Category: Crime

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Eula Boola!

A woman, Brenda Avery, in rural New Brunswick, was charged by the police with piracy after Microsoft spies claimed to have found pirated disks of their applications in her computer store.

The RCMP entered her home and arrested her and her husband even though he had no involvement in the computer store. Brenda Avery defended herself in court and won. The article in the Canadian Press does not describe her defense. Was the software not pirated after all, or was she unaware of the illegitimate source of the disk? It doesn’t say.

But the Crown urged her to plead guilty. Why?

Because it’s more efficient that way. The RCMP charged her in the first place at the request of Microsoft. What I want to know is, if I charge Microsoft with marketing defective products and, through their negligence and incompetence, costing me hours and hours and hours of work, and possible job promotions, and money– can I get the RCMP to burst into Microsoft headquarters and seize the relevant documents and arrest Belinda Gates?

Well, maybe if I wear a suit and wave around some documents.

Why is it that the police didn’t investigate the issue? They didn’t– obviously. They simply took Microsoft’s word for it. That’s outrageous.

In any case, I took note of the case because I have said here before that the standard End User License Agreement that we all pretend to assent to when we install software is worthless and unenforceable and this looked, at first, as if it might prove me wrong. It didn’t. First of all, the charges were laid against a store, not an “End User”.

Secondly, the charges failed.

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The Irvings Sink a Ship

There is a myth out there that a lot of your tax money goes to welfare cheats. True. Here’s one of them:

About 30 years ago, the Irving Corporation (a big Maritime oil company owned by the Irving family) accidentally sunk a barge loaded with PCBs in the St. Laurence River. When government scientists discovered that it was leaking deadly PCBs, the Irvings said, “surely you don’t expect us to pay for it?”.

The government raised the vessel for $45 million, cleaned up the PCB’s, then gave it back to the Irvings for a pittance, $5 million.

Why has no one been arrested? Why aren’t the Irvings sitting in jail? Why haven’t the RCMP seized the Irvings’ assets in order to sell them to pay the bill?

Because the Irvings are not like you or me, my friend. They are rich. They know politicians on a first-name basis.

Now that’s the way to do business! Thank you Mr. Chretien, now we’ll just resume our profiteering, if you don’t mind…

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Bob Kerrey’s Burden

If you haven’t already read Bob Kerrey’s “confessions” to the New York Times and CBS’ 60 Minutes by now, you owe it to yourself. It is a stirring, compelling story.

It seems unfair to summarize this riveting account, but the basic facts are important. In February 1969, Bob Kerrey, a Lieutenant, the commander of a Navy Seals Squad, led his men into the village of Thanh Phong in the Mekong Delta. Shots were fired. “Thirteen to twenty” unarmed women and children were dead.

That’s really all there is. Well, you know, there is of course a long story with it. No one can live with himself having murdered twenty women and children without have a long story about it. And I don’t necessarily mean that Kerrey excuses his actions. But I do mean that when you add a long story and you admit that you are confessing a terrible secret and the secret is that you murdered twenty women and children, the truth is that you believe that what you did was different in some way from what a cold-blooded murderer does but very, very awful, but different, but awful… well, how far back can you step, from the basic facts? On my first reading of the account published in the New York Times, it certainly struck me that Bob Kerrey was confessing to a very serious crime. Just above his confession is a link to a story about attempts to prosecute the men who set a bomb off at a church in 1963 in Alabama which killed four children. You understand: we are trying to prosecute these men. And I had to wonder, of course, if anyone is going to try to prosecute Bob Kerrey.

Kerrey tells us that the women and children were killed because someone fired upon them and his men returned fire, and when they examined the bodies, they found only women and children. But he admits that before they returned fire, and before someone allegedly fired upon them, they had already murdered an old man and an old woman and three children in a hut on the outskirts of the village. If there is ambiguity about what happened to the people in the village proper, there is no ambiguity about the actions of the men earlier. They were afraid that these villagers would reveal their presence to the others.  They were not soldiers: they were civilians.  They had to be silenced. They were murdered.

Gerhard Klann, who was with Kerrey that night, doesn’t agree with Kerrey’s version. Neither does Mike Ambrose, who was also there, nor a Viet Namese woman who claimed to have witnessed the incident. Pham Tri Lahn.

