Category: Justice

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Skip Palenik: Microscoptist! Lies and Fake Evidence

In the May 2003 edition of mediocrity in verse, Reader’s Digest, tribute is paid to one Skip Palenik, “Micro Man”, a forensic microscoptist.

Listen carefully to that word: microscoptist. You are on a jury. True or False– a microscoptist is smarter than a lawyer?

True or false– “microscoptist” isn’t even a real word? My dictionary says no.

Judy Burgin was murdered in Alaska in April 1993. Her body was found in the woods, her head bashed in. She had a boyfriend named Carl Brown who allegedly dealt drugs. Police were stumped. Who could have murdered Judy Burgin? Who could have done it? Is there anybody out there we should investigate? Hmm. Anybody?

With the body, they found a strand of fibre.

That’s when Skip Palenik entered the picture. Skip analyzed the strand of fibre and then compared it to fragments of carpet found in Carl Brown’s house. He declared them a match. He told the jury: I am a microscoptist and with all the authority invested in that title, I proclaim that Brown is guilty. Brown was convicted.

His conviction was overturned on appeal because his lawyers had not been permitted to argue that other people had motivation and opportunity to murder Judy Burgin, who was, after all, a drug addict. In 1998, a second jury found him guilty after four days of deliberation.

There is almost no other information about this case on the Internet.

Now, I can’t swear to it, but I kind of doubt that there exists a sense of definitive standards and procedures that have been thoroughly researched and developed for the positive forensic identification of particular microfibres. That is, though we know there are all kinds of scientific procedures out there that can be applied to the analysis of microfibres and to the science of “comparison”, there probably is no text book that, for example, that lists almost every type of fibre, how they were manufactured, who made them, where they were sold, how many are in circulation, how they react to substances in the environment, how unique they are, etc., etc., etc.

I don’t believe such a body of knowledge exists.

Instead, we have Skip. Skip is given some material by the police and probably is aware of the fact that they need to match. The police don’t go to Skip and say, golly, we have no idea of who could possibly have committed this crime. Here are ten fibres and ten samples of carpets belonging to suspects. Can you match any of them?

We do know that that is not what happens. Skip will receive a couple of samples. Do they match, yes or no? I’ll bet that Skip knows which sample came from a suspect. I’ll bet Skip knows that the police think this is the guy who did it but need some evidence to show in court. It doesn’t matter.

And I’ll bet that there is no scientific definition of what a “match” is, in terms of synthetic fibres.

I don’t think Skip thinks he is giving the jury a distorted picture of the reliability of the evidence because the police seem sure that Mr. Brown did it. I don’t think the police feel that they are manipulating evidence because Skip doesn’t have to manipulate anything. He just has to present some “true” but relatively meaningless “scientific” evidence in a selective and suggestive manner. He never has to lie at any point, because the jury doesn’t understand science. They just understand the word “matches” and “same” and “microscoptist”.

I don’t know how compelling the other evidence was, but I fear that the carpet sample was the decisive evidence in this case. I don’t know if Brown killed Judy Burgin or not, but if the carpet was the most important piece of evidence at the trial and I had been on the jury, I know I wouldn’t have voted for ‘guilty’..

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The Ongoing Comic Adventures of George W’s Inquisition Into Hostile Acts of Aggression and Subversion

How many times have you noticed an article in the newspaper or on TV about some terrorist suspects being apprehended? Caught them. Another attack prevented. Phew! We’re safe again.

But of course, some of those arrests include the Lackawana 5, and Iyman Faris. Add to the list the horribly frightening and terrifying Captain James J. Yee.

Captain Yee was a chaplain at the detention camp for foreign combatants of the war in Afghanistan in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Captain Yee joined the army years ago, left the army and became a Moslem, and then rejoined the army recently as a chaplain. The army liked to brag about Yee. He was emblem of their enlightened diversity, tolerance, and broad-mindedness. He was sent to Guantanamo Bay to minister to the Moslem prisoners of war being held there under obscure and nebulous of legal rationalizations.

Then Yee joined up with Osama Bin Laden and began laying nefarious plots for incendiary activities at Guantanamo. I’m not sure what he was planning exactly. An escape would be difficult– from Cuba. He and his evil Islamic radicals could take over the base, I suppose, and litter.

