As it turns out, Joshua Marquis—the guy who wrote that idiotic letter about the Fisher profile—is a highly regarded spokesman for the prosecutorial lobby—the National District Attorney’s Association.
So I thought it might be interesting to see just what it is that these guys believe. And so with a little help from our friends at Google, I bring you:
THE GREATEST HITS OF JOSHUA MARQUIS (De SADE):
In an article about mental retardation and the (now forbidden) execution of the mentally retarded:
"Those (guidelines) are extraordinarily subjective. IQ tests themselves are subjective," said Joshua Marquis, district attorney in Astoria, Ore., a state that now must craft a ban. "IQ tests . . . can vary by 20, 25 points. It's going to be a very difficult road."
Huh? Does this guy just completely make shit up? Is he a complete idiot, or, given his national status as a bigwig prosecutor can we conclude that these guys don’t care about the truth?
Just to be clear—IQ tests are incredibly delicate psychometric instruments, and 20 points on an IQ test standardized at 100 is a full standard deviation. A 25 point variance is more than a SD. Does this guy think anyone would use such an instrument? This is foolishness on the order of Holocaust denial.
Here’s another:
In an article on the sorry state of indigent defense, a major newspaper began it’s story like this:
MARKS, Miss., April 11 — Diana Brown met her court-appointed lawyer for the first time on the day she pleaded guilty to several serious crimes five years ago. They spent five minutes together and have not spoken since.
"You are guilty, lady," the lawyer, Thomas Pearson, told Ms. Brown, according to her sworn statement, as he met with her and nine other defendants as a group, rattling off the charges against them.
He told her she was facing 60 years in prison for assault, drunken driving and leaving the scene of an accident, and should accept a deal for 10 years, court papers say. He gave her five minutes to decide. Offered no other defense, she took the deal.
What does Marquis say in this same article in response?
"We are looking at a completely different world than Clarence Gideon saw," Joshua Marquis, district attorney in Astoria, Ore., said. "In noncapital cases, indigent defendants get anywhere from an A to a C defense. I think they're entitled to a C-plus level defense."
Huh? Does this guy READ? Again, is this ignorance or do DA’s not really give a shit about indigent defense—sorry was Thomas Pearson a C+ defense? The point is, again, these guys don’t care about process, they just want to prosecute, win and incarcerate.
Ready for more:
On sequential lineups—something I know a fair bit about having been the (or maybe one of the) first in the country to file a motion seeking a double-blind sequential lineup, Marquis says this:
"it will be much more difficult for the [witness] to offer any identification," says Joshua Marquis, district attorney of Oregon's Clatsop County, best known as the home to the town of Astoria. "What we're trying to do is find the truth. We ought to make it easier, not make it more difficult."
While he agrees that lineups shouldn't be suggestive, Mr. Marquis says the research supporting reform is "thin"; indeed, some psychology experts question whether existing studies provide enough support for sequential lineups.
Sorry Charlie—that’s more bullshit. Go read the science. And as for the experts—the DA”s have found only TWO EXPERTS IN THE ENTIRE WESTERN HEMISPHERE (and only one in the US) who agree with them. One of them—Ebbe Ebbeson is a notorious prosecutorial hack who testifies for them constantly. And even Ebbesen doesn’t dispute the core findings of Wells et al—he just thinks we should do some more research.
Again, what’s going on here is the reason I hate prosecutors—they do that republican thing—they spout lies as if they are truth—they deny science and employ lies in the service of a profoundly corrupt agenda.
I know you’re getting bored but it goes on and on.
Marquis doesn’t believe that most people exonerated by DNA are innocent: Really.
When a newspaper reports that:
A comprehensive study of 328 criminal cases over the last 15 years in which the convicted person was exonerated suggests that there are thousands of innocent people in prison today.
Almost all the exonerations were in murder and rape cases, and that implies, according to the study, that many innocent people have been convicted of less serious crimes. But the study says they benefited neither from the intense scrutiny that murder cases tend to receive nor from the DNA evidence that can categorically establish innocence
Marquis says in the same article:
“that many of the people exonerated under the study's definition may nonetheless have committed the crimes in question, though the evidence may have become too weak to prove that beyond a reasonably doubt.”
Oy.
Did I mention he want’s to kill Kids?
"Juries recognize, in some cases, that those under 18 are not the children we might want to believe they are," said Joshua Marquis, a longtime prosecutor in Astoria, Oregon, and a member of the board of directors of the National District Attorneys Association. "They don't benefit from the juvenile justice system, and can be held fully responsible for their actions."
Or that he want’s to bar possibly innocent inmates from being able to demand the DNA tests that might exonerate them?
"If we had unlimited resources, you might say, 'So, there are a couple hundred more people who want DNA testing. What's the harm?' " said Joshua Marquis, the district attorney in Astoria, Ore.
"But there are 500,000 rape kits [containing evidence] sitting on the shelves of police stations across the country right now, untested because we don't have the resources."
So basically, Astoria Oregon has a District Attorney who believes that IQ tests can’t reliably establish mental retardation, that poor people don’t deserve good lawyers, that the police shouldn’t use a kind of lineup that results in fewer innocent being wrongly convicted--that we should allow the execution of juveniles but prevent wrongly convicted people from proving their innocence through DNA.
And this guy speaks for the National Association of District Attorneys. Do you STILL wonder why I hate them?
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12 comments:
You are putting out interesting facts of what is happining in our justice system. I have met one man who had been on death row, and was found innocent, and given his freedom. You are right of there being thousands of innocence in our prisons. Keep your work up.
