South Carolina Supreme Court Probes Numerous Fault Lines in Murdaugh Convictions

FITS, how can run the above comment selling Ukranian brides on-line and not run this comment of mine re-pasted hereunder?
With the “rogue clerk of court” comment, SC Chief Justice Kittredge has crossed the figurative Rubicon, whether he intended to or not.
There can be no “yes, but” after that. No verbal indignation will suffice if not followed by sweeping action.
And Will Folks and Jen Wood must cross their own Rubicon, too.
Are they in it for the clicks anything Murdaugh generates or for the greater good?
I paste here my reply to an intelligent and civil commenter who asked if I am “a Murdaugh” on FITSTube’s “after-party” episode:
@MelVonMonkers, I am THE OPPOSITE of everything “a Murdaugh” is EXCEPT for one thing: I, too, am a victim of false criminal accusations EXCEPT AGAIN for one other thing: thank God, I defended myself WITHOUT A LAWYER in a five-day jury trial presided over by none other than Judge Clifton Newman and did for myself what Alex Murdaugh’s entire defense team failed to do for him: prevent a jury from returning a wrongful conviction.
Thirty months later, again thank God and WITHOUT A LAWYER, I got those false criminal charges against me dismissed WITH PREJUDICE.
“Happy ending” and “the system worked” you think? The truth is EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE.
I continue to be punished for both my innocence and for having proved it without a lawyer. And the second part is more important for “the system” than the first as a reason for CONTINUING to punish me.
How so? Because the system is now built, NOT to prevent wrongful accusations/wrongful convictions, but to provide maximum lawyer employment and consequently maximize judges’ side gigs as part-time law-school professors.
So, the system as currently built needs to violently crush anyone who stands in the way of unchecked prosecutorial powers and/or who advocates “scientification” of the system.
And that is why I am “highly invested” to prevent this from happening to others and to correct the situation for those to whom it already happened.
Thank God, I have more intellect and education than the Murdaughs have/had money; but what happens to those who have NEITHER my brains nor Murdaugh’s money? They rot in false incarceration unless and until some charity picks their case up as a show piece and moves on thereafter leaving many others in cells of steel and stone.
Justice cannot be a lottery for which only those with exceptional intelligence or exceptional wealth are even allowed to buy a ticket. And even then, winning is a matter of chance.
This reply may be almost as lengthy as my initial comment; but your high intelligence and focus on reading the initial comment deserve a full, and hopefully clear answer.
Thanks for reading both and responding civilly and God bless

Having complimented your new photo, here is some constructive criticism of your two-day old after-party FITSTube episode:
Seton Tucker and Jen Wood, at minute 20:38 you say, “it is not on Creighton Waters; it is not on Judge Newman, unless they knew what [Becky Hill] was up to.”
But it IS on Creighton Waters and on Judge Newman EVEN IF they did not know what Becky Hill was up to.
How so? Easy: a criminal trial is NOT an even match between two equal teams, neither of whom has a duty to help THE OTHER TEAM; and the judge sits in the middle as a passive neutral referee.
The judge IS supposed to be neutral but NOT PASSIVE.
Both Creighton Waters and Judge Newman along with Becky Hill ARE “the state” writ large.
And each of them had a DUTY to help the Defense win if the defendant were actually innocent.
Also, each of them had a DUTY to know if ANY OTHER ARM OF THE STATE (in or outside the courtroom) were improperly harming the defendant before, during, or after the trial.
And I want each of you and Will Folks to do this mental exercise which reverses the burden of proof; but we are now post-conviction.
Step One: Try to come up with ONE fact from the record which makes it impossible for Alex Murdaugh to NOT BE the shooter. I am not saying “likely to be the shooter”; I am saying “impossible to NOT BE the shooter.” Meaning, FOR EXAMPLE, that his presence in the kennels might make it likely for him to be the shooter but DOES NOT MAKE IT IMPOSSIBLE for him to NOT BE the shooter. (Double negatives are intended.) It is quite possible for someone to be at the kennels but not shoot someone else there.
If you CAN come up with such fact, for example, a bus load of nuns drove to the kennels, circled around Alex, Paul, and Maggie, and saw Alex shoot them from every angle, then stop the mental exercise. Alex is actually guilty.
If you cannot come up with such fact, then go to Step Two.
Step Two: Examine every fact the Defense says makes it IMPOSSIBLE for Alex to be the shooter and try to discredit it. If there is any fact you cannot discredit, then Alex is actually innocent.
Once you decide that Alex is actually innocent of the shootings, you SHOULD NOT have any sympathy of Creighton Waters no matter how hard he worked, because the question is: “worked so hard at what?” At getting an innocent person convicted.

