Do you accept all court decisions without question?

Lash wrote:

The informants are always treated to (rightful) character assasination--and hardly ever believed.

Remember Robert Blake's hired killer? Testimony that Blake had hired him to kill Bonnie Bakely. You'd think that would be good enough evidence, eh?

But, Blake is on the streets. Because it was hearsay from an impeachable witness....

The Blake case provided no opportunites for political gain within ones power base. Apples and Oranges.

Oh damn! I never had an AUTO SPAM FILTER ATTACK before.

I mentioned a TV show featuring court cases...

Nothing I have seen -- and I've done a lot of reading -- makes me think that the system has broken down in this case. In fact, the system is standing up to a rather powerful assault, and I think that's a very heartening thing.

The powerful assault itself, however, I think is appalling, and so I exercise my general responsibility -- staying informed, being willing to take action if the system has broken down in some way -- by criticizing the extraordinary expenditure of political capital and energy on this case.

Are there really people here who blindly accept court decisions? ....

Lash wrote:

Hearsay is not evidence.

At least it's a famous sustained objection in all other cases...

Oh, but it absolutely is. What evidence do you suppose jailbird informants provide? And there are famous allowances in cases where the person who said the things is not available to testify, as in this case.

ADMISSIONS AND DECLARATIONS AGAINST ONE'S INTERESTS -- These involve long-established common law exceptions to the hearsay rule, and consist of various types, of which admissions (acquiescing in the statement of another or remaining silent in the face of accusations) are a special type. It may be helpful to think of this category of exceptions as similar to the way police investigators go about obtaining admissions or "soft" confessions. There are two main types of declarations against interests -- against pecuniary interest and against penal interest. The rationale behind this group of exceptions is the legal system's confidence in the notion of "probability of truthfulness." When a person says or writes something that isn't exactly in their best interests, the legal system assumes that those statements probably would not have been made unless they were true. At least such statements would be trustworthy if corroborated by other facts, and FRE 804(b)(3), which governs this exception, requires some corroborating facts. For example, if an arson-for-profit case involves the testimony of a co-worker who says he heard the boss say "this place would be better off burnt down," and the boss denies ever saying this, the testimony of the co-worker would be admissible as hearsay if there were corroborating facts such as evidence that the business was doing badly. This is an example of declaration against pecuniary interest, since the co-worker might be held liable in civil court by the insurance company for their part in the arson-for-profit scheme. What is much more common, however, are declarations against penal interest, in which the hearsay witness is at risk of being charged as a co-conspirator to the crime. In fact, declarations against penal interest are so common that at least one commentator (Davenport 1972) has called this exception the "co-conspirator exception." A typical scenario runs like this -- a drug dealer (named Joe) is arrested in a passenger vehicle, and none of the fellow passengers are charged with anything, but later police questioning of the passengers reveals that one passenger says "I often allowed Joe to store stuff he said were drugs in a closet at my apartment." The law would look upon this storage of extra drugs as a critical fact, and force this passenger to testify as a turncoat witness, even if that passenger had the foresight to obtain immunity from prosecution. The passenger is clearly a co-conspirator, but their statement is not taken as a confession, only as a self-inculpatory declaration against penal interest in order for the prosecution to get at Joe. The prosecution can always try to prosecute the co-conspirator later, but it will not be able to rely upon the co-conspirator's statement alone since it was used as hearsay in another case, and doesn't qualify as a confession. It only qualifies as a statement to get at the truth in the context of the present case. It may be helpful to think of this as the law looking favorably upon "uncooperative" witnesses as opposed to "cooperative" witnesses because the law looks down on snitches, who voluntarily sell out their friends in order to save themselves. In order for the truth to come out, the law assumes everyone must face the real risk of a penal sanction. That's what a declaration against penal interest means -- that the truth comes out when you are forced to say things that risk getting you in trouble.

She's already dead. That's the part ya don't seem to understand.

There are a huge body of doctors who agree that the brain scans of this lady and lack of EEG readings are indicative of a mind which does not function. She doesn't even have the areas of her brain anymore that deal with higher thought. They do not exist. She's not going to get better.

All they are doing is laying this poor dead lady's body to rest; and about time. Imagine the hell she's been in for 15 years...

Cycloptichorn

Damn! When I said that...Court (TV)...without the (), they hit me with a Spam Injunction...

Lash wrote:

Hearsay is not evidence.

At least it's a famous sustained objection in all other cases...

Oh, but it absolutely is. What evidence do you suppose jailbird informants provide? And there are famous allowances in cases where the person who said the things is not available to testify, as in this case.

Inasmuch as your first example was incorrect, we have cause to question whether you truly understand the hearsay rule. Although there are some exceptions to the hearsay rule, e.g., business records exception, Terri's alleged out-of-court statements do not fall within any of the recognized exceptions.