"Scalia Twisted My Words"

[rucky]

Scalia twisted my words
Criminologist says his work was used to reach its opposite conclusion in Hudson.
By Samuel Walker, SAMUEL WALKER is professor emeritus of criminal justice at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. He has written 13 books on policing and civil liberties, and he served as a consultant to the Justice De
Los Angeles Times; June 25, 2006


A FRIEND OF mine e-mailed me last week with some exciting news — the Supreme Court had cited one of my criminal justice policy books in an important, late-term decision. My law professor friends tell me that being mentioned by the court is a huge deal. And my 93-year-old mother in Cleveland will certainly be impressed that her son has finally done something worthy of note.

Alas, as I surfed the Net for news about Hudson vs. Michigan, my excitement quickly turned to dismay, then horror. First, I learned that Justice Antonin Scalia cited me to support a terrible decision, holding that the exclusionary rule — which for decades prevented evidence obtained illegally by police from being used at trial — no longer applies when cops enter your home without knocking.

Even worse, he twisted my main argument to reach a conclusion the exact opposite of what I spelled out in this and other studies.
The misuse of evidence is a serious offense — in academia as well as in the courts. When it's your work being manipulated, it is a violation of your intellectual integrity. Since the issue at stake in the Hudson case is extremely important — what role the Supreme Court should play in policing the police — I feel obligated to set the record straight.

Scalia quotes my book, "Taming the System: The Control of Discretion in American Criminal Justice," on the point that there has been tremendous progress "in the education, training and supervision of police officers" since the 1961 Mapp decision, which imposed the exclusionary rule on local law enforcement.



http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-oe-walker25jun25,1,5967576.story?coll=la-news-comment

[Hekate]

1. I can well imagine this man is horrified

:kick:

Hekate

[Erika]

2. Welcome to the new conservative America

via G W Bush and his bushbots.

[shance]

3. Scalia is the one Justice who can be impeached by law.

He has, according to impeachment laws, exhibited "bad behavior", and by that, he is a candidate for impeachment.

[Senator]

6. The remaining "Felonious Four" can be impeached for stealing 2000

Even Rhenquist can be impeached posthumously.

Impeachment is a political (not legal) process. We The People can decide what is impeachable.

And Roberts and Alito can then be impeached/removed for accepting/maintaining illegitimate appointments.

There's nothing to stop it and it should be on our agenda.

It would be a great place to begin the Redemption of Our National Soul.

--

[CrispyQ]

17. You have my vote, Seantor!

:thumbsup:

[shance]

19. I like the way you think Senator.

We need more of that kind of thinking in America these days.

[flordehinojos]

4. can samuel walker sue the pants off of scalia?

and, can his misuse of power be something that can be used against scalia to throw his livig daylights off of the supreme court?

one can only hope!

[rucky]

8. It sounds like he's making the case for it...

"The misuse of evidence is a serious offense — in academia as well as in the courts. When it's your work being manipulated, it is a violation of your intellectual integrity."

that sounds like very deliberate lawsuit language to me.

[flordehinojos]

14. i hope he goes through with it and i hope all the other bush appointed

democracy doesn't matter judges won't cover up his sin and protect him the way they do the bushit boy.

[Senator]

5. Well, we can anticipate Scalia's response -- Vaffanculo!!

Which is the word that accompanies the hand gesture he recently lied about using at a Boston church. Not only lied about, but went to "scholarly" lengths to lie about.

FWIW, here a LTTE (not published) about that incident I sent to the Boston Herald. I think it has some application to this episode as well.

Editors:

It seems that in the rush to guage the precise level of vulgarity in Nino Scalia's most recent audition for National Buffoon, the entire euphemedia (the Boston Herald included) has completely missed the serious duplicity and disdain for the public exhibited in his response to the episode.

It's one thing for a public figure to be caught in a brief, and quite human, outburst of pique. And even unremarkable that the culprit would seek to minimize and/or dismiss the incident as unimportant, provoked, or anomolous.

But Scalia did something quite different when faced with the prospect of significant, self-inflicted damage to his reputation. He chose to perpetrate a cold, calculated public fraud.