Anyway, Captain Yee was arrested and charged with committing terrorist acts and there was a trial and convincing evidence was presented and Captain Yee defended himself to no avail and was convicted and sent to prison.

Or maybe not.

You see, that kind of eventuality would require real evidence and testimony. It would require reasonable people to look at his evidence and say, well, by golly, this guy committed a crime.

Much, much more convenient to simply hold a press conference and announce that some more terrorists have been stopped dead in their tracks — meaning Mr. Yee among others– and then charge him with littering. Well, not exactly littering. Adultery.

Yes, adultery.

Yes, adultery. For which he was held in a brig in solitary confinement, usually in leg irons, for 76 days. Well, not really for the adultery. The adultery, you see, is what they found evidence for. They held him because some idiot thought he was plotting to overthrow the U.S. government.

Do you care about the adultery? Do you care about the miscarriage of justice? You probably don’t. I’m a cynic. I bet you won’t care until it happens to you or somebody close to you. In the meantime, George W. Bush and John Ashcroft and Tom Ridge are your heroes. Do we have John Ashcroft actions figures yet?

I do care, and that’s why I’m taking a few minutes here to write about him, even if I doubt it will make any difference to most people out there.

If you feel safer tonight knowing that George W. Bush and the boys are out there like hawks guarding your personal safety and security, repeat, to yourself, the word “adultery”.

Or, “improperly gathering military information”, as one of Mr. Yee’s supposed cohorts have been charged with. Read that line carefully if you think it sounds sinister. What it really means is, we couldn’t find any real evidence against this guy so we charged him with something we could charge anybody with so as to not look like total idiots…. oops. Too late.

Captain Yee was arrested September 10, 2003, at Jacksonville Naval Air Station. When it was discovered that Airman Al- Halabi had had dinner with Captain Yee, he too was arrested, and charged with Grand Malarkey, or whatever it is that means that he was plotting to commit terrorist or otherwise nasty and unpleasant things of a hostile nature. Airman Al- Halabi– don’t laugh– was charged with aiding the enemy, which carries a death penalty.

As near as anyone with any brains can figure out, Al-Halabi was polite to the prisoners, which is what initially raised suspicions. Then he had a private dinner with Captain Yee, whom they thought was…. never mind. Anyway, Al-Halabi is an Arab name, so most Americans won’t care what happens to him. Lock him up. Leg irons. What the hell, hang him.

If you can’t figure it out for yourself just yet, here is a sure indicator of when prosecutors have gone nuts: it’s when they inspect themselves and go “eureka”. Of course, they never, as in the case of Colonel Jack Farr, actually arrest and incarcerate themselves. That would be unseemly. But Colonel Jack Farr, one of the men investigating Captain Yee, was caught also “wrongfully transporting classified material without the proper security container.” I’m not sure who caught him– the New York Times didn’t say. But it did say that he wouldn’t be treated like Yee or Al-Halabi.

That’s because he’s holding the gun.

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The Police Take Sides on Trade Agreements

On Sept. 5, Lida Rodriguez-Taseff of the ACLU attended a briefing that the police held for local business leaders at the Intercontinental Hotel. Rodriguez-Taseff was shocked that Asst. Police Chief Frank Fernandez’s PowerPoint presentation openly endorsed the controversial trade agreement, telling the audience that it would bring 89,000 new jobs to the area and add $13.5 billion annually to Florida’s Gross State Product. From Salon, December 31, 2003.

Do the police know or care how damaging this information is?

I have no doubt that the police think they are behaving quite decently. Doesn’t everybody support Globalization? Well, real people do. So the unreal can be pelted with tear gas and pounded with batons.

 

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“He didn’t act like someone who was unjustly accused.”

“He didn’t act like someone who was unjustly accused.”

Robert Lazzaro, one of two prosecutors of Kirk Bloodsworth, who was convicted of raping and murdering a 9-year-old girl, Dawn Hamilton, July 25, 1984.

Kirk Bloodsworth was convicted twice of the 1984 rape and strangulation death of 9-year-old Dawn Hamilton outside of Baltimore. He was sentenced to death. His appeals were denied. The justice system works.

