Oh come on, this is a gross understatement of what this man accomplished.
He didn’t just write the supreme court. He then testified to them. As his own lawyer, after failing in a similar attempt at his initial trial.
He got a unanimous 9-0 vote in his favor.
That trial freed two thousand unjustly imprisoned people. He then went on to have a proper trial for his original crime with an actual lawyer and got his fair innocent verdict.
This man singlehandedly reinforced one or two constitutional amendments, sealing a rather significant loophole, and almost no one knows about him.
Before he did this, it was possible to be denied a lawyer if you weren’t facing the possibility of the death penalty, as he was denied one. Now it’s not, and everyone who’s up for trial is entitled to a lawyer.
every time i see some tumblr poetry or whatever about how beautiful it is that certain songs can remind you of past memories all i can think about is how my dad is still enraged by the rawhide theme song because one time his college roommate got blackout drunk, crawled into my dad’s bed crying, and wouldn’t leave until my dad sang him the entire song in a soothing and gentle tone
“Like so many others, I am horrified and heartbroken by what is happening to immigrant kids and families because of this administration’s disastrous policies. We now know that more than 700 kids were separated from their parents between October 2017 and April 2018. As a mother and a grandmother, it’s devastating to even imagine. Not only that — this administration built on their ‘zero tolerance’ policy earlier this month. The result? Nearly 700 more kids were separated from their families in the first two weeks of the new program. Think about that. Hundreds of families torn apart in two weeks. Muzaffar Chishti of Migration Policy Institute said something that has stuck with me. He said that ‘In the immigration context, the government has never taken a stand against the protection of kids in this country. For the first time, it is now formally taking a position that explicitly goes against the best interests of kids.’ It is now the official policy of the US government — a nation of immigrants — to separate children from their families. That is an absolute disgrace. #FamiliesBelongTogether. If you’re like me, there’s nothing worse than feeling helpless. So on this National Day of Action for Children (supported by groups from ACLU to We Belong Together to United We Dream to MomsRising.org, National Domestic Workers Alliance), visit Families Belong Together to see what you can do to help. There is no more important test of our country than the way we treat the most vulnerable among us, especially children. We cannot turn away from what’s happening on our watch — we have to act.“
~2016 popular vote winner; Hillary Rodham Clinton
MURDER and HYMNODISTS and SONGS about MURDER in convenient HYMN METERS!
You, dear friend, have already gotten this explanation, but allow me to vent in public! Avery’s account of things is proving my best source since he clearly knew both Merrill’s, and indeed, one of ‘em–not my Rev. Merrill–was involved in publishing the Vindication of the Result of the Trial of Rev. Ephraim K. Avery. Nonetheless, even he takes a less than commendable whack at distinguishing the two. This is clearly my Merrill:
As is this one:
Yet I’m inclined to guess (and guess it shall remain until I’ve had time to pore over the conference records) that my Rev. Merrill would not have been a presiding elder at this point and that this passage refers to the other one:
I’ve found one secondary source that says the presiding elder was never called as a witness since he had contact with Knapp between when he was arrested and when the trial began (presumably this interview above). Yet the summary of “Merrill’s” testimony includes some things that I very much doubt my guy would have known, unless he was a presiding elder. So maybe they’re wrong about the witnesses and/or I’m wrong about the eldership, in which case Avery told my Rev. Merrill that he would rather be hanged than endure a third trial:
Ah, well. I’ve got David Richard Kasserman’s Fall River Outrage on ILL and ready to be picked up later today. Hopefully it will resolve a question or two. Either way, this stuff will make a really smashing dissertation footnote ; D
AND! Speaking of murder and hymnody, from time to time I imagine myself writing a conference paper or article on the use of hymns in spiritual autobiographies. If I were to do that, the case studies would probably be Ebeneezer Frances Newell and Jonas Welch Holman for sheer pervasiveness… but I’ve now found my oddest example:
The Masorti Foundation, and collegial organizations, are creating a special emergency fund to pursue justice for Yosef Kibita and the Abayudaya Jewish community from Uganda. Yosef lives at Kibbutz Ketura, a kibbutz with Masorti affiliations in Southern Israel, where he has been for a year. He is seeking to make Aliyah.
The Israeli Ministry of the Interior rejected Yosef Kibita’s request to immigrate under the law of return; moreover, the Ministry used this ruling to broadly disqualify the entire Abayudaya community of 2,000 from making Aliyah, declaring that the community and their conversion to Judaism is not recognized.
The Masorti Movement is developing an emergency, multi-pronged, campaign to correct this injustice. Please give as generously as you possibly can –and as quickly as you can– since the court case must be heard THIS JUNE! All funds contributed will be used to support Masorti Israel’s efforts for Yosef Kibita and equality for the Abayudaya community.
This is an issue that hits close to home; as some of you may know, it was only with considerable opposition from the Chief Rabbinate that the Ministry of the Interior eventually decided to allow Karaites to make aliyah in a time of great crisis for Egyptian Jews in the early 1950s. Gershom Sizomu is a good friend of a good friend, and it stings to once again see the validity of a group of “weird Jews” legally questioned.
You can read the statement of the Masorti/Conservative movement (who are also being thrown under the bus with this decision) over here. If you have a few shekels or words of encouragement to send their way, all the better.
Mooncustafer 