Klann says they were never fired upon. Instead, they rounded up the women and children and when they realized that the man they were looking for, a Viet Cong officer, was not present, they decided to kill the villagers. They did not want to leave witnesses to the earlier murder of the grandparents and three children, and they did not want any enemy in the area to know they were there. Of course, as the Times points out, firing your weapons would certainly give away some information about yourself.

Now, there are a lot of people out there who will immediately object to my use of the word “murder”. I would expect they would argue all or any of the following:

1. “civilians”– women and children included– were known to operate as part of the Viet Cong and sometimes killed unsuspecting U.S. soldiers, therefore, Kerrey was justified in treating them as a threat to their lives.

2. This was war, after all, so you have to accept civilian casualties. The normal rules don’t apply.

3. It was all a regrettable mistake, but not something you could compare to a deliberate act under entirely different circumstances. The men were justifiably frightened.

The trouble is that all Western nations agree that, even in hostile territory, the deliberate murder of unarmed civilians is not permitted. This is the military speaking– not some pie-in-the-sky liberal pacifist. This is the standard that German officers were held to at Nuremberg. This is the standard that the U.S. has publicly agreed to in treaties and protocols signed and ratified by the government. This is the standard we are holding above the thugs and murderers of Kosovo and Serbia.

The trouble is, the civilians were unarmed. They did not attack the soldiers. They did not call out for help from hiding Viet Cong commandos. They did as they were told. They waited for the men to complete their search. Then they were shot in cold blood.

The trouble is that even if Kerrey’s account is to be believed– that they were fired upon first and that they returned fire in self-defense– they still murdered the old couple and three children in the first “hooch” in cold blood. That is a war crime. That is cold-blooded murder.

And Kerrey’s account is troubling. If they were fired upon first and returned fire in a random, panicked spree of self-defense… why were all of the civilians killed? Were none wounded?

In the movie, “The Great Escape”, a German officer informs an American commander that a group of the escapees were killed while fleeing their pursuers. “How many,” asks the American, “were wounded”. The German officer, whom we are given to understand is a honorable man fighting for the wrong side (a typical myth of militarists everywhere: that honorable men can fight for evil causes and still be “honorable”) painfully admits, “none”.

We know exactly what he means. And we know why it is so troubling that Kerrey tells us that none of the unarmed villagers were “wounded”. This is the part of the evening that Kerrey, while claiming to have made a damning confession, refuses to discuss.

There are strange ambiguities in the world. We still prosecute Nazi war criminals when we find them. We’re trying to prosecute the murderers of those four black girls in Alabama in 1963. An international tribunal in Holland is trying to bring Milosevic and his cronies to justice for similar crimes.

We throw children and young adults into brutal prisons for long terms for smoking a harmless weed. We try to impeach presidents for having sex with women they are not married to. We ruin the lives of athletes and politicians and business executives who lie or cheat or harass.

In Viet Nam, on a dark night thirty years ago, a group of American men entered a village and murdered 20 civilians. I think Kerrey is genuinely sorry it happened. But so is everybody.

Why did Kerrey do it? Why is he talking about this now?

His given reason is the usual rationale for salacious talk-shows: to advance healing. To bring closure, of course. Peace of mind. You know. And prevent if from ever happening again. But one has to consider that Kerrey ran for the Democratic nomination for President once upon a time and, with Bush not doing anything to dispel the notion that he is the country’s luckiest bozo, might run again. Suppose he was considering running in 2004. Suppose he was worried about the scrutiny his war record would have received had he become the Democratic nominee. Suppose he thought it might be smarter to get it all out now. It’s never a scandal if it’s already public knowledge (Clinton’s stupid mistake was, of course, lying about Lewinski– not the sex itself). Heck, it might even help him. He would have his war record credentials (he served, didn’t defer, didn’t dodge) front and centre, and the confessional aspect of it all might have endeared him to the public I don’t know if that’s what Kerrey is thinking, but you’d be a fool to not tuck this possibility into the back of your mind somewhere and save it for 2004..

In an eerie echo of Viet Nam era propaganda battles, Kerrey now accuses CBS and the New York Times with “collaboration” with the enemy. Uh, Bob, this is 2001…. And Bob, it doesn’t dignify you to sling mud no matter how much you disagree with the information posted in the New York Times or on “60 Minutes”

Has the story taken an even uglier turn? Kerrey met with six of the seven members of his commando team on April 27th for a long, evening meeting. The ostensible purpose of the meeting was to get their stories straight. The six emerged from the meeting all agreeing that they had been fired upon first by the enemy before returning fire. They all denied that villagers had been rounded up and shot.

