Category: Justice

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What is “Tough” on Crime

What is a “tough” criminal sentence? How do you measure “tough”?

Of course, it’s easy to know what “tougher” is– that’s more than we have now. But how do you measure the toughness of now? What factors go into it? How do you calculate it?

It’s all just feeling, isn’t it?

Even judges — who should be experts on what “tough” is– admit that they simply sentence convicted criminals to a time that is longer or shorter than something else. But I doubt they could make a case for any particular time being “fair” or “just”.

Why not? Why is there no work being done in this area? Have you ever seen a study, based on real research, of what an optimal sentence is for a convicted criminal?

How things have changed: General Eisenhower, according to Andy Rooney, refused to censor the official magazine of the armed forces, “Stars and Stripes”.

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Invaluable Intelligence

The first development concerned the alleged plot by Iran to kill the Saudi ambassador to the United States. American officials disclosed that “several hours after his arrest” they had advised the Iranian-American defendant, Mansour J. Arbabsiar, of his Miranda rights. He waived those rights, as well as a right to be quickly presented to a judge, and spent nearly two weeks providing “extremely valuable intelligence,” officials said. New York Times, 2011-10-13.

Wow. Mr. Arbabsiar, you will know, has been widely reported to be kind of a nut case. His neighbors and friends say he is basically incapable of organizing his way out of a paper bag. And be it noted that he was caught by the usual American strategy now that the constitution doesn’t apply to anything: an FBI informant led him on for two months. Hey, do you hate America? I hate America. Hey, Mansour– you know what I’d really like to do? Kill the Saudi ambassador. I hate him. What do you think, Mansour? Do you hate the Saudi ambassador? What’d’ya’say?

But you can’t tell Americans the truth about all this for obvious reasons. So you talk about this “invaluable intelligence” you are getting. From someone who, I take it, has been talking and talking and talking. Because he’s not very smart. But when your intelligence agencies fervently believe that there are an infinite number of conspiracies out there but you just don’t know about them all yet, you will have invaluable intelligence.

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation

Americans put on a fabulous show. They LOVE their constitution and their flag and freedom and liberty and they love proclaiming that they would die for their freedoms and no government is ever going to deprive them of their glorious rights as citizens of the greatest country in the history of the universe.

Truly one of the great disappointments of my life is how little the Americans really value their constitution and freedoms. All it takes to get them to give up those rights is a little fear. You would almost think they can’t possibly believe in it themselves, but they do.

Some conservatives are arguing that terror suspects need not be advised of their Miranda Rights.

Until the 1930’s, some states routinely tortured prisoners to obtain a confession (yes indeed– you can look it up). After courts began rejecting these confessions, the police resorted to more subtle techniques, like questioning a suspect for 36 hours straight without allowing him any contact with anyone outside of the police. Courts ruled that these actions amounted to a denial of a citizen’s right to not incriminate himself. So these conservatives are essentially arguing that the a key element of the constitution simply be ignored.

And now, let’s sing that national anthem again, with our hands over our hearts and our teary eyes fixed upon Mitch McConnell’s unblinking oblivious vacant eyes.

 

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Extraordinarily Lavish Survivor Benefits: Why?

The average family of a victim of the 9/11 terrorist attacks received about $3 million from insurance companies and the federal government of the United States. Altogether, the governments kicked in about $16 billion in compensation. (Insurance Companies kicked in about the same amount.) The government enacted legislation limiting the liability of governments, airports, airlines, and other agencies or companies, in exchange for the settlements produced by the 9/11 fund.

[2011-09-26 I just reread that and I couldn’t believe it. So I double-checked. Yes, $16 billion. And I’m sure lots of people watching it all unfold on TV thought to themselves, boy, they can’t pay them enough.

Yes they can.

You just want the theatrical moment in your mind when you well up with tears and awesomeness at how

As the Rand Corporation pointed out, the government’s actions here establish some precedents for compensation for the victims of a terrorist attack. Politically, it was impossible to stand up to the families of the victims of 9/11: all they had to do was go on TV and complain about “unfair” treatment and politicians of all stripes would fall over themselves to grant their every wish. They even demanded the right to censor any entertainments eventually provided in facilities at the new World Trade Center.