A lot of people were confident in Bloodsworth’s guilt, including the prosecutors who, even after DNA evidence had cleared Bloodsworth, asserted that he must have done it. He still must have done it. Well, he could have done it. Case closed.

The DNA was extracted from Dawn’s underwear.  Bloodsworth’s DNA was not found.  Someone else’s DNA was found.  That would lead most rational people to the conclusion that Mr. Bloodworth did not rape Dawn Hamilton.

Now every prosecutor will tell you that suspects will concoct remarkably preposterous stories to try to escape responsibility for their crimes. How is this for preposterous? Dawn must have left her panties in a clothes hamper where they came into contact with her father’s underwear, which might have had semen stains on them, which explains the wrong DNA, and then she might have put them on again without waiting for them to be washed.

So the DNA evidence is irrelevant. Bloodsworth is still guilty.

Amazing.

It must be very difficult for any person to admit responsibility for putting the wrong man behind bars for a heinous crime for 9 years. How nice for Kirk Bloodsworth to know that reputable justice officials continue to assert you might have done it, as you try to rebuild your life.

Bloodsworth is now a fisherman– he owns a boat and works hard for a living. His taxes help pay the salaries of the Baltimore district attorney.

So it must have been eating away at him for some time, until the police recently found the real killer. If DNA doesn’t match the suspect, of course, there is always a possibility that the real match can be found. It was found. Kimberly Shay Ruffner was a perfect match. Bloodsworth knew Ruffner– they had served some time together (Ruffner was in prison on other charges at the time). Bloodsworth was the librarian in prison and sometimes delivered books to Mr. Ruffner.

For the rest of us, a lesson to be learned. Study innocent men. Learn how they behave. Make sure, if you are ever charged with a crime, that you know how to put on the right act, so it cannot be said of you:

He didn’t act like he was unjustly accused.

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Born Again in Alabama

The born-again Baptist governor is telling voters in this Bible Belt state that their tax system, which imposes an effective rate of 3 percent on the wealthiest Alabamians and 12 percent on the poorest, is “immoral” and needs repair. “When I read the New Testament, there are three things we’re asked to do: That’s love God, love each other and take care of the least among us,” Riley said in his office in the antebellum state Capitol. Washington Post, August 15, 2003

That is amazing. A conservative, Baptist, Republican– Bob Riley–, a devout Christian governor who actually reads the bible. And the real bible– not the Americanized manifest destiny edition of low taxes, capitalism, and bigotry.

The rest of Alabama is devout and Christian but didn’t notice anything in the bible about fairness or justice. They were convinced, by some flimsy advertisements put out by some rich dudes, that an increase in taxes would be ungodly. The poor should take care of themselves.

And I guess they probably aren’t really all that embarrassed about being just about the lowest in the nation in high school standardized test scores because Riley had to submit at least part of his tax plan to a referendum and it failed by a large margin.

 

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Phony Terrorist Convictions

It is utterly conspicuous to me that John Ashcroft’s Department of Justice can’t actually find and arrest any terrorists. Ah ha, you say, but he’s obtained numerous convictions. No, he hasn’t. He has obtained numerous plea bargains. Plea bargains are obtained by threatening a person, innocent or not, with severe sentences until he or she agrees to plead guilty to a slightly less severe sentence.

To give a plea bargain even the slightest credibility you have to believe that an honest-to-god all American jury might actually look for evidence and fail to convict someone for whom there is none even if the government tells them he’s guilty.  It will not happen: all you have to do to an average American jury is say “boo” and they will convict.

Making your persecutor look good is always part of the deal. You will sign a confession and you will not contradict them.

The advantage to Ashcroft is obvious. He doesn’t have to actually catch anybody! He gets to go on TV and claim– surely, this is an outright lie– that another suspect has admitted terrorist activities. Ashcroft knows full well that these suspects are not making free and clear admissions of guilty. They are making deals after being threatened.

Well, what do you expect? Take the latest case– Iyman Faris. Here’s what Ashcroft lets you know about Iyman: he is a truck driver. He traveled to Afghanistan. Someone he knows thought he was kind of weird and finked on him to the authorities.

In our current political climate, he was doomed at that very instant.

