NOA trending toward ‘evil’

In the almost never-ending debate about whether Joshua Marquis--spokesman for the National District Attorney’s Association is evil or stupid, comes today’s gem:

Marquis has been getting lots of play since asserting that people exonerated by DNA evidence aren’t really exonerated after all. Yesterday I went on at some length about the idiocy of his comments in the National Review. Today’s gem comes from MSNBC.

There Marquis says:

“Well my concern about it is that, as you say, when we use the word “exonerated,” that means innocent. That means didn‘t do it. And four of us here are lawyers, all except Mr. Cook, and if somebody is asked the question of Mr. Cook or Mr. Cook is asked have you ever been convicted of a crime, he has to say yes because he pled no contest to murder in the second degree in order to get out of prison after 20 years.”

Let’s take a look: So in sentence 1 (the definitional sentence) he equates “Exonerated” with factual (as opposed to legal) innocence. And then what does he argue? That legal (as opposed to factual) guilt is what makes Cook guilty?

So?
Moron or Prosecutorial nutcase?

My vote: This statement is so stupid, that it can’t be happenstance. I think it tips the balance of power toward evil rather than dumb (at least for today).