There were concerns that litigation would go on forever, would cost far more than the roughly $30 billion offered by the government, and make everybody feel really, really bad.

The lawsuits would have been a grave thing– what jury could resist giving a huge award to someone who lost a loved one because the airlines and the airports didn’t check for box-cutters? But no one, of course, was going to be able to sue the people actually responsible for the disaster: Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda.. Instead, you sue whoever happens to be nearby, with large wallets. The government is always handy, even if we say we don’t want them intruding on our lives. Then, when the Bush Administration couldn’t get Bin Laden, they followed a similar strategy of diffusion: let’s kill Saddam. You sue or kill the most convenient target or the target with deep pockets.

The victims of Hurricane Katrina, of course, were not so lavishly compensated for their losses. Of course, you couldn’t sue Katrina herself either. And for some reason, the victims of Hurricane Katrina, and the remarkably inept government response, didn’t have nearly the political sway the victims of 9/11 had.

Does that have anything to with the economic status or colour of the victims?  You decide.

There was something about the hatred and bitterness and vindictiveness of the 9/11 Families that seemed to have nothing or little to do with perceived or real injustice. It was not pleasant to watch. It caused me personally to begin to lose sympathy for them thought they had suffered real losses.

It’s a lot of money. I think you should only be able to sue for that kind of money if you could clearly demonstrate that there was reckless disregard for the safety of the individuals working in the towers. How reckless were they, compared to all the other towers in Manhattan, most of which are equally vulnerable to this kind of attack?

Not the Empire State Building: it was designed differently. A plane did crash into it once — it met an immovable object. The Empire State Building is far, far safer than the World Trade Center because the builders spent enough money to make sure it was safe. That’s all there is to it.

It is a known fact that no fire above the 37th floor of building in New York City can be fought by fire-fighters.  Nobody cares– not when a billion dollars of office space is just sitting there to be cashed in on.  Buildings are required to have a water tank on the top floor: the World Trade Centre safety equipment did not work.  The door to the roof was locked and could not be opened.

It probably would have cost a lot less than $30 billion to have built the World Trace Center to the standards.

On the 9/11 compensation fund.

9/11 was a genuine act of savagery and a genuine tragedy. One is tempted to forget that, in the face of the relentless, incessant, over-bearing monumentalism going on in the U.S. right now.

U.S. payback was overwhelming, disproportionate, and wildly misguided. And it was payback. Will there be a moment at which the U.S. finally announces that they are even?

On 3/20 will the Iraqis hold a memorial to the 100,000 innocent people who died in the American invasion? (We’re talking about women and children and non-combatants here). Will they solemnly read off the names of the 100,000 at the site of the one of the bombed out neighborhoods? Will the families of the 100,000 sue whoever is nearby with a fat wallet for “compensation”?

We know they won’t get a penny. They just happened to be in the way.

About $3 billion was given to the 9/11 fund from charities.

 

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Brandon Darby

The narrative: 8 dangerous anarchists from Austin, Texas travel to Minneapolis in August 2008 intending to sew chaos, destruction, and mayhem during the Republican National Convention. Thank God a trusted, patriotic FBI informant was among the radicals to help the police and FBI intervene in the nick of time, saving property and lives, and preserving the safety and security of Sarah Palin.

It’s a simple, comprehensible narrative. And American justice is about narratives, not facts, not truth. The narrative is compelling to frightened American juries and judges. You can’t be too careful. The two boys, who did not commit a crime– at least nothing that was defined as a crime before 9/11– were convicted, locked up for two and four years.

The truth is more complex. Yes, the boys assembled some Molotov cocktails at the house they stayed in in Minneapolis during the Republic National Convention in 2008. But they never used them. It’s not clear that they ever had any serious intent of using them. In a rational world, they never broke the law. They no more broke the law with their assembled bombs than any member of the NRA broke the law by carrying a concealed handgun. Is a concealed handgun alarming? Only to a rational person.

