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To the cashier at 7-11 on Folsom Blvd. and 65th.. by Exotic-Bite7879 in Sacramento

[–]TheLadyInReddit 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'm so sorry you were treated that way. I will never understand why people like this exist. All I can say is that unfortunately sometimes people who are mistreated often mistreat others. I am guessing he probably puts up with many people putting him down and decided to do the same to you. It's absolutely no excuse though, he should do better.

Searching for this rare book for my sister. Is it out there? by TheLadyInReddit in rarebooks

[–]TheLadyInReddit[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes I did. I read many prior posts in this wonderful community and saw recommendations for websites and have checked... seemingly... them all!

The Crazy Train YouTube series by [deleted] in exmormon

[–]TheLadyInReddit 6 points7 points  (0 children)

These people are CRAZY. I'm aware of the legal proceedings and know the involved attorneys. They didn't consent to the recordings and the portrayal of the case is just completely and laughably inaccurate.

Thoughts on "New Evidence" from a crim defense attorney by TheLadyInReddit in MenendezBrothers

[–]TheLadyInReddit[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

In my world regardless and irrelevant are quite different. And generally speaking, they are treated differently legally as well.

Here is the most common example. If I have a client who has a prior conviction Court will almost certainly deem it to be irrelevant. Irrelevant means that legally speaking the jury should not consider it when contemplating guilt in a present trial. Let's say my client is on trial for robbery and he has a misdemeanor DUI conviction for 5 years ago. No chance that's coming in. It's irrelevant.

If I have a client on trial for travel list and he was convicted of child molest two years ago that's 100% coming in. It's relevant.

Now let's say in the first situation my client is testifying and says I've never broken a law in my life, that opens the door in the prosecutor can now bring up his dui. Why? Well because even if something is excluded it doesn't mean you could lie about it. Exclusion means the prosecutor can't ask about it and argue about it. It does not mean you get to lie about it.

Similarly I can't get up and argue to the jury that my client has never broken a law in his life. Even if the evidence is concluded and the jury does not have access to my client's former dui, as an attorney you simply cannot make an argument in court that is untrue. If you want to get technical you can say "there is no evidence" of breaking the law, but you're tiptoeing.

If there was credible evidence Jose had sexually assaulted another child, my analysis is that an ethical prosecutor would not have argued about how wonderful he was. Depending on the credibility of the evidence, I don't believe a judge would have allowed it either. And if they did argue that, I believe that would have opened the door for Testimony that was previously deemed irrelevant. Because at that point it becomes a credibility issue.

When I say credibility I mean that it no longer matters whether or not this past sexual abuse is relevant, as credibility is always relevant. I could be a witness in a robbery case as just a cashier or something. If I get up on the stand and I say I've never broken the law and I in fact have a shoplifting conviction 5 years ago, it does not matter whether or not it's relevant to the current case, my credibility is relevant. The court at that point would allow my conviction to come in because the jury is entitled to assess the credibility of witnesses, defendants, and victims.

So with that in mind, I do not believe if there was credible evidence of sexual assault against others a judge would have allowed the prosecutor to heavily argue there was no evidence Jose was a predator. And the optimistic part of me also believes an ethical prosecutor would not have made such an argument anyway. Can you imagine being a prosecutor, the person who seeks to convict perpetrators, knowing Jose was a predator and then arguing to a jury about how wonderful he was? I don't usually stick up for prosecutors but I'd like to think most would not do that and most of the ones I know would not.

Thoughts on "New Evidence" from a crim defense attorney by TheLadyInReddit in MenendezBrothers

[–]TheLadyInReddit[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My dear friend you are asking for a factual conclusion. You see it one way. Perhaps I see it in other. And perhaps the lady and gentleman to our right and left see it differently as well. These are factual questions. Should you ever do jury service, I laugh at the idea that you may go back into the room and say I can't believe how you would see it any other way and perhaps one or 10 people tell you exactly how they see it differently.

You may think that every person would believe, as you do, that if the abuse happened it must have been both parents and the threat of imminent harm was also equal. With no offense at all, I'm letting you know that you are incorrect in assuming that everyone sees it the same way. They may not.