Come and see what the locals in Josh Marquis' own district think of him as their prosecuting attorney. The honeymoon is definately over.
Oregon Democrats are thinking of asking him to run for senator?
Yes, his honeymoon will be over. He has no business being a DA anyway, with his insane beliefs about the death penalty, dna.
He's crazy!
As a district attorney myself I was amused by your comments on Mr. Marquis. Many of them were apt, others (like the IQ comments) were petty. Unfortunately the posture of the blog makes them irrelivant.
DA's, like myself, want to do a good job. Nobody wants to prosecute the innocent. A good DA's job is to assure that this doesn't happen -- I dismiss, or refuse to file over a hundred of cases a month.
Unfortunately DA work attracts blood thirsty cops with J.D.'s who have almost no regard for the rights of the accused. Blogs, like this one, suggest that reform should come from the outside, from the Public Defender. But in an adversarial system it is unlikely that reform will come from the outside--rather outside criticism hardens both sides.
So why not join us. The strong, the proud, the few, liberal DA's.
I did. And, now the zigger, guess who convinced me that as a concerned liberal the best place for me to be was in a DA's office? Josh Marquis.
So speak ill of him all you like. But thank him when you meet me in court, and I put my job on the line, and dismiss that piece of crap case the police are bringing against your client.
And watch your bar card if I think you aren't working hard enough to defend your client's interests.
Unless your planning on moving to Clatsop County it is highly unlikely "we" will meet. We never met the man you speak so highly of, either. We only know DA Josh Marquis, the one who takes every case brought to his office without discernment for justice. The one who refuses to cooperate with the County Commissioners by providing performance based reviews of his department. The one who does poor research on his cases, allows and encourages his Deputy DA's to lie to judges, who twists every statistic to fit his perception of law and justice. Who let the local newspaper's editor's adult son off with a slap on the wrist for a domestic violence rap that would have gotten anyone NOT in the media jail or even prison time. That's the Josh Marquis we know, here in Clatsop County. Wish we knew the one you appear to know.
I certainly don't know the DA you speak of so well, look and see how he is working real hard to divide the County he lives in.
Josh Marquis hates teens, now you know one reason he is hated. Read up on the rest, let us know if your still amused
I'm sorry. I really fight against being too outspoken or critical of others on a personal level simply because of their political perspective. However in the case of Josh Marquis, I make an exception. It is apalling that this psychotic parasite is still drinking from the public trough. Marquis established long ago that he was a disgusting human being with little humanity, respect for justice, or respect for due process of the law. I his case saying he is unfit to practice law or represent the public falls far short of the real issue. Josh Marquis is a cancer on our society and forfieted his right to share the rights and freedoms that ordinary decent citizens are allowed to share. This is a man that should be isolated from decent humans and locked away for life. He represents one of the biggest threats to humanity that those who value democracy and fairness could ever imagine, and is way out front in this growing tide of unlawful, fascist, authoritarians that are destroying our constitution and all that we as a civilized people have fought to gain over the last few centuries.
A cancer to society, I agree. From personal experience of a case in which DA Josh Marquis, neglected, was bias,mistreated,and sought no justice whatsoever, I will have to agree 100%. This case took place back in 2003 which involved an 18yr oldgirl found shot to death in the home of her boyfriend, which happend to be her army recruiter. of course with the military being involved, one would speculate fowl play and why this recruiter was cleared from being any type of suspect. DA Josh Marquis then 'sold' the idea that this teenager may have taken her own life by shooting herself in the heart with her boyfriends gun??! Without any physical evidence supporting so? What an outrage. He stands for something other than justice thats for sure, and that is to only keep him in his position, and not having a case go unsolved. I cringe at the thought of him being Oregons senator.He is disease.
This guy is no different from most DAs. A complete and utter bag of poo. One might wonder what steps a citizen can take to rectify the situation which is systemic and unlikely to change. Seems like I remember Thomas Jefferson writing about the Tree of Liberty and its watering requirements.
WARNING: Narcissist and professional liar Joshua Marquis is being considered for the U.S. Attorney position for the Oregon Judicial District. Somehow Wyden submitted his name as one of three candidates for the position.
If you hate this bastard as DA, just imagine how he'd screw up as U.S. Attorney. Write to Obama and tell him to appoint this excrement to the waste treatment plant where he belongs.
A County Commissioner in Marquis county was written up in an editorial by Marquis friend, the owner of the Daily Astorian for governing like the KKK. Many of us believe this was just another hate campaign supported by our DA. The Commissioners mailbox was painted with the letters KKK on it after the editorial ran in the paper. Marquis is quoted in that same paper saying the vandalism to the mailbox was "political". He is political first, above all else.
Great News! Asshole Marquis didn't make the cut for Oregon U.S. Atty. Apparently, being an arrogant asshole wasn't a requisite of the position. (see below)
I recently added a complaint to his OSB file, so if we're lucky, the asshole may live out his career in obscure Astoria--thus making him the Asshole of Astoria.
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President Barack Obama has nominated a lawyer for Oregon's Justice Department to be the state's top federal prosecutor.
Amanda Marshall has been a child advocacy lawyer for the state Justice Department. If she is confirmed by the U.S. Senate, she'll replace Dwight Holton, who was named Oregon's interim U.S. attorney in February.
U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden says Marshall has been a successful criminal prosecutor in Coos County, as well as "a tireless advocate for children and families" with the state Justice Department.
She graduated from the University of Oregon in 1992 and the Willamette University College of Law in 1995.
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