The FBI, convinced that anyone who is suspected of being a terrorist must be a terrorist, arrested him. By the time you are arrested, in this day and age, you are already 99% guilty.

He was charged not with conspiracy or with any actual crime– that would require evidence, you see (strange world, isn’t it). Oh no. He was charged with the ever-useful generic “providing material support to a terrorist organization”.

It is important to notice– if you even care about injustice– that he was not arrested with a truck load of explosives, a basement full of bomb parts, a suitcase filled with guns, or anything of the sort. No no– again, that would constitute evidence and then we would have an actual trial, and it might even be public (Faris is a naturalized American citizen). No, no, no. He was charged with providing support to a terrorist organization, which, as we learned from other cases, means that he traveled to suspicious-sounding places like Pakistan and Afghanistan and talked to suspicious-looking people and looks suspiciously Arabic (he was born in Kashmir).

Did you know that the U.S. government itself has, on numerous occasions, provided support to terrorist organizations? You don’t have to be particularly finicky about the definition of “terrorist organization” to include the Taliban, which the U.S. sponsored when they were the muhajadeen and they were fighting the government of Soviet-occupied Afghanistan in the 1980’s, but you could also include anti-Castro Cuban paramilitary organizations and the Contras in Nicaragua. I would include Pinochet and his generals in Chile but, for argument’s sake, let’s just stick to the obvious.

Ashcroft admits that Faris appeared to be a hard-working truck driver. Tell me, do you think Al Qaeda, with their enormous resources, can’t afford to put their operatives up for a few months while they assemble their devices of international terror? They have to get real jobs?

Mr. Faris drove back and forth across the country delivering things. The level of intelligence of this government is such that you envision top officials going “ah ha!” when they learned that. Next is, “so you deny being a witch?!” (As you might recall, during the height of the Spanish Inquisition, it was a crime to be a heretic, but it was a worse crime to deny being a heretic. If you were merely a heretic, you were strangled and then burned at the stake. If you denied being a heretic, you were burned alive.)

Apparently some of the information used to implicate Faris came from captured Al Qaeda operative Khalid Sheik Mohammed. Hmm. Certainly a reliable source. Mr. Mohammed convinced the Department of Justice that Faris was planning to cut the supports of the Brooklyn Bridge with a torch, causing the bridge to collapse. This from one of the men responsible for planning 9/11? Do you think he’s serious? I’ll bet he also offered them information on plots to take Mickey Mouse hostage, blow up a McDonalds’ in Paris, and assassinate John Ashcroft.

A Palestinian friend of Faris’ said that he was surprised at the guilty plea because Faris didn’t seem interested in politics at all. I’m surprised this gentleman would even admit he had ever known Iyman Faris. This Palestinian friend will be John Ashcroft’s next suspect… unless he agrees to testify against someone else, so the FBI can run up the count.

It is a scandal that Faris was not tried in open court so we could all see and evaluate the evidence against him. It is unbelievable that the American people tolerate and accept secret trials of American citizens for nebulous crimes of association and insinuation, and it is an even greater crime that Ashcroft, after striking a plea bargain with almost all of his targets, still claims to have proven that there are terrorists active on U.S. soil.

What he has proven is that the government of the United States employs thuggery and intimidation and bullying in the pursuit of political bullshit.

Update July 2005: by the way, if you do a search on Iyman Faris you may find an article or two like this.

By golly, sounds like a regular high level Al Qaeda plotter, doesn’t he? Now please take note that almost all of that information was supplied to the FBI by Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who now admits that he was making all this stuff up.

And who is this guy anyway?

And do you care about the fact that millions of voters might be misinformed about a witness of whom the authorities claim such monumental significance?

Does it worry you that your government may never wish to put this guy on trial for the same reason it might never really want to hear, in a court room, from Osama Bin Laden?

Updated July 2005.

The most important point: do you honestly think that this government would negotiate a plea-bargain with known terrorists if they really had the goods on any of them?

Come on– be serious.

They would love a public trial where they can introduce impressive documentation, video, or material evidence to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that someone is actually plotting terrorist acts against the United States and that the mighty U.S. government is skillfully protecting you and me against their evil designs.

It is the duty of every American to assume that the unfortunate victims of Ashcroft’s jihad are innocent until proven guilty the old-fashioned way: in publicly accountable courtrooms.