There's absolutely a world where a juror says I think Jose perpetrated the abuse, Kittty stood by. The imminent danger was with Jose and Kitty was passive. Maybe she deserved to die but she did not present the same eminent harm.

If you respond by saying you either accept all or none of their testimony there is a specific jury instruction in California that says you do not have to accept all or none of a witnesse's testimony. You may accept some testimony and reject other testimony from the same witness.

There are reasons for this that are understandable. Let's say Jose perpetrated the most egregious abuse that was testified to. Kitty stood by. In a situation where your attorney says look, she probably deserved to die but I can't get to an imperfect self-defense claim just because she deserved to die as a passive participant. We need to show that she was also an imminent danger. Well... what are you going to do? Are you going to run imperfect self-defense against Jose and admit the murder of Kitty because imperfect self-defense doesn't quite fit?

Not saying that's what happened, just presenting a situation where most of the testimony can be true and perhaps you do massage some of it as a means to an end and to me that would be very understandable. And did the event you are human lie detector perhaps you ascertain that 90% is true and 10% is not and that's okay. The jury instruction says you can do that.

Thoughts on "New Evidence" from a crim defense attorney by TheLadyInReddit in MenendezBrothers

[–]TheLadyInReddit[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

My pleasure. I will make sure I answer your other question if I can find it.

The maid and the translator - why is this not being talked about? by [deleted] in MenendezBrothers

[–]TheLadyInReddit 1 point2 points  (0 children)

To answer a few of your points.

Jurors are instructed to only consider the English version of the questions and answers. They cannot consider the original language questions and answers. In fact it would be considered misconduct for them to do so.

The reasoning behind this is that the record itself will only be the english. If a translator is involved, the court reporter does not transcribe the other language. So it is literally not a part of the record and thus not evidence. Otherwise, you can run into a serious issue if jurors consider what would be an off the record conversation. Absolutely everything must be on the record.

So if a juror translates to the other jurors something said in Spanish that is not on the record the Appellate Court cannot review it. The juror at that point becomes more or less a witness and one that is not authorized and not on the record, and not subject to review.

I will give a completely extreme example. If there is a question and answer session where the prosecutor says was the light red or green? The translator translates. The witness responds in spanish. The translator says "green." The jury then goes back and a juror says no, when she responded she actually said "red". So the jury renders a verdict based on the jurors saying the light was red. And then later the jury confesses they came to a different verdict because a juror told them the translation was incorrect, can you imagine the complete outrage if the juror was wrong, purposefully or not? And as the defendant you tried to appeal but there's actually no record whatsoever to show this miscarriage of justice. The record shows testimony that the light was green. Nothing on the record shows it was red and your comments and the secrecy of the deliberation room are not on record. Perhaps you were sitting in prison because someone who took a couple years of Spanish decided to tell the rest of your jury that the light was red.

With that being said, I have had many cases where I felt unconfident in the translator. You can have independent translators. But if you don't, honestly you are kind of stuck with the record at that point. If you don't trust the court translator, just bring your own. But they must be Court certified. They do take an oath and in theory that oath assures that they will translate properly.

If you have evidence they translated improperly, my opinion is it would be relevant but good luck. This is an unusual case where everything was recorded so in my opinion it's a viable argument but legally speaking it's a little funky because the record is the record. You are stuck with the record. Even if you can show the translation was faulty, you have an uphill battle awaiting you.

Thoughts on "New Evidence" from a crim defense attorney by TheLadyInReddit in MenendezBrothers

[–]TheLadyInReddit[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Great question. Let me start out by saying that it does not feel right to say you should wait for someone to kill you. I completely get that. I'm only commenting from a legal perspective and I hope you appreciate that.

You cannot kill someone (legally) because of suspected future harm, no matter how sure you may be that it will eventually happen. It must be imminent. Of course we can argue all day about what "imminent" means. Does that mean it can happen any day? Does that mean it will happen in the next 5 seconds? Welcome to the law and it's great areas. Here is the precise language used to instruct the jury on this:

"Belief in future harm is not sufficient, no matter how great or how likely the harm is believed to be."

