Category: Law

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Execution is a solemn occasion. We, and I use the word we here because the state is acting on our behalf, only carry out this sentence for the most extreme crimes after a jury of 12 people review the facts in the case. It is a grave matter to decide that taking a man’s life is a just sentence. When all is said and done a human being is dying. It is sad if only that the murderer found himself making profoundly stupid decisions that he could have easily avoided.

The glee with which Pete Hegseth takes in executing a man is disturbing. It certainly isn’t solemn, it is more like won’t it be cool to kill a man on live television. Maybe he could wear a white shirt so we can see where the bullets He is behaving like a 12 year old with a brand new BB gun who wants to kill, well, anything. He clearly misunderstands the gravity of taking a man’s life.

Holding public office requires an understanding of polite behavior. He may think it is all fun and games in private. That is his business. In public, however, he is a cabinet secretary of the U.S. government. He serves the people of this country and a certain amount of decorum is required to serve in this position. Either he is so arrogant to not care about how a cabinet secretary should behave when faced with such a situation or he is incredibly stupid.

I wish I could say he was just an asshole but I am inclined to believe he is really a stupid asshole although I am debating which puts us in a worse position. Malicious or clueless. Neither one is particularly helpful at this time.

Sometimes when I think the fate of the world is in the hands of people of such character as Trump and Hegseth my mind boggles.  This is one of those occasions.  

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First, I think the strong positions people are taking before all the facts are know is interesting. The whole point of an investigation is to uncover the facts and come to a conclusion about how best to resolve the manner. This isn’t happening. People are already taking positions based on the accusations made. I am assuming I don’t have all the facts, to take a position is premature.

The woman in the case feels wronged and she has a burden to prove her case. What facts we do have reveal a messy situation. Drugs, alcohol and sex. But this is precisely why a court should intervene. It is messy.

Something happened though and it is worth investigating.

What I find irritating is the tears shed for the men involved. Miranda Devine, in the New York Post, writes: “The young men made bad choices, too, and I would be ashamed to have sons who behaved that way. But they were just as young and just as out of it as she was and don’t deserve to have their lives ruined if the evidence shows they committed no crime. As far as ruining the young men’s lives involved, though, I don’t know what to say.”

If a woman has to be cautious about how she behaves at a Frat Party, then the same applies for the men. Men need to be aware that women may object to these maneuvers to get them into bed and, because times have changed, these grievances may end up in court. This is where we are with the Cornell case.

I would also argue that these are questions worth pursuing and the courts are best place for their resolution.

Why did these men offer an already drunk woman even more intoxicating substances if not to make her more pliable to their sexual advances? By making her even more incapacitated, they were making the woman even less capable of making a reasonable decision. She wasn’t asking for more drugs and drinks, so why were the encouraging her to get even more inebriated? This seems like a line of inquiry worth pursuing.

But men have been doing this for thousands of years, it is all part of the seduction process — a woman has to be aware when given alcohol or drugs. This is hardly a defense of the young men. Making a person so inebriated they will do anything you want, doesn’t sound like a benign seduction maneuver here. They should have to explain their intentions here.

Then there is the message from one of the men to the rest of his fraternity to come join him for free pussy. Two questions here. Did the woman ask him to offer her up for sexual use? If not, why did he think she was offering it up? Again, this doesn’t seem like some benign action from a nice guy. It sounds very much like he was offering her up to be sexually used by the rest of the fraternity without her consultation.

But she put herself in that position. She did.

And the young men put themselves in the position of wanting sex so badly that they behaved badly in order to pursue this end. They now find themselves in a court of law to straighten out the mess they participated in making. Given the numerous ambiguities of the case, there is a good chance that most of them will get off scot-free.

Of course, their parents and friends have learned about their capacity for bad behavior but then, let’s face it, their behavior was bad. Is it really so wrong to learn this? Discovery is the risk a person takes when they do the wrong thing. If their lives are ruined, which I doubt very much in this case, they participated in causing the ruin.

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I am against capital punishment because I distrust the present judicial system. People are wrong. Systems and processes fail. You can release a person who is wrongfully imprisoned, you can’t revive the dead. I am particularly wary of convicting anyone just on circumstantial evidence. I also realize I am in the minority in the United States and capital punishment is something I have to live with.

I thought I had made my peace with the process but Christa Pike’s botched execution in Tennessee has caused me to reconsider the practice. If the state is going to execute someone, the state should, at least, be able to ensure that it is done right. Particularly worrisome is the number of botched lethal injection executions. By my count, there have been 17 lethal injection executions that have gone wrong since 2000.

And, before someone writes, at least she was treated better than her victim. That is not the point. An execution is a state sponsored action. The state owes it to its citizens to conduct itself in a humane manner. Not because the person deserves such treatment, but because this sentence is being carried out for all of us. We don’t want to engage in torture and mistreatment of any individual.