Okay FITS, here again is my reply to AC Top fan. Run it or go coercive control yourself:
AC Top fan, I was unclear on whether your “feeble minded judge” comment meant Jean Toal or Clifton Newman; but now that you include Justice Katanji Brown Jackson, the Harvard college and law school graduate and law clerk to Justice Breyer, your attack on Judge Clifton Newman’s intellect is “only a smidge” less racist than that video depicting the also-Harvard-Law graduates Obamas as apes.
Before you start attacking MY intelligence, I am an Honors medical school graduate, got my MPH at Chapel Hill on a Fulbright Scholarship, and speak four languages and am highly educated in the literature of three of them.
Oh, and in case you missed my having said it before: thank God and without a lawyer, and in the court of none other than Judge Clifton Newman, I achieved for myself what Alex Murdaugh’s entire defense team failed to do for him: prevent a jury from returning a wrongful conviction.
So, politely but without giving any one any unearned respect: what are YOUR qualifications to assess the intellects of Judge Clifton Newman, his MENSA-member daughter, and Associate U.S. Justice Jackson, or mine?

Still speaking of hypocrisy, I posted this comment on FITSTube’s fanfare and gloating about Senator Shane Massey’s attack on Former Speaker Lucas’ candidacy for SC’s Supreme Court:
Blake Hewitt had no judicial experience when he was elected to South Carolina’s Court of Appeals either. What is the difference?
Nor did Jean Toal when elected directly from the General Assembly to South Carolina’s Supreme Court.
No one called her election corruption.
And Blake Hewitt’s entire legal experience before being elected to the bench was entirely appellate. No trial experience at all. And he was elected over Allison Renee Lee who had decades of presiding over trials and a several-months stint as an acting full-time SC Court of Appeals Judge. Why did Senator Massey NOT vote for Judge Lee then or even make such speech against Blake Hewitt’s lack of judicial experience?
I think I know the answer; but to ignore it is to ignore the hypocrisy of attacking a very decent and very capable man because he made “the mistake” of giving a decade of his life to service in South Carolina’s Legislature.

Here is a related REAL quiet part out loud about judicial elections, to be heard, God willing and FITS permitting, clearly: South Carolina’s Supreme Court Justices THEMSELVES and basically ALL lower SC state court judges, past, present, and future, WANT THE SYSTEM THIS WAY.
They have said it many times to visiting students on case-of-the-month Wednesdays. (This is a program allowing state mostly-high-school classes to attend oral arguments of a case basically once a month and thereafter question the Justices on any polite topic EXCEPT the case that was argued.)
And the Justices make NO SECRET of why they want it this was and consider it superior to all others, although they sugar-coat it as all lawyers sugar-coat anything in their interest.
Plainly put: IT IS THE LAZIEST AND CHEAPEST SYSTEM FOR JUDICIAL CANDIDATES, although in fact other systems open other doors for corruption.
Compared to elections at large, the judicial candidate need not spend any money campaigning and needs to convince only 86 legislators instead of millions of registered voters.
And, to its credit when compared to voting-at-large states, huge campaign donations have given at least the perception, if not reality, of influence buying. A famous case from West Virginia reached the U.S. Supreme Court.
But also think about the other alternatives: gubernatorial appointments with the advice and consent of the senate. Guess what? South Carolina has EXACTLY that for magistrates. How well does that work out?
Besides, South Carolina’s governors being term limited, there is no way for the public to hold a governor accountable for bad judicial choices in his/her second term.
It is further easier to bribe one governor than 86 legislators. So, that alternative is open to corruption and lack of accountability, too.
Finally, South Carolina’s judges like their system this way because it is more likely than any other to produce a diverse bench.
Perhaps the latter is the real reason FITS and his so-called freedom-caucus patrons attack the system or pretend to attack it because their base does not want a diverse bench.
But if the Justices themselves laud their state system as superior to all others, they should not attack it as corrupt when it prefers a candidate with diverse EXPERIENCES to a stale throne-sitter.
So my comment leaves no loose threads: a more feasible and effective answer is tighter recusal laws and a requirement of annual financial disclosures as the federal system requires of its judges.
And again, the judiciary should be stripped of its control of court administration and lawyer discipline. THAT is where the separation of powers REALLY breaks down with the Judiciary arrogating to itself BOTH legislative and executive powers.

