WTW24: Perverse and Illogical

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:41 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Where There's Woke. This is part five of X.

0:00:47 Lydia: X.

0:00:48 Thomas: I'm Thomas.

0:00:48 Lydia: That's reasonable.

0:00:50 Thomas: That's Lydia. How you doing?

0:00:51 Lydia: I'm here. I am good.

0:00:53 Thomas: You good? I am excited to tell this, not that it's pleasant, but this is just, I've been, And it's one of those things, and I've had a lot of things over the past fucking month where I've been like, I cannot wait to tell this. And this is a little more recent than that, but this is one that I'm very excited to tell. So again, go back and listen if you haven't listened. And on this one, I need to issue the content note of just this is bad crimes. This is death penalty cases. These are gruesome crimes. I did not have a fun time reading any of this.

This sucks, but necessary to discuss the cases. Just giving you that note. These aren't fun. So, uh. If this isn't something you feel you can stomach, you know me, I'm not going into much detail cause I can't stomach it. Uh, but mentions of stuff have to happen. So just giving me the warning. So what are we talking about? We're talking about death penalty cases. I went down that rabbit trail of the justice system. Boy. Uh. You my first thought is glad we're better than we were in 1934 Mississippi, we're not actually. Crap. All in one sentence. And this is down that road.

I looked up some death penalty cases until I came across one that, again, I keep saying is the one I have to tell in full. Before I get that, I want to tell a couple of quick ones that I saw that I was like, oh, should I look into this one? Should I look at it?

You know, just little things to drive the point home of how awful and, you know, racist and terrible the death penalty uh and death row is um there's um some general principles that organizations are

0:00:53 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

0:02:19 Thomas: Like the ACLU point out uh there's something called death qualification do you know what that is involves juries could you guess just keeping you involved I don't know what do you think that means a way they weed out jury members you can't be dead. No, it's not that.

0:02:24 Lydia: No. Oh. I I don't if you're willing to on whether or not someone else can be dead.

0:02:43 Thomas: Sort of. So, in death penalty cases, this is something from a kind of ACLU brief sort of thing that I read, just talking about this general problem, because there's, God knows there's a million problems, but this is just one that I wanted to mention. Quote from that, juries are rigged to be more conviction prone, friendlier to the prosecution and to exclude black community members. This is because of a process known as death qualification, which dictates that to serve on a death penalty jury, a prospective juror must be willing to impose the death penalty. Those unwilling to impose a death felony are excluded from jury service.

0:02:48 Lydia: Oh, boy.

0:03:22 Thomas: And guess what? Black people are more likely to oppose the death penalty. I wonder why, and as a result, are disproportionately excluded from death penalty of juries. Now this is just fucking insane. This is just something that I, it's like a little philosophical, but I hate this so goddamn much. I I hit it on every level, emotional level, human level, but also just logically speaking like this is anything that makes sense. You're what is a jury? Like ideally, what does a jury, it said jury of your peers. I actually think that system is pretty good. That concept is, you know, that's probably a pretty pretty good way of having to do some of this unpleasant stuff. Probably. I don't know. Who knows? Eventually we should just have AI do it. Honestly,

0:03:22 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah and what

0:04:01 Thomas: It'd be better than humans. Yeah.

0:04:02 Lydia: Our peers and yeah, I know that's

0:04:03 Thomas: But like in an idealized sense, they're citizens of the community, you you know, hopefully are like your average person who's kind of reasonable.

0:04:09 Lydia: Representative of yeah.

0:04:12 Thomas: And just taking all that on board, just assuming, okay, that's the system we're doing. If you then decide, no, because there there could be a death penalty, like, because the death penalty is on the table, we can only include the opinion of those who support the death penalty. That's insane. That is absolutely insane.

0:04:12 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah.

0:04:31 Lydia: It is insane. I will say, as you know, I have served on a jury, not a death penalty case at all. But if I were to serve on a judge, I that was on the table.

0:04:42 Thomas: Oh, I would just lie. I would absolutely lie. I'd like, yeah, maybe.

0:04:44 Lydia: But oh, God, I had I don't know if I could do that.

0:04:48 Thomas: Well, I wouldn't. You know why I could do it is because fuck this. Like, this is a good cause.

0:04:51 Lydia: Well, because you know this now. Yeah, yeah.

0:04:54 Thomas: Like this is a cause of like, no, no. You are doing it. Imagine, just as a a hypothetical, imagine if one percent of citizens supported the death penalty and then 99 were like, boy, we have really evolved as people, we don't support this nonsense, but because our political system sucks, we still have the death mentality everywhere. Well, we can only have jurors from that one percent, bloodthirsty fucking savages who wants to kill people, that's insane, that's... Yeah, unfortunately, this would get someone like you, who's a compassionate person, but a rational, smart person, person. That is unfortunate. Lydia is exactly who you would want on your jury. That's not who a prosecutor would want, let's be real. A prosecutor would not want you on the jury. But, like, I would want you in my jury because I know that you're compassionate and you're logical and you know whatever. But you don't believe in the fucking death penalty. That doesn't mean you don't get to be a part of the case.

0:05:40 Lydia: Thanks. Yeah.

0:05:46 Thomas: That's silly. And you know what? Even in jurisdictions where the jury doesn't decide that, even in jurisdictions where it's like the jury decides guilt, but then the judge decides death penalty or not, even in those, it's still like, no, the jury still needs to be people who believe in death penalty, nuts, absolutely stupid, fucking wrong on every level. I hate it. Just had to point that out. You can't just exclude that portion of society and then say, like, yeah, we have to because otherwise. No, that's part of your society. That's part of your peers. It's a jury of your peers, some number of your peers don't support that. Tough, Mr. Prosecutor. That's what, they're part of the people you have to convince, on average, that someone's guilty. So I hate that.

0:05:47 Lydia: Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, it is obviously the death penalty is separate from other situations because it's not reversible once it's carried out. But but it is similar to like asking the jury in a non-death penalty case. Are you against minimum sentencing requirements? You know? No, they don't.

0:06:50 Thomas: Do they ask them that? Oh,

0:06:52 Lydia: Because it doesn't matter, right? Because that's related to sentencing and you're making a call based off of whether or not a person is guilty.

0:06:52 Thomas: Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, right. Gotcha. Yeah.

0:07:00 Lydia: And so, yeah, I totally see your point in the ACLU's point here that

0:07:03 Thomas: Well. And like everything in the justice system, it's a conscious effort by bloodthirsty, probably racist to kill more people. That's all. Like, this isn't something that like some philosopher came up with. Oh. Oh, I think it'd be more fair. No, it's like, oh, here's way to kill more people. Let's do this. It's a conscious thing. And so I do have to say, I encourage everyone, including my lovely wife, to please just lie. Like, just say like, oh yeah, no, I could be open to... Same with the like, would trust a police officer or not trust? My real answer is no, I trust nothing the police say. But if I ever get in this situation, what I will say is, oh yeah. About equal. Yeah, sure. Sure. Uh, yeah, no, done that rationally every, uh, yeah. Yeah. And then he just, uh. I will make a judgment as to their trustworthiness. Yeah. Cause we need to be on these fucking juries. We can't take ourselves out of commission by being the only honest people. The stakes are too high.

0:07:04 Lydia: Yeah.

0:07:41 Lydia: I evaluate people, you know, based on the information they share on the stand. Yeah.

0:07:57 Lydia: Yeah.

0:07:58 Thomas: That's first point there. Uh, was also a case I wanted to bring up. I uh, think it's Dominique, it's but spelt a little differently than I'm used to. End. But anyway, Dominique Ray, I think, that's the person you may remember, just to give you an example of how fucking unjust all this shit is, and and how we're not better than 1934 Mississippi, barely.

This was the Muslim man who, in addition to having his appeals for, you know, not to die being denied, once those were denied, and I won't go into those because I already have too many deep dives, but like, set those aside, I, he might have been innocent, might not have, been set that aside then, and this is the part you might remember hun, then he appealed to like, hey, can I at least have a Muslim imam in here while I'm murdered by the state. Christians get it. Christians get a priest in there. Catholics or whatever, fucking whatever other white people things. We basically get it and This was naked fucking discrimination by the Supreme Court. You may remember this was in, I can't believe it's been this long. I think it was 2019 actually. Yeah. God, 2019. Jeez. That's crazy. After, you know, again, once again, not being granted any of his appeals to not die, set that aside. He argued that he he had a right to have a Muslim imam present in the execution chamber.

