SMOKE AND MIRRORS [PRO DEATH PENALTY QUOTE OF THE WEEK ~ SUNDAY AUGUST 24, 2014 TO SATURDAY AUGUST 30, 2014]

            On this date, August 24, 2010, a federal judge in Georgia upheld the murder conviction of death row inmate Troy Davis after a special evidentiary hearing ordered by the US Supreme Court to determine whether he is innocent. We will post the idiom, ‘Smoke and Mirrors’, as the Pro-Death Penalty Quote of the week. It was quoted by Federal Judge, William Moore. 

William Theodore Moore Jr.

QUOTE: US District Judge William Moore held a hearing on the issue on June 24 2010. On Tuesday, the judge issued a 174-page order concluding that Davis is guilty.

“This court concludes that executing an innocent person would violate the Eighth Amendment,” the judge wrote. “However, Mr. Davis is not innocent.”

While reviewing Davis' claims of innocence last year, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Georgia found that Davis "vastly overstates the value of his evidence of innocence."

"Some of the evidence is not credible and would be disregarded by a reasonable juror," Judge William T. Moore wrote in a 172-page opinion. "Other evidence that Mr. Davis brought forward is too general to provide anything more than smoke and mirrors."

AUTHOR: William Theodore Moore Jr. (born 1940) is a United States federal judge. Born in Bainbridge, Georgia, Moore received an A.A. from Georgia Military College in 1960 and an LL.B. from the University Of Georgia School Of Law in 1964. He was in private practice in Savannah, Georgia from 1964 to 1977. He was the United States Attorney for the Southern District of Georgia from 1977 to 1981. He was in private practice in Savannah, Georgia from 1981 to 1994. He was a Pro-tem recorders court judge, Garden City, Georgia from 1984 to 1994. Moore is a federal judge on the United States District Court for the Southern District of Georgia. Moore was nominated by President Bill Clinton on July 13, 1994, to a seat vacated by Anthony A. Alaimo. He was confirmed by the United States Senate on October 7, 1994, and received his commission on October 11, 1994. He served as chief judge from 2004–present.

William Theodore Moore Jr.

INTERNET SOURCE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoke_and_mirrors

Smoke and mirrors is a metaphor for a deceptive, fraudulent or insubstantial explanation or description. The source of the name is based on magicians' illusions, where magicians make objects appear or disappear by extending or retracting mirrors amid a distracting burst of smoke. The expression may have a connotation of virtuosity or cleverness in carrying out such a deception.

In the field of computer programming, it is used to describe a program or functionality that does not yet exist, but appears as though it does (cf. vaporware). This is often done to demonstrate what a resulting project will function/look like after the code is complete — at a trade show, for example.

More generally, "smoke and mirrors" may refer to any sort of presentation by which the audience is intended to be deceived, such as an attempt to fool a prospective client into thinking that one has capabilities necessary to deliver a product in question.