{"id":14,"date":"2009-05-08T14:13:48","date_gmt":"2009-05-08T21:13:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kindleylaw.com\/?page_id=14"},"modified":"2017-05-24T04:39:51","modified_gmt":"2017-05-24T09:39:51","slug":"research-and-writing","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.kindleylaw.com\/?page_id=14","title":{"rendered":"Scholarship"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/span><\/p>\n There is bitter irony in the Indiana Court of Appeals’ description of me as “a recognized scholar,” quoted above in the header of this site. The quotation comes from the Court of Appeals’ 2015 opinion in the case of Tyrus D. Coleman v. State of Indiana<\/a>, which affirmed the denial of Coleman’s petition for post-conviction relief. The same opinion notes that my testimony at the post-conviction hearing was accompanied by “bitter recriminations against the legal system that convicted Coleman.” (I guess you had to have been there, but there was nothing “fervent” about my testimony. I did not volunteer these “bitter recriminations,” but stated them calmly and matter-of-factly under oath during cross-examination.) Some very good reasons for these “bitter recriminations” are summarized in this post at my (currently dormant) blog<\/a>. (Coleman has a petition for writ of habeas corpus pending in federal district court, alleging that his conviction and imprisonment violates the United States Constitution.)<\/p>\n As for the Court of Appeals saying I am “a recognized scholar,” I wrote the following on January 5, 2016 in another blog post<\/a>:<\/p>\n Recognized as a scholar by whom? The Court of Appeals and the post-conviction court were presumably referring to this Comment I wrote for the Wisconsin Law Review when I was a law student way back in 1998, which the State brought up at the post-conviction hearing: John Kindley, The Fit Between the Elements for an Informed Consent Cause of Action and the Scientific Evidence Linking Induced Abortion with Increased Breast Cancer Risk<\/em>, 1998 WLR 1595<\/a>. But the Indiana Court of Appeals, in its opinion calling me a \u201crecognized scholar,\u201d didn\u2019t actually cite this piece of scholarship. Nor did the Eighth Circuit in its recent \u201cembarrassing\u201d<\/a> abortion decision, which instead merely cited<\/a> the declaration, submitted by the State of North Dakota, of a board-certified obstetrician and gynecologist licensed in North Dakota, who \u201cexplained some studies support a connection between abortion and breast cancer.\u201d Nor did the North Dakota Supreme Court in disposing, back in 2003<\/a>, of a false advertising suit I brought against the very same abortion clinic that brought suit as the plaintiff in the Eighth Circuit case. Nor did the courts in California in disposing, in 2003-2004<\/a>, of a similar false advertising case brought there.<\/p>\n In fact, the last time I was \u201crecognized\u201d as a \u201cscholar\u201d was by then-Congressman Dave Weldon, M.D., back on August 24, 1999<\/a> \u2014 more than 15 years ago.<\/p>\n The Indiana Court of Appeals (and the post-conviction court) also think that I am \u201cwell read.\u201d Let me share an excellent piece of legal scholarship I did happen to read not too long ago, that I think concerns and should interest them very much: The Origins of \u201cReasonable Doubt\u201d<\/em> (2005), by Yale law prof James Q. Whitman<\/a>. Its thesis is close to something Gerry Spence wrote in one of his books, also published in 2005, which he framed as an argument to a hypothetical jury:<\/p>\n The protection of reasonable doubt is not just a protection for Jimmy. It protects each of you. You are men and women with good souls and clear consciences. But what if you were pressured by the prosecution\u2019s arguments to convict Jimmy, and when you got home you began to worry about what you had done, lying awake at night concerned about your decision, your worry that you may have convicted an innocent man?<\/p>\n The rule of reasonable doubt is to protect you. You have a right not to be concerned about your decision. It must be clear to you so that all worry about whether you were right has been removed by the evidence. That is why we have reasonable doubt \u2014 not only to protect the accused, but to protect you as well.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n