Comments on Texas Court of Criminal Appeals blog: Godzilla v. Mothra

Thanks for the comment. Yeah, I do think Kennedy ...

2009-06-30T08:15:20.582-05:00

Thanks for the comment. Yeah, I do think Kennedy kind of overreached, and I'm glad that the Texas statutes took care of a lot of the practical problems. I do, however, expect challenges when the State calls a different criminalist than the one who performed the test.

I thought Scalia was quite clear about what witnes...

2009-06-30T07:54:08.336-05:00

I thought Scalia was quite clear about what witnesses must be confronted. He didn't "avoid" the issue, he pointed out that in an adversarial system there are only witnesses for or against the defendant, no third category as Kennedy wanted to claim. In practice, that pretty much resolves it. Indeed, given how easily Texas' CCP 38.41 and 38.42 satisfies all the questions you say Scalia didn't address, it seems like the practical problems left extant are small and inconsequential, hardly deserving of Kennedy's sky-is-falling rhetoric.

I thought the most interesting part of Kennedy's dissent was the history about founding-era copyists, but his analogy IMO pretty quickly falls apart applied to forensic testing.

That wasn't Cochran squeeling with glee that y...

2009-06-26T08:58:16.420-05:00

That wasn't Cochran squeeling with glee that you heard, it was me loudly moaning for yet another Sir Walter moment.

As always, thank's RJ for your cogent breakdown of this opinion. It saves me from reading all 61 pages of the Supremes opinion.

And you understand and explain it in ways my sometimes feeble mind cannot.