Suffice to say a grave injustice was willfully perpetrated by the prosecutors and police of Phoenix. Oh, man should they be punished. I've said before that if we're going to have jury trials for death penalty then if the person is later proven to be not guilty/exonerated then the jurors should all have to serve the same sentence they handed out. And the prosecutor also. We have a saying in the oil field "Stop Work Authority" Everyone has that authority in the event of unsafe conditions or actions. If you notice something unsafe and don't do anything then you're an asshole. You don't get punished but you are still an asshole. I feel that a court room should have the same safety feature. At some point this Milke trial got out of hand and it slipped into a fantasy world of television and political pressure and when the entire trial failed to present any evidence that the defendant was guilty...then it's time for a stop work authority by someone, the bailiff, the stenographer, the judge. Someone must've noticed there was absolutely no case, no evidence. And the fact the invented confession was not witnessed, recorded, signed or otherwise authenticated...is alarmingly biased. When something important like that appears manufactured...that is because it was manufactured. Something important like that should have triple redundant authenticity. This confession had no authenticity. None. A cop manufactured it for his own benefit because it fit his agenda.
This Milke case is so bad that I'd say the Judge, the Jury, the entire police force, and the prosecutors, for ignoring their stop work authority, should have cots made up for them to sleep in for the next 24 years in jail....to see how it feels...because this case is the most blatantly fabricated case I've ever seen. Although the Robert Carter case is numbingly awful, this Debra Milke case is even worse because it's so implausible...so totally beyond reason...and there was absolutely no physical evidence of her guilt and when examined even casually it made absolutely no sense and to actually sentence her to death...to go to the absolute extreme where there should not be a shred of doubt, when in this case there wasn't even a shred of suspicion...completely the opposite approach to justice...no more legit than a jealous Puritan minister who got caught beating off behind the horse barn suddenly accusing a melancholy widow of witchcraft because she was seen eating an apple on Sunday. Except Milke was sentenced to die in 1989 and then ignored for 23 years until someone finally thought, "Gee, maybe we should take a closer look at the third woman in the history of Arizona to be sentenced to death...and what's this...the only evidence she masterminded the execution of her 5 year old son is the third party hearsay of one of the guys who did it...and a police investigator who said she confessed conveniently without any recording, notes, signed confession, or witnesses or waiving her Miranda rights...and that cop was the only person on the planet she made a ranting and babbling confessed to and an hour later she gave an interview calmly asserting her innocence. Really? How did that confession get admitted during the trial? How? There was no evidence she made it. Do cops lie? Well it turns out the cop who told this monster lie HAD DONE THE EXACT SAME THING MULTIPLE TIMES BEFORE. He finally got one to stick.
As far as I can see there were two murders:
1) the small boy who was killed by two twisted men.
2) Debra Milke by the state of Arizona.
So who do you punish when an entire justice system commits murder? This is kind of the shit I was getting at in my fake Syria travel advisory post. This case is the kind of thing that raises red flags of more than an inept and broken justice system. It's nakedly corrupt and seen from the outside one can only conclude that a state like Arizona and Texas may have good intentions...but they can not be trusted as a combined entity to protect you. They may imprison or murder you unjustly and there will be no recourse. Ooops. The system was able to murder Debra Milke and other countries should be warned that this is the kind of thing war tribunals are organized for. This is an inexcusable crime against humanity because it was mandated by a state government and ignored by the feds. They are all culpable. If a country like Norway or Canada were to invade the United States on the basis of our clumsy holocaust against innocent bystanders like Carter and Milke...I really couldn't argue with them. All the evidence points to a system that is not merely flawed but is actually homicidal...these aren't justified homicides of guilty people....these are homicides of innocent mothers for pure political gain, badges, promotions, raises. Our justice system rewards results on paper. Cops get promoted. Lawyers become judges and get more money and political power. It encourages and rewards convictions. It doesn't matter who gets convicted. I'm not proud of this justice system. I'm ashamed of it.
In closing prosecutor Noel Levy argued in 1989:
“Now, as she told Detective Saldate*, the reason that she decided to have her son killed
is for this reason: She didn’t want him to grow up to be like Mark Milke. And it isn’t
that she didn’t love the child, it’s that God would take care of the child. She would
simply have this child’s life ended, having prejudged him, have him terminated, and
then he would go up to heaven and God would take care of him..”
is for this reason: She didn’t want him to grow up to be like Mark Milke. And it isn’t
that she didn’t love the child, it’s that God would take care of the child. She would
simply have this child’s life ended, having prejudged him, have him terminated, and
then he would go up to heaven and God would take care of him..”
