Ed. Note: Chris Halkides has been kind enough to try to make us lawyers smarter by dumbing down science enough that we have a small chance of understanding how it’s being used to wrongfully convict and, in some cases, execute defendants. Chris graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a Ph.D. in biochemistry, and teaches biochemistry, organic chemistry, and forensic chemistry at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington.

In 2009, Brandon Woodruff was convicted of murdering his parents Norma and Dennis in their new home in Royse City, Texas in 2005.  His parents were both shot and stabbed multiple times in what might have been a personal cause homicide. The prosecution hypothesized that Brandon killed them over tensions arising from his being gay having poor grades in college, and possibly from his overspending and appearing in a couple of adult films. There was no evidence for an argument; there is evidence that the police and the jury were anti-gay. It was repeatedly stated at his trial,  “If he could lie about being gay, he could lie about killing his parents.” Continue reading →

Sorry for not posting yesterday, and there will be no post today either. I had a procedure yesterday and I’m not up to writing yet. Hopefully, I’ll be back in action in a day or two.

For all the former prosecutors on the payroll at MSNBC, the one thing that goes wholly unmentioned is that the “hush money” case against Trump for falsifying business records is a misdemeanor unless it’s in furtherance of another crime.

But dreadful isn’t a synonym for criminal, and nothing about the terrible facts of the case has eased my legal concerns. From the beginning, it has been obvious that the facts of the case are damning, but the law is cloudy. The reason is simple: To secure a felony conviction, the prosecutor has to prove that Trump falsified business records with an “intent to defraud that included an intent to commit another crime or to aid or conceal the commission thereof.”

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David French reflects on the Axios report that neither President Biden nor his senior advisors believe the polls that say he’s got campaign issues. After all, how could someone as worthy as Biden lose to someone as unworthy as Trump?

I thought of 2012 when I read in an Axios report this week that “President Biden doesn’t believe his bad poll numbers, and neither do many of his closest advisers.” That belief isn’t absurd on its face. After all, polling is difficult, and there have been a number of recent polling misses.

After describing at length a handful of banal experiences for a concept that doesn’t really require much explication, David puts the pedal to the metal. Continue reading →

A two-day “festival” was held earlier this month in the bowels of hipsterville called “Dissident Dialogues.” It had been my plan to attend for a day, and I requested an agenda so I could decide this day to attend. I was told it would be forthcoming. It never was, so I never went. Fortunately, Cathy Young did and wrote a brilliant post about the good and the bad wrapped up in the current iteration of dissidence.

IN AN AGE OF POLITICAL POLARIZATION and tribalism, “heterodoxy” has become an increasingly popular concept for the tribeless, denoting people and ideas that defy traditional left/right descriptions. The Heterodox Academy, cofounded by renowned psychologist and author Jonathan Haidt in 2015 in reaction to progressive groupthink in academia, is the most prominent example; but the label is also embraced by what Radley Balko identified as the “new genre of heterodox punditry”—as found in publications like Quillette, UnHerd, and the Free Press. Amid competing and stultifying orthodoxies, the concept of heterodoxy can feel like a refreshing alternative.

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The obvious failings of public sector unionism aside, the union representing graduate students and staff at the University of California, a local of the United Auto Workers because the Teamsters were too busy that day, has authorized a strike.

Not for pay. Not for benefits. For “free speech.”

The union, U.A.W. 4811, represents about 48,000 graduate students and other academic workers at 10 University of California system campuses and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Its members, incensed over the university system’s handling of campus protests, pushed their union to address grievances extending beyond the bread-and-butter issues of collective bargaining to concerns over protesting and speaking out in their workplace.

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In 2015, Cy Vance made a decision. His office, the New York County District Attorney’s office, would not prosecute Harvey Weinstein for the sexual assault of Italian model Ambra Battilana Gutierrez, despite their being a recording of Weinstein admitting his conduct.  Perhaps David Boies, who contributed $10,000 to Cy’s re-election campaign when he was running unopposed, had something to do with it. Perhaps not.

But now, Cy has seen the light. Continue reading →

The commencement speaker at Duke University was none other than New York Jewish comedian Jerry Seinfeld. Whether his speech was particularly good or funny is beside the point. That students walked out of graduation as he was introduced, however, became headline news.

At Reason, Billy Binion argues that it shouldn’t have been. Continue reading →

He was a 23-year-old active-duty airman, a patriot and, by all accounts, a good person. So why was Roger Fortson shot dead in the doorway to his apartment? Body cam showed the reason, at least from the point of view of the sheriff’s deputy.

As highlighted in the video, Fortson had a handgun in his hand. From the perspective of the deputy, he was there to address a “disturbance” in apartment 1401, Fortson’s apartment. Continue reading →

Remember when Moira Donegan created the “shitty media men” list as a way for women to hurl untested accusations, whether true or false, at anyone they wanted to smear? At least that list had the putative merit of accusing men of wrongdoing, even if their only wrong was being male. But is it a crime to be Zionist, to believe in the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state? Apparently, it is, at least to some.

Jew lists are back in fashion pic.twitter.com/aE8AdrrO67

— Eitan Fischberger (@EFischberger) May 11, 2024

Of course, without lists, how would people know who to hate, to shun, and round up when the time comes? Continue reading →