Category: Justice

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Clarence Thomas, Wake Up

Thomas criticized the majority for imposing ”its own sense of morality and retributive justice” on state lawmakers and voters who chose to give state judges the option of life-without-parole sentences. ”I am unwilling to assume that we, as members of this court, are any more capable of making such moral judgments than our fellow citizens,” Thomas said. NYTimes, May 17, 2010

That is a stunning declaration.  What I do, says Thomas, as a Justice on the Supreme Court, is rubber-stamp any cockamamie decision you want.  But we know: as long as it is a conservative decision.

Wow! Even for a long-time follower of the diminutive career of Justice Clarence Thomas, this one is particularly mind-boggling. He appears to have forgotten what the Supreme Court is for. He calls it a “moral judgment” but what he is talking about is the job of the court to ensure that government legislation and policy does not infringe on the rights guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States. Thomas, having accepted the job of navigator on this airplane, suddenly exclaims, “why are we on an airplane? We should be on a boat instead” and jumps out the window.

What is a “moral judgment”? The majority (6-3) simply agreed that the Constitution of the United States prohibits “cruel and unusual punishment”. Is it a moral judgment to force voters and legislators to obey the constitution? Could it be that the framers of the constitution didn’t mean cruel and unusual? Maybe they meant to ban “reasonable and humane” punishments instead.

One has to ask the obvious question: does Clarence Thomas know he is on the Supreme Court? Does he understand what a Supreme Court does? If the Supreme Court is not capable of “making such moral judgments” about what was meant by “cruel and unusual”, then what exactly, one wonders with astonishment, is the function of the Supreme Court?

But then we know what Clarence Thomas’ answer would be: to prevent suspects from defending themselves against criminal charges. To prevent citizens from suing corporations. To prevent corporations from being unprofitable. To prevent minorities from oppressing the majorities with their extravagant demands for equal opportunity, fair wages and a safe workplace. To prevent women from stealing jobs from white men. To prevent black men from stealing jobs from white women. To prevent parents of minority school children from demanding trained teachers and science labs. To prevent reporters from demanding information. To prevent police from having to seek medical attention for injured prisoners. To prevent privatized prisons from having to provide adequate space and staff for prisoners. To prevent witches from witching and sorcerers from corrupting the minds of young children with their liberal theories and scientific text books and pagan culture. To prevent feminists from being feminine and masculine men from using mescaline. To prevent guns from falling into the hands of pacifists and pacifists from falling into the hands of lesbians. To prevent lesbians from being lesbians or living in sin or enticing gay-bashing preachers to have children they could adopt.

Let us all now and forever and again deliriously sing the praises of the unlawful, the unconstitutional, the transcendent Clarence Thomas. May he go down in history as the only Supreme Court Justice to ascend directly into heaven.

Thomas might answer that the Constitution is not a moral document. But that’s not the issue and he knows it, for he asserts that Congress and the voters have the right to make “such moral judgments”. I think Thomas would concede that what he is saying is that the “moral” content of the judgment that a life sentence is too harsh for a mere property crime is not subject to constitutional constraints.

If the public wants to torture and hang a witch– so be it. Who are we to say they shall not torture or hang a witch? Who are we to say there are no such things as witches?

My other ecstatic tribute to Justice Clarence Thomas.

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Just Sentencing: 35 Years

Why is there no discussion about criminal sentencing in the U.S., other than the usual nut cases advocating even more and more of it?

Is there a single politician in the U.S. who doesn’t run on a platform of “getting touch on crime”. Those criminals! They commit crimes. Next thing you know, they’re out there just walking the streets and committing even more crimes, right after their 30 year sentence is up!

There is a logical absurdity at work here, of course. Ever since Nixon in 1972, every American politician, including Democrats Clinton and Carter, have pledged to get tough on crime, just like the Republicans do. But if every new generation of leaders gets tougher on crime than the previous generation, we must have long ago reached maximum toughness. In fact, I think we’re at a level of insanity that approaches the very high standards set by Salem, Massachusetts in the 17th Century, and Spain during the Inquisition.