There are two kinds of reactions to this statement by the ignorant Noel Levy.
1) Damn, whoever he is talking about must be a twisted person. Too bad she was so insane and babbling during that confession that Saldate forgot to record her ranting indictment of God and her son's father and her son. Too bad he didn't take notes of this detailed and specific confession but relied completely on his memory...that had been proven totally flawed numerous times before. Too bad no one else witnessed the confession. Too bad she denied saying any of that before and after the interview with the cop. She must be some kind of criminal genius because she managed to hide all evidence that she was psychopathic and a religious fanatic for her whole life, fooling every single person she knew except the two losers who killed her kid...only breaking down under this incredible policeman's prying intellect...and then immediately pretending to be a grieving mother for the next 23 years on death's row never once mentioning God again. How strong must be her will power!
or:
2) Where is the evidence to support any part of this assertion? Show me something, some behavior, some testimony, some background, some evidence that the mother killed her son because, specifically, she thought God would take care of him. Or, is it possible, that is unsubstantiated speculation, that is also totally and completely implausible coming from this particular defendant who has no history of saying anything remotely similar?
That kind of leaping assertion is something that I would expect from a fuckwad mouth-breather who loves to analyze cases on CNN or writes narcissistic blogs. That's a perfect leap of faith statement that requires nothing more than a good imagination. It makes good fodder for the internet geeks who are boring in real life so they mine the misery of others. But if a Prosecutor's closing statement is the same as a casual internet armchair analyst then WE MIGHT AS WELL LET THE JURY READ CNN COMMENTS AND LET THEM MAKE THEIR DECISION BASED ON THEM.
BUT! If those words are coming out of the mouth of the lead prosecutor...in the closing argument (meaning all his evidence has already been submitted before the jury) and the juror thinks, wait a second, he never mentioned any of those motives until this very minute and while it makes for a very colorful fill-in-the-blank game, IT ACTUALLY SOUNDS COMPLETELY INSANE. SEE? If he's making this kind of magico-religous fanatic argument in his closing statement then he either already submitted countless pieces of evidence that the mother was bat shit crazy, or else HE'S MAKING IT UP AS HE GOES ALONG AND THIS IS THE BEST MOTIVE HE COULD THINK UP FOR HER. It all looks real good on paper but if you step back for two seconds none of what he said took place in the real universe...so he betrayed his oath and knowingly lied to the jury.
See, at that point, because Levy isn't a CNN commenter, it becomes a criminal act. He's manipulating the jury with pure fiction that doesn't pertain to any fact of the case, but is in fact an imaginary story he made up to prove his case. He presented no evidence she was involved because, like Robert Carter, she wasn't involved. But no one stepped in to stop this sham...and there were enough idiots involved to sentence her wrongly to death.
Shameful, indefensible. Until lawyers and cops can be prosecuted for misconduct like this and share the punishment of their victims then you can believe they will continue to fabricate evidence to make themselves look good on T.V. And until a jury is also punishable then you will find idiots who believe them. This is an abomination like you would see under Stalin or Pol Pot. A court doesn't sentence someone to death by accident. It's either because of irrefutable evidence that the individual is beyond redemption, or because of a conspiracy among lawyers, detectives, judges, witnesses and juries to kill an innocent person. That's what happened with Robert Carter and Debra Milke. In my book that's a felony conspiracy to commit murder and needs to be prosecuted.
Please someone get Levy in a chair and ask him how he could justify those closing statements. I'm really amazed the judge allowed that kind of speculative babbling from a lawyer. It wouldn't even be a good closing statement if it had all been true. Notice he makes no mention of evidence. He's speculating about someone else's speculation. A closing statement is supposed to start, "You have seen irrefutable evidence that X did Y." not launch into a religious fantasy about hearsay.
Honestly, if you think I'm being harsh you should read the remarks of the review board who tear Levy a new asshole right after they declared the whole thing a travesty and set Milke free**. If you're a lawyer and not sickened by this case then your name is probably Noel Levy.
*Detective Saldate deserves a special chamber in prison for making a career out of sexual assault, lying under oath, fabricating statements, inventing confessions, ignoring procedure. He's as bad as the two guys who murdered the little boy.
**She's technically scheduled for a retrial but I'll bet sane heads prevail and recognize there was never a case to begin with. Actually, I hope there is a new trial so the state can expose itself as total barbarians again. It's ironic that she'll be awarded millions after she's exonerated...if she'd had just a little bit more money in 1989 she would never have gone to jail in the first place...but when money can buy freedom and poverty sends you to jail then you must be living in America.
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