But what role did FBI informant Brandon Darby play in all this? Would they have ever even build the Molotov Cocktails if he hadn’t organized the trip to Minneapolis in the first place. Did he hector them, tirelessly trying to persuade them that the depths of depravity they saw in Minneapolis– and it was depraved (police phalanx, tear gas, batons)– called for something stronger than a protest sign.

PBS– the only U.S. network that does any serious journalism anymore– aired a documentary recently– “Better This World”– that offered a compelling glimpse of the dynamics of homeland insecurity, paranoia, manipulation, and the use of informants by the FBI. Brad Crowder and David McKay come off as youthful, passionate, and naïve.

Brandon Darby, the informant, is cynical, manipulative, and dishonest. The results are appalling.

 

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Acronym Syndrome

A year or so ago, Stockwell Day (a Conservative cabinet minister, in case you’ve forgotten) was defending a number of initiatives by the Harper Government to “strengthen” the criminal justice system. By “strengthen”, he meant “make people suffer more”. When a reporter asked what the reason for this was, considering that the crime rate was actually in decline, Day famously replied that “unreported crime” was on the increase.

I think Day should have set up a website first. “UnreportedCrimes.ca”. Then people could report their unreported crimes and we would have a better idea of the scale of the problem. He should have invented an acronym for it — UCD for “Unreported Crimes Disorder”. He would have sounded more authoritative if he had said, “of course, UCD is way up over last year, and URPCA is also on the increase. (Under Reported Perception of Criminal Activity). He might have added that if a citizen sees any activity take place which is not clearly a known legal activity then it should be treated as an unreported crime. And reported.

The problem is, if he had done this tens years ago, the numbers would still have declined. Because, after all, the rate of crime really is down, if you look at actual facts, so the amount of reported unreported crimes would also likely have declined. Do you see the problem?

Similarly, or not, there is a website for “The Invisible Disabilities Association of Canada”. It’s about two particular “syndromes”– I don’t know what to call it exactly– myofascial and fibromyalgia. Your first clue: myofascial is not in the dictionary. That is because it is not a real word. It is a made-up word.  That means it was just discovered– or just invented.

Now before I go any further, I want to make it clear that I believe it is quite possible that some people in this world, particularly in the affluent developed countries, really do suffer from tiredness, sore muscles, aches, and pains. In fact, it is quite possible that all of us do, to some extent. In fact, it is quite possible that life, in general, sucks. I’m not being flippant– life generally sucks. You make the best of it if you can, but it sucks.

I don’t care about that. I do care about bad science and irrationality, because those things lead to trouble.

So when this website informs me that fibromyalgia is diagnosed when “other illnesses and conditions are ruled out”, I am astounded. Let’s say you meet a person. Are you French? No. Are you British? No. Then you must be Chinese.

Fibromyalgia, we are informed, affects either the upper half of the body, or the bottom half, and can affect the right side or the left side. I am not making this up– check out the website.  [The website is out of business.]

Fibromyalgia consists of general aches and pains and tiredness. That’s good– because if it only affected specific parts of the body in a specific way, you would know when you didn’t have it.

Now, I have no idea how you would know if your aches and pains and tiredness are a syndrome or if they are just aches and pains and tiredness, or if your life sucks and you hate making the effort and you just want to veg out on the couch and you don’t have the courage to get out there and engage the world…. I don’t know. Nobody will ever know.

According to the website:

Generally people with Fibromyalgia state that they hurt all over, especially in the parts that are used the most. Stiffness, especially on waking, sleep disorders, irritable bowel syndrome (see separate sheet), irritable bladder syndrome, premenstrual syndrome, restless leg syndrome, headaches (especially migraines and tension headaches) (see separate sheet), muscle spasms, cold intolerance, TMJ, cognitive difficulties, numbness and tingling in the extremities are some of the symptoms. Other common symptoms include a decreased sense of energy, disturbances of sleep, and varying degrees of anxiety and depression related to patients’ changed physical status.

