Thread by @AkivaMCohen

This is the correct legal decision on the facts and the law (gimme a sec) which should be enough to tell you that the law itself is the problem here, and has to change.

Also, with respect to Dilan, he's 100% wrong about what the Missippi Supreme Court found. See below.

https://twitter.com/dilanesper/status/1432379917283389443

Why is it the correct legal decision? Mississippi does not have no-fault divorce, so the abused spouse here had to prove "habitual cruel and inhuman treatment" to get out of her marriage. There was a trial, and the trial judge found she hadn't proven - without expressly saying if

That failure of proof was either because (1) the judge believed the wife's testimony about what happened in the marriage but didn't think it was sufficiently cruel; or (2) the judge believed the husband and didn't believe the wife

The former would be monstrous; as @dilanesper notes in his thread, the conduct Ms. Rankins testified to is horrifying.

So Mississipi's SCT goes out of its way to note that the latter is not only an option, but it's required to assume the judge disbelieved her

And as a legal matter, that's right. If a trial judge holds a hearing on contested facts, and then rules for one party, appellate courts can't be overturning that ruling on the theory that as long as the judge believed the loser the loser should have won

Judges holding bench trials (like juries in jury trials) are allowed to make credibility determinations and choose between competing versions of events, and those judicial rulings are not really subject to review.

And appellate courts are required to affirm verdicts if there is any legal basis on which the fact-finder could have reached them. In a state like Mississippi, "I don't believe your allegations" is one such basis.

Despite that, when the first level appellate court reversed the denial of divorce, it did so on the basis that "****if**** the judge believed Ms. Rankins, then what she testified to would be cruel and inhuman enough to justify a divorce"

And it would. Even in goddamn Mississippi

So when the Mississippi SCT reviewed, and trapped this poor woman in her marriage, they didn't say "this isn't abusive enough" about keeping Ms. Rankins from her sister, abusing her dog, pushing her, etc. They said "well, maybe the judge didn't believe her version of events"

And if you look at the dissent in the Mississippi SCT, you can see the limits of what the parties did agree had happened: yelling, name-calling, once kicking a suitcase in anger, and criticizing

Is that going to rise to the level of "habitually cruel and inhuman treatment"? Not in Mississippi, where the law says that habitual "unkindness or rudeness" isn't enough.

Which is an abomination. Nobody should be trapped in such a marriage.

So yes, be angry about this decision. But focus your fire where it belongs: On the Mississippi state legislature, which apparently thinks women like Ms. Rankins shouldn't be allowed to escape their husbands until those husbands are "sufficiently" abusive.