He Was a Suspect in the Yogurt Shop Murders for Thirty Years. He Can't Forget | Hacker News Reader

He Was a Suspect in the Yogurt Shop Murders for Thirty Years. He Can't Forget

texasmonthly.com

64 pointsgmays40 comments

No disciplinary action for the cops involved in trying to convict innocent boys, and harassing one to the extent that he’s now dead. If their own freedom was on the line, they’d not be so motivated. Time to hold the police accountable:

Dont forget that the whole police qualified immunity was a fiction created out of nothing from SCOTUS. Its not federal law. Not state law.

Pierson v. Ray (1967) is the start of this farce.

And these police, due to non-law SCOTUS making shit up, are able to hound an innocent person for decades and suffer absolutely no punishments for that.

The right to an abortion was also a legal fiction "created out of nothing".

So was woman's right to vote? What's your point.

You can probably assume they’re using this as an example of an “invented” right that many here would agree with, to say it’s not necessarily a bad thing for courts to “invent” a right.

Part of it is also congress won't do their job. So it leaves the courts legislating from the bench. And precedents can change as the wind blows.

If anything, it's problematic. Like, why do cops have immunity? Why do they deserve it, and why does SCOTUS get to invent 'qualified immunity'?

Of course, yet another person brings up Roe v Wade, and didn't read the briefs. The crux of that was that states had a patchwork of laws, and some of those laws required violating privacy laws. Abortion rights were predicated upon doctor-patient privacy. The briefs also stated that first trimester should be no issue for abortion, second is not recommended, and 3rd was at threat of life of mother. That's a pretty decent and well thought standard.

And....

> So was woman's right to vote?

Are you for fucking serious? Have you not heard of the 19th amendment? This isn't legislating from the bench. This is 'passes constitutional muster and is part of the constution'

The legal system is literally incapable of holding cops accountable

Why do you feel this is the case? There are many examples of cops being both held accountable and getting away with literal murder.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Breonna_Taylor#Depa...

In America are police essentially literally immune from the law?

Who watches the watchers?

The answer is no.

It's complicated because the District Attorney is usually responsible for seeing cases against police and deciding to bring charges but they rely on having a good relationship with the police.

The high profile stuff you see on the news are the hard cases. Most of the time the instances where people say they got away with something are very biased takes that leave out a lot of context rather than a successful cover-up, though both do happen.

People talk about qualified immunity like it's a personal shield for police but it's much more nuanced than you'll read about most places. Qualified immunity just says that the individual police officer has immunity from prosecution or liability in cases where they genuinely believe they are doing their job correctly.

Not quite. The way courts have applied QI is: a cop can't be held liable if there's no legal precedent that what they did would violate one's rights. The specific wording is "clearly established". So if there's no legal precedent that punching an innocent bystanding (who's recording them) is a violation of their rights, then it's not "clearly established" that their rights were violated. Ergo, QI applies and the bystander's on the hook for his/her hospital bill.

The absolutely absurd wrinkle is: courts often skip the rights question entirely. Since Pearson v. Callahan (2009), they can decide either "prong" first, but many decide only that the right wasn't "clearly established". As such, the underlying violation goes unruled on and precedent is never established.

Rarely, courts hold the conduct so obviously unconstitutional that no precedent is needed and that QI doesn't apply. Those rulings are rare and often reversed on appeal, including by the Supreme Court. Even if they survive appeal to the circuit level, courts are under no obligation to "listen" to a ruling from a different circuit (it's how "circuit splits" happen).

> has immunity from prosecution or liability in cases where they genuinely believe

Why does it apply only to cops? If I'm drivind at 60mph in a 50mph zone but I genuinely believe the max speed is 60mph, do I get a fine?

The question to ask is of the net harm on society would be higher if cops were hesitating at every move.

The stories against the police are incredibly damning, but the statistics are pretty tame.

> The question to ask is of the net harm on society would be higher if cops were hesitating at every move.

We have to draw the line somewhere. How about, "Cops shouldn't harass people once charges against them have been dropped"?

> The stories against the police are incredibly damning, but the statistics are pretty tame.

Every minute wasted harassing an innocent person is a minute better spent pursuing actual criminals. There are numerous cases (like the Central Park 5) where the police prematurely focused on suspects of convenience while the real criminals walked free and killed again. Stronger rules would protect us.

Irony: the real killer was arrested 2 days later and had the murder weapon on him, but it was never matched against the Austin murders. He killed himself in 1999. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Eugene_Brashers

I had heard about this case but I didn't realize they had finally identified the perpetrator. What an awful human being he was.

