> But then again, who needs science when the conclusions are already made
> - as for example suggested by your
>comment about courts trying to cover their own bias by not admitting
>statistical evidence. If one already
>knows that the courts are biased, why bother using science to "prove" it,
>especially if it is of
>questionable quality anyway?
Yesterday you said there was good reason courts don't accept this kind of evidence, suggesting that decisions are made based on the merits of that evidence. Things in the record suggest otherwise. In 1987, the supreme court rejected a death row inmate's appeal by a 5-4 vote in McCleskey v. Kemp. The appeal was based on a study of 2,000 cases in Georgia, the state where the inmate was condemned, that showed the odds of a death sentence in cases in which blacks killed whites were as much as 11 times higher than blacks killed by whites.
The decision was written by Justice Powell who, after retirement, said this decision was the one he would change if he had it to do over again. He also said that his understanding of statistical analysis ranges from limited to zero.
>It started when one Dennis Claxton (I am not even sure if that is a real
>person or an alias of some
>prankster, it's hard to tell on this list anymore,
I'm a real person. Don't you ever get tired of being so fucking smug?