Several corrections to questions in the oral arguments; and an important lecture on some principles of science.
First, the scientific method is what brought humanity of the dark ages and witchcraft into the light of modern tech.
You do not need to be a scientist to understand, and use in your everyday thinking and decision-making, the scientific method.
To capsulize it, the scientific method relies on OBSERVATIONS, experimentation, and CALCULATIONS.
It is THE OPPOSITE of speculation.
Yet, speculation, and speculation alone, is what made the first responders on the scene suspect Richard Alexander Murdaugh (“RAM”) and the media-consuming public followed these speculations, most recently rehashed by Ever-Bluffing Eric Bland (“EBEB”), who profited abundantly from both the deaths of Paul and Maggie and from the murders being pinned on RAM.
The speculations go essentially, “RAM must be the shooter because I WOULD HAVE BEHAVED DIFFERENTLY if my wife and son had been shot by someone else.”
That is THE OPPOSITE of scientific thinking.
Of course, it is unethical to take a group of male lawyers in their fifties, shoot their wives and sons in their absence, then observe and quantify their reactions.
But Science has a work-around to observe what cannot be done by controlled experiments. That work-around is THE NATURAL EXPERIMENT.
For example, it would be unethical to take a large group of heart patients, leave half of them asleep as normal, but brutally awake the other half from sleep to see if lack of sleep would increase the heart-attack deaths among them.
The natural experiment there is the change of the clock twice a year for daylight saving time.
And INDEED, it is observed that the NATURAL increase of decrease of one hour of sleeping time associated with the change of the clock is correlated with increase or decrease of heart attacks and heart-attack deaths.
Do we have a NATURAL EXPERIMENT on how a spouse reacts IMMEDIATELY when the other spouse is fatally shot by someone else?
YES we do.
That natural experiment is the then-first-lady’s IMMEDIATE reaction when President Kennedy was shot.
And that reaction is documented in the Zapruder film.
Jackie Kennedy may have LATER hugged her hugged her husband’s lifeless body and not wanted to let go of it for burial. But Jackie Kennedy’s IMMEDIATE reaction was to jump AWAY from that body and help a secret service man to the presidential limousine for protection.
Please review the Zapruder film and stills from it for yourselves.
Self-protection is INSTINCTUAL and CONSISTENT with RAM’s running back to the house while on the 911 call to get a gun.
Law enforcement officers and investigators should be better trained to NOT use their own speculations about what they “would have” done if innocent INSTEAD OF the observations derived from natural experiments.
I have other mini-lectures about touch DNA and firearm markings which I shall, God willing and FITS permitting, post later.