And my thoughts on that are, yeah, if that's a thing, I don't, I've never thought of this because it's awful, but like, yeah, sure. I'm not religious, but if the right is, hey, we're killing you because, you know, we're the state and we like doing this for some reason. But if you're white, you at least get to have a priest with you.

0:08:43 Lydia: Yep. The It's

0:09:32 Thomas: Okay. Well, if you're not white, if you're something else, and that's it's always a racial thing, but it is a racial thing, let's face it. You could be white Muslim, obviously, but like, if you are any other religion that's not one of the ones that, we you think is like the most important ones in this country, because we're a Christian nationalist nation, apparently, you should also get to have your religious leader of choice in the chamber. Fucking duh. Obvious. The least we can do. The very least that we can do, and the Supreme Court's like, nah, why you fucking got me?

This was one of those ones that had, you um, know, our favorite justice set of my are pretty upset. It's like, What are you talking about? Actually, this, so the dissent was written by Kagan, who I like, Kagan, not as much, but she also is often good. She was said this was profoundly wrong. This is a major complaint I have about even the liberals on the court is, can we get past the part where we're entertaining the idea that the other side is at all doing anything other than being a piece of shit?

Like, this was 2019. Maybe I'll give you some leeway, but by now I really hope we get to the point where the, the few liberals on the court are like, "Hey, the pieces of shit over there are doing another dumb fucking thing." I'm tired of this respectfully dissenting thing. But anyway, um, read some of of her thing. "A Christian prisoner may have a minister of his own faith accompany him into the execution chamber to say his last rites. But if an inmate practices a different religion, whether Islam, Judaism, or any other, he may not die with a minister OF HIS OWN FAITH by his side."

0:10:02 Lydia: Nuts. No.

0:10:11 Lydia: I'm

0:11:04 Thomas: "This treatment goes against the Establishment Clause." Duh, I could have told you that. I'm not a lawyer. "Estabishment Clause's core principle of denominational neutrality," she added, referring to to the Clause of the First Amendment. I'm quoting a New York Times article, by the way. Yeah, seems pretty fucking straightforward. Seems pretty, pretty straightforward. And appeals court, so mind you, this had gotten through the 11th Circuit. The 11th Circuit had said, well, yeah, duh, obviously. They said, yeah, powerful Establishment Clause claim. Quoting from that one, quote, "We are exceedingly loath to substitute our judgment on prison procedures for the determination of those officials charged with a formidable task of running a prison, let alone administering the death penalty in a controlled and secured manner." But nevertheless, Judge Stanley Marcus, this is the 11th Circuit, again, wrote, "Nevertheless, in the face of this limited record, it looks substantially likely to us that Alabama has run afoul of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment."

0:12:01 Thomas: If as if this wasn't bad enough, um, less than two months after that, the Supreme Court stayed the execution of Patrick Murphy in Texas over concerns that not allowing him to have a Buddhist spiritual advisor instead of a Christian chaplain or Muslim imams, the only two religions spiritual advisors permitted by Texans to be present, would violate his constitutional rights. Kind of weird.

I mean, I guess good that you got that, but Alito, Kavanaugh, and Roberts did not explain the difference, didn't bother, didn, they don't have to, doesn't matter. Um, you know, again, could be that the person is white, could be that, maybe, Buddhist, I mean the, the Patrick Murphy was a white guy. Uh, and then another one, changed, June 2020, Texas changed its policy to prohibit the presence of all spiritual advisors, the Supreme Court also stayed the execution of a Catholic convicted murderer and ordered consideration of his request to have a spiritual advisor present in the execution chamber at. Now, this was a Latino man, but Catholic, so the court is exceedingly Catholic, disproportionately Catholic.

So again, that's another component of this that's infuriating, very clearly just personal bias, very clearly against the Establishment Clause. But what can we do about it? Fucking nothing right now other than, you know, elect Democrats forever so that we can eventually take back the court. And then last thing before I get to my main story, Jesse Johnson. This one, oh boy. Now this one, at the very least, this person, thankfully, exonerated. But on Equal Justice Initiative's website, it says, and this was September this year, so this just happened a couple of months ago. Jesse Johnson is 194th person exonerated from death row. So this was a black man, is a black, he's alive, Jesse Johnson, 62 years old.

0:13:04 Lydia: T

0:13:51 Thomas: Fortunately, exonereated, as I said, doesn't mean he didn't spend 25 fucking years in prison for murder, wrongly convicted. I just wanted to give you some of these details because Jesus Christ. So let me just read from the Equal Justice Initiative website. Mr. Johnson, a black man, has always maintained that he was not involved in the 1998 stabbing death of Harriet Thompson, a Black woman. Despite the lack of DNA and evidence connecting him to the crime. Mr. Johnson was convicted and sentenced to death in 2004. And this is a weird one because this was in Oregon, of, not a state I would guess in my top whatever of death penalty cases,

0:13:59 Lydia: I'm top.

0:14:30 Lydia: 20.

0:14:30 Thomas: But yeah, No, it definitely, they have their moments, but yeah, usually it's the Southern states. But in 2021, the Oregon Court of Appeals unanimously overturned Mr. Johnston's conviction because his lawyer failed to interview a key witness who saw a white man flee the victim's home on The night of the murder. Listen to this. The witness, Patricia Hubbard, lived across the street from the victim and was sitting on her porch at about 3:45 a.m. when she saw a white man drive up and park in the victim's driveway. She testified in a 2013 deposition that she recognized the man because she had seen him at the victim's home many times before. Within seconds after the white man went outside, Mrs. Hubbard heard shouting and screaming from the house.

She recognized the white man's voice and heard what sounded like pots and pans crashing. The screaming got louder and more intense, and then she heard a thud, followed by total silence. Right after the screaming stopped, the white man came out of the back door and flew off the steps running. Later, Mrs. Hubbard saw a black man walking, not running, down the driveway and rubbing his forehead as if in disbelief. When she was shown a photo of Mr.

0:14:30 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah.

0:15:32 Thomas: Johnson 12 years later, Later, she said he did not look like the person she saw that night. Ms. Hubbard then left for work, but later returned to find police in her neighborhood. So I jumped around in time, but whatever, this is back at that night, she approached a uniformed police officer and told him she had some information. He told her to go back home. Later, another neighbor brought a Salem police detective to Ms. Hubbard's house. Ms. Hubbard said, I started telling him what I saw and he stopped me and he said, that won't be necessary. And this is, this is her words, but Oregon police might believe she said he told her a N word got murdered and an N word is going to pay for it.

0:15:44 Lydia: Oh. Wow. Yeah.

0:16:10 Thomas: Mr. Johnson's trial lawyers spent only six hours canvassing the neighborhood and never spoke to Ms. Hubbard. This was deficient performance, the court of appeals found, and it prejudiced Mr. Johnston because Ms. Hubbard's testimony could have changed the outcome of his trial. The court also found that Ms. Hubbard's testimony included evidence of racial bias in the police investigation of the murder and failure to properly investigate. So, duh, obviously.

0:16:33 Lydia: Sounds about right.

0:16:34 Thomas: And by the way, just to, just lest we think things are, you know, going too well here. Although prosecutors have known about Ms. Hubbard testimony and other exonerating evidence since before the appellate court's decision in 2021, they waited another two years before filing a motion to dismiss the case, writing that based on the amount of time that has passed and the unavailability of the critical evidence in the case, the state no longer believes that it can prove the defendant's guilt. So one more little reminder that even when these things get overturned, that often means, okay, you have two options, you can order another trial, or you can let them go Apparently that takes time, you can still be in prison for two years after that happens without knowing what's going to happen, which is another form of agony. So at long last, let's get to the main story. This one I'm going to tell in chronological order. Uh, once again, another warning, this fucking sucks, this is a sucky suck one that sucks.

I And for this, I want to shout out, um, it's a source that I didn't use to appreciate because of its association with fucking Glenn Greenwald, uh, but he's gone now, but, uh, The Intercept, there's a journalist here that maybe someday we could try to interview or something, but her name is Liliana Segura.

And she has reported on this case a lot, uh, really really good reporting, like in-depth, law, like each of these articles that I've read is long, detailed, and it's, uh, worth very worthwhile work.

