discontinued, and the workers were being given protective gear. More women sued, and the radium companies appealed several times, but in 1939, the Supreme Court rejected the last appeal.
The only reason cases were heard as soon (soon...lol!) as they were, was because everyone believed the women would DIE before the causes could be heard by courts. Appeals were always filed, and continuances were usually granted. The cases finally settled, but Ingersol Company whined (sorry, I know I lost my objectivity here) that public opinion would damage their reputation if the prosecutorial claims continued to trial.
But back to the Curtis Flower case and the epidemic of indifference so prevalent in our courts. When the poor and disadvantaged are charged with crimes, great and small, law enforcement servants, great and small, find golfing, vacations and conveniences more important than the lives of incarcerated persons. Looking at a person in the eye with compassion can itself bring them back from the grave of loneliness and despair. Who among us could live decades in prison without losing hope? 'Hope springs eternal in the human breast' evidently applies only to the well-monied powerful entities (nope, not ELITES) in our world.
DNA evidence alone has uncovered prosecutorial and police misconduct, but no one would have given their cases a second glance until science freed them. Short of a spiritual revolution, religion and conscience alone won't open the gates to their freedom, so appealing to such paradigms are useless. To simply exonerate such wrongfully convicted persons doesn't go far enough. Our best thinkers in jurisprudence have not eliminated discrimination in our thinking, so maybe it's time for an Education of the Heart to balance the scales.