So, how would you react if someone said, “you know what– I think we need to start showing some compassion, and we need to reduce prison time, improve prison conditions, and concentrate more on rehabilitation? How would you react? I’m not sure. Polls suggest that most people will react with sneering and laughter. Are you nuts? Do you know how easy criminals have it? Man, I wish I could sit around all day in my comfy prison cell just watching TV and stuffing my face all at taxpayer expense! No worries! No bills! Did you know how often they weasel out any sentence at all?

I would challenge anyone who thinks like that to spend a day in one of our lavish, over–crowded prisons.

What we have is a society that has become vicious, heartless, vindictive, and irrational. Yes, that’s us. We’re nuts. We have been increasing sentences– in the U.S., at least– and Harper wants to do it in Canada– and we have reached a level of absurdity: 20, 30, 40 years for property and drug crimes!

How does anyone know what the right sentence is? I just read about a first-time offender in the U.S. who got 33 years– I’m not making this up– for hiding a video camera in a women’s locker room. How do you know 33 years is “right”? What is 33 years? What pleasure does the judge get when he looks into this man’s face and decides his life should be destroyed. It was his first mistake– enough. Destroy him. Crush his spirit. Erase his existence. Annihilate his soul.

You could argue that it likely wasn’t his first mistake: it was the first time he was caught.  But you could also argue that most of us have sinned at one time or another and never been caught.

That is the kind of human being the judge is: he will deny it until he is blue in the face, but it’s true– he takes pleasure in doing it. It gratifies him. He should admit it, so we can have an honest discussion of crime and punishment in America.

And America needs to look at itself and ask: if what we believe about crime and punishment was true, how come we’re not the most crime-free society on earth, because almost nobody punishes as harshly and ruthlessly as we do.

On Obama:

Tommy Barnett, 56, an independent of Cullman, Ala., said: “Somebody told me he’s not from here. I said I never heard of Barack Obama, that’s not American, then we find out he’s Muslim. What they got somebody like that running our country for?” (NY Times, April 21, 2010)

He doesn’t. You do.

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Capitalism and Abortion

Why are so many capitalists opposed to abortion? It’s really rather bizarre. They construct this massive edifice of rationality and logic to justify a system that rewards capital and entrepreneurship, and brutally punishes the poor, and then they declare that the unborn are entitled to massive government interventions on their behalf. The government must intrude on the mommy market, insinuate it’s authority, seize control of the very bodies of a class of citizens– fertile women– and dictate the outcome.

A real capitalist would tell you that if it isn’t profitable to have babies, the government shouldn’t interfere. But then, there are few real capitalists. People who claim to believe in small government actively support the government seizing bandwidth and giving it to the telecoms, or seizing new copyrights that never existed before, or taking oil from the ground beneath wildlife refuges, or taking trees from national parks and hauling them out on roads built by taxpayers.

Free market capitalism is mostly a fraud intended to attack government programs that benefit working class citizens at the expense of owners. When government intervention benefits the wealthy, they’re all for it.

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The Crime Rate and Stephen Harper

The crime rate in Canada has been declining for about 10 years.

So whatever it is we do now is actually working.

That won’t stop Stephen Harper from introducing his mean-spirited “tough on crime” legislation, because it’s a sop to the party base.  If the crime rate continues to go down: it worked!  But, best of all, if the crime rate actually goes up after his new anti-crime measures, he will simply say that that proves we need even more of them!

(Conrad Black- of all things– after his personal experience of prison– is opposed to Harper’s plans.)

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The Unspeakable Tragedy of Stefan Kiszko: “For a Laugh”

There is something about Stefan Kiszko’s story, among many, many stories of wrongful convictions, that is especially poignant.

The bare bones: on October 5, 1975, Lesley Susan Molseed, an 11-year-old girl from Manchester, England, was murdered on Rishworth Moor. She was not sexually assaulted but her assailant masturbated over her body.