0:17:58 Thomas: So big shout out to Liliana Segura of The Intercept for a lot of this information. And then of course, I've also consulted the entire trial record and all of that. So, uh, lots, lots of sources here, but this, fucking um, horrible, awful crime, um, takes place in 1994. So 1994, this takes place in, uh, kind of a, a trailer park type situation. These are, um. Now here's, here's the twist. This involves a white defendant. And I know that my point for a lot of this has been about the racism of the system. And it is. But these facts, I have to tell the story. And it just so happens to be a story about a white defendant, but the tough on crime, they're all guilty mindset because this country is, and a lot of these places are majority white, you know, obviously there's going to be white people implicated in these things. Even if disproportionately it's hurting black people Latino people, non-white people, basically.

0:18:06 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah.

0:18:56 Thomas: But it also hurts white people who are often poor, drug addicted, stuff like that too. And the fact that this is a white defendant does not at all take away from the racism of the system, but I just want to point that out so people didn't assume I was talking about a black man or something. Um, this is an awful thing, this is a little girl, four years old, and she, uh, is taken to a hospital, essentially rushed into a hospital, and she's pretty much dead on arrival. And her mom, drug addict, um, she, it's places, it doesn't say, like, like it says she's a drug addict.

Her story was like she was asleep that whole day, which, you know, that means She was fucking either recovering from something or on something. But she's, not great. She's drug a addict, and the man who was convicted of the murder, eventually also an addict. But here's the thing, the guy, Jones, was kind of the boyfriend at the time, it's a little unclear, seems to be the boyfriend, I don't think the relationship was good, like, per se, but was around and was the boyfriend and was kind helping raise the kids.

And it was not like a stepdad, but, like, know, that you kind of thing. Lot of, a lot of tough details. Um, the, what he was convicted of was raping this girl. And that's what led to a sort of a, a kind of injury to the abdomen that results in death eventually, kind of thing, horrible, horrible thing, that's what he was convicted of.

The way we get there is, um, autopsy shows, you know, trauma to vaginal area, lots of bruising as well around the stomach and, like, possibly abuse, um, there was a head injury but didn't seem to be

0:19:41 Lydia: Yeah.

0:20:39 Thomas: Actually that key in her death or anything, you know, it's more about this abdominal thing. And she was in Jones's sole care. Jones, sorry, Jones is the man who was convicted. She was in Jones's sole care in the afternoon of the day she died. Aside for a moment, the reason she was in Jones's sole care, the mom was a drug addicted person who was kind of passed out. But that aside, that's kind of where it went. The case hinged on medical A examiner saying that, like, yes, this injury, you could have taken place within the past time frame that he, you know, was with her kind of thing. They also interviewed some other kids around the, you know, it's like, I think it's like a trailer park thing.

It's a very, you know, it's a very poor drug addicted kind of place where people are living in their cars kind of thing, know, live, or, they live in not great conditions. Um, Jones has a van that I don't think he lives in, but he seems to be in a lot, I don't know, it's it's that kind of thing.

Um, he, he's, he comes by the fact, honestly, that he wasn't a great guy, then he was drug addicted, and, uh, you know, it' not like he was the model the of humanity or anything, uh, but he firmly always professed his innocence, always, and said he didn't do it.

0:20:57 Lydia: Interesting.

0:21:47 Lydia: Yeah.

0:21:48 Thomas: But to start with, kind of what happened at trial, there were other children who claimed to have seen Jones hitting Rachel while driving. There there's forensic evidence that finds traces of Rachel's blood in the van and on his clothing. One key, uh, kind of damning piece of evidence was he made a statement to the mom and somebody else that he took Rachel to get examined by paramedics at the fire department. And it turned out that wasn't true. So that doesn't look good. The jury found guilty on all counts.

0:22:21 Lydia: Yeah.

0:22:22 Thomas: They said child abuse because it was used in the way, whatever, it ends up being felony murder because of the way it happens. So basically death penalty. And in addition, the, you know, obviously aggregating factors, which you, you know, again, I don't believe in death penalty, but yeah, if there's such a thing as aggregating factors, it would be if you were convicted of abusing a four-year-old and the, the young age, all those kinds of things. And, and no, basically no mitigating factors for leniency. So death penalty, in, in this terms of death penalty this is very death penalty in our, our country, in the state that it's in, which is, where is Arizona, oddly enough. So it is actually still a pretty conservative state. So admittedly, things don't look great there.

0:23:02 Lydia: Right.

0:23:02 Thomas: You know, he was kind of with her, she was in his custody, sort of, he was kind of in charge of her. Um, and, you know, there's certain evidence there, there's testimony from other kids, I, so convicted in 1995, I, then kind of the usual appealing stuff that happens, and it's very state by state, again, not a lawyer, not a legal show, but I think the first thing is just usually an appeal of like, are you sure?

0:23:24 Lydia: Yeah.

0:23:24 Thomas: It's like one of those like. You go right back, and they're usually not successful, but you appeal to the Arizona Supreme Court, and that one was basically a, you nah, like, it's one of those where they're like, you try to make some probably desperate arguments, usually that's like, yeah, reconsider this. And they're like, no, did not find sufficient grounds to believe that any errors significantly impacted the outcome, basically.

0:23:25 Lydia: Hmm. Okay.

0:23:48 Thomas: At that time. So then we go to what's called post-conviction relief proceedings, which is again, I don't know why, but kind of a different thing. I think it's like, that's where you don't, I think in the first one, you're able to just look at the trial record and be like, did they get everything right relative to this? Like, did the judge make a mistake relative to us? And then I think after that fails, then it's like, okay, now it's more picture. Was anything wrong? And I think that's where you can say like, didn't have, you know, proper representation kind of thing, like incompetent counsel. I think, I don't know. Something like that. Is the first place in the record where we see the claims of ineffective assistance of counsel. And the allegations are defense counsel failed in several areas, including not seeking a mistrial after jurors saw him in handcuffs. You know, I'm not sure they would have been successful in that, but you're making every argument you can.

0:23:48 Lydia: A little

0:24:40 Thomas: Again, failing to interview Angela, who was a co-defendant, that's the mom, not following up on a request for a second attorney, not meeting with Jones enough times to prepare and not informing Jones explicitly of his right to testify in his own defense. Those strike me, I'm not an expert, those strike me as not amazing.

0:24:58 Lydia: Flimsy.

0:24:59 Thomas: Yeah, like you're obviously going to try to appeal the things you can appeal. And that's that first appeal. The court says, nah, the court's like, nope, still no. And then we get to federal habeas. So that's when I I believe you've kind of exhausted your state stuff. And then you're like, all right, well, now I'm going to try for the federal stuff, essentially. And it, I think it pretty much just has to go in this order. This is usually how it's done. We're at 2001, by the way, 2001, 2002.

0:25:27 Lydia: Hmm.

0:25:27 Thomas: And he's got some more claims, and this time kind of more expansive on the ineffective counsel because they've got, they've uncovered some more things, it seems like, so.

0:25:37 Lydia: Still.

0:25:38 Thomas: More other suspects that no one ever talked to, more eyewitnesses that didn't, didn't seem like got interviewed or could have testified, some other stuff like that. It's getting a little more, you know, seems a little more serious sort, he's, like we've sort of talked about already, you got to have a reason why the feds, you know, why they could look at it, and that's the ineffective assistance of council thing, so we've gone more that direction.

But then here's what happens, this is where it gets, it gets a little legally tough, and I'm not an expert, but suffice it to say, when he does that first federal habeas, rules at the time were that, like, ineffective assistance of counsel doesn't necessarily help in this specific technical way. Like, you had to bring up a certain thing first. It's sort of, it's a little bit like the Mississippi thing, where it's like, ah, you needed to do this the first time. And so it's denied. And that's bad. That's like pretty much close to game over. But happens in 2012, and I can't believe we're all the way at 2012, but you know, the legal system takes for fucking ever.

0:26:27 Lydia: Yeah, yeah.

0:26:39 Thomas: A decision called Martinez v. Ryan amends something fucking shitty that was, oh man, this is where I'm deep diving, deep diving, so, I his habeas was denied, and, uh, again, not qualified to go into all the technical reasons, but it had to do with something that, if I just say what this is, hon, I think you'll get an idea.

0:27:03 Lydia: Okay.

