“Much of the so-called wisdom that has been handed down to us about the workings of the legal system, and the criminal process in particular, has been undermined by experience, legal scholarship and common sense,” Kozinski writes in the Georgetown Law Journal.
Read this summary in Business Insider by Matthew Speiser and Kozinski’s article in the Georgetown Law Review.
“Permanent injunctions following a full trial may be constitutional, if the speech fits within some First Amendment exception, such as perhaps the libel exception. Preliminary injunctions are almost never constitutional, as the Pentagon Papers case shows. And in any event, any injunction would have to be based on a showing that the entire article was indeed within a First Amendment exception — it’s hard for me to see how this could be so.”
Read the article by Eugene Volokh in the Washington Post.
“It’s never simple when science suffers a shakeup. The road to the truth is littered with fallen experts who were disgraced when they tried to disprove—or prove—the common wisdom, be it that the earth revolves around the sun or that witches float. Today’s researchers are fighting to restore logic in the debate over vaccinations, global warming, and the increasingly hazy medical condition called Shaken Baby Syndrome, whose adherents accuse, pursue and prosecute an estimated 250 parents, babysitters and other caretakers each year.”
Read the article by Amy Nicholson in LA Weekly.
“Unsafe? These days, when students talk about threats to their safety and demand access to “safe spaces,” they’re often talking about the threat of unwelcome speech and demanding protection from the emotional disturbances sparked by unsettling ideas. It’s not just rape that some women on campus fear: It’s discussions of rape.”
Read Wendy Kaminer’s op-ed in the Washington Post.
“There is something terribly wrong with a justice system that allows an inordinate amount of power to reside in the hands of one office that not only has no real accountability or oversight, but is insulated from the consequences of its actions by court-granted immunity. And no, I am not talking about Supreme Court justices, but about prosecuting attorneys.”
http://wrongfulconvictionsblog.org/2014/12/08/are-prosecutors-above-the-law/
“To anyone (including this writer) who was in Boston at the time of the attack on April 15th, 2013, and who has remained since, O’Toole’s analysis was little short of laughable. To quote Bob Dylan, “you don’t have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.” It is perhaps not surprising that a judge insistent on keeping control over a high-profile, historic case proves not to be a very good weatherman. But justice should require that a judge control his ego and grant the defendant the legal relief necessary to assure a fair trial.”
http://wrongfulconvictionsblog.org/2014/09/06/new-shaken-baby-syndrome-documentary-the-syndrome/
“Editorial Comment: Of course the promoters of this medical voodoo are not backing down. For them, SBS has been their source of livelihood, notoriety, and power.”
Joseph’s birthday is May 29. He is in a difficult and depressing situation. I know a few cards would brighten his day.
Here is Joseph’s address:
Joseph Lee Allen #A293-486
Belmont Correctional Institution
P. O. Box 540
68518 Bannock Road
St. Clairsville, Ohio 43950
Here are some previous posts about the Smith/Allen case:
https://bobchatelle.net/category/smithallen
-Bob
An editorial by NCRJ Advisor Dr. Susan Robbins. Dr, Robbins reviews the history of the DSM as psychiatry evolved from being psychoanalytically based towards a biomedical model. Robbins says “Each DSM revision attempted to add a patina of scientific discovery, despite the failure to empirically denonstrate major advances in either reliability or validity.” She also points out that “The very fact that diagnoses can be voted in or out, based on little more than the opinions of the persons charged with revising or creating those diagnoses, or as a result of political activism, speaks directly to the ideological and constructivist nature of the diagnostic enterprise.” She expresses concern about social work programs that require a DSM course with a lack of critical thinking about the DSM. Social workers must do more than simply assign a DSM diagnoses. She also aruges that “the continued lack of reliability and validity in DSM diagnoses combined with a narrow biologic etiology also raises etical and practical issues related to its use in research.”
Read the full editorial, posted here with Dr. Robbins’ permission.
Lawyers representing divorced people in custody battles know well that the first charge of child abuse gives the accuser momentum. False charges have become common in this context, even acceptable. A Seattle judge recently acknowledged that charges of molestation against one spouse by the other were false, but explained that they were understandable because the accuser was fighting for custody of the child. The accuser won. Compared to the venomous intensity of custody battles, criminal trials are pastorals.
There have been so many wrongful convictions for child sex abuse over the past 30 years that researchers are able to identify patterns of how false charges are created. The chief method is coercive and suggestive interviews by determined adults who already know what they want to hear. A young child learns by following the direction of grownups. It’s hard to imagine a technique more leading than for the child’s mother to follow her around for days with a camera, selectively recording answers to some, but not all, probes and questions and comments about sex abuse. Only a remarkably insensitive child would be indifferent to her caregiver’s strongest desires; there is no evidence that Dylan Farrow is insensitive. The use of that technique by Mia Farrow doesn’t mean that Dylan was not abused. It just means that Mia Farrow got the answers she wanted, whether or not Dylan was abused. That makes her tape unreliable.
When four-and five-years-olds have testified to impossibilities—being flown to Mexico to be abused and returned back in time to be picked up from daycare, watching their teachers eviscerate animals in the classroom—they cling to those events as if they were real. Ten-year-olds who testify falsely get caught up in the whirl of being a hero/victim, but they know when they go to sleep at night that it really wasn’t like that, and often they eventually recant. Seven-year-olds are somewhere in between. Dylan’s alleged abuse was a chief theme of the house in which she was raised; any counter-story would have been a betrayal of her mother. What should we make of the fact that Dylan still believes that it happened? Not much.
Woody Allen has a long history of keen interest in and involvements with post-pubescent women. Pedophiles don’t. The likelihood of him committing some unspecified form of sexual assault on a young child, especially while engaged in a custody battle, is minuscule. There is nothing that supports the truth of the charges against Woody Allen—not the timing and circumstances of how they came to light, not their investigation, and not the nature of the accused.
Michael R. Snedeker, Esq.
President, National Center for Reason and Justice
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