[lbo-talk] your legal system in action

[Shane Mage]

>A Little-Noticed Supreme Court Case Represents A Huge Injustice:
>The Court Refuses to Free A Man Serving Six Years on a Two-Year Sentence
>By EDWARD LAZARUS
>elazarus at findlaw.com
>----
>Thursday, Jun. 10, 2004
>
>At the Supreme Court, the least significant and least noticed cases
>sometimes say the most about the institution and our system of justice.
>Dretke v. Haley, decided last month with no fanfare, is just such a case.
>Unfortunately, the story it tells is of an institution and a system
>remarkably unconcerned with the common call simply to do the right thing.
>
>Everyone involved in Michael Wayne Haley's case - the State of Texas, which
>prosecuted him; the lower federal court judges who heard his case; and all
>the U.S. Supreme Court's Justices - recognize that he's been in jail more
>than six years for a crime carrying a maximum sentence of two years.
>The lower federal courts ordered Haley released. But Texas, despite agreeing
>that Haley is serving time under an unlawful sentence, still appealed to the
>Supreme Court to keep Haley in jail. And the Supreme Court, rather than
>setting him free, doomed him to another long round of litigation in the
>lower courts.

The following part of this article should be shoved down the craw of
John Lacny and all the other Dumbocratic apologists who cry
piteously that judicial appointments are reason to support the
revolting Clinton-Kerry-DLC campaign:

Still, it says a lot about the current Court that both Clinton 
appointees, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer, voted with the 
majority - and, indeed, could have swung the case the other way had 
they so chosen - while Justice Kennedy joined the dissent.

The Haley case renders laughable the common accusation that Ginsburg 
and Breyer are "liberal." To the contrary, they are moderate, 
profoundly cautious, and unmoved by claims of individualized 
injustice.

The case also serves as another reminder that, on this Court, Kennedy 
owns the strongest moral compass. In the field of criminal law alone, 
in the last few years, Kennedy has now written passionately to decry 
abusive interrogation tactics, the misuse of race by prosecutors, and 
now the failure of Texas officials to observe their absolute duty to 
seek justice.


>How does this happen? The story of Haley's case illustrates how hard it can
>be to correct, through our system, what is really a simple and
>straightforward injustice.
>
>The Facts of Haley's Case: Why He Got Sixteen Years When Only Eligible for
>Two
>
>In 1997, Haley was arrested for stealing a calculator from a Wal-Mart. At
>trial, he was convicted of theft. Because Hale had two prior theft
>convictions, his relatively minor crime was punishable by up to two years in
>prison.
>
>Not satisfied, Haley's prosecutors also charged him with the separate
>offense of being a habitual felony offender, under Texas's "three strikes"
>law.
>
>continued at http://writ.news.findlaw.com/lazarus/20040610.html
>
>
>Edward Lazarus, a FindLaw columnist, writes about, practices, and teaches
>law in Los Angeles. A former federal prosecutor, he is the author of two
>books - most recently, Closed Chambers: The Rise, Fall, and Future of the
>Modern Supreme Court.
>
>
>___________________________________
>http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
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