0:27:04 Thomas: It has something to do with this act called the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996. What do you think that's related to?

0:27:14 Lydia: Terrorism before 1996. when was Oklahoma City bombing?

0:27:17 Thomas: Yeah, there you go. Oklahoma city. So Oklahoma city, and again, I already mentioned it, but there's this perception that like, man, these were not good enough at killing people. We're in our state needs to, they take too long to execute people. And so we passed a law in 1996, tough on crime. That was like, yeah, let's, let's streamline this. And So that somehow in that technical, whatever it had deadline, Stricter deadlines for habeas, you know, which is what we were just talking about.

0:27:29 Lydia: Yeah. Right.

0:27:45 Thomas: Some other stuff, you now, which lawyer, lawyer, legal language, whatever, leads to that's why his federal habeas. But then in 2012, there's a case, a Supreme Court case called, Martinez v. Ryan. And it sort of changes that a little bit. Good, there used to be a time when the court did like sort of good things for a minute, like for a brief time. Sometimes, not always.

0:28:04 Lydia: Okay. Yeah.

0:28:11 Thomas: Sometimes.

0:28:12 Lydia: We had a good like four years. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:28:12 Thomas: Yeah, within living memory, you know, it was around the same time as the gay rights stuff, probably, as the Gay Rights stuff. But 2012. And this is going to blow your mind. This may seem obvious, this landmark decision recognized that the ineffective assistance of counsel during initial state post-conviction proceedings could be a valid cause to excuse the procedural default of an ineffective assistance of counsel claim that was not raised in state court. Happened, so I guess, was, hey, my lawyer wasn't good enough. So a enough and the state's like, nah, nah, whatever that happens. You know, that's a, it's a common thing. But then down the road, Jones was like, hey, remember when my lawyer wasn't good enough that one time? Well, again, we're dealing with people who have no money.

0:29:05 Thomas: These are lawyers that are provided by the state. That is important to keep in mind. Don't, I mean, I don'T think it should make a difference, but like it it matters anywhere, it matters here. Like if the state is providing you a lawyer and and then that lawyer makes a mistake that leads to your death, I feel like the state kind of owes you one or whatever. You know what I mean?

0:29:20 Lydia: Yeah. So, the the state's responsibility, essentially.

0:29:22 Thomas: Yeah, essentially. And so this is kind of a weird double thingy there where was a loophole where it's yeah, but okay, if you had a bad lawyer and then later tried to say you had a bad employer, but you did it wrong. Why?

0:29:22 Lydia: Yeah, because

0:29:39 Thomas: Because you had second bad lawyer. So it's this awful set of circumstances where if you had a second bad lawyer that then did the appeal wrong about your first bad lawyer or other stuff, then the way the system worked, I think, because of that bill I talked to you about, the anti-terrorism thing, they're like, nah, fucking, we've had enough of this, you know, like, again, it's that mindset of like, yeah, you're annoying, go die, because we're fucking ghouls. Um, but that Martinez v. Ryan changed that. That was like, hey, that doesn't, it makes sense. Like, if, it's unlikely, but if you rolled snake eyes

0:29:38 Lydia: You had a bad lawyer yeah, yeah, yeah, right

0:30:12 Thomas: And got two bad lawyers in a row, why would it be like, yeah. First one's on us. Second one's on you. You should have known better than to get another bad lawyer. Once again, assigned to you by the state because you have no money. So like, that seems like no nonsense. Absolutely. No duh. Yeah. Just because it happened twice doesn't make any, any less bad. You Should At Least. And again, that doesn't mean you're free to go or anything like that. I mean, it just means means you get to file another thingy because there are limits to the number of thingies you can file. That's how it works because, you know, for a lot of reasons, but it also makes sense. Like you shouldn't be able to infinitely appeal everything. I get that at least somewhat. And this decision just said like, all right, you get one more because you had another bad lawyer. Reasonable, makes sense, so that opens us back up again, kind of.

And so now Jones is like, Know, making some you progress, guy, because this turns out there's quite a lot wrong with this. And it's very heartbreaking. There's quite a lot wrong with his conviction. That was 2012. They redo the habeas. And eventually we get to 2017. And Jones's case is kind of so solid that he wins the right right, to at least an evidentiary hearing. So

0:30:29 Lydia: Right wow yeah

0:31:22 Thomas: That means you're like, all right, we're listening. Let's do a hearing to establish whether or not there was, you know, evidence that was missed or those kinds of things to see if you ought to get a new trial essentially, or something like that. And so they do an evidentiary hearing and this is seven days long. That's pretty significant. Again. October 30th, 2017. And there's quite a bit of stuff here that now we can kind of talk about again, it's an awful tragedy, but from a bitof a different light. Now I'm going to present someof factsthat I didn't tell you earlier, some ofthe reasons to maybe doubt doubt that this person did it quite a bit.

For one, here's what really broke my heart. This person, again, we're dealing with this whole community is they're drug addict. It's a little like trailer park of drug addicts. It's kind of, it's for lack of a better word. It's like a white trash kind of area, that kind of thing. These aren't saints. I'm not saying they're saints. They're not, obviously, but by all accounts, this guy was, was actually kind of decent. It's kind of heartbreaking because the mom, it turns out, was an abusive piece of shit.

And while it's not entirely like clear that she, like, killed, you know, she obviously didn't rape her child, but she was seen to have beaten her children, and so could have caused some of the bruising that we're talking about, around the, the the pelvis and all all that. And in addition to that, the guy, what gets me, because as I've already established, and I think people know, if this guy seemed guilty, I would tell you. I've told you other times where people were like, ah, this guy didn't do it. It's like, no, he fucking did it, sorry. All the testimony about this guy from the neighbor children, from his own, not his, his children, but that, you know, the other siblings of the girl that he was looking after too, he

0:31:42 Lydia: Okay mm-hmm yeah yeah mm-hm

0:33:07 Thomas: Was not abusive. And I'm sorry, it's a pretty solid pattern that if there's a man who's in charge of a child and is the kind of person who would, you know, like rape that child to death and beat that child, there's going to be other complaints of abuse. Like, I mean, that's virtually, in my opinion, I'm not an expert here, but like, that's pretty indicative and universally like most of the other people they interviewed other children around the community. They're like, no, yeah, it's the nineties. So, you know, maybe he's done like not amazing parent stuff for the ninities.

0:33:42 Thomas: Yeah. Like he's not, you know fucking Mr. Rogers or something, But pretty universally, he had testified and people had testified that he said he didn't believe in corporal punishment, that the worst that ever happened, if she was bad, if this girl was like misbehaving, was she had to go to a room. And that's pretty, like, it's more than just a few people testified to that. And it really starts to build a different picture of this guy, where the mom is actually kind of an abusive piece of shit. And I just say kind of, she is, she was an abusive

0:33:41 Lydia: Like a spanking or whatever, yeah Yeah.

0:33:54 Lydia: OK. Yeah.

0:34:12 Thomas: Piece of shit. People testify that she hit the kids all the time, um, but he didn't, here's another fucking wacky thing, he has a twin brother. Yeah, we're in like a bizarro fucking Arrested Development situation, which right away, I mean, this is this is just me, but if you have a twin brother, I think right away we can't execute you. Like, I think that's just, that's a freebie.

0:34:13 Lydia: Oh, weird. Yeah, yeah. I

0:34:34 Thomas: If it's, hold on, if it identical twins, if you, if you look identical mechanical, sorry, can't be executed. That's just a rule. I'm kind of joking, but actually really not because if you need to be a hundred percent certain to kill somebody, which I think you should, and not only does he have a twin brother, but the twin brother is involved in the area. It's not like, oh, he lives in another country. Like he was, I think he might've also, I don't think he Might've dated the mom too. Like it's a weird thing.

0:34:33 Lydia: Know. Yeah same genetics. Yeah yeah.

0:34:58 Lydia: Yeah there's no way to know.

0:35:01 Thomas: Yeah. So like, okay, well already already, there's some doubt there. I'm not saying it's, that's not the situation. It's not alleged that like we have a mistaken identity situation per se, but there is evidence that the twin brother might've been responsible. Like it's conceivable that the Twin Brother might've been responsible, but now we're talking about other suspects. And here's the thing. There are many other, I say many, there'S at least a handful of other plausible suspects from my read of the the case. And that doesn't mean that these people definitely did it. That's not what you have to prove.

