An amazing thing happened in my courthouse yesterday: http://blogs.cwsl.edu/news/2009/08/10/california-innocence-project-obtains-reversal-of-12-year-old-murder-conviction/ Here is the text:
"Today, 16 years to the day after the murder of Pamela Richards, San Bernardino County Judge Brian McCarville granted the California Innocence Project’s request to reverse the murder conviction of her husband William Richards. Finding that new evidence points “unerringly to innocence,” Richards’s 1997 conviction of murdering his wife in their Hesperia, Calif., home was thrown out. Richards was convicted for the 1993 murder after two trials ended in hung juries.
The reversal marks the successful conclusion to an eight year-long process. In 2001, Richards contacted the California Innocence Project at California Western School of Law, a non-profit clinical program in which law professors, lawyers, and law students work to free wrongfully convicted prisoners in California. He maintained his innocence in the murder and sought the Project’s help in requesting a reversal of his conviction.
The California Innocence Project obtained new DNA testing on the murder weapon. Test results revealed that an unidentified male held the murder weapon and struggled with the victim. DNA testing on hair from under the victim’s fingernails also pointed to another person other than Richards. This evidence countered the prosecution’s claim that no one other than Richards or his wife were at their home on the night of the murder.
During the Richards trial, evidence was presented indicating that a “bite mark” on the victim’s hand could have only come from Richards or two percent of the population. However, the testimony provided by the bite mark expert was based on incomplete information and poor photos. Experts obtained by the Project were able to correct the distortion in the photographs and testify that Richards could not have been the person responsible for the “bite mark.”
The California Innocence Project also argued that fiber evidence may have been falsified by someone employed by the County. The prosecution claimed that a tuft of 15 light-blue fibers were found in a tear in the victim’s fingernail. According to the prosecution, the fibers matched those of the shirt Richards was wearing the night of the murder. However, members of the California Innocence Project discovered that photos taken just after the victim’s autopsy clearly showed no such fibers in the fingernail. After the autopsy, the victim’s fingers were severed and sent to a county criminalist for review. Sometime after that, the fibers appeared.
“We have been working on this case almost as long as the California Innocence Project has been in existence,” said Justin Brooks, Professor at California Western and Director of the California Innocence Project. “To say that I’m ecstatic with today’s decision is an understatement. William Richards has been living a nightmare for 16 years. First he had to deal with the murder of his wife and then he had to face his wrongful conviction and incarceration for the crime. What could be worse?”
Jan Stigltiz, Professor at California Western and Co-Director of the California Innocence Project argued successfully in his closing that the case was purely circumstantial.
“Other than the fact that Richards came home and found his wife, there was no evidence linking him to the crime. These cases are hard to win,” said Stiglitz. “But if you get a judge like McCarville who is willing to take a fresh look at the evidence, then wrongful convictions can be corrected.”
Founded in 1999, the California Innocence Project is a law school clinical program dedicated to the release of wrongfully convicted inmates and providing an outstanding educational experience for students enrolled in the clinic. The California Innocence Project reviews more than a 1,000 claims from inmates each year and has earned the exoneration of eight wrongfully convicted clients since its inception."
I have only a few notes. First, good job Judge McCarville. It takes courage to make the right ruling, and he clearly made it. Second, how, EXACTLY, did the photos showing that the fiber evidence was fraudulent get found, and why weren't they produced before trial? The key piece of evidence that likely lead the jury to convict was the fiber on the victim's broken fingernail, that was likely from D's shirt. That sounds big to me. There are photos of the V's fingers, cut off after the autopsy, that show the fibers in the broken nail. Pretty damning. But, behold, apparently sometime after the trial the autopsy photos show up, and the autopsy photos show the fingers before they were removed from the body, and there are no fibers in the broken fingernail. In other words, the fiber was not present at the autopsy, but was there AFTER the fingers were cut off and sent to the crime lab. How were those autopsy photos not produced before the trial? Third, How was the DNA missed? Was this a case where the DNA wasn't as reliable as it is now? Was it too expensive?
