The new law allows the modified self-defense law to be applied retroactively to Fish's case, as well as to any others filed after April 24, 2006, as long as the defendant did not plead guilty or no contest. [More]What if the facts of the case apply, and the person pleaded no contest because they couldn't afford the legal fight?
And since when has the burden NOT been on the prosecution to prove a crime...?
[Via Mama Liberty]
2 comments:
Fish's case was the one that prompted the original new law ... a clear case of overzealous prosecution of a self-defense homicide.
The legislature simply crafted the retroactivity to not allow a bunch of folks to use it as an excuse to appeal.
The idea was to force the prosecution to drop the damned case, which that retard refused to do after the legislature first changed the law. So they had to pass another law to slap this idiot prosecutor over the head with.
The burden is on the prosecution to prove the crime, but traditionally, self-defense has been an affirmative defense (meaning that the burden of proof for self-defense was on the defendant) in most jurisdictions for centuries. The big change in recent years has been the growth of the convict at all costs mentality among prosecutors. Cases that would never have been tried ten or twenty years ago are now tried because the prosecutor wants another scalp to hang from his belt or because the person using self defense has the "wrong" skin-color or ethnicity.
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