“Irritable bladder syndrome”? “Numbness and tingling”? “Cold intolerance”?.

Think about how it sounds if you say “I am cold”. Now say, “I have cold intolerance”. Different effect, isn’t it? Now try: “I have cold intolerance syndrome”. I will rush out and get you a blanket.

All of it sounds like the normal wane and flow of everyday physical life. It gets cold, it gets hot. If you move, you use energy, and if you use energy you feel tired, and if you feel tired you want to sleep, and if you feel restless, you have “restless leg syndrome”.

Why? Because a label is a label. Why did you stop going to work? Why do you sit on a couch all day watching TV and eating potato chips? Why are you fat?

If you think you have fibromyalgia, I’m not saying your symptoms are not real. I’m saying that you don’t have something that is left over if nothing else can be diagnosed. I’m saying that you have no way of knowing how tough it is supposed to be to get up in the morning or to get out of the house and engage with the world. You say, I don’t know how real your symptoms are. You don’t know how real my symptoms are. Neither of us knows where the line is between attitude and illness, but I know that any illness that can affect the upper half of the body, or the lower half of the body, or the right side, or the left side, and fails to produce any empirical manifestations, hasn’t earned the right to an acronym.

Your last refuge: you don’t know what it’s like to not want to make the effort. And I admit that we have something pure there.

Of course there is an acronym. Developing an acronym for mythical conditions is essential to selling these conditions to the public. So fibromyalgia becomes “FMS”. I think it is believed that the general public will be more easily convinced of the reality of any condition if it has an acronym, especially if it has the word “disorder” in it.

PTSD. SARS. ADHT. TMJ. MPS.

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Exquisitely, Completely, Consummately Irreligious American Exceptionalism

The world looked at America, and lo, it saw this: obese children suckling mega-super-ultra-gigantic soft drinks and fries; men in camouflage shooting at helpless animals and beer cans; a city drowning in floods while the government stumbled around like drunken blind crippled men; children on motorized off-road vehicles tearing into the hillsides; cities draining; farmers growing gas; cosmetic surgeries; abandoned factories; Koran-burning pastors; pyramid marketing materialists; bunker-bussing survivalists; drug pushers on the streets; drug-pushers in the doctors offices; poverty and indifference to poverty; screaming hatred at “town hall” meetings.

And lo, America looked at itself in the mirror and did not see what the world saw. America looked at itself and saw that it was EXCEPTIONAL. And that the rules of the world, of fair play and mutual respect and cooperation, did not apply to them, for America was EXCEPTIONAL. And America was chosen by God to be the vessel of his or her grace, for America was EXCEPTIONAL. And he who does not embrace this ideology shall be accused of not loving America and if he does not embrace it, America will hold its breath until it turns blue in the face.

What is truly exceptional is how American politicians like Newt Gingrich have managed to take “I’m better than you are and I can do whatever I want to do because I’m special” and repackaged it as some kind of weird religious-patriotic mishmash expressed in a harmless sounding euphemism: “exceptionalism”.

It’s code. “Manifest Destiny” is back. Look out, boys. This time, they’re after your oil, your fish, and your water. And they’ve invented a new kind of morality to make it right. And they’ll kill you if you stand in their way.

Newt Gingrich has written an entire book which essentially argues that America, the exceptional, is like some titled noble to whom the rest of the world, a collection of lesser nobles, peasants, and slaves, must kowtow.

No, of course he doesn’t put it that way. They never do, do they? But no one should mistake the meaning of “exceptional” for anything else: we get to make our own rules and we have special access to the world’s wealth and resources because God said so.

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Richard Rosario’s Misplaced Trust in the Justice System

Eyewitness identification is the most common cause of wrongful convictions. Of the first 200 DNA exonerations, for example, 158 involved convictions based on eyewitness testimony, according to a 2008 study by Brandon L. Garrett, a law professor at the University of Virginia.  NY Times, 2011-05-02

From a story about a man who was convicted of murder based solely on the testimony of two witnesses who picked out his picture from a police book.