(I don’t even know what a Rishworth Moor is but it sounds dark enough, and drab and dreary.)

The police needed a suspect.

They never choose a well-spoken, middle-class, white professional who knows how to get a good lawyer for these things. Virtually never. (An exception.)

Enter Stefan Kiszko, 26 years old, a Ukrainian immigrant, with a few strange habits. He happened to live nearby and awaited disaster. Kiszko lived with his mother and compulsively wrote down license numbers of cars that annoyed him. One of these license numbers matched the number on a car seen driving in the area in which the body was found.

Kizsko suffered from anemia and other medical complications.

He initially came to the attention of the authorities when three teenaged girls went to the police and claimed that Stefan Kiszko had exposed himself to them. The police picked him up and questioned him and quickly formed the opinion that this was just the kind of suspect they were looking for in the unsolved Lesley Molseed case. Take that as you will. Then they found the license number in his notes– case closed.

As always– and, as usual, without consequence– the police broke the rules. They questioned him without advising him that he could have a lawyer present. They did not inform him that he was a suspect in the Lesley Molseed murder. They denied his request for his mother to be present. They bullied and cajoled and intimidated and harassed him for hour after hour after hour and then they told him he could go home if he would only sign the confession. According to the Guardian Newspaper, Kiszko had the emotional and mental age of 12.

A smart police officer— well, let’s say, a conscientious police officer– would have realized that Kiszko was vulnerable and easily led and might have looked for something in the confession that provided independent collaboration of the story. A detail that would have been unknown to anyone but the perpetrator. No such luck. I don’t know if they even thought of it, but no such evidence was brought forward.

But that’s not the “industry” of policing. The “industry” of policing is the arrest and conviction of individuals blamed for specific crimes. Whether or not the individual actually committed crime isn’t always relevant to the “success” or goal of the industry. People should understand that. There is a reason why the police and prosecutors are so reluctant to give up on a prosecution even when there is overwhelming evidence of innocence.

As someone who is not in that industry, I think about that a lot. If I had been a cop, the first thing I would have wanted out of Kiszko, if he was going to confess, is something we didn’t already know. A type of knot. A weapon. An artifact. The position of the hands on the body. Anything. I think I would have been troubled if there was nothing like that in his confession.

Maybe a cop thinks that no one would ever confess to a crime he did not commit. [Be it noted that Albert DeSalvo– the Boston Strangler– “confessed”, and allegedly provided the police with details “only the murderer could have known”; DNA testing proved that his confession was false. One can only conclude that the information only the murderer could have known was probably actually provided to him by the police.] I don’t find it so unbelievable. The psychological pressure on a suspect must be unbelievable. It must be like someone constantly poking at you with a pointed stick, jabbing you again and again, stopping for a moment, then starting again just as you begin to relax. And it will all end if you only please please please sign this piece of paper.

Kiszko was tried in July 1976. As usual in cases of wrongful conviction, his lawyer appears to have been incompetent. (Where’s the Hollywood Movie about this lawyer?) In fact, in express contradiction of Kiszko’s wishes, his lawyer made a defense of “diminished responsibility”. He didn’t do it, but if he had, he wasn’t responsible. Needless to say, this strategy undermined Kiszko’s alibi (that he was with his aunt at the time, and then in a store). His lawyer also failed to provide the court with evidence about Kiszko’s medical condition (a condition which made it unlikely he could have carried the body to where it was found) or, astonishingly, that his semen did not contain any sperm (sperm was found in the semen found on Lesley Molseed’s body).

That last fact alone should have disqualified Kiszko from suspicion.

The prosecution apparently knew these facts and failed to provide them to the defense, as they are required to do.

Philip Clegg, an attorney who assisted on the case, later admitted he had doubts about the confession and Kiszko’s guilt at the time. Bravo for you Clegg.  (Cue the sound of one hand clapping.)