If we can’t do it right, we shouldn’t be doing it at all.

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Lindsay Clancy killed her children during a postpartum psychosis breakdown. She then tried to kill herself by jumping out a window which only paralyzed her from the waist down. This is horrible. A nightmare really.

For some reason, people are arguing about it. Some say she should be found non-guilty by reason of insanity; others saying she deserves prison or worse. The vehemence is puzzling. Clancy was in a troubling state prior to killing her children. She also did strangle them. What does justice look like here? Should she suffer in a prison for the rest of her life or should she be free to suffer a free woman in her own home.

The guilty crowd bother me because they are focused on punishing Clancy which seems pointless. Her children are dead. She is paralyzed. Her marriage is over. Everybody in the world knows she is a child killer. Her life is ruined. I guess putting her in prison would make her life just a little bit more miserable. So there is that but all and all any further punishment seems like a waste of time.

The not guilty crowd are focused on the madness of a mother who should have been helped before breaking down and killing her children. Sympathy for a woman suffering under such duress is understandable but it doesn’t change the woman’s actions. Murderers get stiff penalties for their actions. So why not Clancy?

The argument that this could be any woman in postpartum depression is a bit of an overreach. Very few women actually murder their children while in postpartum depression. Clancy is an aberration. So, while postpartum depression affects many woman, it rarely results in the mother killing her children.

On the other hand, not guilty by reason of insanity is, understandably, a difficult sentence to accept. The killer still did the killing. The victims are still dead. She should have to pay for what she did. And, if not Clancy herself someone should? But who? Clancy’s husband? Mental Health Professionals?

The problem is the need to pin the crime on someone. If this person had only done what they were supposed to do, these horrible killings wouldn’t have happened. Some rational behavior on someone’s part would have saved those children. If only that were true.

This need for justice to put the world back into rational order is impossible here. I believe Clancy was a deeply troubled woman who broke down and killed her children. There is absolutely nothing we can do to make sense of her actions or bring justice for her children.

I can live with her going to prison or remaining a free woman. Either way, we left with a difficult problem. Dangerous crazy people. How do we stop them before they act and we are doing absolutely nothing to help the insane or protect their innocent victims. Nothing except waiting for it to happen.

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This might just be a wild hair up my ass but I keep thinking there is a better way to deal with criminals we can’t actually catch or prosecute — particularly those involved in the illegal drug trade. Pablo Escobar famously had more money than he could ever spend — loosing hundreds of millions of dollars to decay because he hid his money so poorly. And, despite the worms eating the dollars, he still had billions left to spend.

To start out with, let me acknowledge that Pablo Escobar was an asshole. He murdered people. There is no doubt about it. And the general resume for someone involved in the illegal drug trade would be someone similar in ilk to Escobar. They deserve stiff prison sentences more than their ill gotten money. The people hurt by these criminal deserve justice.

The problem is catching them and/or prosecuting them isn’t always successful. The criminal eludes justice and gets to keep his money which largely goes unspent and whatever money is spendable goes to mostly dubious ends. The victim doesn’t get any justice or restitution for what happened to them without prosecution.

The government wants somewhere in the neighborhood of 46 billion dollars to deal with illegal drugs. Some of this goes to drug treatment but at least 11 billion goes directly into enforcement. The question, then, is do we get a good return on this investment. Illegal drugs, for as long as I can remember, seem to be doing just fine. Yes, there is something to be said for there being no price on justice. The criminal justice system is taking the hard way out here — there has to be punishment for the criminal or there is no justice. Perhaps, but getting a financial settlement is better than nothing at all.

This means if a person wants a return to society with the ability to spend some of their cash legally, the drug dealer will surrender all of their hidden cash, pay a very stiff fine from those funds, pay any taxes due based on this money and get out of drug dealing. Since a lot of these dealers are sitting on pile of cash and are pretty tired with running from the law, they might jump at a chance to get out of the game.

Is it perfect? Absolutely not. But, then, much of the justice system is imperfect. What we are aiming for is a reduction in crime. If this takes some people out of drug dealing, it is better than getting nobody out of drug dealing.

Won’t this only encourage people to commit crimes if they aren’t punished for their crimes? Maybe but then, it is illegal now and a lot of people seem to be willing to take the risk. I think the government would have some discretion in how they move forward. Focus would be on the big dealers with large amounts of hidden cash. Also removing the bigger names from the drug trade might have some impact on the food chain for trafficking in drugs.

The problem here is that the government since the 1960’s has been fighting a losing war with illegal drugs — mostly because a significant portion of the citizenry want to use them which makes the illegal trade of drugs profitable. This doesn’t look like it is going to change any time soon. I am betting that some of these people are tired of running and would like a way out. Right now, there is no realistic exit — it is death or jail. Letting them get out with something might make them think differently.

