Good luck!

You're lucky. I was subjected to about an hour of the awards show last night, against my better judgment. Needed multiple PBRs to muscle through.

PBR?

what are you? 90?

Miley who?

I just think it's a scary precedent and can think of all sorts of situations where it can convict and innocent person.

So a guy gets shot and is dying on the ground. Cops ask, "Hey buddy who shot you?" Dying man replies, "Eddie shot me." He just KNOWS Eddie is the dude because Eddie has had it out for him for a long time. However he was shot from behind and he didn't see the actual shooter but he dies and cops don't get the full story. Eddie is arrested and convicted because a witness to the crime said he did it....although that witness is dead and can't be questioned.

No, but when it's like $8 for a 12-pack and we're in the supermarket, I can be conviced to be cheap.

Jonas brothers...etc. There will be more and they will just keep coming. Once one grows out of the role another one will be put into it. It's plug and play.

And this is obviously nothing new. Can you say The Monkeys and The Partridge Family?

Yeah, but without all the supporting evidence, you don't have a case. So, yeah, it would suck for Eddie being the primary suspect, unless Eddie happens to have the gun that shot the dying man, it's really just an inconvenience. Now I'm not saying that this type of thing couldn't be used to get a falst conviction at some point, but I think the number of times it helps get a correct conviction will far outweigh the number of times it hurts someone.

This is one of the things I hate about our legal system. We get so caught up in the symantics, we forget the spirit.

The facts of the case decided seem like a standard application of the very old "dying declaration" rule, that allows statements of people facing imminent death to be admitted into court (on the quaint assumption that someone who is about to meet his maker will not tell a lie with his dying breath.)

The particular facts of this case don't really bother me, because the dying declaration exception to the inadmissibility of hearsay actually makes a lot of sense.

It is founded in common sense--if somebody shoots you and you are laying there bleeding out, it is exceedingly unlikely that you will falsely accuse someone. You'd obviously want to tell the police who actually shot you, so that the shooter can be punished.

Also, the fact that hearsay is admissible doesn't mean that the case against you can be proved. hearsay statements can be cross examined to a certain extent even if the person who made the statement is unavailable. For example, the officer offering the hearsay statement from the dead guy that "Joe shot me," can be cross examined on whether the dead guy has a grudge against Joe, whether he had blood in his eyes, whether he had adequate opportunity to observe who shot him, etc. etc.

In the hands of a clever defense attorney, a hearsay statement is largely dogmeat, because you can come up with 82,000 things that the officer doesn't know that can undermine the credibility of the dying declaration.

So just because the dying declaration comes in doesn't mean it's game over.

But it's not a simple tally of correct convictions against improper convictions to determine the success of the judicial system.

So if 5 people are rightly convicted and 4 people are wrongly convicted is it a success? I don't think you would say it is. It's my opinion that if you send one innocent guy to jail for every 100 truly guilty you are doing something wrong.

I agree with that you say about the spirit of the law however and the state violates that as much as anyone. The whole three strikes your our thing to me is an example. Sending a guy away for life for three 'minor' offenses is pretty incredible imo. A guy I know turned his son in for stealing audio equipment. It was his third strike. He is now in jail for life...whatever that means (with parole and whatnot).

OK. The problem is, as it pertains to this case, it seems clear that the guy was not lying. But it seems to me that the decision has opened up the number of instances in which it can be used. That is my problem.

To me it's not that cut and dry of a deal to begin with. I mean it did get the the SCOTUS and they felt like it was important enough to rule on.

“Today’s opinion distorts our confrontation clause jurisprudence and leaves it in a shambles,” Scalia wrote.

yeah, the opinion seems interesting.

The majority purports to have created an "emergency" exception to the hearsay rule, which would allow any statement made to the police during the course of an emergency (but not an investigation) into evidence as hearsay.

This would be a major expansion of the hearsay exception.

The case itself may or may not have been cut and dried--there is a lot of caselaw out there on, for example, how imminent your death needs to be for a declaration to be an admissible dying declaration.

With a 6-2 decision, though, it looks like the court took this case for the purpose of creating a new hearsay exception; in which case the case could have been completely straight forward, and simply happened to be the most available case for the court to use to make a new law.

In what part of law did you practice? I'm just curious and not questioning your knowledge by any means (don't let anyone know but I think your SUPER ****ing smart).

For the first 5 years I was in practice, i did criminal law almost exclusively. I worked as both a defense attorney and as a prosecutor.

Later, I went into civil litigation. My particular specialties became shipwreck law and utility regulatory litigation (I usually represented people/entities whose property was in the proposed path of high voltage electrical transmission lines).

At the end of my career, I owned a firm with 8 lawyers working for me. They practiced in workers compensation, eminent domain, immigration, domestic law, corporate transactions, bankruptcy and criminal defense, and I was conversant in all of those areas of law as well.

edit: i forgot that I did a fun stint as a specialist in ballot access laws.

^ This deserves some lovin'...

I have no opinion on this legal stuff, but PBR is probably the #1 drink of hipsters, so the what are you 90 argument doesn't hold!

(but srsly, it's like 3 or 4 bucks for a tall boy at most bars that are charging 4 bucks min for any other 12 oz vessel!)

The college mantra I remember hearing was: "what is our favorite kind of beer? FREE BEER! What is our second favorite kind of beer? CHEAP BEER!"

There's a bar, not too far from us, offering $3 pints of PBR. I'm not proud, but I've been known to order them when we're in there.

re: hipsters - I agree, but being called a hipster (or hipster-like substitute) would be grounds for a PBR being thrown at you, imo.

Yessir!

Our college mantra (and actually since has turned into a life mantra of sorts) was "if it's free, it's for me".

Anthony Bourdain in Haiti.... back in an hour.

I enjoy his show

I kind of like it, but his show from Beirut was epic!

One of my favorites... Although the Haiti show is heartbreaking if you dig little kids.

Both were great episodes - the aborted show, and when they returned to do what they couldn't on the first go-round.

Actually about ready to go watch a bunch of backlogged episodes that we never got around to, with the new season starting and all - last things to watch on the DVR.

I'll never be determining my choices by hipsters.

You can get any other cheap beer for $8 or so for a 12pack. PBR just is nasty. I tried it once, was one of the worst beers I've ever had:

- Red Dog
- PBR
- Beast
- Bud Light Lime
- Icehouse
- Fosters

Not in NYC, you can't. I think that you're being unnecessarily harsh on the PBR.

And none of the beers in your list are worse than Genny Cream Ale.

Or Golden Anniversary, now that I think about it.

i think PBR is the best tasting cheap cheap beer around, throw some names out and maybe i'll change my mind