The jury must have respected the police an awful lot because they didn’t see any flaws in the case and voted 10-2 for conviction (in Britain, the jury need not be unanimous). Did they think the evidence looked thin but the police probably had stuff they couldn’t show in court?

Awards, medals, and court appointments for all concerned!

A life sentence for Kiszko.

“We can find no grounds whatsoever to condemn the jury’s verdict of murder as in any way unsafe or unsatisfactory”. Lord Justice Bridge, on appeal.

After five years in prison, and innumerable threats from other prisoners, and several vicious beatings, Kiszko began to show signs of mental deterioration and schizophrenia.

He was denied parole because he continued to claim he was innocent. In fact, he was diagnosed as delusional precisely because he claimed he was innocent. All the same, he was denied effective treatment and was shuttled around from prison to prison, hospital to hospital, until he was pretty well destroyed as a human being.

Until he was pretty much destroyed as a human being.

Around 1987, a gentleman named Campbell Malone took an interest in the case, at Kiszko’s mother’s urging, and began to examine the evidence. It seems to take a long, long time to “examine evidence”. Years continue to go by. Kiszko sits deteriorating in prison and years and years go by.

But meantime… Kiszko’s very own lawyer, David Waddington, had become Home Secretary. He would soon be appointed to the House of Lords! David Waddington, you see, was pro capital punishment!

It didn’t take all that much work, really. With the help of a private detective, — why do years go by??– Campbell Malone was able to determine that strong alibis existed for Kiszko, that he was incapable of leaving sperm on the crime scene, and, most astonishingly, the three girls who saw him exposing himself had lied.

They did it, they said, “for a laugh”.

The Yorkshire Police and the forensic scientists involved in the conviction never apologized. Judge Lane apologized but didn’t think he’d do anything differently the next time.

In November 1992, Kiszko, emotionally and psychologically destroyed went home. He became a recluse. He was promised 500,000 pounds compensation but never received it. One year later, he died of a massive heart attack

In one of the few acts of true grace in this sad, sad story–as all the police and prosecutors blamed each other and insisted they were all good and wise and just– Lesley Susan Molseed’s sister had the remarkable good grace to attend Kiszko’s funeral in acknowledgement of his innocence: Kiszko, it turns out, was just another victim.

In October 2006, a man named Ronald Castree was arrested and charged with raping and beating a prostitute. A DNA test proved he was innocent. Ironically, it then proved a match to another specimen — in November 2006, Castree was arrested and charged with Lesley Molseed’s murder. His DNA matched that of the semen found on the body.

I am so pleased that today we have finally put things right.” Police Superintendent Max Maclean.

And that is quite possibly the most obscene statement of all. “We have finally put things right”. Police Superintendent Max Maclean, you are a fucking liar.

No, you haven’t. You never will. It’s simply not possible anymore.

Not until the little girls have had all their laughs.

* In the U.S., assuming Kiszko had been executed– a likely event– , no one would ever have found out he was innocent because no court action can be brought on behalf of a deceased prisoner.

Stefan Kiszko

“I started to tell these lies and they seemed to please them and the pressure was off as far as I was concerned. I thought if I admitted what I did to the police they would check out what I had said, find it untrue and would then let me go” Stefan Kiszko

Thank God– only in the U.S. could we still have the drama of an execution of an innocent man — every other civilized country does not practice capital punishment. Still, for Kiszko, given his idiosyncrasies, it might as well have been a death sentence. Maybe it was worse.*)

“I would like all the officers responsible for the result to be specially commended and these observations conveyed to the Chief Constable” Judge Hugh Park, after Kiszko’s conviction.

Who are we? In prison, Kiszko was repeatedly, brutally attacked by other inmates because he was a sex offender. Perhaps they are simply more naked in their impulses, but it is striking that they didn’t see themselves all that differently from judges and juries, really.

More Details about the Stefan Kiszko Case.

I stopped tracking individual stories of wrongful convictions years ago. Why? There were too many to keep up with.  It’s too depressing, not because we, as a society, make mistakes: but because of the glee with which police and prosecutors openly flout the law and good practice in their desperate lust for successful prosecutions at the expense of judicial integrity.

