Man was made for the law

By Capt. Fogg

UPDATE (6/20): The NYT editorialized about this on Thursday -- "In an appalling 5-to-4 ruling on Thursday, the Supreme Court's conservative majority tossed aside compelling due process claims, the demands of justice and a considered decision by a lower federal appeals court to deny the right of prisoners to obtain post-conviction DNA testing that might prove their innocence."

Appalling indeed. One wonders why the SCOTUS -- or, rather, the conservatives on the SCOTUS -- hate innocent people so much.

-- MJWS

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Is anyone still so idealistic as to think that our justice system is about justice and not about upholding the authority of... well, authority? Well, maybe the latest ruling from the Old Bastard's Club we sometimes call the Supreme Court and the Republicans sometimes accuse of giving a damn will change your mind. In a ruling today one might have expected from a Texas court or perhaps the Spanish Inquisition, it ruled that once you're convicted, you have no right to obtain evidence that might exonerate you -- at least in Alaska, one of the six states in which innocence is no defense once the infallible courts have ruled.

Science alone cannot prove a prisoner innocent,

read the decision, and of course not, but it can prove him not guilty and it often has done just that. But I guess this is a good way to keep from the inevitable embarrassment of killing a few innocent people now and then.

So isn't it nice that at least one branch of government retains its contempt for the value of human life once it's had the chance to be baptized?

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)