What is kind of strange here is this: Kerrey has admitted to an act that certainly should raise questions about criminal prosecution. Then he held a meeting with all the American witnesses– except for Gerhard Klann, who denies that shots were fired at the commandos– to coordinate their stories. If Kerrey had been charged, it would be illegal, of course, for witnesses to gather together to “get their story straight”.

Kerrey and the six commandos then issued a press release insisting that they had been fired upon first. Why should we believe this account? To contradict this story would be to admit to cold-blooded murder, and the six ex-commandos would not likely embrace any other alternative. I’m not saying that we know their statement is false. But no court of law in America would accept or even allow the testimony of six witnesses who met together prior to giving testimony in order to coordinate their stories.

It should be noted that there are problems with this story in any case. First of all, none of Kerrey’s men were wounded. Secondly, all of the villagers died in the first hail of bullets, according to Kerrey. They all died? Not a single survivor? Not a single wounded? This strains credulity.

Kerrey also initially denied that he had anything to do with the murder of an old man at a “hooch” (hut) at the outskirts of the village. Now he admits, “we used lethal methods to keep our presence from being detected”. Oh the euphemisms! This one smells. Try “we killed several villagers at the outskirts of Thanh Phong so they wouldn’t give us away.”

“The unanimous view of the six was that we were young men and we did what was right and what was necessary”. The defendants have spoken: they’re not guilty. Think about it. He can’t have it both ways. Either the civilians were killed in cold blood or you were shot at and there is no need for the “we were young” and the “right and necessary”. No need at all.

What has being “young” to do with it? What is he trying to excuse, for which we would be less forgiving if they had been “old”? 2008-05

One last note: Kerrey received a medal for this action. Think about that. No Viet Cong were killed. No military objectives were achieved. The raid was not even successful in any sense at all. But, by golly, you get medals for failure in the army.

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Three Bad Stories

The four officers were found to be defending themselves when they fired 41 shots at the West African immigrant, striking him 19 times, two police sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, told The Associated Press.

The four officers — Kenneth Boss, Sean Carroll, Edward McMellon and Richard Murphy — encountered Diallo in the vestibule of his Bronx apartment building on Feb. 4, 1999, while searching for a rape suspect. They opened fire when they saw what they thought was a gun; it turned out to be his wallet. All four were acquitted of criminal charges last year. New York Times, Thursday, April 26, 2001

Sometimes a story hardly needs comment. The seeds of it’s own outrageous absurdity are already planted, in all their imminent glory, in the very words that tell the tale. In this case– “41 shots”. The only thing left to comment on is the bizarre distortion applied to an issue like the Diallo case because the bar of absurdity has been raised so high. Those who defend the police argue that because Diallo was reaching for his wallet– which some reasonable people might regard as a rather foolish thing to do with a number of New York’s finest closing in aggressively– the police are justified in applying lethal force. The argument appears to be that the police, given their dangerous occupation, can’t afford to wait to see if it really is a wallet. Thus if they win the point that the officers thought it might have been a gun, which is the only point they have a chance of winning, they would seem to prevail and the officers would get off scot free.

But the real issue is the 41 shots. There were four officers. If they had each fired once or twice, you could argue that they were jittery and too quick and maybe even incompetent. If that had been the case, they should simply have been fired. In a dream world, good heavens, they might even have been charged with criminal negligence. But the fact that each officer fired and fired and continued to fire can only be explained by one thing, and that is that they wanted to make sure that nobody was going to survive to go to court and testify that four big, mighty, manly New York police officers went ballistic and fired their guns at him for no good reason at all.

In reality, even if Diallo had been reaching for a gun, the officers, by any reasonable standard, should still have been charged with murder, because there were four of them, and because they obviously had no intention of arresting or disabling or wounding Diallo: they fully intended to kill him.

As it turns out, they may have correctly surmised that a dead Diallo would be easier to deal with than a living witness to their actions, since Diallo, of course, is not available to deny that he even reached for his wallet.

 

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The Supreme Court of Canada recently ruled that four con artists can’t be extradited to the U.S. to face charges because the prosecutors in the case, who have wide discretion over sentences and terms, have threatened to see to it that the malfeasants are sodomized in prison. They can do this because “get tough” U.S. crime laws give them considerable discretion over which charges, exactly, will be laid, how long the prison terms will be, and where the terms will be served.

