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Lithwick on the Hood Case

By Steve Hall

Her latest Newsweek column is online, "Courtly Love: Why an affair fails the 'ick' test."  It's a must-read.Hood has already been granted a new sentencing hearing because the Texas appeals court has acknowledged that the jury instructions were improper, but prosecutors say they will again seek the death penalty. In any event, resentencing Hood doesn't resolve the fundamental problem with the case. The issue here is whether any reasonable person would believe that a criminal trial at which one's prosecutor and judge are secretly in love could ever be fair. And that's the issue the courts keep refusing to address.Last year the Supreme Court handed down a blockbuster opinion in Caperton v. Massey, a case testing whether a justice on West Virginia's highest court should have recused himself from hearing an appeal in which one of the parties?Don Blankenship of A...continue to full post

Full post as published by StandDown Texas Project on April 22, 2010 (boomark / email).