Finally, how many times will this have to happen for everyone else to realize that our criminal justice system is badly broken? How many guys are out there who didn't get their case before a decent judge? Who didn't have DNA evidence to "prove" that they were wrongly convicted? William Richards is lucky that the California Innocence project exists, that they took an interest in his case, and that they worked their asses off for him. Too many times, I am certain, the wrong guy gets convicted because everyone is in a foul mood about the crime, the defense attorney is not on the ball or is overworked, the DA is focused solely on convicting the guy rather than doing what is right, the police are too interested in closing their books to investiagte properly, and the judge is too focused on making sure the DA gets a fair trial, rather than the D. The juries are made up of ordinary, but usually conservative, people who want to do "justice," rather than follow the law. Reasonable doubt gets forgotten in the shuffle. In other words, the entire system evades accountability because no one is actually accountable. And even if the right guy does get convicted, when corners are cut, we lose any sense of certainty that we are, in fact, being just in punishing this person. That isn't right.
I know that our system is not perfect. But we should not have such drastic sentences, and certainly should not have the death penalty, when there is so much uncertainty and unfairness in our system. I wouldn't want to treat those accused of crime any worse than I would expect to be treated if I were accused. William Richards got screwed, and it is our fault.
What are we going to do about it?
Dennis R. Wilkins
The Guest Blogger
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Tuesday, August 04, 2009
Wow, what a long time
I have been very busy with life, so I haven't posted in 6 months. I see that PDDude hasn't posted either.
I am very burned out with being a deputy public defender. I used to enjoy the job, but now I don't. Suffice to say that I am an employee, and an employee who has been taught to fear for his job. Very sad that it has come to this.
There was a time when I didn't care. But now I have kids to support. A mortgage to pay. I have to conform to what the bosses want. I have come to realize that I must do exactly what they say, or I will be fired. It isn't about protecting my clients. It is about satisfying my bosses.
I believe that this country, and the State of California, are at a very crucial stage. Our legal system is melting down. The current budget crisis is goign to get worse and worse because it is the natural result of a defective system. We require an informed and motivated citizenry to make our democracy work. But we are overwhelmed on the one hand with ill-informed older people who "think" they understand what is going on, but really don't, and a swelling population of illegal aliens who have no say in the system. The poor are rapidly forgetting that that they have the power to vote, the illegals have no power to vote, and the old white guys who still have sway want something that is impossible to get - a rollback to the 1950s. we have a system that is beset with gridlock and preyed upon by those wealthy interests, such as banking and insurance industries, and the prison-industrial system, who can control our state government with a pittance of corrupt dollars. The disconnect is amazing.
Okay, enough whining, I guess. I still hate those old-style liberals who would constantly moan about things but would never actually try solve them. How about some predictions:
Predictions #1: The budget crisis will get worse. The only way to save our system is to honestly re-think how we do just about everything in Calfornia. Too long we have allowed ourselves to think "the little things don't matter." They do. WE CANNOT AFFORD THREE STRIKES - IT IS KILLING US. I was against Three Strikes before it was popular to be against it. I have railed against Three Strikes for moral reasons and for fairness reasons. Now we are actually closing schools to feed the beast. It's time to re-think crimes, sentencing, prisons, jails, mental health as it relates to crimes, the works. We cannot afford the system that we have, and destroying our future to keep people locked up is madness.
Prediction #2: The feds will not be able to get california to release inmates. In a way, it is a blessing. The anti-federal government attitude is going to harden the already bankrupt Republican Party in california, further alienating them from normal people. The 9th Circuit just ordered the release of 45,000 prisoners within 2 years. Count on the state to appeal, and the U.S. Supremes to REVERSE. It will be 5-4, but it will be reversed. And this is a good thing. Because then the State will be forced to solve this crisis.
Funny thing about crises - they often make the impossible possible. At some level too many people are actually worrying about services in California. Like Schools. Or libraries. Or electricity. Or garbage collection. Or health care. The costs of these things are set to spiral out of control in the next few years. We will have to fix these things. And in doing so, I think that it will make us stronger as a State.