The enthusiasm with which many citizens continue to advocate for capital punishment, longer sentences, harsher penalties, is testimony to our insatiable desire to seem righteous and our unbridled faith in the police to solve cases and arrest the right person.

We will be ferocious and hateful, if necessary, to defend our sense of righteousness. We will tolerate any amount of abuse and torture to provide ourselves the chimera of safety and security.

It should be the policy of the national parole board from now on to disregard the issue of innocence or guilt once a prisoner approaches the end of his sentence– so we don’t get caught in these catch-22’s anymore, in which a prisoner will not be paroled because he won’t admit he is guilty. What’s the big deal? He has almost served his sentence. Why do we insist he now validate the judgment and righteousness of the prosecution?

Well, it’s obvious why, and it’s wrong.

[2022-05: it appears that the judicial system is actually taking up my suggestion– that the National Parole Board disregard the issue of innocence and guilt when a prisoner becomes eligible for parole.]

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Taser the 10-year-old!

The Police Taser a 10-Year-Old

The Police Taser Another 10-Year-Old

No wonder the police often think they are underpaid. It’s those scary 10-year-olds out there that are terrifying them. You may think a big, burly police officer might be little reckless in the presence of a 10-year-old, but in today’s society, with the decline in morality and lack of respect for the law, you can’t be too careful. Taser the 10-year-old!

The police need to hire a pr firm. The pr firm would tell them, if you want to stop getting bad publicity about your bad behavior– improve your behavior first. It’s easier to spin.

So if a particular cop is incapable of reasoning that a 10-year-old child, or a homeless person with emotional problems, or a foreign-speaking traveler, might be safely managed with patience, calm, and intelligence, convince him that it is better public relations to do it anyway.

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This is a pretty naked, rather exquisite statement: if I was a Christian, I might want to show mercy. Well, no, as a matter of fact. At least, not if you were an American Christian. Apparently, American Christians are quite free to wish death and imprisonment with cheerful exuberance, on anyone they think “dun it”.

You don’t want to bore people like that with issues like evidence and proof. Good heavens! And they don’t really want to discuss compassion or mercy so much as scream hysterically at you that if we don’t beat the hell out of our enemies, they’ll take away our Hummers. It doesn’t seem to matter much if “them” is Al Qaeda, communists, liberals, drunk drivers, Canadians, or Scots.

Yeah, I’m not interested in sounding reasonable at the moment. I’m just a little nauseated by the orgy of hatred and paranoia that dominates American politics right now. And I’m really sick of seeing this coming from people claiming to be Christians.

There’s that division between Europe and America. Americans– at least, the vast majority of them, seem very, very excited about the idea of inflicting a lot of pain and suffering on Abdel Baset al-Megrahi and they don’t seem to care very much about whether he actually did the crime or not. At least, none of the posters or bloggers that I have found have devoted a single line, let alone a paragraph, to the fairly serious claim that his conviction was a frame-up in the first place. The people who do seem aware of the dubious integrity of the case against him see predisposed to approve of the early release any way.

The crucial witness against Megrahi for the prosecution was Tony Gauci, a Maltese storekeeper, who testified that he had sold Megrahi the clothing later found in the remains of the suitcase bomb.[17] At the trial, Gauci appeared uncertain about the exact date he sold the clothes in question, and was not entirely sure that it was Megrahi to whom they were sold.

You get the feeling the Americans don’t really care about the evidence. You get the feeling they suspect that requiring “proof” would merely be a way of hoodwinking them out of the satisfaction of seeing someone suffer and die in order to vitiate their rage.

Sorry– does that sound brutal? Yes, doesn’t it? Yes, yes, yes.

Even Obama, sadly, has joined the chorus. Has U.S. politics reached such a low point now that even a fairly honorable guy like Obama feels utterly compelled to name a few witches?

