Death row case #2

I re-read my post from yesterday ("Know-it-all Scalia wrong about death row case");   and I realized that my intent was to slam Scalia for rejecting a review of this conviction because he considered it such a horrendous crime, rather than granting a review because of police misconduct and prosecutorial miscarriage of justice.

That is all true.   But as I consider the story again, what stands out to me is the larger picture of the great inequality of justice in this country.   Poor and minority people often do not get fair trials because they cannot afford the good lawyers that are too often necessary to get a fair trial in our system.

Indigent defendants get court appointed lawyers, it's true.   But they are often either inexperienced or ineffective;  and, even if they are good, they do not have the budgets to hire expensive experts or to do costly forensic testing, like DNA.

This headline exoneration story reinforces what we saw in Ferguson, Missouri.   If Michael Brown or these two brothers had been white or privileged, the results would have been very different.

Ralph