That’s it. Two witnesses, from a photo. The suspect, Richard Rosario, did not have a very good lawyer, because there were at least seven people in Florida willing to testify that he was somewhere else at the time the murder took place.

Visitation

But this is America where justice is a joke. That image on the left — that’s America’s Lady Justice. Look at that face: expectant, suspicious, arrogant, rubbing her hands in anticipation of another long sentence.

Sanchez and Davis identified Rosario as the shooter. The prosecution also called Diaz, the hotdog vender who had witnessed the argument leading up to the shooting, expecting him to make an in-court identification. However, Diaz refused to identify Rosario as the shooter. The prosecution presented no other evidence linking Rosario to the shooting. Although many people in the Bronx knew Rosario and his fiancée lived there, the prosecution presented no witnesses who said they saw him in New York during the month of June — except the two strangers who briefly glimpsed Collazo’s murderer

From www.justicedenied.org

Rosario’s mistake was the completely ridiculous assumption that he would be treated fairly by the criminal justice system when he voluntarily returned to New York to respond to the police investigation. He should have fled the country. But then, a lot of people–far fewer, I hope, than twenty or thirty years ago– would have insisted that only a guilty man would flee the country.

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Our Savage Justice: Steven Russell

Several months ago, a fellow prisoner shook him by the hand while he was being walked to his cell – it was the first time Russell had been touched for almost a decade.

From The Guardian

What savagery did this man commit that we would in turn be so monstrous? Not a human touch in ten years? Solitary confinement for 23 hours a day? For how long? 144 years. Because you and I are savages. Because we are not worthy of even contempt. Because all the while we sing our glorious praises and erect our monuments and cathedrals and weep at the great costumed dramas, and twinge with humanistic delight at “The King’s Speech” and “The Blind Side” and “Freedom Writers”… we are really no better than incestuous cannibal chimps. We lock up people for 144 years. We lock them up in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day. We deny them any human contact at all. We approve of this because this is what our leaders have given us in response to our passionate tinkly delight in “law and order” and “tough on crime”.

What Steven Russell did was con people out of lots of money.

But, far worse, in the eyes of the government– he humiliated the administration of then governor George W. Bush by making the Department of Corrections look like fools. The same George W. Bush who conned America out of $1 trillion to prevent Iraq from using the weapons of mass destruction they did not possess.

The secret: they are fools. They let him walk out of prison after dying his clothes green with magic markers diluted in toilet water. They let him con them into believing he was, over the phone, a judge, or a lawyer, or a state corrections official. They never checked.

The point is, he has never been charged with hitting or beating anyone, or threatening their lives, or any other crime of violence. Those people only get five, ten, maybe twenty years, and they have contact with fellow prisoners. No, no, no.

He got 144 years.

He never caused anyone to lose his life’s savings or his home or his job. Those people got bonuses.

He never murdered hundreds of civilian villagers in a foreign country. Those people got house arrest for a couple of years.

He never tricked us into spending billions of dollars and hundreds of lives on a war against a foreign despot, or caused the deaths of 100,000 people. Those people got re-elected.

The important thing: I don’t think most Americans even have any idea of why they should even give him a thought. It’s justice. Or maybe not, but why should anyone care? He’s a loser. What’s wrong with being psycho? We’re all psycho.

He’s a loser.

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The Psychopathic Justice

The New York Times Article

In his dissent in Mr. Florence’s case, Judge Louis H. Pollak, a former dean of Yale Law School, was also skeptical of the majority’s theory. “One might doubt,” he wrote, “that individuals would deliberately commit minor offenses such as civil contempt — the offense for which Florence was arrested — and then secrete contraband on their persons, all in the hope that they will, at some future moment, be arrested and taken to jail to make their illicit deliveries.”

The older I get and the more I see of cases like that of Mr. Florence the more I believe that the difference between criminality and civility in our society depends upon who was first to pull out the gun.