My friends, the United States is a backwater, sometimes, of spiteful hicks and idiots.

What happened? What made these guardians of public morality so damn mad?

Well, these guys simply decided to fight extradition. The prosecutors (shall we have the evidence now, or after sentencing, your honor?) were hopping mad. How dare you exercise your legal rights! They made threats, including the afore-mentioned sodomization.

Well, it cost them. The four were sure to be extradited until the Supreme Court of Canada got wind of the threats, which, in it’s honorable opinion, amounted to a kind of extortion. The suspects were being asked to give up their constitutional rights, now, this minute, or else face cruel and unusual punishment.

The Supreme Court of Canada, bless their hearts, ruled unanimously that the men don’t have to face that kind of U.S. justice. It’s a start. I’d be quite happy if they would make a blanket ruling that Canada, as a civilized country, never sends anyone to be tried for any crime in the U.S.

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The Master of Soul-less Self Sufficiency

When Timothy McVeigh, sentenced to death for murdering 276 people in the Oklahoma bombing, dies, it is reported in Salon, he intends to quote the poem “Invictus” by William Henley:

I am the master of my fate
I am the captain of my soul

Now now– that’s not traditional. You’re supposed to turn to the families of the victims and say, “I am truly sorry.” But McVeigh isn’t sorry. He believes in what he did. He believes he was right to do it. It was good and necessary.

The Attorney General of the United States, John Ashcroft, believes that it is an act of compassion to grant, to the families of his victims, the privilege of seeing Mr. McVeigh get murdered himself, on that peculiar cross-shaped table upon which they will strap him before this charming little game of “which tube contains the liquid cyanide” that they play when they put him to death.

When they executed people by firing squad, they used to put one blank in one of the rifles, so each of the shooters could go home that night thinking that he might not have been the one responsible for the man’s death. How honorable, for an institution that claims to pride itself on honor, courage, and integrity— how honorable, to cop out at the crucial moment: I might not have done it. I can sleep at night.

What a great idea. What a great way to help people– men (do you know of any female executioners?)– feel better about themselves. It’s cheaper than Prozac or Zoloft.

What amazes me is that they don’t do this in war. Why not?  Every soldier gets a gun but some only fire blanks. Every air plane gets bombs but some are duds. One in five torpedoes carries only the admiral’s laundry. That way, after committing hundreds or thousands of atrocities, we can all go home and say, I didn’t do it. When our children ask us what we did in the war, we can all say, “fired duds, mostly”.

Why didn’t they think of this when they dropped the nuclear bomb? They could have sent ten planes with ten similar fat bombs and they could all have dropped them at the same time and then they could all have gone home and said to their wives, “mine was a dud”.

Of course, the real captain of the Enola Gay, Paul W. Tibbets, is actually proud of the fact that the dropped the real bomb, and I guess his wife didn’t mind, so, in that instance, the idea is wasted.

Anyway… Ashcroft wants to give the relatives of the victims the “sense of closure”– or is it vicarious thrill? — or “satisfaction”– of seeing McVeigh die. The language is nebulous– no one wants to admit they are simply out for revenge, since our society knows well enough that “revenge” is not a noble virtue. Nobody really believes that McVeigh’s execution will stop anybody else from doing the same thing– not, especially, when we have suicide bombers in the world.

Revenge is an attribute of pugnacious, small-minded thugs and felons. But we are not thugs and felons. We are honorable and pure and we want to watch McVeigh die so we can get a sense of …. “closure”.

After the grandmother of one of Floyd Allen Medlock’s victims witnessed his execution, she expressed disappointment. It was too quiet, too peaceful. She wanted to see him die but our society, at cross-purposes with itself, now resorts to the antiseptic ritual of lethal injection. Not enough horror for her, I guess. More to the point: his death didn’t bring back her grand-daughter, and didn’t remove one ounce of the pain she suffered and didn’t prevent a single crime from being committed. It just added to the total sum of misery in the world.

I know this seems strange, but she reminds me of those fanatic Palestinian mothers who raise their sons to become martyrs to the faith. These devout boys strap explosives to their bodies and then get onto buses or wade around busy market places and set themselves off. Their mothers approve, so it appears. They wish death upon their own sons.