Mini-lecture 2: Actually, two snow flakes COULD be alike. Two unrelated people COULD have the same finger prints. And two bullets fired from different firearms COULD have the same markings.
Touch DNA shall, God willing and FITS permitting, be explained in the third mini-lecture.
Just as a single lottery ticket OR fifty different lottery tickets sold in fifty states COULD hit the jackpot in the same draw.
How so?
Actually, the mathematical principle is rather simple: combinations and permutations. One looks at the probability of a limited number of subjects being selected AT RANDOM from a larger set of subjects IN ANY ORDER. The other looks at the probability of the same number of subjects being selected AT RANDOM from the same larger set of subjects IN A PARTICULAR ORDER.
Some lotteries have the winning numbers in ascending order only (for example 1, 2, 3); others have them in any order (for example 1, 2, 3, OR 1, 3, 2, OR 2, 1, 3, OR 2, 3, 1, OR 3, 2, 1, OR 3, 1, 2).
The probability of selecting 1, 2, and 3, AT RANDOM from a set of 1 – 9 IN ANY ORDER in three draws in which the already drawn number is figuratively put back in the hat is 1/9 x 1/9 x 1/9 = 1/729.
But if the already-drawn number is NOT put back in the hat, the probability is 1/9 x 1/8 x 1/7 = 1/504, which is a greater probability.
If the larger set were only 1 – 6, the probabilities are 1/6 x 1/6 x 1/6 = 1/216 and 1/6 x 1/5 x 1/4 = 1/120, respectively, which are still greater probabilities.
But if the larger set were only 1 – 3, the probabilities are 1/3 x 1/3 x 1/3 = 1/27 and 1/3 x 1/2 x 1/1 = 1/6, respectively, which are still much grater probabilities.
The certainty is 1/1 and that is of drawing 1, 2 AND 3 IN ANY ORDER out of a hat with only 1 – 3 when the already drawn number is NOT put back in the hat.
The purpose of that exercise was to demonstrate that the smaller the bigger set, the higher the probability.
I do not know about snow flakes because, as soon as you capture one to examine it, it melts. Thus no scientific validation of “no two snow flakes are alike” is possible. So, stop saying it!
What about fingerprints?
There are only ridges and grooves (and some scars) which form loops and whorls in THE LIMITED AREA of the size of a human finger tip multiplied by the number of fingers a normal uninjured human has. That denominator is large BUT MUCH SMALLER the billions of human beings on earth. So, the probability of two unrelated human beings out of the billions on earth having the identical prints of one, for example right index, finger is NOT ZERO. In fact it is substantial.
So, the idea that fingerprints are unique is NOT scientifically valid.
First, there is no biologically-plausible need or evolutionary reason for it to be so.
Next, to actually positively validate it, ALL human beings on earth would have to be accurately ten-finger-finger-printed with PRECISELY the same technique. All that is required for it to be disproven is to find two unrelated human beings with the same prints of one finger, which believe it or not, has already happened at least twice in documented court cases.
That is the same for tool markings on spent bullets. There is a finite number of markings on the very small area of a bullet; so, it is QUITE POSSIBLE for two bullets fired from different weapons to have the same markings.
In the Murdaugh case oral arguments, Justice Few WRONGLY stated that the theories of uniqueness of finger prints and of tool marks are valid but they are not applied rigorously enough in the field.
Really, except for DNA, almost nothing forensic was applied rigorously enough, if at all, in the Murdaugh investigation. But the underlying theories of uniqueness of fingerprints and of tool marks are mathematically invalid.
Ready for mini-lecture 3?

As if they have not already done so plenty, they will retaliate against me for this; and surely many of my supposed FaceBook friends with ongoing interests before current South Carolina’s Associate Justice John Cannon Few will unfriend me. But courage is not the absence of fear; it is the overcoming of fear to do what is right to be done at the right moment. And in my judgment, courage is to say the following:
John Cannon Few’s last-minute withdrawal is an act of cowardice, selfishness, arrogance, and for a former Duke mascot, total lack of sportsmanship. Yes, it is customary for the lowest-vote-pledge-getting candidate to withdraw; BUT that is for open seats when the screening had already been done for an open seat and the withdrawal of the unfavored candidate does NOT halt the election. The rules are different when the incumbent is a candidate and withdraws at the last minute. The other candidates have to be re-screened and the election rescheduled, perhaps to a date AFTER Few’s current term expires. Thus, he plans to continue on the bench UNELECTED beyond his elected term. Few should have stood up like a man in the election and let the world see how few, if any, votes he had earned. Instead, like an unruly child, he took the football and went home. Or, like the Biblical Samson, Few brought the temple down on himself and his competitors. Ironically, Few boasts an article of his titled “The Courage of a Lawyer.” What Few did is the OPPOSITE of courage. Few talks the talk but does NOT walk the walk. That alone suffices to explain why few, if any, electors in South Carolina’s General Assembly liked Few for a second term on SC’s supreme court. A man’s character matters when he wants to continue as a judge. And character is revealed, not by a man’s word, but by a man’s instinctual acts in a crunch. Instead of graciously acknowledging the competitor who bested Few in vote pledges, Few threw a temper tantrum and delayed the likely-successful candidate’s election, perhaps indefinitely.