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November 08, 2004
I'm glad we recently had an election for this
I've complained about the Washington State Supreme Court here before. They have given me more ammo to do so again.
High court overturns killer's death sentence
The Washington State Supreme Court overturned the death sentence of Cecil E. Davis yesterday, finding that a juror's glimpses of the defendant's ankle shackles in the Pierce County courtroom may have prejudiced the jury.
In reviewing Davis' case, the majority in the 8-1 decision found the evidence too "overwhelming" to toss out Davis' conviction for aggravated first-degree murder in the slaying of his 65-year-old neighbor, Yoshiko Couch of Tacoma. But it also found that the image of Davis' shackled ankles may have given jurors a "negative inference as to [Davis'] character" and sent the case back to Pierce County for a new sentencing hearing.
So the evidence was good enough for the conviction, but because the guy couldn't keep his leg irons under the table, he gets to live? WTF!?!
The elections here still aren't complete with at least one race too close to call even for me. Whent hat race is decided I'll compare who I voted for here and see how I did.
In the case of the new State Supreme Court Justices though, I'll just say that I chose rather well.
Posted by Nukevet at November 8, 2004 09:44 AM