Sotomayor’s Selective Empathy
Posted on July 13, 2009
She’s not empathetic at all. She’s just an arrogant racist. But her confirmation for SCOTUS gets underway this week and she is expected to sail through
Judge Sonia Sotomayor is wrongly being sold by Team Obama as an “empathetic nominee.” This adjective is shown a farce when one examines her record in two noteworthy cases involving Jeffrey Deskovic and Frank Ricci. In these instances, she acted callous and indifferent to the injustice and suffering of these men.
As a 17-year-old young man, Deskovic was convicted for the murder and rape of a classmate despite a negative DNA test. He ended up serving 16 years in prison before he was ultimately exonerated after additional DNA evidence proved another man was guilty. A good portion of his life was taken away by a justice system with Sotomayor playing judge.
Despite Deskovic serving 10 years in prison, Sotomayor refused to hear two of his valid appeals. These appeals were based on DNA evidence and coerced testimony. A county clerk gave his attorney inaccurate information and his attorney filed the appeal petition four days late. The court refused to hear this appeal, so the lawyer appealed the decision before Sotomayor’s court, arguing that the error was the fault of the clerk; therefore, the case ought to be heard given Deskovic’s innocence. Sotomayor ruled against hearing Deskovic’s appeal, effectively sentencing an innocent man to six more years in prison for a crime he did not commit.
“Despite Sotomayor’s rhetoric, her ruling in my case showed a callous disregard for the real-life implications of her rulings,” Deskovic says. “She opted for procedure over fairness and finality of conviction over accuracy. Many of the victims of wrongful convictions serving long sentences had exhausted their appeals long before they were exonerated. In how many of those cases did Sotomayor vote to refuse to even consider evidence of innocence?” Even though Sotomayor displayed a callous indifference to the suffering of this innocent man, Obama wants people to ignore this case and confirm her immediately because she is a “wise Hispanic Woman.”
Another case showing her lack of empathy and poor judgment is the Frank Ricci firefighter case. Frank Ricci is a Connecticut firefighter with dyslexia who studied many difficult and challenging hours, due to his disability, to pass a written test. Along with the passing of the test came a promotion but Ricci’s aspirations for advancement quickly vanished as he watched the city throw his results away because no minorities passed the test and they didn’t want to get sued for discrimination. Sotomayor and her court agreed with the city and were willing to punish a white firefighter who succeeds just because minority candidates did not perform well on the test.
By allowing this discrimination and racism, Sotomayor proves herself to be anything but empathetic.
More HERE
Posted by John Ray. For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don’t forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me (John Ray) here
» Filed Under Activist Judges, Hypocrisy/Situational Ethics, Judicial Tyranny, News, Racism, Sexism, liberalism
Trackback URL
Comments
One Response to “Sotomayor’s Selective Empathy”
Leave a Reply
The Jeffrey Deskovic case, I strongly agree with that miscarriage of justice on all levels.
The Frank Ricci case, I completely agree with Sotomayor’s ruling. It was the law, albeit a crappy law but none the less, the law. Sotomayor was presented with what was established state precedent and established law and she upheld that law. That was her job. In other words, Sotomayor didn’t legislate from the bench. The Conservatives on the Supreme Court on the other hand, DID legislate from the bench.
This is a truly crappy and unfair law but it’s a state legislature issue and should’ve been left up to the state legislature to correct. Minimally, submit a petition and force the issue on a ballot and let the voters abolish the law. What Sotomayor did was uphold the law and not legislate from the bench.
What if Sotomayor was presented with a case of Anti-prop 8 supporters vs. The State of California over the law against same sex marriage. Sotomayor upholds the state law and rules against the anti-prop 8 claims. Then the case gets elevated to SCOTUS where they rule against California’s state legislature in favor of legalizing same sex marriage. The Supreme Court just legislated from the bench against established state law. I’ve lost count as to how many times I’ve heard outrage over this “judicial activism” but that is exactly what happened with the Frank Ricci case.
I strongly disagree with what happened to Frank Ricci but Sotomayor did exactly what she was supposed to do and upheld the established law. It was up to the state legislature and/or the state voters to change the legislation, not the Supreme Court. Read Justice Souter’s opinion. Good stuff.