Shane Armstrong

My latest: a bleary-eyed morning's musings on this world so many of us feel we must muddle through. May it bring you some peace if you feel alone and lost in a world of gray.

@IanRunkle @dissidentwest I feel like we're saying the same thing different ways. Your job is absolutely to defend your client, I'm not arguing that. I'm just saying that whether or not a conviction happens is immaterial to your duties. Sorry if that's getting lost in translation somehow.

@SetantaDArc @dissidentwest If I can show someone is innocent at trial, that is absolutely my job. They are not guilty until proven guilty. If I can prove otherwise, they are not guilty.

Has there ever been a case where a defense attorney was just overwhelmed with guilt for defending a client that was too evil to defend? Or are they all sociopaths?

@IanRunkle @dissidentwest My point was that it's not your job to prove or argue that someone guilty is innocent. It's your job to either prove the prosecutors don't have a sufficient case to prove guilt, or if they do, it then becomes your job to defend the guilty party's rights during sentencing.

@IanRunkle @dissidentwest Sure, innocent until proven guilty, they do have to prove it to the standard of the court in question. That's a core part of the process. Protecting their rights means defending them from unjust and undue scrutiny, lies, and misrepresentations and anything else they may try.

@ChrisRGun @SecDuffy I mean, if the merger allows Spirit and Jetblue together to be net more competitive and maintain their routes against larger competitors like AA, United, Etc., it means competition stays broader rather than shrinking, as it now will do as no one will service Spirit's routes.

@SecDuffy How does preventing a merger result in less competition? Are you braindead?

🚨 THANK A DEMOCRAT 🚨 JOE BIDEN AND PETE BUTTIGIEG bragged about blocking the JetBlue–Spirit merger… The very deal that could have SAVED Spirit Airlines THE RESULT: ❌ LESS COMPETITION ❌ CUSTOMERS SCRAMBLING ❌ EMPLOYEES LOSING JOBS YOU CAN’T MAKE THIS UP

@SashaWe15747849 @ketchupcourtH @IanRunkle @dissidentwest I don't think it serves imdividuals or society to be dishonest. Call me naive or stupid if you want, but building a legal system that relies on or celebrates lies and liars erodes public trust in the legal system over time. Society grows both more dishonest and more atomized.

@SashaWe15747849 @ketchupcourtH @IanRunkle @dissidentwest I never said I am okay with it, I'm saying that is the state of the world, and it is that way because as a society we reward dishonesty and victimhood. "Using tricks at trial" i.e. lying about evidence is one of those self-same ways that dishonesty can be rewarded.

@SashaWe15747849 @ketchupcourtH @IanRunkle @dissidentwest It is a moral stain on society to celebrate obviously guilty criminals walking free, and the innocent inevitably pay the price when the guilty are paid too much clemency as we're currently seeing in many cities in the US with lax penalties on those who reoffend.

@SashaWe15747849 @ketchupcourtH @IanRunkle @dissidentwest I understand law is messy and not that cut and dry, but I don't like world where we're celebrating R. Kellys and OJ Simpsons and the like as though people getting away with crimes off technicalities is a good thing

@SashaWe15747849 @ketchupcourtH @IanRunkle @dissidentwest Well sorry, but you're doing a terrible job of making a compelling hypothetical. Your entire premise is based on the defense having no way to offer evidence about the case to exhonerate the defendant. If all of your evidence is somehow inadmissible, you've fucked up as counsel.

@SetantaDArc @ketchupcourtH @IanRunkle @dissidentwest Because I've tried criminal cases and you have no idea what you're fucking talking about.

@SashaWe15747849 @ketchupcourtH @IanRunkle @dissidentwest If a woman I had sex with wanted to ruin me with a rape accusation, it wouldn't matter if she filed a report. She could announce it on twitter and ruin my life without ever having the police involved, we have a decade+ of evidence of that at this point.

@SashaWe15747849 @ketchupcourtH @IanRunkle @dissidentwest Then presumably she has made statements about how he caused the bruising. Either way, we're sitting here trying to contrive an ever more ridiculous hypothetical to prove the merits of your argument

@SashaWe15747849 @ketchupcourtH @IanRunkle @dissidentwest If you have reason to doubt her testimony as the only witness to the alleged crime which she has already lied about, you cannot reasonably convict beyond reasonable doubt. If there is no other tertiary evidence of the crime to suggest I did it, it is more likely a fabrication.

@SashaWe15747849 @ketchupcourtH @IanRunkle @dissidentwest If there's no proof there was any struggle, there's no proof of force, and her story falls apart as she contradicts and changes her story from being about me forcing her to have sex to being coerced, at which point we have it that she's already lied about what happened.

@SashaWe15747849 @ketchupcourtH @IanRunkle @dissidentwest Presumably my defense would be that I was no where near the woman in question because I don't go around having physically abusive sex, commiting battery, or raping people, and then to ask if a rape kit was taken or if there were any witnesses who saw us together?

@SetantaDArc @ketchupcourtH @IanRunkle @dissidentwest You will be arrested, and charged with a crime. If your defense is that the sex was consensual, how are you going to explain the bruises all over her body? You know for a fact that they were caused by another person and that his DNA was found inside her. Not admissible.

@SashaWe15747849 @ketchupcourtH @IanRunkle @dissidentwest I understand your larger point about inadmissibility, I just find the idea of making absurd or illogical arguments that distort facts to be a bad way to handle law, both for the prosecution and the defense. Winning the case being more important than the truth is wrong to me.

@SashaWe15747849 @ketchupcourtH @IanRunkle @dissidentwest Okay, but prosecutors also don't tend to go in on rape charges at all unless there's overwhelming evidence to support a conviction, precisely because it's so hard to prove. This is also a big reason why rapes have such a low report rate and an even lower conviction rate.