Fascinating history. 3 years for a 12 year sentence as the result of good behavior, huh. Amusing. I suppose if someone were to attempt to murder you or someone you love, your best shot is to kill them after their release and then behave well. Then you will have likely saved society from a repeat offender and perhaps you’ll serve a few years. A sacrifice well worth it.

And I suppose their loved ones should then kill you, to save society from another killer...

And I suppose your loved ones should then kill their loved ones...

And so it goes..

Why would you suppose that? Presumably, arjie’s murder-in-response tactic is only for the first “unjustified” murder.

In arjie's mind, perhaps. In the minds of the murdered person's family, perhaps not.

Three years is a long time. Three years in an American prison and you’re not coming out the same person.

It blows my mind when I read comments online. People very lightly talk about sentences of decades like it is nothing.

Turns out I work a couple blocks away from the strip model where that shop was. One day I walked by and saw a memorial placard in the ground and started googling to find out what happened there. Pretty nuts. There’s been so much gentrification since the time of the murders that it’s hard to understand what kind of neighborhood it was back in the day.

It's honestly not all that different today. The Shoal Creek neighborhood behind it was well established then, and the mall buildings were the same. North of Anderson has changed a bit more, but not radically.

Yeah, I was about to say the same thing. The strip mall's basically the same. The shops have changed. Some of the stuff around there has been changed, but it's actually not that different.

I've been in Austin for 25 years. It's actually one of my favorite parts of town. What has completely changed is the people.

Used to be kind of a slow college town with kind of a counterculture, some hippies. Now it's a buzzing urban area. Fancy cars, a lot of tech money.

That part of Austin (I lived in North Shoal Creek for about fifteen years) is pretty slow to change. Most obvious change on Anderson would be part of Northcross Mall becoming the Walmart.

Weirdly, and I'm I guess I'm a little embarrassed about this, but after I saw the documentary about what happened, I saw him interviewed at some bar. I used ChatGPT to figure out which bar it was. And then on a lazy Sunday I drove down there and just hung out and soaked in the atmosphere.

He was there, he works there. I didn't even want to look because it felt weird. But there he was, doing his job, living his life.

Probably the bar in the article that he owns, I guess.

Another example of why the death penalty should not exist. One of the boys spent five years on death row for a crime he didn't commit.

The HBO documentary about this case was excellent and you really feel for Forrest and his family. Highly recommended watch.

> In February, Forrest was officially declared innocent, and a few months later he was granted millions of dollars in compensation from the City of Austin. In August, he turned fifty, and his mom and the patrons of the Manchaca Springs Saloon threw him a big party. Sixty friends—many of whom he didn’t even know two years ago—toasted him, hugged him, and gave him raucous high fives. You would think Forrest would, finally, be happy.

I see the argument thrown around a lot that it's unethical to impose the death penalty because it can't be reversed.

This has never made any sense to me. If you put someone in prison for 40 years, you can't reverse that either. If you spread baseless rumors about someone being a murderer, never charge him with anything, and just quietly let everyone in the state shun and despise him for 40 years...

How does that work? Was he indicted and put on trial?

Two of the other boys were tried, convicted, and one given the death sentence. The death sentence was later commuted, and eventually they were freed due to the violations of their sixth amendment rights.

If someone is falsely convicted we may not be able to rewind time but we can publish their innocence widely and give them monetary compensation, and whatever portion of their life remains is returned to them.

We cannot resurrect a dead person.

> If you put someone in prison for 40 years, you can't reverse that either.

If I walk past you on the street and accidentally sneeze at you, I can't reverse that either. But sneezing at you is less of a harm than putting a person in prison for 40 years, which, you know, is less of a harm than murdering a person.

Millions of dollars isn't a reversal of 40 years in jail or 40 years of humiliation, but it's a heck of a lot better than nothing.

I think it's very obvious why your argument is incorrect. All you have to do is apply it assuming it happened to you, then you'll understand the difference.

False convictions are much easier to stomach for the public when the punishment isn't final, irreversible and impossible to compensate.

The rate of such false convictions is just too high. This study estimates it at over 4%: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1306417111

You can't be killing people for justice when 1 in 25 are statistically innocent, that's just not gonna fly anymore.

40 years and death aren't the only two options. You can't see the future, he could be exonerated after 2 years of the 40 year sentence but if he'd been murdered by the state there would be no coming back.

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