Wrongfully convicted man freed after 23 years

After Spending 23 Years in Prison for a Murder He Didn’t Commit, Ricky Kidd Is Going Home – Reason.com - Zuri Davis & Joe Seyton:

August 15, 2019 - "Ricky Kidd was charged in 1996 for a double murder that he did not commit ... and he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. On Wednesday, Judge Daren L. Adkins of Missouri's 43rd Judicial Circuit granted Kidd habeas corpus relief. After 23 years behind bars, Kidd will finally get to go home a free man, unless state prosecutors opt to retry him within 30 days of the Adkins' ruling....

"Police in Kansas City, Missouri, received a call in 1996 after neighbors believed they heard gunshots. Upon investigation, the lifeless bodies of George Bryant and Oscar Bridges were discovered at Bryant's property. An anonymous tip, which was likely called in by those connected to the crime, named Kidd as a suspect. That tip — and a number of Brady violations committed by the prosecutor — sealed Kidd's fate.

"Multiple witnesses attested that around the time of the shooting, Kidd was driving to the Jackson County Sheriff's Office at Lake Jacomo, Missouri, to apply for a gun permit [but] Kidd's alibi was not enough to save him from a sloppy police investigation. Nor did it convince the Jackson County lead prosecutor, ... Amy McGowan, [who] acknowledged in a 2017 deposition that 'there is no physical evidence tying [Kidd] to the crime scene that I recall.'

"McGowan did not disclose the depositions of Gary Goodspeed Sr. and Gary Goodspeed Jr., both of whom are now considered 'viable alternative suspects' in the murders of Bryant and Bridges, according to Adkins' ruling. Kidd's lawyers have spent years arguing that this was a Brady violation that ultimately helped doom Kidd.

"Though Kidd was sentenced to die alone in a cell, he had the Midwest Innocence Project (MIP) in his corner. Thanks to that group's years-long effort, Kidd received a Rule 91 hearing in April, which allowed him one final shot at habeas corpus relief.... On Wednesday, Adkins ordered the state of Missouri to release Kidd from prison.

"'Based on a careful consideration of the record and these proceedings, this Court finds that the evidence is clear and convincing that Kidd is innocent of the murders of George Bryant and Oscar Bridges,' Adkins wrote in his 107-page decision.....

"'If anything, Ricky's case shows just how hard it is to correct an injustice,' Tricia Bushnell, executive director [of] the MIP and a member of Kidd's legal team, told the AP. 'It shouldn't take 20 years to bring a man home. Ricky's case is solved. We know who committed this crime,' she added.... And even if he does get to come home, which seems likely, there's no getting back the 23 years Kidd lost while incarcerated."

Read more: https://reason.com/2019/08/15/after-spending-23-years-in-prison-for-a-murder-he-didnt-commit-ricky-kidd-is-going-home/
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Libertarian makes SCOTUS case for Kavanaugh

Here’s The Libertarian Case For Brett Kavanaugh’s Nomination | The Federalist - Ilya Shapiro:

July 29, 2018 - "While Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court has been warmly received on the Right, libertarians haven’t been uniformly thrilled. The night of the announcement, Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI) tweeted that it was a '[d]isappointing pick, particularly with respect to his #4thAmendment record,' also mentioning 'government surveillance' as an area where Americans can’t afford a 'rubber stamp.'

"A few days later, my Cato Institute colleague Matthew Feeney did a critical dive into Klayman v. Obama, where the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit rejected ... a 2015 challenge to the National Security Agency’s telephony-metadata collection. Kavanaugh wrote separately to say the program passed constitutional muster.... But should this be that big a worry?... this ... has likely been superseded by Carpenter v. United States, where the Supreme Court this past term ruled that police need a warrant to access cellphone location data....

"Kavanaugh has both rejected executive supremacy in favor of judicial review and praised Justice Antonin Scalia’s dissent in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld (2004), which argued that the military can’t detain U.S. citizens absent a congressional suspension of habeas corpus.

"Kavanaugh [has also] lauded Scalia’s role as the court’s 'most tireless advocate for the right to trial by jury [under the Sixth Amendment].' Accordingly, in United States v. Moore (2011), Kavanaugh found that a criminal defendant’s Confrontation Clause rights had been violated when the government introduced Drug Enforcement Agency reports at trial without allowing the defendant to confront the report’s author....

"Kavanaugh has also been a leading advocate of interpreting statutes to incorporate robust mens rea requirements, protecting individuals from criminal sanction unless the government establishes a 'guilty mind'.... [I]n United States v. Burwell (2012) ... he argued that a defendant could not face a mandatory 30-year sentence for carrying a machine gun during a crime because the government had not proven that he knew the weapon to be a machine gun.... [In]  United States v. Williams (2016) ... he commended a majority opinion that reversed the conviction of a gang member involved in a hazing ritual 'to underscore the critical importance of accurate instructions to the jury on mens rea requirements'....

"Kavanaugh dissented from a decision upholding the Securities and Exchange Commission’s broad theory of liability in enforcing fraud laws against a broker who transmitted a fraudulent statement dictated by his boss. Last month, the Supreme Court agreed to review the case (although of course Kavanaugh will be recused from it if he is confirmed).