I want to get that very straight. You have to prove, did either the police or your lawyer or whoever, did they do their job in evaluating this? And that answer is definitely no. They They Did Not Interview the Twin Brother. They Didn't Interview These Other People. Um, Rachel, the girl who died, the four-year-old, uh, the girl who was killed, she had an older brother who was 12, who was, uh, actually, this was another, catches the layers of fucking awful heartbreak to this, but he was born deaf, and the mom had no fucking ability to at all parent a deaf kid.

0:35:13 Lydia: Mm-hmm. Oh. Yeah.

0:36:09 Thomas: And was awful to him, and he was way late to to read and, you know, like, just way developmentally delayed because she sucked and poverty, you know, it's all those things. Many of the children testified that he was, um, he molested the, the kids in the community. So conceivable, plausible that he could have been the one who raped the child. A Especially when you look at the facts, on the final night before she died, she got into bed with the mom and the guy, Jones, who was convicted of the murder, it seemed like she really trusted him.

There's testimony that like it's really heartbreaking, but there's testimony that she really thought he was her buddy, you know. And um, yeah, man, that's really, it's hard to read this stuff, but I think I've demonstrated that I, you know, like, this is why it's so hard, because either this guy is a horrible victim of something awful, or he's one of the worst people ever who killed a four-year-old girl. But think I've demonstrated, and there's so much more I'm not, you know, I can't get to in this, in this small amount of time, but I don't think this guy did it. In fact, I'm very certain he didn't, and I think Adnan fucking did, he actually killed this

0:36:10 Lydia: Yeah. Oh. Gosh. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

0:37:19 Thomas: Girl. No, like, I'm not somebody who's like, just am very prone to believing everyone's innocent. You know, there's a lot of, there are murder. There's a lot of murders. There must be a lot of murderers. Um, I don't know what the percentage of accuracy is, but it's not zero. Like often the people did it. Um. I don't, this guy didn't fucking do it. He didn't do it and if you don't want to believe me, believe the federal court that was like, oh yeah, no, this is is not good. Like, so he wins on this. He gets a hearing, evidentiary hearing. Like I said, um, they have this seven day hearing. And he ends up prevailing on that. I'll talk about some of the more stuff, you know, it was seven days. I can't go through all of it, but there's,

0:37:27 Lydia: That's Good, I'm Yeah.

0:37:58 Thomas: There's a lot of problems with this conviction. A lot. First off, there is no physical evidence, forensic evidence at all, linking Jones. Remember I told you there was some like blood and all that stuff? Well, he had always testified from the beginning, like when he was interviewed by police, when it was, that she had gotten an injury on her head from falling out of the van when a boy pushed her out of the band, and that's something that other people verified. Um, and this is a particularly shitty part of it, it's possible that there's some other young boy in the, in the area that that caused a lot of her injuries. Um, the, little girl said that he hit her with like a metal bar thing in the stomach.

0:38:29 Lydia: Gosh. Yeah.

0:38:36 Thomas: So that's part of it. This it's unclear in the end what ultimately happened here, but it may have been a lot of things actually more than just one thing that killed her. Because for one, she was malnourished really bad because the mom fucking sucked. The mom was a drug addict, barely around. And she was around, but like she was unconscious all the time and they were not fed. And sure. I mean, he's also a parent and guardian, but he's a boy. He's not their dad. He actually wasn't really in love with her or anything. He had said that he didn't want to kick her out with those fucking four or five kids or whatever it was.

He felt bad for the kids. He seems to be within the realm of what we're dealing with here. Honestly, not a bad guy. He was a drug addict, but not a bad guy. It seems to me. And she was a bit worse than that. She was a very negligent parent. She Was an abusive parent. I think part of what could have been happening here, she was so malnourished, this little girl that like some of these things that might not have killed, you know, a healthy child ended up killing her. Now, she does seem to have been sexually assaulted, but from

0:38:51 Lydia: Right. Right. Yeah. Hmm.

0:39:44 Thomas: The medical evidence on that that looked to have been actually maybe old, like that might have happened a while before this. And that may have been, again, what ultimately led to her death by the puncturing of the thing. But that thing, in and of itself, actually takes a while, because that injury, that particular medical thing, that's not something that's like, oh, you bleed out instantly, that's something like, oh, your your bowels start like kind of leaking a little bit, and that, over time, can circulate, and that kind of like, it kind of poisons you to death, is what she died of, and that takes time, and so that throws the date into, into doubt, this state timeline of, "Ah, you were with her for four hours right before she died, that's the only verified time he was with her alone," or whatever, so that's when it all happened.

And now it's like, well, no, that doesn't make sense at all. And a lot of the people who testified, some of them changed their story. There's even a juror that's part of this coverage in The Intercept. It's really interesting. There's a juror who went on to really regret what happened. And she said, like, I didn't know some of these things. And she was campaigning for his innocence, you know, but she she was an elderly woman. She actually passed away in like 2020 or something. But she was interviewed for like, the coverage before that was like, I regret this. I think he's innocent. The that other thing, and this is true in so many of these death penalty cases, is the, the evidence is just actually so much worse than you think. Like they present

0:39:49 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah. Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

0:41:09 Thomas: It, they'll present it to the jury. Like we've got this forensic and it's like, no, it's bullshit. It's nothing. The person wasn't actually an expert or something like that. You know, there'd be stuff like that there no, physical evidence was nil. There was no semen, no any like typical, like, okay, rape kit kind of stuff. None of that zero physical evidence that he did it, nothing, that all there was, was blood, but that was already, something that was from the beginning, a consistent story that she had hit her head and was bleeding. And here's another thing.

The mom initially thought he was guilty because of the the lie, he told her about having taken her to like a fire station and gotten her checked out when she wasn't feeling well. And let's, let us recall, she was fucking unconscious and beating them and all sorts of stuff. Like her word doesn't matter. But like, I think that's kind of instrumental in sort of the attitude around the investigation and conviction. If the mom kind of thinks he did, you know like that's going to be, that's gonna have an effect on like how the investigation goes, I think. But then it turned out that he lied, but not entirely.

So his story was, he told that story. But then what really happened was he got to the fire station and there was a cop car nearby and his van registration was, you know, he didn't have plates or whatever. And he was like, okay, I can't do that. But he said he found a paramedic and this isn't like totally verified, but it it's like, plausible and it, there's nothing that contradicts it. He said that he had found a Paramedic who checked her out and said her head injury wasn't a big deal.

0:41:31 Lydia: No.

0:41:48 Lydia: Right. Mm-hm. Okay.

0:42:38 Thomas: And that's true, like her head injury didn't end up being the thing that killed her. It's just kind of coincidental that she wasn't feeling well and it hit her head kind of thing. And once the mom found that out, she also has campaigned for his innocence. Anyway, there's just a lot of reasons that really I don't think he did it. So he prevails on this.

Now keep in mind, with all these things, every time you're like, oh wow, he's totally innocent, and they're filing a thing, there's the state is always still fucking opposing it because they're usually monsters. He did ultimately prevail on this this thingy that I'm telling you, but the the state was arguing against it. Arizona was saying, well, look, the feds should not be able to meddle in this because we, you know, we're the state. We did our thing. And again, it's some technical stuff, but like essentially this section 22, blah, blah. Like the kind of the thing that was, you know related to that terrorism thing. I told you like that, should mean that for some fucking lawyer legalese reason, like they shouldn't be doing this. Now, that argument didn't work on at the federal court But

0:43:33 Lydia: Mm-hm. Okay.

0:43:44 Thomas: Then state appealed it to the Supreme Court. So let's think about where we are. He's won the right to have an evidentiary hearing that went seven days and there's detail from there. I'd love to get to but the judge was like, are you kidding me? This is your fucking evidence talking about the state like the state witnesses were like, well, I think I didn't, you know, they sucked. It was very clear that this was an investigation and a trial done badly and the judge, that's why he won. Like, you know, like it's not like it was easy to win at the federal level on these things. It's not, like, those courts are super progressive-y cool. They're, you know, that's hard to win there, but this was a bad court thingy. This was a, he didn't do it.