The deaths of their sons help them bring “closure” to their anguished feelings about the atrocities the Israelis have committed upon the Palestinians.

Do you buy that? Or do we prefer: they will feel closure about the deaths of their sons when every single last Israeli citizen is driven into the sea?

And the biggest joke of all: McVeigh announcing, as he is helplessly strapped to a table and poisoned to death, that he is the master of his soul, the captain of his fate. He is now the master of nothing. He is utterly helpless and useless and impotent. He is less important than a beggar on the streets who, at least, could beg or not beg, or cross the road, or not cross the road. He could imagine he is the King of Spain and prance down the alleyway singing at the top of his lungs.

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Fabulous Fantino!

The chief of police in the City of Toronto is Julian Fantino. Fantino is a fabulous guy. He has fantastic ideas about everything.

Fantino thinks it is contemptible that the police actually have to answer to a committee that includes civilians whenever they kill or injure somebody. The police know better than anyone else when someone gets in the way. Why should outsiders have to come in and ask questions that the police haven’t already thought of, like, “what can I charge this guy with after I beat him up for dissing me?”

Fantino thinks the police need an increase in their budget every year, until, I think, the police budget is at least ten times the budget for everything else combined. There can never be too many police officers. Not even when a RIDE (drunk driving) program in Scarborough only catches one person in one year. Money well-spent! It’s the visibility of the police that keeps those drunk drivers from getting into their cars! If that’s the case, I suggest we use Lastman’s ideas for moose and put fiberglass officers all over the city. There can never be too many moose.

The City of Toronto is facing a $300 million shortfall this year. Premiere Harris must be giggling in his downtown love-nest or from his vacation in Florida or some golf course somewhere about the civic politicians being forced to give up their limos and research assistants and cut the wages of those lucky working stiffs that get to subsidize millionaire athletes when they’re not being pulled over by the RIDE program. Everybody in the city is going to have to “bite the bullet” and give up their wage increases. Except for the police. The police demanded a 7% increase. The Police Services Committee, rightly embarrassed, decided to only ask for 3%. But you see how bargaining works: ask for something obscene and then settle for something absurd.

What’s odd about this is that even during the years of recession, when everyone else was taking pay-cuts or getting laid off, the police forces continued to grow and their budgets continued to grow. Meanwhile, in spite of Fantino’s nonsense, the crime rate has actually declined. If anyone is in a position to take a budget cut, it’s the police.

The police desperately want a helicopter. The city was reluctant to fund one, so they got some corporate sponsor to donate the money to rent one for six months. I presume the corporate sponsor was able to write off his donation as a charitable gift. Which means that someone else has to cough up that deduction to make up for the missing tax money. Which means you and I, brother. Then the police tried very hard to make it look like the helicopter was helping the save lives. The trouble is that officers on the ground routinely beat the helicopter to where-ever it was police helicopters go. If you watch U.S. television, the role of police helicopters is to video-tape the chase thereby proving how dangerous the reckless offender was driving, which justifies the gap in the tape between the point at which the officers drag the hapless evil-doer from his car and the point at which they lift his handcuffed comatose body into the back of the patrol car.

When the Supreme Court of Canada– I’m getting to my point– ruled that a pair of Canadians could not be extradited to the United States for trial until Canadian authorities were assured that they would not face capital punishment, Fantino weighed in immediately with his pronouncement that Canada would now become a safe haven for wanton murderers and terrorists from all around the world.

First of all, the comment is idiotic. The Supreme Court ruled that Canadians cannot be extradited to the U.S. to be subject to the death penalty. The ruling does not apply to foreigners. It might, in the future, if someone brings a case involving foreigners before it, but it doesn’t now. (In fact, a few years ago, the Supreme Court did send Charles Ng back to the U.S. to face the death penalty, because he was a U.S. citizen.)

Secondly, the Canadians in this case can still be tried for murder in Canada and sent to prison here. They likely won’t be because the U.S. will probably agree not to seek the death penalty.

And thirdly, who asked you? You are a police chief, not the Minister of Justice. You are not a democratically elected official of the government, and you seem hardly accountable to anyone. What’s with your big mouth on the front of the newspaper every two days? Why don’t you shut up and train your officers on the etiquette of strip-searches?

