“Lucifer in the flesh,” the former speaker said. “I have Democrat friends and Republican friends. I get along with almost everyone, but I have never worked with a more miserable son of a bitch in my life.”
I don’t see it in the archives, but it’s hard to believe I haven’t blogged my favorite Ted Cruz joke yet:
Q: Why should people hate Ted Cruz on sight?
A: It saves time.
OK, it’s my only Ted Cruz joke so far, but comments are open.
Previously: Tell Us What You Really Think
FBI analysts gave consistently false testimony for 20 years, leading to hundreds of convictions, including at least 32 defendants sentenced to death. “Of those, 14 have been executed or died in prison.”
Yet the Washington Post manages to write an entire article about this conspiracy to pervert the course of justice without using the words “perjury” or “conspiracy”. Seems we’re calling it “flawed testimony” this year: FBI admits flaws in hair analysis over decades.
The issue is the (lack of) scientific validity and certainty of supposedly incriminating forensic evidence such as the comparison of hair samples and bite marks:
Of 28 examiners with the FBI Laboratory’s microscopic hair comparison unit, 26 overstated forensic matches in ways that favored prosecutors in more than 95 percent of the 268 trials reviewed so far, according to the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) and the Innocence Project, which are assisting the government with the country’s largest post-conviction review of questioned forensic evidence.
…
The findings likely scratch the surface. The FBI said as of mid-April that reviews of about 350 trial testimonies and 900 lab reports are nearly complete, with about 1,200 cases remaining.
The bureau said it is difficult to check cases before 1985, when files were computerized. It has been unable to review 700 cases because police or prosecutors did not respond to requests for information.
Also, the same FBI examiners whose work is under review taught 500 to 1,000 state and local crime lab analysts to testify in the same ways.
I suppose it is possible that in some cases the FBI examiners didn’t understand that they had been trained to lie, and in those cases it was merely a (in some cases literally fatal) denial of due process rather than perjury, due to a lack of mens rea. But surely at least some of the examiners, or the trainers, have to have known what they were doing?
Anyway, according to 18 U.S.C. § 3282, the statute of limitations for perjury is five years, and the most recent of these cases is 16 years old, so I guess everyone at the FBI is safe.
I was one of the guests on Denise Howell’s and Mike Keyes’s This Week in Law — a two hour podcast on this week’s developments in technolaw and IP law. The other guest was David Levine, who fortunately knows a lot more about trade secrets than I do, as it was a busy week for those.
Anyway if you have a very long exercise session, the podcast awaits. And in some states you can get CLE for listening!
Going to see the Iggy Pop concert tonight.
I’m old enough to remember when “Iggy” for music meant Pop and not Azalea. In fact I’m old enough to remember when it seemed like New York Times style, which required that everyone be Mr. or Mrs. or Miss, might require a review of Iggy Pop to speak of “Mr. Pop”. (The story is that the ban on removing honorifics broke when it came time to review an album or concert by Meat Loaf. Meanwhile the rule that honorifics must be removed for convicted felons got changed just in time to save the paper from lèse-majesté with Spiro Agnew.)
Anyway, now that Bowie is gone, Iggy Pop may be the last of his kind. So if he’s going to come here as part of his “Post Punk Depression” tour, I’m going to go there, even if it is the last week of a very busy semester. See you in row “U”.
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