And the federal court said, no fucking way. But the state, so think about that. He wins. As I've talked about, that means he's not free to go per se, but he wins that, like Like, yep, everything is stayed. You're not going to, for one, we're saying your execution, but then the state also has to like figure out what they're going to do. Are they going to try to redo a trial, which they get to do, you know, you get to retry if they want, or are they going to let you go or something else? So that's where he is. And it's been years and years. Keep in mind, we are in 20, at this point, that was 2017-ish and going into like, 2018, you that kind of thing, for a crime from 1994. 1994 so now on something like 24 years, essentially.

0:43:59 Lydia: Okay. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Okay.

0:45:05 Thomas: And he's thinking we're getting a new trial, at least, or maybe he's going to get let go. You know, essentially, the state is not giving up. Why is the state not giving up? Because I'll tell you why. This is a decision that's made by someone like, say, a piece of shit prosecutor, and this piece of shit prosecutor happens to be a piece-of-shit Republican prosecutor, and and this asshole is named Mark Brnovich, and he's an asshole who is a Republican asshole for the attorney general in Arizona. Now that's name you may remember, because what else might an attorney general have been doing in Arizona around 2020, 2021, 2020?

0:45:15 Lydia: Hmm. Yep. Brnovich. Mm-hmm.

0:45:46 Lydia: Oh, stop stealing the election.

0:45:49 Thomas: You go, fucking ninjas, or whatever was that crap, you know, the election ninja. What was that? You know, the whole Arizona crowd, you know, so cyber ninjas. Yeah. This is the, if you've heard his name, I think he was somewhat involved in that. We're not going to talk about that, but like, that's this level of garbage. That's this guy, uh, essentially. And so he is still fighting it, and he appeals to the Supreme Court. And here's a statement from his bullshit, their website headline is, "Arizona Attorney General's Office Argues that Supreme Court to Uphold the Death Penalty for Two Convicted Killers." I'm not going to talk about the other one, but there was another one, it was like a paired case together that went to the Supreme Court because it's the same issue. Essentially, "Attorney General Mark Brnovich's office argued today at the Supreme Court to uphold, uphold the death penalty sentence for David Ramirez and reinstate the first degree murder conviction of Barry Jones." That's our guy that we're talking about. Quote, "Today's about confronting convicted criminals who seek endless delays in our courts to avoid accepting responsibility for their heinous crimes,"

0:45:51 Lydia: Oh. Yeah. Yeah. Cyber Ninja.

0:46:07 Lydia: Yeah. Geez. Right.

0:46:53 Thomas: Said Attorney General Mark Brnovich. Upholding the rule of law requires the rejection of erroneous legal arguments and misguided antics designed to delay the administration of justice. I will always stand up for victims, their families, and for our communities.

0:47:09 Lydia: Even Though the victim's mom is trying to to fight for him at this point too. Yeah.

0:47:14 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Even when they didn't do it. But never mind that because he's a fucking Republican. And under the Barry Jones part on this, again, this is their website, like the state, you know, Attorney General website thing. In 1994, Barry Jones murdered his girlfriend's four-year-old daughter. The victim died from, you know, it just goes under all this like crap.

0:47:15 Lydia: Wow, yeah. Right.

0:47:30 Lydia: And as most sensationalist As possible. Yeah.

0:47:33 Thomas: Exactly. Victim died from infection of her organs caused by blunt force trauma inflicted the day before while she was in Jones's care. Jones did nothing to help the little girl. Instead, he lied to friends who were worried about her condition and said she had been examined by paramedics. After she died overnight, Jones drove his girlfriend and the victim's body to the hospital and left them there.

The medical examiner determined that the four-year-old girl had been sexually assaulted before her death, although the Arizona courts had consistently denied Jones's attempt to overturn his convictions, a federal district court granted habeas relief based on new expert testimony he had never presented in state court and concluded that he was entitled to a new trial. The Ninth Circuit denied the state's appeal and agreed with the district court that Jones must be retried or released from prison. So that's their press release.

And there is something I did mean to say. Some version of of those things obviously in that bullshit propaganda is correct, um, but one of the articles Liliana Segura wrote for The Intercept, it has screenshot, it didn't have a video, but as screenshots, and she saw the video of the interrogation, like the first, when he was arrested, and man, it's fucking heartbreaking, like, that's another reason, like, obviously not, like, that's some foolproof way to judge somebody if they're telling the truth or whatever, but like, in my human opinion, he is so consistently professed his innocence and genuinely distraught at what happened, like, genuinely. And and also, consider he's a drug addict, he dropped the mom off with the dead body and they had rushed and left the other kids alone. And so he said he was going to go get the other kids,

0:47:34 Lydia: Okay. Okay. Yeah,

0:49:11 Thomas: You know, cause they'd just rush. And I think he ended up like, he stopped it somewhere, like his relative, I think. And he like, they thought like, He's not doing well. Like he seems something, you know, he's fucking broken up and possibly, you in a mental emergency because of this. And so they gave him something to calm down and he passed out and didn't wake up for a while.

0:49:24 Lydia: Yeah, yeah. Oh, no.

0:49:32 Thomas: Yeah. And so he woke up, he was being arrested. That's his story. You know, if you want to be a Mark Brnovich and say, oh, he's full of shit, it seems to be pretty corroborated. When you look at his actions and words, he seems so broken up. And even today, and this is something I'll be honest, again, acknowledging that it's not as though we can always be perfect judges of like Like who's telling the truth and blah, blah, blah.

Like even in his interviews now, he is so deeply bothered by what happened. Like he still brings her up as like, yeah, I, I think about her every day. She never got to have a life. You know, I wonder what happened? I wonder, like, I still blame myself. He still blames himself. He didn't get her the care she needed. Probably. Even though the mom, by the way, I forgot to say this. The mom got convicted of not first degree murder because, you know? Know, they couldn't prove that she like actively killed the child, but she got convicted of essentially like a third or second or whatever degree murder for not taking her to the hospital for being completely negligent in being on drugs and not even having any idea. Like, keep in mind, we're blaming this guy like, oh, why didn't you bring her to hospital? Why didn't she? Yeah, he's not her dad. Like her mom is

0:49:32 Lydia: Hmm. Yeah? Yeah. Yeah.

0:50:43 Thomas: The caretaker. She did nothing. Absolutely nothing. So as much as ideally somebody would have done something and he's Not Perfect and, you you know, obviously he, he could have done more. She got convicted of murder too. What, something like that. I forget if it was manslaughter or murder, but some level of that and did like eight, 10, 11 years.

0:50:59 Lydia: Wow.

0:50:59 Thomas: I don't know. Something like that. She did a lot of time. Knows, she's out now, but she did quite a lot. And so I just wanted to add that detail that when it, when it comes to like, oh, he didn't care. He left. I Like saw some of these stills from from the video. And I saw a lot of quotes and it's very consistent. It's very consistent. And, and read it as very believably, he's fucking distraught over this, like very distraought. And you see how the police testified as to what it was. And they're like, ah, he was acting total bullshit, you know?

And you're just like, fuck you, man. So that's Brnovich. And so as I read you in that fucking puff piece, press you release on the website, he argues in front of the Supreme Court. That's 2021. So this innocent guy all come this way, going on now almost 30 years of this. And he finally has a breakthrough. By the way, because of the Supreme Court decision in 2012. And here we are merely nine years later from that. Which in Supreme Court years is two minutes. I don't know if you know this, but usually precedent lasts a while.

0:51:21 Lydia: Weird.

0:51:30 Lydia: Yeah Yeah.

0:52:01 Thomas: And the only argument that Arizona, this Brnovich asshole from Arizona has is, nah, we should just trust us because that's kind of how it used to work, essentially. And the Supreme fucking court said, you know what? Yeah, I know we said different nine years ago, five seconds ago. That if you had, one bad lawyer that we gave you, okay, maybe you have remedy. If you had two, that's your fault. I know we went, I know we overturned that because that's fucking stupid, but you know what? No, actually, no. Here's what is a better idea. We're going to rule in favor of this Brnovich asshole in Arizona and say that if you got assigned two bad lawyers that's your fucking fault and so therefore go die, you innocent man.

0:52:47 Lydia: Awful.

0:52:47 Thomas: So this man's death sentence was reinstated for a murder that I very much do not think he committed, that a federal fucking court said, yeah, no, yet these assholes who have taken over our Supreme Court because of Trump decided to to overturn their own precedent from nine years ago to say, no, definitely kill this guy. I think I'm just going to read from, again, Liliana Segura, her coverage of this moment. The headline is Supreme Court guts its own precedent to allow Arizona to kill Barry Jones. Embracing the state's claim. By the way, the state argued, Arizona, essentially that innocence isn't enough. Which, where do we know that from?