Fantino is one of the most obnoxious police chiefs in the country. What he really wants is to be in the news every day. He loves to hear himself speak. He is loyal to his officers no matter what they do. He seems to have a vision of some kind of police state in which cops can do pretty well whatever they want to. And if you object? He’ll tell you, well, that’s the price of law and order. You want us to sick the Hell’s Angels on you? Now shut up and bend over.

Now listen– I’m not one of those people who thinks we can do without the police. But I am one of those people who thinks that being a cop is a privilege. And I think that if you want to be a cop in our society, and get paid for being a cop, and get respect for being a cop…. there is one trade-off: we have very high expectations for you. You have to be self-disciplined. You have to have self-control. You have to understand the law and know how to apply it fairly and equitably.

You have to demonstrate a fundamental respect for the fact that it is the role of our democratically elected institutions to make law, and your role to enforce it.

And sometimes, you have to shut up.

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Timothy

Some record company executive back in 1970 or so listened to a song about cannibalism and thought, hey, this could be a hit. And so we have “Timothy” by the Buoys, which had pretty well disappeared from the airwaves for thirty years until Napster gave it new life. Yes, people are using the Napster and the internet to share music files and one file that shows up a lot is “Timothy”.

Not since Chaplin’s “The Gold Rush” have people taken such delight in such a morbid possibility.

“Timothy” gets right down to business. The narrator is trapped in a mine shaft that caved in. “Everyone knows” the only ones left are Joe, and “me”, and Tim. When they finally reach the unfortunate trio, the only ones left are Joe and– long silence here– me. The chorus:

Timothy!
Timothy!
Where on earth did you go?
Timothy!
Timothy!
God, why don’t I know?

Well, we know why he doesn’t know. “My stomach was full as it could be/and nobody ever got around to finding…. Timothy.”

Uh huh.

Now, let’s not get sidetracked by the fact that the song is about cannibalism. And let’s not even begin to discuss the question of whether or not this is another one of those pernicious rock songs that promotes anti-social behavior, like eating your co-workers. Let’s focus instead on the reliability of the narrator, because he is quite clever. You see, he tries to get you, the listener, to share his sense of shock and outrage that Timothy has been eaten. He thinks that because he shares your presumed shock and outrage, that you won’t suspect him of being the instigator of this tragic development. Oh no. He says:

Timothy,
Timothy,
Joe was looking at you….

Ah ha! Yes, I may have eaten my co-worker, but it wasn’t my idea. Yes, yes. As your present co-worker, I feel a lot better now.

So where’s Joe? Why don’t we get his version of the story? Maybe he’s the one who really “blacked out just about then” and suddenly woke up with a full stomach.

And let’s look at that sequence of lines there. Joe is looking at Timothy after saying that he would sell his soul for just one piece of meat. Joe takes a sip of water and hands the bottle to the narrator saying that there is just enough left for one person. And then:

I must have blacked out just about then
‘Cause the very next thing that I recall
Was the light of the day coming through.
My stomach was full as it could be
And nobody ever got around to finding Timothy.

Now think about this. He blacks out but wakes up with a full stomach. Can you eat while you are unconscious? No. Do you suffer trauma to the head while chewing on somebody’s forearm? Not necessarily. Is your psyche so traumatized by the experience of dismembering a friend that it represses the memory of the experience? Well, that’s what he’d like you to believe. But, in fact, research has shown that …..

Wait a minute. You should never believe any sentence that begins with the phrase “research has shown”. Research shows whatever the researcher wants it to show. Which is not to say that research is always wrong. It’s just a warning: don’t believe somebody just because he says “research” says. Check it out for yourself.

So check it out for yourself: do people repress memories of horrific events? No, they don’t. I know– dozens of Hollywood movies have shown this exact thing and they are all “based” on true stories. They are all lies. Seriously, check it out: they are all lies.

Back to the research, and I’m serious here: some researcher talked to a number of people who had verifiable experiences of traumatic events. Everybody can remember the events. Nobody “repressed” the memories of those terrible events. They are always there, always available to the mind to consider and reconsider.  Survivors of the Holocaust can tell you the same thing: they have not lost their memories of their terrible experiences.

On the other hand, in almost every case in which people claim to have repressed memories of traumatic events, they have no proof that the events actually happened.

But that’s a separate issue.

Anyway, the guy says he can’t remember anything from that last swig of water to the rescue. Well, he’s a liar. I just thought you should know that. He just doesn’t want to remember. He should stop whining. He should rewrite the song. The chorus should be:

Timothy!
Timothy!
I was chewing on you.
Timothy!
Timothy!