Just imagine Obama saying: “We do need to acknowledge that the evidence against Mr. al-Megrahi is controversial, to say the least, and we must respect the desire of whacky other countries to actually show something they call “compassion” even to people of Arabic ethnicity….”

Something like that. And the Republicans would be foaming at their mouths with apoplectic rage that an American president missed a valuable opportunity to advocate for cruelty and hatred around the world, instead of just in America.

“I’ll never apologize for the United States of America, ever. I don’t care what the facts are.” Attaboy George! That about sums it up– George Bush Sr. responding to criticism of the U.S. warship Vincennes under Captain William Rogers for shooting down Iranian Air Flight 655 killing over 300 innocent civilians.

Yeah. Do you suppose there are Iranians out there who might be a bit miffed that Captain Rogers– widely regarded by his own military at the time as a “loose cannon” never paid for his sins?

No?  What if they know that he received a medal for it?

I suspect that that is the way America really means it: no matter what the facts are. It’s us vs. them, ours vs. yours, and if we need your oil, we’ll damn well take it, thank you.

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So a guy, apparently, shows up at an Obama town hall meeting in New Hampshire a few weeks ago with a semi-automatic weapon and a t-shirt that refers to Thomas Jefferson’s statement: “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” This guy’s t-shirt actually says “It’s time to water the tree of liberty…”

Let’s imagine that a few steps away some other dude pulls out a doobie and lights it up. And a few feet from him, some woman decides to breastfeed her baby. And a few steps from her, two men kiss each other on the lips. And a few steps from those two, an Arabic man puts a mat on the ground in the direction of Mecca. And he is standing close to guy wearing an “impeach George Bush” t-shirt.

Of these loyal citizens, whom might the police choose to detain? Well, all of them, except the man with the gun.

The gun-toting “libertarian” won’t be detained– he is exercising a sacred right. He also loudly and rather hysterically claims that he is standing up for liberty– he doesn’t want the government acting like a nanny and telling him what to do, nosirreee. Like telling him who he can kiss or what he can smoke or who he can pray to.

Of course, if that same government wants to tap his phone without a warrant, or put him on a plane and send him to Syria for some serious questioning, or send him to some other foreign country to lose his arm or leg or life on behalf of an oil company, or allow his job to be outsourced to some sweatshop in Asia somewhere… well, that’s fine with him. And if a corporation tells him what kind of health coverage he can have and what kind of treatments he can receive, well, gosh, that’s not like “liberty” or anything like that, I guess.

I’m just trying to imagine the American mind set here… when a protestor shows up with a t-shirt that advocates impeaching George Bush, he gets busted, dragged off– by government employees– because he constitutes some vague sort of risk. The courts almost always find these actions unconstitutional but the Bush Administration never paid much attention to the courts or judges or the law. But a man hangs around the venue at which President Obama is appearing with a semi-automatic weapon…. ?

I don’t think the hysterical right is even a large minority right now. I think these are marginal people, ill-informed, a little crazy. But their hysterics, at these town-hall meetings, are getting enormous media play– from the mythical “liberal” media, no less– and they seem to be scaring Obama, who seems to be backing away from a public option on health care even though polls of the rational majority have shown that most people are in favor of it.

There was a woman at a town-hall meeting in New Hampshire who got all teary and emotional about the threat to America by a health care plan that threatened to turn her nation into another Russia. She might as well have added that the fairies are trying to steal her turnips, for all the logic in her position. But she gets on the air, on TV, and makes people uneasy, and the Democrats back away.

It’s beyond contempt. It makes you wonder why anyone ever thought there was such a thing as “progress”.

It’s really easy to look back at McCarthyism and chuckle and assure ourselves that we have far more sense than that nowadays. No we don’t. And I have a feeling that a lot of people who find McCarthy ridiculous today might someday look back at this decade and find a lot of ridiculousness too. The use of torture and arbitrary arrests and detention? The hysterical rituals by which we think we’re keeping terrorists from blowing up Ellis Island and the Brooklyn Bridge? The determination of the widows of victims of 9/11 to honor liberty and freedom by banning unpatriotic plays from the theatre to be built as part of the new World Trade Center complex?