0:53:07 Lydia: Yeah.

0:53:27 Lydia: That's from the one that I keep thinking is Scalia. Leah.

0:53:31 Thomas: Exactly. Herrera v. Collins. And they decided, yeah, that's a good argument. That's what this asshole was arguing. Fucking Brnovich and whoever else was involved. Years. I'm just going to read this for a bit. It's good coverage. Not a ton, obviously. I don't want to read the whole thing because they're all, like I said, very well written. Check out these articles. Well written, long articles by Liliana Segura for The Intercept. But I'm going to read a few paragraphs here because I think it does a better job than I would do. Because she is really, this is like, article number seven. She's like, she's really been in this case for for a while too. Almost four years after a federal judge overturned Barry Jones's 1995 conviction, the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated the order directing Arizona to release or retry Jones and reinstated his death sentence. Sentence. The ruling puts Jones on a path to execution in a state that just restarted its death machinery, despite significant evidence that he is innocent. We're The 6-3 decision in Shinvi Martinez-Ramirez was authored by, who do you think? You got a lot of options. I'm

0:53:32 Lydia: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah I

0:54:26 Thomas: Not going to blame you for getting this one wrong. What would be the most ironic thing when I'm doing a series on how racist the death penalty is, it's Clarence Thomas, so in this instance we have a black man on the Supreme Court doing this to a white defendant, oddly enough, but even though that's the case in this one case, by the way, you know I was paired with Shin v. Martinez, because Martinez is the other guy, um, And this decision will obviously have a massive impact on the mostly black people, or disproportionately at least, black people who are on death row. So even though

0:54:27 Lydia: I know. I Thomas. Yeah yeah okay mm-hmm yeah,

0:55:02 Thomas: In this one instance, we get this bizarro world, ironic Clarence Thomas doing this to a white dude, but the actual effect around the entire country is going to be a bunch more black men are killed, essentially, who were probably many of whom will probably be innocent, or at least some number of whom. We'll be innocent. We don't know how many. It's it's going be a lot more than zero.

0:55:16 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah.

0:55:25 Thomas: Okay. Back to It was authored by Justice Clarence Thomas, who wrote that Jones and David Martinez Ramirez, another man on Arizona's death row, should not have been allowed to present new evidence in federal court showing that they had received ineffective assistance of counsel trial. Trial. In Jones's case, the evidence dismantled the state's original theory of the crime, prompting U.S. District Judge Timothy Burgess to vacate his conviction.

"If not for the failures of Jones's trial attorneys," Burgess wrote in 2018, "jurors would likely not have convicted him of any of the crimes with which he was charged and previously convicted." That's that federal ruling. That was good. The Supreme Court's May 23 ruling renders this evidence and Burgess's core findings, which were twice upheld by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, moot. The majority agreed with Arizona's contention that under the 1996 Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, which sharply limits federal appeals, the hearing in Jones' case should never have taken place. "In our dual sovereign system, federal courts must afford unwavering respect to trials in state court," Thomas wrote. "Federal courts lack the competence and authority to re-litigate a a state's criminal case." The decision is a devastating blow to Jones, who always insisted on his innocence, but it also slams the courthouse door on countless incarcerated people whose lawyers failed them at trial. "The court's decision will leave many people who were convicted in violation of the Sixth Amendment to face incarceration or even execution without any meaningful chance to vindicate their right to counsel,"

0:56:18 Lydia: Wow.

0:56:52 Lydia: Awful.

0:56:52 Thomas: Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in a dissent joined by Breyer and Kagan. Sotomayor described Thomas's opinion as perverse and illogical, in part because it eviscerates the court's own 2012 ruling in Martinez v. Ryan, another case out of Arizona. Oh, did I note that? That's funny. I didn't know that was out of Arizona. Might've missed that. That decision created a much needed remedy for defendants who receive poor representation both at trial and in state post-conviction proceedings. Like I said, the double, you again, I give you one bad lawyer, shame on me. I give you two bad lawyers, well, shame on you, which is just fucking evil and insane. Anyway, under the stringent rules governing federal appeals, a defendant who fails to challenge their trial lawyer's performance in state court is forbidden from bringing that evidence to federal court. Does that remind you of anything, too? You didn't bring it up early enough,

0:57:09 Lydia: Oh, yeah it's out of Arizona. Yeah, yeah,

0:57:44 Thomas: So now you don't. Lots of echoes of fucking fucking 1934 Mississippi. But Martinez created an exception. It held that if the failure to develop such evidence in state court was due to a post-conviction lawyer's own ineffectiveness, the defendant should be excused and allowed to bring an ineffective assistance claim in federal court. Obviously, duh, fucking no duh. That wasn't in the article. That's me adding that.

0:57:44 Lydia: Yep.

0:58:07 Lydia: You don't say.

0:58:07 Thomas: There we are. All of that, after all of That. And there's more that what really irked me was also Clarence Thomas did the like super you gruesome descriptions of the crimes and the in the decision as though that has any fucking relevance to the legal issue because they didn't fuck well I'll I don't know about the other guy but Jones didn't do it. I'm gonna go ahead and fucking say it, Jones didn't do it. So it doesn't matter how bad the crime was.

He didn't do it, so describing that to emotionally like fucking elicit this response in us, yeah, and the hearing, he talks about the hearing, he, Thomas, has a huge problem with, remember the the seven day hearing I talked about was an improper burden imposed on the states, you know, the sprawling seven day hearings, quote, included testimony from no fewer than ten witnesses, including defense trial counsel, defense post, council, the lead investigating detective, three forensic pathologists, and more, he wrote. The hearing covered, quote, virtually every disputed issue in the case, including the timing of Rachel Gray's injuries and the cause of her death. The wholesale re-litigation of Jones's guilt is plainly not what Martinez envisioned. And, uh, I was going to rebut that, but, um, I realize now Sotomayor is quoted, so why don't I just

0:58:17 Lydia: Yeah trick people. Mm-hmm. Oh yeah, uh-huh.

0:59:17 Lydia: Oh

0:59:17 Thomas: Do that? Because she's the fucking best. Uh, idiot, that's me, I'm gonna start, I'm gonna do the the pre of it, hey, fucking asshole, quote, that thorough hearing was necessary only because trial counsel failed to present any of that evidence during the guilt phase of the capital case. The district court's hearing was wide-ranging precisely because the breakdown of the adversarial system in Jones's case was so egregious, fucking dot, I love this. Thomas complained, well, it was so long. They had to do, you know, how we were going to

0:59:17 Lydia: Oh, yeah. Seven whole

0:59:48 Thomas: Kill an innocent man?

0:59:49 Lydia: Days.

0:59:50 Thomas: Yeah, and they're going through all this stuff again. Bored, I'm bored, I want to kill him. What the fuck are you talking about, you evil asshole? Fucking disgraceful. Absolutely horrible. That just really got me, his language. Oh, this wholesale, Really. Yeah, because he's an innocent asshole. Because he was assigned ineffective counsel. I get it. Look, I get it. I'm against the death penalty, but let's say I'm entertaining the notion that we have one. I get that you can't get infinite appeals. That's what he's talking about. You shouldn't have the ability to say, yeah, one more appeal because just check everything.

Even though, fuck it, fine. I think you should have it. Okay, whatever. I get that there has to a limit. Otherwise it would go on forever and it would cost a lot of taxpayer money and time and all that clog up the court system. I get it. There has to be a limit, but it, when something like this happens and you've proven that, or at least, you know, made the clear case that you had ineffective assistance of counsel, you didn't get justice. Asshole. It blows my mind. Fucking evil. Absolutely evil. So this man is back ready to die at this point.

0:59:55 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah That's so sad.

1:01:00 Thomas: Yep. And now going to give you shitty as everything is right now. I'm willing to give you a positive fucking ending. Because you know what happened? Arizona was ready, to murder this innocent man. But you know, what fucking happened?

1:01:00 Lydia: God.

1:01:15 Lydia: An election?

1:01:16 Thomas: Yeah. Instead of Republican asshole, Mark Brnovich, got a human being to win. And this is the most inspiring part. Please listen to this. Democrat Chris Mays defeated. And now Brnovich, I think he wasn't the other candidate. I don't know if he was term limited or whatever, but it was going to be another Republican that obviously would have been a piece of shit too. But Chris Mays defeats the Republican rival for this by a couple hundred votes,

1:01:17 Lydia: Oh, good.