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“The room had erupted with laughter”

“The class began with a video address by Helge H. Wehmeier, who was then in charge of Bayer’s United States operations. Mr. Wehmeier said that Bayer executives were expected to obey ‘not only the letter of the law, but the spirit of the law as well.’ And he urged them to call his office if they learned of violations. Mr. Couto recalled how the room had erupted with laughter.” New York Times, April 15, 2003

Bayer negotiated a deal with a Kaiser Permanente, one of the largest health care organizations in the United States, whereby it falsified the price of Cipro in order to maintain an artificially high price to Medicare services, which, by law, must receive the lowest price on any pharmaceutical product.

The United States Attorney’s Office in Boston caught Bayer doing this because an honest employee named George J. Couto blew the whistle. He received $34 million in reward money. Except that he died of cancer, so his family got the money.

Bayer had to pay $257 million as a settlement. But the part of this story that I like is the laughter in the room when Mr. Wehmeier asked his employees to report any violations of the law to him, personally. The New York Times doesn’t tell us how Wehmeier reacted. Maybe he was astonished at the laughter. Maybe he laughed with them. Maybe he didn’t even know about the laughter because it was a “video address”.

Either way, you have to think about corporate ethics here, and about California’s “Three Strikes and You’re Out” law. There seem to be different rules of behavior in our society, depending on whether your are rich and powerful, like those Bayer executives, or poor and destitute like Leandro Andrade.

That laughter wasn’t really directed at Wehemeier. It was directed at poor little Leandro Andrade— the poor schmuck who got 50 years in prison for stealing $150 worth of video tapes. [Each of the tapes was treated as a separate crime by prosecutors in order to meet the “three strikes” criteria. What if each Cipro tablet had been treated the same way? Would executives from Bayer be sent to prison for 50 years times several million pills?]

Leandro didn’t get a chance to pay a fine instead of going to prison. And he didn’t get the opportunity of having his employer provide him with a top-notch lawyer, and then pay the fine.

And he didn’t get a chance to sit in a room with any of the dozens of other miserable miscreants who are all serving life sentences for petty theft and laugh as a California policeman warned them all not to commit three felonies.

 

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The Blunt Instrument of Zero Tolerance

Zero Tolerance is a concept grounded in atheism.

Yes it is. I don’t care if you disagree.

It’s a catchy idea, isn’t it? This is what happens. A scandal. Outrage. Denial by the culprits. Conviction. Confession. Apologies. Then, just to prove that we really are moral and upright, “zero tolerance”.

There is a power structure in every organization. The power structure is always responsible, in a real way, for what takes place in the organization. An organization that is shown to be rife with sexual harassment and discrimination against women must repair the public damage. Since the people in charge never fire themselves and never subject themselves to onerous rules and regulations and never find themselves at fault, and are perfectly able to cut a deal with their lawyers present when needed, they have to name a few scapegoats in middle management, fire them, and pronounce themselves purified. The company then passes “zero tolerance” rules.

Churches do it too now. Which is really odd, because “zero tolerance” is an insanely atheistic concept.

They can believe in zero tolerance because the essence of zero tolerance is not really zero tolerance. The essence of zero tolerance is that we will no longer make judgments or rational decisions or peruse evidence or measure credibility. There’s no question of not tolerating real sin. What we don’t tolerate is the appearance of sin. We think that if we eliminate the appearance of sin, we eliminate the sin itself.

We will not longer consider either the possibility that a person was wrongly accused, or that they might change, repent, or learn from their mistakes, with a reasonable, proportionate response to the infraction.

Waterloo Christian Reformed Church has “zero tolerance”. If any allegation of any kind of improper behavior is made, the culprit is immediately suspended from position or function in the church, before any investigation is made.

Sounds godly, doesn’t it? We are so holy that we punish people without determining if they have really sinned or not.

It’s the product of atheism. Here’s why.

The essence of Christianity is Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. I can’t and won’t go into a long, detailed theological discourse here, but I think most Christians feel they understand that this sacrifice was to make possible the forgiveness of sins, and bring about the redemption of sinful humans by a just God.