With the slightest amount of perspective, the particulars of the event are clear from the "evidence" -- both photographic and the testimony of "professional" eyewitnesses. Scalia made an objectionable hand gesture, reinforced it with the accompanying "dirty word" in Italian, then immediately regretted his breach of decorum. That regret, and consciousness of guilt, was demonstrated by his futile emergency appeal for merciful discretion.

When the journalist did what journalists do -- published the story, Scalia found himself in a PR pickle. No catechumen to controversy, he knew the choice -- weather the storm or initiate damage control.

But control of damage was not on his agenda. Scalia engaged in a effort to control reality. He conducted "scholarly" research of unknown lengths to come up with, of all things, a shill hand gesture. One that at least vaguely resembled the real one but had the essential benefit of being relatively innocuous.

He then used an absurdly lengthy reference to this "patsy" gesture as the centerpiece of his response letter to the Herald. He then wraps the reference with an ad hominem attack on the reporter (as a "gotcha" star), a Q&A that eliminates (at least in his own mind) even the possibility that the event happened as reported, and a irrelevant objection to being called "Italian."

The effort is reminiscent of how Linda Greenhouse of the NY Times reported the process behind what can only be called the edict of Bush v. Gore -- as "a conclusion in search of a rationale." It would perhaps remain laughable but for the fact that his fraudulent letter to the Herald, and the public, is a perfect exemplar of his body of work.

It's been years since I've bothered to read any of Scalia's missives from the bench because of their strikingly consistent nature -- one nearly devoid of edifying or illustrative content. A Scalia "legal opinion" rarely rises to the level of thought or argument usually associated with the phrase. They invariably consist of a barrage of mental gymnastics that can be most accurately characterized as complaint.

Always unecessarily prodigious, they are forged from a peculiar alchemy of intellectual thuggery and schizophrenic ranting. Were he a family member I might well be discretely presenting his writings to a mental health professional to get an opinion on whether or not an intervention would be warranted.

Yet even the Boston Herald parrots the ubiquitous praise for Scalia's "intellect and legal prowess," as if that truism has ever been supported anywhere by competent analysis. It hasn't. Like Ronald Reagan's "victory over communism" and Barbara Bush's "beloved" personality, it is just one more artifact of propagandist right-wing "reality creation."

It would be nice to see the Herald take a step back toward real reality and report the substance of Scalia's fraudulent letter.

Regards
Name Irrelevant

"Twisted" is exactly the right word.

--

[aquart]

7. We already knew Scalia and truth were strangers.

But nobody with any power is going to do anything about it. The man is a criminal. He should be publicly hanged for what he did to this nation.

[xchrom]

9. more proof that scalia sucks cat shit.

[no_hypocrisy]

10. Scalia took Walker's work out of context, thus avoiding having to

acknowledge Walker's conclusion, and thus using it for Scalia's purpose of justifying an otherwise unsupportable decision. That wouldn't fly on a law school examination, yet here it is in a Supreme Court decision. Huh.

[annabanana]

11. It typifies the poison spreading out from this Administration..

As it seeps deeper into the administrative and legislative branches, so it seeps into the judiciary.

[The Backlash Cometh]

12. This has a remedy.

Challenge Scalia's interpretation by filing another suit.

Can you imagine being before the Supreme Court and given a chance to explain in Scalia's own face how incredibly single-minded he is in purpose, to take something so out of context?

[tanyev]

13. One more person's eyes opened.

Gads, this is a long, slow, painful process.

[leesa]

16. You are so right! I never dreamed it would take people so long to see

what is so painfully obvious. I used to tell myself fascism couldn't work in the US because Americans were too spunky...too non-compliant. But American's selfishness and materialism has grown so large that they only care about the next possession they are going to acquire, or the next family event, or the next ballgame, etc. They are still spunky and non-compliant, but it is for useless things...they rebel but for pointless causes.

[UTUSN]

15. and the Scaly rebuttal?

[intheflow]

18. A twisted citation of source.

It was a sloppy move. I'd have been given an academic repremand if I had been discovered doing this in college. I'm glad the professor is setting the record straight in the LA Times, but I wish there was some mechanism in place to repremand that asshat Scalia. x(

K&R