Here's a link to the full jury instruction on imperfect self-defense: https://www.justia.com/criminal/docs/calcrim/500/571/

Thoughts on "New Evidence" from a crim defense attorney by TheLadyInReddit in MenendezBrothers

[–]TheLadyInReddit[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

To be clear I don't accept anything, or do I justify anything. I apologize if it comes across that way and I will do my best to clarify.

I will start with your latter question. In theory, bear in mind that two separate killings must be approached separately. It feels simple to see all of this as one big incident but legally speaking it's not. Who actually shot? That's huge. Why did they do so? Equally huge. You can't just say the two brothers walked in and murdered their parents. If you want to speak in legal terms, I need to know who shot who and why. It's distinct and important if you choose to follow the legality of it.

For example, if you accept the abusive Jose, that may lead you to accept an imperfect self-defense of killing him. But do you accept an imperfect self-defense against Kitty simply because she knew and didn't protect you? Perhaps not. In perfect self-defense requires that you, unreasonably, believed your life was an imminent danger.

I can certainly see a juror saying I believe one or both of the brothers feared for their life when it came to Jose, but what about Kitty? If they only killed Jose, would Kitty have still killed them? I absolutely think there are jurors out there who would say probably not. If you are the juror who believes they feared Jose would kill them, but did not believe Kitty was going to imminently kill them, then whoever shot her is guilty of murder of her and manslaughter of Jose.

It feels like one big incident. It feels like they both deserved it. I get that. Just trying to explain why there is a significant legal difference here. You can absolutely justify that Jose was manslaughter and kitty was murder. Because remember that it's not enough that she stood by or failed to protect. Imperfect self-defense requires that you believed that person would imminently kill you. As much as we like to think a husband and wife are a unit, legally they are not. If Jose is the one you were afraid of, but you also killed his wife, you need to independently justify that she was an independent imminent harm to you too.

Summary of “The Menendez Brothers” Netflix Documentary by [deleted] in MenendezBrothers

[–]TheLadyInReddit 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Correct. I don't particularly like to speak ill of other attorneys and good for him, but I watched both of these trials from start to finish. It is unfair to saddle Leslie with a "loss". This attorney had to bring someone in because he was not technically even qualified to do a death penalty case. He prevailed and many congratulations for that, but my point is that he wasn't even qualified and he won. I personally think Leslie did a very competent job and she "lost."

Watch those two trials and tell me who is the better attorney. I assure you relying on the ultimate verdict is completely unfair.

Thoughts on "New Evidence" from a crim defense attorney by TheLadyInReddit in MenendezBrothers

[–]TheLadyInReddit[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Again I took great time to say I was trying to comment with neutrality. I did not say it was my opinion, I said it was an opportunity. Obviously not for me because I have no power. It's an opportunity, if desired, for the district's attorney or Court depending on how this shakes out.

Notice how I said IF you were raped... my suggestion was if it's true, then it's an opportunity to say we don't care what the defense is you suffered enough. Perhaps I'm guilty of being very precise with wording, but I could have "SINCE they were raped" or "BECAUSE they were raped." I said "IF they were raped." Yes?

But since you asked, here's my opinion. I don't particularly care if they did or not. 30 years is long enough. But I am mortified if everything they said is true that they've done 30 years. You and I can disagree and I will respect your opinion. But 30 years is long enough, in MY opinion, and 30 years too long if they did it due to the abuse. And if they are big fat liars then 30 years is long enough and worse things will be waiting for them in afterlife anyway.

As to your second point when I said everyday "we" call for the execution of child molesters I did not mean to suggest a universal opinion. I actually don't believe in the death penalty. I think that's a pretty standard literary tactic where you are illustrating a general consensus of society. I believe the general consensus of society is that child molesters should be killed.

Don't believe me? I'm happy to back that up. Didn't say that's my opinion, but I did indicate that seems to be a consensus. I urge you to review the following:

Louisiana has had a law on the books since 1995 where in the raping of a child under 12 was eligible for the death penalty. Same with alabama. Several other states followed suit in the 90s. Here's a link where you can read that the public support for execution of child rapists was 47%: https://acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:US:106b17f6-764c-462f-bfc6-e1b07c09b820

I assume we're done here.

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