"All this goes without mentioning other issues ... from the Second Amendment — he would’ve struck down DC’s gun-registration requirement and ban on semi-automatic rifles, using an historical rather than a 'tiers of scrutiny' approach — to a skepticism of broad judicial deference (Chevron, Auer, etc.) to executive agencies. As he repeated at his nomination ceremony, 'the Constitution’s separation of powers protects individual liberty.'"

Read more: https://thefederalist.com/2018/07/29/heres-libertarian-case-brett-kavanaughs-supreme-court-nomination/
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See also: Brett Kavanaugh and due process

Trump protests leave this libertarian speechless

Speechless in 2017 (On the Banks) - Bretigne Shaffer:

January 19, 2017 - "I’m a libertarian. I’ve been surrounded by people who don’t agree with me for as long as I can remember and it has never occurred to me to isolate myself from everyone because of our political differences.... To me, you’re all a bunch of fascists. But I’ve somehow learned to live with you.

"For me, watching people unravel over this election has been instructive.... I understand that a lot of people are worried, upset, even frightened over the prospect of a Trump presidency. Good. They should be. But they should have been worried eight years ago, or at the very least, four years ago.

"I was worried four years ago. And I was worried eight years ago. I tried in vain to get my Obama-supporting friends to see what I saw, but with very few exceptions (which I appreciated, thank you) I was met with silence, accused of mean-spiritedness or just told that I should 'give him a chance'....

So in case you (like some of my friends) somehow missed out on what’s been happening over the past eight years, let me catch you up:

1. We no longer have a Fourth Amendment, nor the right of habeas corpus (you remember: it was kind of the foundation of our justice system). Yes, the demise of these fundamental protections has been a long time coming, but President Obama delivered the death blow when he gave himself (and all future presidents) the right to imprison indefinitely or even assassinate any human being on the planet with no due process whatsoever.

"Number One should be enough.... But, because I know it won’t be enough, I’ll continue…

2. Obama has bombed more countries than George W. Bush did, and his drone strikes have killed more than six times as many people as those under Bush, according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (killing unintended victims 90% of the time.)
3. He has given himself (and all future presidents) the power to wage war without Congressional approval.
4. He has greatly expanded the mass surveillance of American citizens.
5. He put in place a statist health insurance mandate that has sent insurance premiums skyrocketing.
6. He has continued the same brand of crony capitalism and debt expansion of the previous administration....

"So as I watch my friends and thousands of other Americans gather together to protest the inauguration, I find myself a little speechless. It cannot be that all of these people only see evil when it wears the other team’s uniform. It cannot be that they are more upset by offensive speech than by a man claiming the right to kill any human being on earth at his whim. These things simply cannot be. And yet it sure looks like they are.

 "I love my friends. I share many of their concerns (or rather, it seems they have recently come to share some of mine) and I don’t think less of them because of our political differences. But after eight years of deafening silence about these concerns, their newly discovered outrage has no credibility with me."

Read more: http://bretigne.typepad.com/on_the_banks/2017/01/speechless-in-2017.html
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Do chimpanzees have habeas corpus rights?

Chimpanzee Rights Get a Day in Court | WIRED - Brandon Keim:

May 27, 2015 - "More than a year after the starting fight for legal personhood for the research chimpanzees Hercules and Leo, the apes and their lawyers got their day in court. At a hearing in Manhattan on Wednesday, a judge heard arguments in the landmark lawsuit against Stony Brook University, with a decision expected later this summer. At stake: the question of whether only human beings deserve ... rights.

"A decision could set a precedent for challenging, under human law, the captivity of other chimpanzees — and perhaps other species. It’s a radical notion, and many legal experts doubted whether the lawsuit, one of several filed late in 2013 by the Nonhuman Rights Project, would ever reach court.

"But Justice Barbara Jaffe decided to consider the arguments. 'The law evolves according to new discoveries and social mores,' she said while presiding over the hearing. 'Isn’t it incumbent on judiciaries to at least consider whether a class of beings may be granted a right?'

"Jaffe posed that question to New York assistant attorney general Christopher Coulston, who represented the university, where the two chimps are housed. Coulston had argued that Jaffe was bound by the previous decisions of two appellate courts, which had ruled that other Nonhuman Rights Project chimps didn’t qualify for habeas corpus, the legal principle that protects people from illegal imprisonment.

"Both those decisions are controversial. In one, judges decided that habeas corpus didn’t apply because the chimp would be transferred from one form of captivity to another — in this case, a sanctuary. But illegally-held human prisoners have been released to mental hospitals, and juveniles into the care of guardians.

"In the other appeals court decision, judges declared that chimps are not legal persons because they can’t fulfill duties to human society. But that rationale arguably denies personhood to young children and mentally incapacitated individuals, as several high-profile legal scholars, including Constitutional law expert Laurence Tribe, pointed out. He filed a brief on behalf of the Nonhuman Rights Project, saying the court 'reached its conclusion on the basis of a fundamentally flawed definition of legal personhood.'"

Read more: http://www.wired.com/2015/05/chimpanzee-rights-get-day-court/
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