McCleskey v Kemp: SCOTUS ERROR & LEGAL DECEPTION
From: Dudley Sharp, independent researcher, death penalty expert, former opponent, 832-439-2113, CV at bottom
Preface
McCleskey v Kemp (Georgia) is the infamous race based death penalty case decided by the US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) in 1987.
Nearly, every academic and/or anti-death penalty group either lies about this case or is, willfully, ignorant, just as those in the media world, . . . since 1984/1987.
All who fact check and vet would have known reality in 1984, with Federal District Court Judge Owen Forrester's opinion (1,2) and 2012, at the latest, with Scheidegger's excellent article (2).
I became aware of this systemic fraud, ignorance and/or deception, around 1998..
Can one fail to fact check and vet, accidently? Of course not.
The Baldus' Georgia Study (BS)
The BS, allegedly, proved racism within the death penalty system in Georgia. Not close.
" ... Baldus et al. failed to prove (and the State’s experts succeeded in rebutting) the basic claims made in the Baldus study. They did not just fail; they failed dismally. The Baldus study lay in shreds when Judge Forrester got through with it." (1)
"The best models which (David) Baldus was able to devise (within McCleskey v Georgia (Kemp)) which account to any significant degree for the major non-racial variables, including strength of the evidence, produce no statistically significant evidence that race plays a part in either [the prosecutor’s or the jury’s] decisions in the State of Georgia." (1)
"After a thorough review, Judge Forrester concluded that “the (Baldus) data base has substantial flaws and . . . petitioner has failed to establish by a preponderance of the evidence that it is essentially trustworthy." (1,2)
"The Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, sitting en banc, commended the district court “for its outstanding endeavor” in analyzing the validity of the Baldus study, and there is little doubt that a review of the factual finding that the study was invalid would have been affirmed under the applicable “clearly erroneous” standard." (1)
Read Federal District Court Judge Forrester's full rejection of Baldus' database for McCleskey (2).
The more thorough review is provided by Joseph Katz, who did the methodological review of the Baldus database, which was rife with errors and problems and is what destroyed the Baldus study and was used by the state.
Totally inaccurate,
These two articles, below (4,5), give a good explanation of some core problem with David Baldus, in the McCleskey case and another of his reviews.
I am unaware of Baldus making any efforts to correct these many misconceptions, in McCleskey, in New Jersey or in Philadelphia (4) over the many years that he should have. Despicable.
http://articles.latimes.com/1998/jul/12/opinion/op-2965
(5) See “The Odds of Execution” within “How numbers are tricking you”, by Arnold Barnett, MIT Technology Review October, 1994
https://geocities.restorativland.org/CapitolHill/4834/barnett.htm
