01/04/2024
Assuming everyone has seen this clip (Steve Sailer blogged on it earlier) …
I think "The Talk" might need to be amended to include judges as well as police. https://t.co/KYhRVHAoZl
— Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) January 4, 2024
… you may be asking why the Judge hadn’t ordered him shackled, since the offense he’s committing in the clip is the same one he’d been convicted of already, and was being sentenced for.
It would be good if she did (that’s the point of Ann Coulter’s comment) but it might result in his conviction being reversed. In 2020, I did a blog post called Michigan Court Releases 6’5’’ Black Strangler Who Killed Woman With One Hand Because Because He Was “Visibly Shackled” During Trial.
In it, I noted that Jonathan H. Adler at The Volokh Conspiracy had a blog item about a murder conviction:
In June, in Davenport v. MacLaren, a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit overturned Ervine Lee Davenport’s first-degree murder conviction because “he was visibly shackled at the waist, wrist, and ankles during trial.” Judge Stranch wrote for the court, joined by Chief Judge Cole. Judge Readler dissented.
Today, by a vote of 8-7, the full Sixth Circuit denied the state of Michigan’s petition for rehearing en banc, even though nine of the sixteen judges believe the original panel decision was wrong. Two of the judges on the court, Judges Sutton and Kethledge, concluded that the panel decision was wrong, but not en banc worthy (something these same judges have concluded before).
Wrong, But Not En Banc Worthy — 2020, September 15, 2020
I added a comment to the effect that:
Online prison records show that Mr. Davenport is 6‘5“ tall and weighs 299 pounds. The offense that he was charged with was killing an adult with his bare hands.
Under those circumstances, what would be the justification for NOT shackling him?
After mentioning another similar case, I pointed out that in the case of Ervine Lee Davenport, it would be more accurate to say that what he was charged with, and the reason he was presumably subject to pretrial detention, was that there was a prima facie case that he had killed a woman with one hand, while driving a car with the other.
Jurors in the Davenport trial said the shackling hadn’t influenced them, but the Sixth Circuit insisted that they must have been.
My 2020 conclusion:
Assuming that the law does say defendants can’t be shackled while they’re in court, it’s a case of ”Civil Rights Law Doesn’t Care If You Die.” A huge mad killer may decide to kill his defense lawyer, a court officer, a prosecutor, or if athletic enough to leap the bench, even a Judge. Are they supposed to die just to prevent his conviction being reversed on appeal?
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