Mr. Florence got a ticket once. In 2003 he committed a traffic offense. He paid his fine. He obtained a letter from the court certifying that he had paid his fine– God knows why he even thought for a second he would ever need it. Just because he was black? Because he was a financial adviser to a car dealership and made a decent wage? Because he drove a BMW?  [You know, I suspect that a certain segment of the population has already sighed a little sigh of condescension: well– he’s black and driving a BMW…..]

Then, in 2005, Mr. Florence was pulled over. His wife was driving and his four-year-old son was in the back. The cop called up the record of the offense and arrested Mr. Florence on the spot. Mr. Florence showed him the document from the court showing that he had paid the fine for the offense. The cop– representing you and me and all other white taxpayers, and Clarence Thomas, one must suppose, because he sure as hell didn’t seem to represent any coloured taxpayers– arrested him anyways. He was held for eight days.

You don’t believe that? I don’t either. Here’s a direct quote from the NY Times article:

Mr. Florence was nonetheless held for eight days in two counties on a charge of civil contempt before matters were sorted out.

Say what you want about the NY Times, they almost always have the facts right, so I believe it.

But here is the issue germane now– maybe– to the Supreme Court: he was ordered to strip, bend over, and separate his cheeks while a group of manly police officers looked on.

Mr. Florence is asking the court to rule that such intrusive, humiliating actions are not justified by the law. The prosecutors argue that such procedures are justified by the enormous risk of people driving around with drugs or weapons stuffed into their anuses on the off chance that a police officer might stop them, call up a paid traffic ticket on their computers, and prove incapable of decoding the information correctly and decide this person was a threat to society and needed to be locked up in the same jail cell as a rich convict who had secretly arranged the entire thing from his prison cell and doesn’t care where the contraband has been.

The black man on the Supreme Court will relish ruling against him, but what about the seven sane members (Scalia, in my view, is nearly a psychopath) who might consider Judge Pollak’s perspective above.

What kind of person believes the police should have the right to pick up a man — seemingly at random– and strip search him and hold him for eight days… for a traffic offense (if one were to assume, crazily, for a moment, that Mr. Florence was even guilty of not paying the fine)?

Yes, the Supreme Court said, “that’s all right, that’s all right, that’s all right with me…”

[Update 2022-04-30]

And of course it was a 5-4 decision.  But don’t worry– Amy Coney Barrett has assured us that the Court is not political and of course the 5 who voted in favor of this outlandish travesty were not Republican Appointees (oh yes they were).

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Another Forensic Fraud: Bernard Spillsbury

And another.

Another so-called “expert” on forensic science is unmasked as a fraud and a charlatan. Why is there no outcry for reform of the criminal justice system? Because they are not you and I?

It begins to sink in. All this forensic “science” is mainly about theatre. It’s intended to dazzle the average uninformed jurist with the illusion of scientific certainty, unassailable facts, the immutable truth: he did it.

Of course some forensic science is sound, but only when performed soundly. When blood samples have not been contaminated, witnesses uninfluenced (and even then…), records undoctored. In most real cases against real criminals there is no need for Dr. Blowhard to sit on the stand and state with categorical certainty that no other sweater could have provided this fiber to the exclusion of all other sweaters that I never tested.

This man died of excited delirium. Excited delirium, or ED (the acronym proves it is widely accepted as truth) was the only cause of death. The splatter pattern of the blood indicates that only a 5 foot 7 Polish electrician with a moustache could have committed this murder. Oh, what the hell, let’s just give his name and address to Dexter.

Can you be a fan of the show Dexter without being a serial killer and torturer yourself? But I didn’t do anything! It’s my favorite show! And they deserved it!

They always do.

“Some confidently assert that the government has the power to arrest and detain or restrict American citizens for months on end, in sometimes primitive conditions, not because there is evidence that they have committed a crime but merely because the government wishes to investigate them for possible wrongdoing,” Judge Milan D. Smith Jr. wrote in 2009 for a divided three-judge panel.

From NY Times, Feb 18, 2011;

You could reasonably debate the value of Obama’s compromises on many issues, but this is one that I do not wish to forget: he has instructed his Justice Department to defend exactly this power: to arbitrarily arrest and detain anyone they please.