11/9/2021
My Friend & POTUS, JRB,
Yesterday we signed our wills & trust. I’m sure that’s routine stuff for you, but not for us. I was troubled by the legalese we encountered so I am pondering the 4 disturbing legal issues in todays’ papers. There’s that poor guy in Puerto Rico who got $28,081 disability checks that he wasn’t supposed to get. The SCOTUS is going to decide if he has to pay us back. What did your law profs teach you about the “rational basis” test & the idea that when “judgments are rational, and not invidious, the legislature’s efforts to tackle the problems of the poor and the needy are not subject to a constitutional straitjacket?”
The other cases are all in criminal courts. I worry that justice may not be served. The most worrisome involves Kevin Strickland, who has maintained his innocence for the past 43 years. His case is being reviewed at an evidentiary hearing in KC where the prosecutor claims he is “factually innocent” in a triple homicide. The two guys who pled guilty to the crime are already out of prison & claim he had nothing to do with it. The eyewitness who put him at the scene recanted her testimony but died in 2015. The MO AG doesn’t want to let him out. So, we have an innocent Black man who has served time.
In WI we may have a guilty White man who will go free after running around Kenosha with his semi-automatic killing people. According to the NYT, the testimony against him is complex & the situation was so chaotic that his self-defense excuse is plausible. Do we want folks thinking that they are free to go out in public with a gun & use it whenever they feel threatened?
That’s the excuse that those 3 guys who shot Ahmaud Arbery are also providing. I have a hard time understanding how we can end up with such a lopsided jury in that case. How is it that in 2021 those White men are in front of an almost all White jury for their murder of a Black man? What can we do about that?
BYBS,
RCA
PS – Pray for Myanmar!
