Anderson case
Quick question - why was the 'self defense' defense shut down for them? Was it because it was irrelevant or was it because the judge was being a meanyhead?
shareThe judge was being a meanyhead. She said if they went with self-defense she would hit the jury with an extremely tough instruction.
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"She flattened a Dear John with a John Deere." - Douglas Wambaugh
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Is meanyhead a legal term?
Anyway, sorry, Fiero, I have to disagree. Look at the facts of the case. The man who was killed wasn't threatening to kill Anderson Pierson. He was just standing there, unarmed. Yes, he had been stalking him, and yes, he had killed his cat, but at that moment he didn't pose any imminent threat to Pierson or his wife. Not when Pierson was the only one with a weapon.
SPOILERS AHEAD
As far as the nun killer case went, she didn't want to let him free. She even listened to oral arguments, hoping that Helen would find a reason to not set him free, but Helen (despite a great effort) couldn't come up with a good enough one.
Where she was a bad judge was when she didn't throw out the confession of a car jacker who had already asked for his lawyer. That was after she let the nun killer go, after Lindsay had been stabbed (she thought by the nun killer) and after Bobby had given a very poor defense for his client (since he had spent all night in the hospital with Lindsay). In that case she was wrong, but not in the other two.
Comprehension is not a prerequisite of cooperation.
(excuse me for going off topic on Pearson)
Gotta agree with juviejay on Judge Hiller and the case with the Nun Killer. She did not want to let that guy walk but if you listen to her final verdict, she actually explains herself quite clearly why she did what she did. The police officers, no matter how good their intention, broke the Fourth Amendment rule by going into the apartment and into the closet when they had no right to.
Lindsay was right when she said that they broken that amendment when they really could have just secured the area and waited for a warrant because there was no way the man was coming back since they already picked him up.
Helen made a good rebuttal, in her closing when she says that they had reason to secure the guns that the girl (the one they thought was kidnapped) said were there because they wanted to secure the scene before the guy came back. THAT sounds reasonable, yes, but that still breaks the Fourth Amendment rule (for reasons Lindsay declared) so, therefore, no matter how Helen would have argued that, there was no choice.
The constitution is flawed, hence amendments, but even the Fourth Amendment itself is flawed so that case really couldn't have been won because the police made an error in judgment.
If you can recall, Hiller even considered looking the other way and going against the Fourth Amendment because the crime was so heinous and it was quite obvious that man did it, but she had no choice. She was a judge and it's their job to uphold the law, no matter how flawed it may seem.
As for the car jacker...Bobby did defend his client poorly and I agree again with juviejay, but I also want to add that aside from exhaustion and lack of sleep and stress, Bobby's emotions were in tatters at this point. He was unraveling and he was in no condition to work or even function properly. Not that you can blame him.
Hiller made a mistake on that one, yes. I think at this point she was more cautious only in that case, she became too cautious...Plus, I am guessing that while she knows her part in the Nun Killer, I'd like to think that somehow, not just by letting him walk (since she still thought the Nun Killer was the one who stabbed Lindsay), she also bore responsibility by assigning the case to them...but that could just be me. I'd feel terrible too if I assigned a lawyer a job and what happened to Lindsay happens.
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