We are not worthy of redemption on our own. We don’t deserve it. We didn’t earn it. It is only through the sacrifice of Christ that we are entitled to it.

Zero tolerance makes sense if you don’t believe in redemption, or grace, or forgiveness. Zero tolerance leaves no room for redemption, no room for forgiveness, or repentance. You are done, toast, finished.

I guarantee you that most Christians in churches that have adopted zero tolerance will tell you that, oh yes, we do forgive the sinner, of course we do, amen, alleluia. And they will tell you, yes, we are all sinners. And they will tell you that if the allegations are proven false, the sinner will be fully reinstated. And the damage to his reputation will magically disappear.

But they don’t mean it. As I have argued before, when Christ demanded that his followers forgive those who wish them evil, he didn’t mean “forgive them, and then punish them anyway. If a man steals your cloak, take it back, and then tell him you forgive him. If a man strikes you on the cheek, hit him on the cheek, and say you forgive him”.

But of course, zero tolerance doesn’t mean that we have zero tolerance for sin at all. We don’t have zero tolerance for greed or materialism or arrogance or self-righteousness, or lust, or hatred, or hard-heartedness, or bigotry. We have zeroed in on one particular area of human behavior– sexuality–and because we’re all rather hysterical about sex and ashamed of our own bodily desires and feelings, we make it the scapegoat. Our church or organization is pure, because we punish people who are inappropriate.

I have learned something else through all this.  Once the leaders in a church become enamored of a certain idea that they want, they will stare at you blankly and nod and give you a few minutes to make your argument but they will not hear a single word.

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Supreme Injustices

Leandro Andrade, 37 years old, stole video tapes from K-Mart. He stole 5 tapes and then he stole 4 tapes. These were not Leandro Andrade’s first criminal offenses. Leandro Andrade is incorrigible. He stole and stole again.

He broke into some houses and stole things. He was caught. He went to prison. Ten years went by. Do you think you can escape your past? Not in California. He was caught shoplifting in two different K-Marts, by store employees each time. The goods were recovered.. He was convicted twice.

Leandro Andrade has never committed a violent crime. But he stole 9 tapes worth about $150.00 from K-Mart.  (They actually worth a lot less than that– $150 is what they would sell for– but the real cost to K-Mart and the manufacturer is probably less than a dollar.)

Now he is going to pay for it. He is going to rot in jail for 50 years. There is no possibility of parole. No time off for good behaviour. No early release. He is going to spend the rest of his natural life in prison.

I am not making this up.  I have to say that, because any sensible person would immediately say, “that can’t be true”.

This is essentially the “second most severe” sentence that can be imposed by a court, after death, of course. For stealing video tapes. So, when you think about it, the court, in this case, decided that Andrade was such a threat to society that they should almost execute him. But that would be unreasonable. That would be barbaric. Well, what’s the next most severe possible sentence? Life in prison with no chance of parole.

If Mr. Andrade had been smart, he would have stolen all of those tapes at once. Then, due to a technicality, he would have had only three, not four, offences, and could have served “only” a maximum of 25 years. I’m not kidding.

If he had been really smart, he would have committed only one theft, and then murdered somebody in a rage, without premeditation. Then he could have received a lighter sentence. I’m not kidding. He might have been out of prison in 20 years, at 57.

But no– he had to go and steal some video tapes again. Fifty years. In a nation that probably thinks of itself as “civilized”.  In nation in which a majority of citizens claim they are Christians.   They are not.

According to Justices Sandra Day O’Conner, William H. Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, and Clarence Thomas, that is not an unreasonable sentence for an incorrigible criminal who stole 4 video tapes from K-Mart.

The Justices who upheld Andrade’s conviction believe that his crime of stealing the video tapes must not be seen in isolation. He is receiving 50 years for all of his crimes, in a sense. So 50 years in prison is not an unreasonable sentence for several non-violent thefts, according to O’Conner & company.

Even though… even though California prosecutors did not have to charge Mr. Andrade with a felony. His crime could have been classified as a misdemeanor, at the discretion of the state. The state prosecutors, knowing the consequences, chose to charge him with felonies, even though the crimes were not really very serious. They also chose to charge him with the two thefts separately, so that he would have four convictions instead of three, which led to the doubling of the 25-year maximum.

