It's the obligation of the prosecution to seek justice, not defend, I think. So if evidence comes to light that says, "this is not the correct person," then they need to drop it. But in order to bring a capital case to trial, you would have to, as a human, really be convinced that the evidence clearly points to this individual. And in that convincing, it's difficult, and probably takes a herculean effort to be swayed by new evidence. That's the dissonance. Too often those charged with prosecuting crimes (and cops, too) get tunnel vision. Sometimes, a fresh pair of eyes looks at the evidence and says, "wait, there was this other dude, and here's his DNA, and look, he owned that gun..and what the fuck were you thinking?"

It's not that they're being intentionally stupid or anything. It's just really human to double-down in the face of being wrong, especially when circumstances are so dire.

Squashy/Prickly were things we were talking about to explain social personality types to Noah. We decided we are entire family of pricklies, except for Grace who is all squashy.

At work, my friend C to my mind is a squashy because she'll actually listen to kids' non academic issues but I sat in her room and heard her tell a student, "No. I'm not going to fix the printer. No one taught me what to do. Figure it out." (favorite advice ever!) and my other fave, "No. You can't go to the school psychologist right now. Face it. All people have problems they'd like to talk about. The people who are successful learn to compartmentalize to finish what they need to do Right Now and then deal with the problem when they can. You need to learn that too."

So perhaps not so squashy after all.

Squashy outside with a hard rubber outside--like those teddy bears that are actually filled with hard foam, so cuddly to look at and hold, but such a disappointment when you go to give them a good, hard hug.

Possibly, we watch a lot of True Crime in this apartment.

Ha, I would totally say something like that. I have to admit to loving the look on a student's face when I say, "Tough." "What?" "I said, 'Tough.' I know you're not happy but life is like that sometimes."

Sometimes I just wanted my teachers to say, "yeah, that does in fact suck." Every now and again, they did. And it was awesome.

When my students used to tell me something wasn't "fair," I used to agree enthusiastically with them. Yup, it's TOTALLY not fair. It's still what we're going to do, though.

I wonder if I was a big whiner in middle school.

Man, I would never have gone to a teacher with a problem outside academics. And I might not have gone to them with an academic problem. If they identified one and wanted to discuss it with me, that was fine. Otherwise I worked that shit out with students.

And emotional stuff? Hell no. None of them. I am the prickly student. But I doubt any of them would have dreamt to come to me with anything that mightn't affect university placement or public grades.

As for social media and acting the ass, they would have snapped down on that then. I wonder what their opinion is now? Because the universities we were trying to get into really ran you through the microscope. But it was a big dog and pony show that I think was incredibly stupid.

Hey ita ! If you didn't just tweet about a new job opportunity, you might want to check your twitter acct.

I'm not here. I'm still asleep.