And their is precedent for this — the Sackler family. The Sacklers unleashed Oxycontin onto the American Public with devastating effect. The government, in order to get something out of this criminal family, made deals that involved financial penalties. It was far from a perfect deal, particularly for those families who lost loved ones to addiction. On the other hand, the Sacklers were able to hide a lot of their money and delay the legal process that they might never have gotten anything if they waited for justice. Again, the settlement wasn’t perfect, but it was something and something is better than nothing.

Maybe we forego punishment over an imperfect pay off.

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I have to hand it to Donald Trump. He picks his targets wisely. Trans people are an infinitesimally small minority that most people don’t understand and don’t have any contact with. They are mostly an unknown, not likely to get people out into the streets. Immigrants can’t vote and are being blamed for many of the social ills that afflict the country. Their status is vulnerable because many are here illegally. Now, he has declared foreign drug smugglers as terrorists which gives the government the ability to blow them out of the water without trial. Brilliant. Trump gets to pick on two hated groups for the price of one — they are foreigners so they can’t vote and they are engaging in an illegal act so they aren’t very popular. Bingo.

Defending them is tantamount to saying I want drug smugglers importing their poison into the country. Is that what you want? It’s awkward position to have to defend but, then, defending despicable people is sometimes necessary to defend every citizen’s rights. So here goes nothing.

What is disturbing me is that I thought I understood my legal rights as a citizen. This understanding seems out of steps with what the Trump Administration believes. I thought that terrorists had the same rights as any ordinary thug. It seems like a regular old American drug dealer unloading drugs at a dock in an American city would be treated differently than the drug smugglers killed recently in the Caribbean. They should be given an opportunity to surrender and given an opportunity to explain themselves in court. Right?

As far as I can tell, they weren’t given an opportunity to surrender. Again this seems like a reasonable first step in any police action where lethal force might be used. Why kill the suspect when you can get them to surrender. But these suspects weren’t warned. This doesn’t seem like a difficult step to take. Put a helicopter in the air, have someone with a megaphone explain the situation to the trapped smugglers and give them an opportunity to surrender.

Then there is the killing. My understanding of using lethal force is that it is limited to imminent danger. Someone’s life has to be in danger now, not some person who might use the drugs a week from now. This doesn’t seem to be the case here. The U.S. Navy was in control. They didn’t ask them to surrender and there was no imminent danger to anyone until the Navy attacked the drug smugglers.

Finally, drug smuggling isn’t a capital crime. No where in the United States can anyone be executed for drug smuggling. Again, what would have happened if this had happened on U.S. soil? Also has the status of terrorists been designated to local drug dealers? Can we expect executions in the streets to ensue?

Of all the shitty things that Donald Trump has done, this, I believe, is the worst because he has undermined my notion of what my rights are. I used to be able to say with some confidence what they were. Now you can say well as long as you don’t engage in drug smuggling you are safe. For now, maybe, but this man has intimidated his way into being the final say about what the law is and how the government interprets the law. So far he has used them against unpopular and marginal targets. As I am gay and reside in a more vulnerable part of the population, I question how safe I really am. All I can say is I don’t feel particularly safe anymore.

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The last time I rented an apartment was in the 1992. A lot has changed since then. For starters, back in the good old days, I signed a few pages of a contract, I would say about 3 pages at most, and was handed a key. As long as nothing broke down in the apartment, I never had a reason to talk with the building management and since I paid on the first of the month, there was no reason for them to talk to me. No contact whatsoever. In my eyes, the perfect landlord/ tenant relationship.

Some 30 years later much has changed. I should have gotten the hint when we signed the rental agreement. The sales person pestered us to sign the contract almost immediately after we agreed to rent the unit. All set up automatically through the portal. The portal would send us messages every day reminding us to sign our agreement. We would have gladly driven after to their office and done so, but signing a contract in this day and age isn’t such a simple matter.

The portal is the most important tool of a smart apartment. All communication must first come through the portal. Talking to anyone who works in the building is insufficient. Anyone who has ever put an app on their computer know this could be easy one two process or a descent into Hell. This was more of a descent into Hell — a half hour struggle to create a user ID, complete our personal details and finding the link to the contract. Whew.

Not terribly onerous but a little annoying and, honestly, driving up and signing the contract would have been faster because signing through the portal took a good hour. The biggest problem was that the document was 120 pages long and each page had to initialed. EVERY SINGLE PAGE (capital letters so you know I mean business here)

Bob was cooking dinner when he started the process. He thought he could complete the task while waiting for the water to boil and the pasta to be cooked. Boy was he wrong. He would glance at page, initial, send to computer and then wait for the system to complete the process. Some pages went through like a rocket into space, other pages resembled a glacier moving an inch over the course of a thousand years.