God! What did I do?

Yes, yes, yes, I know that “Timothy” is a miner’s slang for a mule used underground for hauling cars full or ore to the surface. But the song never tells you that, does it?

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Roger Latimer’s Sentence

This is such a tough one. On the one hand, you have a vulnerable child suffering from serious and painful disabilities. On the other hand, you have a down-to-earth farmer who, by all accounts, was a loving and sensible father, who simply decided one day that he couldn’t bear his daughter’s continued suffering and went ahead and put an end to it. You have protection of the weak, the disabled, the voiceless. You have a justice system that ends up sentencing this father to a longer sentence than Karla Holmolka, who merely helped her husband rape, torture, and murder several young women.

I don’t disagree with the Supreme Court’s decision to force Latimer to serve his sentence. I don’t see how they could have ruled otherwise. The question is not, in any case, whether Latimer’s decision made sense in any shape or form given his extraordinary circumstances. The question is whether or not the courts can look the other way or make exceptions to the law based merely upon their sentiments about he case.

What if Latimer, instead of fighting the courts all the way, had immediately agreed to plead guilty? What if he had said that he was willing to serve the sentence because that is how deeply he cared about his daughter Tracey and the suffering she was going through? What if he had understood that the law cannot make exceptions even under exceptional circumstances, when an issue like protection of the disabled is at stake?

I have a feeling that public sentiment would have been more uniformly on the side of compassion and clemency.

I don’t see Latimer as a bad man. I think he was simply wrong, and profoundly unfortunate.

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And Another Wrongful Conviction, And Another…

Michael Ray Graham and Albert Ronnie Burrell just walked out of Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, with a $10 check and a denim jacket and couple of manila envelopes with all that is left of their worldly possessions.

At least they are alive. And that’s good, because, after waiting 14 years to be executed, they have been declared innocent of murder by the State of Louisiana.

Let’s see. That is eight this year alone. That is 92 since the death penalty was reinstated in 1973 in the U.S., according to the New York Times.

Wait for it. Come on, I know it’s there. Let me read a little further… aha! “With no physical evidence linking either to the crime, the two men were convicted largely on the testimony of a jailhouse snitch, Olan Wayne Brantley, who a law enforcement official acknowledged was known as Lyin’ Wayne.”

The old jailhouse snitch! Again! From Guy Paul Morin to Michael Ray Graham, the jailhouse snitch has proved to be an indispensable tool of prosecutions and police everywhere. It is the most widely accepted “solution” for a simple lack of evidence.

Did the police really believe that Burrell and Graham were guilty? Were they afraid that guilty men would walk free just because they couldn’t find any proof? From my reading about wrongful convictions, that might well be the case. The police simply decided that these two “dun it”. They felt it in their bones. They were convinced, emotionally. Maybe they didn’t answer questions the right way. Maybe they sweated under questioning. Maybe they were stupid.

Maybe they should be on Oprah. [2011-03]

“The kind of prosecutorial misconduct in the cases of the two men is not unusual, said Mr. Graham’s lawyer, Ms. Fournet.” No, it’s not. And it’s probably the best reason why the death penalty should be abolished in the U.S., as it has been in Canada for twenty years.

What a time for the governor of the state that has been the most mindlessly efficient and enthusiastic about executions to have stolen the election to become president.

Which is not to say that Al Gore was exactly Mr. Courageously Righteous on the issue. It is clear that he adopted Clinton’s very pragmatic “go with it” attitude towards the death penalty. But my guess is that Gore might have been persuaded to lead a movement against the death penalty given the incredible number of wrongful convictions that have come to light in recent years.

Dubbya’s attitude? They must have done something wrong for the police to even have suspected them in the first place.

It looks like Bush is going to appoint John Ashcroft, the Senator who lost an election to a dead man, as the new attorney general. We are told that Ashcroft, as a devout Christian, is completely in favor of the death penalty.

???

I can’t help but wonder, “What would Jesus do?” about a jail-house snitch who put two innocent men on death row so he could get a lighter sentence for passing bad checks? What he do about the prosecutors who knowingly pressed the case, aware of the fact that there was no physical evidence against the two men, and that the key witness had a history of mental illness? What would he say to the prison officials who handed each of the men a $10 check, as compensation for losing 14 years of their lives?

What would he say to the judge who put a developmentally delayed man on death row?