1:01:38 Lydia: Right. Oh, wow. Yeah I was gonna ask if it was close.

1:01:48 Thomas: 280 votes. That was Down from a lead of 511 before the obviously mandatory recount, count, because it was so close. And I just want you all to think about that. And because of that, this man was not murdered by the state for nothing of this election, because of 280 extra people and above, the Republican assholes who just want to kill innocent people. 280 votes were the difference of life and death for this man. He would be dead. He would, would be dead now. 280 votes. Democrat. She's not AOC, you know, she actually, it's kind of a funny detail. She's, she used to be a Republican.

She's pretty moderate, you know, but like, that just goes to show you how big the, you don't have to be like a worshiper of Democrats to see that it is fucking mandatory that we elect them over Republicans because even a moderate ex-Republican Democrat was the difference between life and death. And it's funny because she still made him agree to a plea that acknowledged that he was guilty of something for not taking her to the hospital, you know, which is like, all right. Like, it was kind of weird to be like, yeah, she, the mom was already convicted of that. Like it's, it's kind of strange. Like, and I thought it was a great allegory for how, if you just looked at that by itself and like, are you kidding me?

This innocent man, she made him agree that he still was negative, whatever. And it's sort of an allegory for like the moderate Democrat and how everyone's so mad that these Democrats aren't perfectly pure, whatever, AOC, whoever, whatever example, Bernie Sanders. And I'm sitting here looking at that, at that and seeing, okay, he got time served. So I think she smartly in a very toss-up state did a thing that looks a little little bit

1:01:50 Lydia: Wow. Mm-hmm. Mm. Yeah oh yeah yeah Yeah,

1:03:32 Thomas: Less super liberal because as much as you and I are incredibly progressive, the electorate is not us. The electorate ist very mixed. And this is me projecting. I don't know what her reasons are, but I would imagine what she did was she looked at and she said, okay, here's the thing. This doesn't matter because he's already served almost 30 years. So he's just getting time served, which means he's playing to a thing and he's leaving. He's free. And so it's kind of just a free way. Like it's a cost-free way. Yeah, it's a little bit weird, you know, maybe psychologically, but it's a cost free way to still be like, yeah, I'm still a prosecutor who, you know, like I'm not letting all the criminals go for no reason kind of thing, because that's honestly, as much as I personally would love a let the everybody go, like I would love a way progressive prosecutor, I personally, would, that's who I would be if I happen to be a prosecutor, but that's also very bad for elections, especially in red, but it is bad for elections in blue places, actually, which sucks.

1:03:38 Lydia: That's

1:04:30 Thomas: I wish it weren't. But this is a perfect allegory to me because could have been a purist and said, no, she is. She used to be a Republican. She is no better than the benefit. Or you could be one of the fucking heroes that went and voted. And we only had 280 extra, 280 to give. That's that's nothing. That was the difference between this innocent man being murdered from the state and not, and that matters. And that is what I really wanted to get to from this story, that these little things matter. We do such a bullshit thing, which is we make everything about the biggest national issue at all times.

And if you're not fucking a socialist, whatever, like the left, we just kill ourselves on the left. And I want us to not do that. I want to focus on how much better, even the most marginal Democrat is is then The, and it, those increments matter. It's not enough. You don't have to, I know we're all kicking ourselves. Oh, but it's not enough. Yeah, I know. But like this person's life was the difference. And that's just one fucking thing in one place. There's a lot of that. There's a ton of this, this kind of thing, if not this exact thing, things related to this, where those 280 votes made all the fucking difference in the world. Absolutely all the the difference in the world.

This poor guy, I mean, he didn't do it. He didn't do it and he's been in prison for 30 years and this poor guy beats himself up over the fact that this little girl died, who's not even his kid, who was his girlfriend's kid that she abused and didn't look after and he beats himself up. He's not a saint, but you know, he's not that bad of a guy

1:04:50 Lydia: Crazy.

1:05:18 Lydia: Yeah, it's the incremental.

1:06:03 Thomas: And he is a victim. Yeah, and he is free now. He was released June 17th. Funny thing was, he was dumped at a bus station. People didn't know where he was for a while, which is fucking weird because obviously the police and everybody still has to be a piece of shit, like out of the prison, whatever, whoever it is. But he's free. He's free of that, because of That Election. Just, it's remarkable.

1:06:04 Lydia: He's human. Oh, good. Of course. Yep. Wow.

1:06:25 Thomas: When I saw that, I was like, I have to tell this story. This shit matters. Please remember that all of this stuff matters to somebody, maybe a lot of people. And now I want want to lead us back into next episode with our main story. One, let's return back to the apparently barely better, barely worse time, uh, no, I'm exaggerating, but in some ways legally speaking Supreme Court wise, apparently, we'll get to it, but like, go back to 1934, Mississippi, where the court has said this technicality thing that sounds really fucking familiar, doesn't it? That nope, sorry, you three black men still need to die because you didn't fill out the right form at the right time, whatever bullshit, right? So setting up our Empire Strikes Back scenario, remember John Clark?

1:06:47 Lydia: 90 years ago. Yeah.

1:07:00 Lydia: Yep. Yes.

1:07:14 Thomas: Yep, he did his appeal, he lost his appeal and he made a critical mistake. He didn't raise any federal questions in the case, in that appeal. So therefore, he had no right to appeal at this point to the Supreme Court, to the U.S. Supreme Court.

1:07:12 Lydia: Yes. Only lawyer worth a damn. Mm hmm. Mm. Right.

1:07:30 Thomas: Despite our other kind of hero, Judge Anderson, the one who dissented, if you remember, despite Judge Anderson. He kind of tried to do that thing where he like helped him out in the dissent, I don't know if it mattered. But they despite his suggestions that the Kemper Trio's convictions had violated like the actual Constitution kind of thing, that doesn't matter. And Clark, because again, he's not that good of a lawyer, he seems to have been oblivious to this, he didn't realize this because he writes the NAACP and he says, all right, well, we lost, but you know, I'm hoping I can appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. And little does he know, he can't. Then literally collapses, Clark physically collapses quote A quote from his wife, quote, he was a sick man when the judge appointed him to defend the Negroes.

And for that reason, he asked to be excused from the case. Not sure if you remember that. The judge insisted on his defending the clients. And when Mr. Clark entered the case, he put his whole heart and ability in the defense. And even from this alone, Clark or, and also Clark's wife, by the way, are already better to name something after than fucking John Stennis. But anyway, so here's the situation. Our three, Kemper Trio, these three black men who have been beaten and tortured into confession, they have one more thing that can save them. And that is filing something called a suggestion of error in the Mississippi Supreme Court. The only problem, their lawyer has literally collapsed. He is physically

1:07:40 Lydia: Uh huh. Hm. Oh gosh. Yep. Yeah. Jeez.

1:09:00 Thomas: Incapacitated. No one has any money. Once again, quoting Mrs. Clark, quote, the Negroes were the poorest and most illiterate type of of sharecropers. Their families could not, and I believe this, their families could could not raise $5 if all their lives depended upon their doing so. And if that wasn't bad enough, the suggestion of error thing I mentioned had a 15-day deadline to file.

1:09:27 Lydia: No.

1:09:28 Thomas: And that deadline passed.

1:09:30 Lydia: No.

1:09:31 Thomas: So next time on Where There's Woke, we finally meet our main hero of this story. And he fucking rules. God, this guy rules. I cannot wait. We're on part six. When we finally get to meet the guy that I have said multiple times when I've been like, this is fucking amazing, hon. This is fucking, this guy rules. So next time on Where There's Woke. Thanks so much for listening and we'll see you then.

1:10:16 Thomas: I just dropped my, my pick that I fidget with. Damn it. When it fell in something, where is it? Look, I have a system of guitar picks that I fidget with and they're different sizes and I've lost one of the sizes and now I can't continue there it is okay, we're good it's the heavy one. I can, if it was one of the duplicate ones, then I could have made it but like it's specifically the heaviest one. Okay.

1:10:28 Lydia: Uh-oh all is right with the world

1:10:41 Thomas: ADHD. Anyway.

1:10:41 Lydia: Okay yeah