A lot of the 120 pages were in Spanish. These pages were duplicates of the English language pages. Now I realize property management were covering their asses, and this is necessary in these litigious time but I would think it could have been handle with a quick question at the beginning — do you want to see the contract in Spanish or in English — this is particularly helpful in eliminating needless time staring at a frozen computer screen. I get waiting endlessly for a screen to change for the English pages but why do I have to stare at a computer screen endlessly waiting for the Spanish language pages to change. I would call that user unfriendly.

Back to Bob and the pasta boiling. The pasta was ready and Bob wasn’t even close to finishing initialing the contract. He had to stop and concentrate on the meal but then he had this concern that will the app save all the pages he already initialed so he could come back later and complete the task or would he lose everything — always a concern when using apps. He opted not to risk losing all his work and convinced me to finish initialing the contract while he completed making the meal.

At this point, he had initialed 60 pages so neither of us could imagine there being many more pages to initial. Boy were we wrong. There were 60 more pages. I realize I was supposed to be reading the pages and understanding the contact before initialing. But 60 pages of paging through a legal document and looking at a twirling hourglass is boring enough, reading it was way too much to ask. Particularly when I realized I would have to complete the same task later for myself.

I decided to just rub my lucky rabbit’s foot, did a quick sign of the cross, filled my glass of wine and initialed away. I am hoping I haven’t agreed to indentured servitude. So far so good.

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Maybe it is because almost everything that comes out of Donald Trump’s mouth is bat shit crazy and to actually single one statement out becomes difficult given the sheer volume of his output that so few Republicans have commented on it. But recommending vigilante justice has disturbed me more than any of the other recent comments. An hour of violence or a day of violence to stop drug store thievery seems like a fairly big breech of democratic norms. It takes the government out of the whole process and puts it squarely into the hands of his own supporters.

I was certain that some Republicans would, at the very least, caution him to use less violent language. Yet there is nothing and I mean nothing so far that resembles even a mild rebuke. Given that Republicans like to point out the Constitution and the original intent of our founders, it seems like a good time to remind Trump that the Constitution enshrines the right to a trial as opposed to grabbing suspected thieves off the street and teaching them a lesson (in other words – beat them up).

Trump has always had a penchant for vigilante justice but this is the first time he has so nakedly expressed his desire to see it enacted. It also makes his denial of violent intent on January 6 less believable. If Trump thinks violence is a suitable response for shoplifting, why wouldn’t he also think it was appropriate for something more important like losing a stolen election? What are the limits of Trump’s extralegal violence? He needs to explain how this tool might be used if he were to win.

It is incredibly disappointing that Republicans have chosen to remain silent about this blatant call for violence. Trump talking shit like this is hardly surprising. It is the game he has been playing since he entered the political scene. What is surprising is the silence of other Republicans. The American legal system is flawed but, then, all systems are flawed. We should work to create a better system instead of ignoring the system we have. If we decide to go outside this system, particularly with violence, who knows where that violence will take us. I suspect to a much worse place than where we are now.

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Missouri executed Marcellus Williams despite there being evidence that he was innocent. The family of the murdered woman asked that his sentence be commuted to life in prison so there was no pressure from them for execution. The county prosecutor found issues with his case and wanted further investigation. Missouri still went ahead because Williams was found guilty by a jury of his peers.

As if a jury sentence can’t be wrong when we know that human institutions are wrong all of the time. When the sentence is death, then the state should be confident that the verdict was correct. Any information that creates doubt regarding the verdict ineeds to be investigated to ensure that execution is merited.

This is why I am not a fan of capital punishment. A wrong verdict that takes away 20 years or so of a person’s life is bad enough but if the state discovers they were wrong, then the person, at least, has his life. Death can not be undone. Missouri seemed more concerned about carrying out the sentence than ensuring that the verdict was correct.

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I think most conservatives will agree that Kathleen Ryan, an Oakland County Michigan judge, needs to be removed from her position. The headlines are pretty cagey about why she got canned. It sounds like she is getting the ax for racism when actually it is for sexual harassment. Her racism is just the icing on the cake and I am sure will come into play if she eludes removal for sexual harassment.

Ryan’s problem, as a judge, is that her impartiality has been impinged beyond repair. She also appears to be a bit of an idiot which I think everyone, Right, Left and Center can agree on. Most smart public figures, in this day and age, know that it is unwise to speak this way unless they absolutely know for certain the other person agrees with them because her opinions are flagrantly racist. She was bound to piss off someone sometime and she did. Ryan was talking with an employee. If nothing else, this shows an amazing lack of good sense.

She could have relayed her opinions through a coded racist cant that lets everyone know what she was thinking without exposing her to racist’s complaints. Ryan gleefully and unapologetically cuts loose with her racism. Worse still, she is unaware that what she is saying is racist which is troubling. How is she supposed to rule in a case where racism is involved, if she has an inability to identify what racism is?