The Weakest Link Standard

[Note: Friends of Justice is a personal blog. I speak only for myself.]

Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard University

“Rosario was convicted based in part on a confession, but the high court accepted a late-arriving medical diagnosis of “delirium tremens” (drug or alcohol withdrawal, the “DTs”) to undermine the credibility of that confession. He was convicted based in part on forensics, but the high court applied new fire science to undermine the reliability of the prosecution’s account. Finally, both the trial judge and the state supreme court applied a standard of review that if applied more often would make it much easier for defendants everywhere to get their convictions overturned.”

Read the article by Andrew Cohen at the Marshal Project.

The National Center for Reason and Justice has long sponsored the case of Victor Rosario.

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