[Gableman] campaigned on a stereotype we all believe: No one likes "Slimy" defense lawyers. ... As for Reuben Lee Mitchell: It is a distasteful card to play, but facts are facts. He was released, and committed another crime. I don't know if Louis Butler's actions directly led to his release,* but he was involved.Bizarre reasoning** is protected by the First Amendment.
* They didn't, and in fact (see, supra: "facts are facts"), "release" was never the remedy sought to begin with. The question was whether certain evidence was admissible at Reuben Lee Mitchell's trial, evidence that was barred by statute, those statutes written by the people's representatives in the Wisconsin State legislature. On appeal, a total of ten appellate judges (including a unanimous Supreme Court) agreed that the evidence was inadmissible according to the plain language of the statute. Those are the facts.
In other words, what Louis Butler was doing was following the plain language of the legislature's law, something Gableman never tired of reminding us was his own special mission in life. Given that double standard, clearly, Gableman's suggestion was that criminal defendants enjoy a different measure when it comes to having that plain language applied to them. Hence the current requests for Gableman's removal from a number of different criminal appeals.
Incredibly, Gableman's own pro hac vice lawyer, James Bopp of Terre Haute, IN, proceeded to smear Louis Butler for being the type of person who would ... er, follow the plain language of the statute.
Not to mention the United States Constitution. Lately we have been regaled with a quantity of lip service from conservative Republicans, urging the inviolate nature of constitutional rights. But when those rights come in contact with society's pariahs — to whose benefit are played out the hardest tests of those rights — the lip service is quickly abandoned in favor of political expediency and ambition.
It's those cynical manipulations which are truly offensive.
** a.k.a. undue process.
2 comments:
But when those rights come in contact with society's pariahs
And sometimes the TP Patriot is the pariah. If I could pick one of life's mysteries to be revealed it would be the origins of the wingnut complementarity, which allows the same person to be both a maniacal narcissist and a martyr in the Earth's most oppressed caste.
To wit
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