If you think this is a disproportionate sentence– maybe you don’t– consider the case of Mr. Rummel. In 1964, Mr. Rummel was convicted of using a credit card fraudulently to obtain $80.00 worth of goods. In 1969, he forged a check for $28.00. In 1973, he obtained goods worth $120 under false pretenses.

Life sentence.

Yes, life in jail for passing a few bad checks. Have you ever written a bad check? A check that bounced?

I’m not sure if they do things more cheaply in Texas than in New York, but In New York State, it cost about $30,000 a year to keep a man in prison. So the state considers it worthwhile to spend $1.5 million to prevent losses of about $20 a year.  It would save the government $1.5 million to just pay for the tapes and let him go.

In fact, if they had simply fined Mr. Andrade, they would have been ahead on the deal.

One of the arguments offered in defense of this draconian sentence is that the people of California, who voted for the “3 Strikes” law in a referendum and approved it, should have their expressed desires respected. Aside from the question of whether the citizens believed the three-strikes law could be applied to non-violent offenders (you could make a good case that they didn’t), one wonders how far such respect should go. Suppose they wished to introduce flogging for littering? Suppose they wanted to castrate rapists? Suppose they wanted to cut the hands off of pick-pockets? Our noble, enlightened Republican Supreme Court appointees would pronounce, “Yea, for the people hath spoken, let the mutilations begin!”

In fact, if I lived in California, I believe I would start a campaign to introduce a referendum forcing the government to arrest witches.  Just so we can make it clear what kind of people we are.

Insane Justices
Sandra Day O’Conner
William H. Rehnquist
Antonin Scalia
Anthony Kennedy
Clarence Thomas

Sane Justices
David H. Souter
John Paul Stevens
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Stephen J. Breyer

It’s worth reading about the Supreme Court’s reasoning on the case, especially if you seriously believe the Republican majority is smart and psychologically healthy.  Justice Rehnquist wrote the majority opinion on Rummel and defended the absurd severity of the sentence on the basis of the fact that other states had equally or more severe sentencing requirements.  Give that argument a few minutes and think it over.

This is the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court telling us that Timmy’s mom let’s him swim in the alligator pond.

Balances of Justice: how other criminals, who only stole millions, are treated.

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Unenforceable Clauses

Marilyn Shafer of the New York State Supreme Court has just issued a ruling that all of us should celebrate.

Network Associates, a software company that makes anti-virus software, had a little clause in their customer purchase agreement that should sound familiar to most of us, in tone if not exact content.

The clause states that no customer may review the product purchased without the prior consent of Network Associates.

I know from my experience arguing with people on the internet that a lot of people firmly believe that a company can force you to agree to anything as a condition of buying and using their product. These people believe that there is some kind of absolute right of private property out there, that companies have no obligations to society other than to provide the product they promised on the terms they specified to the customer who agrees and pays.

But companies do not exist in a vacuum. Like you and me, they are part of a complex of relationships and obligations that constitute membership in a society. If you live in America, you have to obey the law, pay your taxes, and shoulder your share of the burden of providing roads and schools and policing for everyone– unless, of course, you are a rich person under a Republican administration.

In return for meeting your obligations, you receive enormous benefits. You receive protection from the police, medical care, education, roads, assistance in times of natural disaster, military protection from foes abroad, and so on.

If you don’t like that deal, you can, as they say, go live elsewhere.

Network Associates benefits from all of these and more. Their employees acquired their skills from publicly funded schools and universities. Their products are delivered on our roads and through our airports. They are protected by laws and police, from arbitrary search and seizure (until the Homeland Security Act was passed). They benefit from the enormous structure of laws and procedures that constitute our economic system. As a result, they have an obligation beyond the simple power of setting conditions of sale, to observe generally agreed upon rules of conduct in our society.

The Supreme Court of New York State has struck a blow for freedom of speech and consumer rights, and simultaneously raised the issue of whether these myriad conditions imposed by vendors upon customers are actually “enforceable”.

Not only did Judge Shafer rule that the clause was unenforceable. She indicated that there will be fines in the millions of dollars. She is going to punish Network Associates for trying to trick people into obeying a rule they had no business imposing on people.

I like this judge, and I hope you do too.