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I Feel Bad: Who do I Sue?

I am disgusted by the misuse of language because it is usually done in the service of deceit or greed or indifference. “Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder” is the language of an industry– psychology, and it is a label that helps them bill individuals and insurance companies for their services, and it causes many people to behave as if there was a well grounded science behind the procedures and practices used to “treat” the problem and these treatments are better than just learning to cope with something with the help of supportive friends and family.

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The Ungrateful Passengers of Flight 1549

Passengers who have received some of their luggage say they are grateful, but not all of them are ready to absolve US Airways of responsibility for injuries, emotional distress and losses they claim to have suffered.

The airline’s insurance company, A.I.G. Aviation Adjustment Services, has started offering each of the passengers $10,000 in exchange for agreeing not to sue the airline, some passengers said. Ms. Lightner, who lives in Tega Cay, S.C., said she had received a two-page contract from the insurer but had not decided whether to sign it.

NY Times, May 18, 2009

Everybody has heard how the heroic captain, Chelsey Sullenberger, landed his crippled Airbus A320 safely into the Hudson River, January 15 this year. The Airbus320 struck some large birds– Canada geese– as it was taking off from LaGuardia Airport, New York City. The geese were sucked into both engines causing catastrophic failure. The jet was not high enough to glide for any distance and, after a brief, hair-raising exchange with the LaGuardia air controllers, Sullenberger safely glided the A320 to a landing in the Hudson River. All passengers and crews were rescued by ferry boats and other craft that reached the plane within four minutes.

Nobody is suing the geese.

The passengers have been offered $10,000 by the airlines. For what? I don’t know. It sounds to me very much like an accident. Usually, passengers sue an airline if a plane crashes due to some incompetence or negligence. On the surface, it appears, to the contrary, that the cause of the crash was an unavoidable accident, that the crash was not caused by any deficiency in the Airbus 320, and that the crew of Flight 1549 performed extremely well. Who do you sue?

Well, if you’re a lawyer, I imagine you could make the case that the airline should be responsible for the general existence of risks and accidents.

It doesn’t seem to matter nowadays. For one thing, lawyers seem to believe that every lawsuit, no matter how frivolous, should be negotiated and settled with an undisclosed amount of cash and a confidentiality agreement. This is usually cheaper than going to court. The lawyers suing on behalf of the passengers know this and hope to score a big fat settlement quickly and bloodlessly, because the negotiators for the airlines are other lawyers.

Could it be that there is no negligence, no fault of the airlines.  Just a bunch of lawyers arranging a deal together that benefits them more than anyone else.

The Ditch Switch

“The Flight crew did not activate the “ditch switch” during the landing.” Wikipedia

The function of the ditch switch is to close all external outlets and openings in the event of a crash landing on water, to prevent the aircraft from sinking too quickly. In all the coverage of the event immediately afterwards, I never heard this mentioned even once. For all the accolades Sullenberger received, he apparently forgot to do something important: hit the ditch switch. Had there been loss of life, because the aircraft sank quickly after ditching, and had the cargo doors not been ripped open anyway, this fact would probably have been pivotal to our assessment of Captain Sullenberger’s performance.

It wasn’t his only mistake: he initially gave Air Traffic Control the incorrect flight number. None of this alters the fact that Sullenberger performed extremely well doing the one thing he is really paid to do: land the plane safely.

June 15: I just saw a documentary on Flight 1549 which noted the issue of the “ditch switch” and claimed that the air plane was sinking quickly at least partly because of that mistake.

I have not read anywhere that anyone thinks the crew of Flight 1549 should have been able to avoid the flock of Canadian Geese. Can they do that? Do they watch for flocks of geese, from the air traffic control tower for this reason?

I do know that they do take some measures to discourage birds from hanging around near the runways. Would that be the basis of a lawsuit? They didn’t do enough to stop the geese from flying into the path of an airliner?