Dennis R. Wilkins
The Guest Blogger
I am very burned out with being a deputy public defender. I used to enjoy the job, but now I don't. Suffice to say that I am an employee, and an employee who has been taught to fear for his job. Very sad that it has come to this.
There was a time when I didn't care. But now I have kids to support. A mortgage to pay. I have to conform to what the bosses want. I have come to realize that I must do exactly what they say, or I will be fired. It isn't about protecting my clients. It is about satisfying my bosses.
I believe that this country, and the State of California, are at a very crucial stage. Our legal system is melting down. The current budget crisis is goign to get worse and worse because it is the natural result of a defective system. We require an informed and motivated citizenry to make our democracy work. But we are overwhelmed on the one hand with ill-informed older people who "think" they understand what is going on, but really don't, and a swelling population of illegal aliens who have no say in the system. The poor are rapidly forgetting that that they have the power to vote, the illegals have no power to vote, and the old white guys who still have sway want something that is impossible to get - a rollback to the 1950s. we have a system that is beset with gridlock and preyed upon by those wealthy interests, such as banking and insurance industries, and the prison-industrial system, who can control our state government with a pittance of corrupt dollars. The disconnect is amazing.
Okay, enough whining, I guess. I still hate those old-style liberals who would constantly moan about things but would never actually try solve them. How about some predictions:
Predictions #1: The budget crisis will get worse. The only way to save our system is to honestly re-think how we do just about everything in Calfornia. Too long we have allowed ourselves to think "the little things don't matter." They do. WE CANNOT AFFORD THREE STRIKES - IT IS KILLING US. I was against Three Strikes before it was popular to be against it. I have railed against Three Strikes for moral reasons and for fairness reasons. Now we are actually closing schools to feed the beast. It's time to re-think crimes, sentencing, prisons, jails, mental health as it relates to crimes, the works. We cannot afford the system that we have, and destroying our future to keep people locked up is madness.
Prediction #2: The feds will not be able to get california to release inmates. In a way, it is a blessing. The anti-federal government attitude is going to harden the already bankrupt Republican Party in california, further alienating them from normal people. The 9th Circuit just ordered the release of 45,000 prisoners within 2 years. Count on the state to appeal, and the U.S. Supremes to REVERSE. It will be 5-4, but it will be reversed. And this is a good thing. Because then the State will be forced to solve this crisis.
Funny thing about crises - they often make the impossible possible. At some level too many people are actually worrying about services in California. Like Schools. Or libraries. Or electricity. Or garbage collection. Or health care. The costs of these things are set to spiral out of control in the next few years. We will have to fix these things. And in doing so, I think that it will make us stronger as a State.
Dennis R. Wilkins
The Guest Blogger
Friday, January 02, 2009
The Meltdown Continues
Two articles sum up what's going on with the prison crisis in California. The prison crisis is best understood when we juxtapose our ridiculous sentencing policies, such as 3 Strikes, with our ongoing unreality of finances in California. They are both part and parcel of denial of reality by those who really run this state - the People of the State of California.
First the budget crisis. From "California Progress Report," an online publication about California politics and issues:
"Schrag: A Series of Bad Decisions Have Compounded Current Crisis
By Peter Schrag
This is usually the time for looking ahead, making resolutions, wishing for greater things. But in California we've locked ourselves into a mind-set and governmental processes that look like nothing so much as deliberate attempts to avoid thinking about the future, much less dealing with it.
Through term limits, we've created a Legislature that has neither an institutional memory nor members who can expect to be rewarded for long-term success, and thus, with rare exceptions, lack any motivation for leadership or inclination to sacrifice and compromise in the present.
We have refused to change a supermajority requirement, one of the few such absurdities in America, which allows any minority to veto any budget or tax increase. If five Republicans – three in the Assembly and two in the Senate – had been willing to negotiate such a compromise, the state would have had a budget long ago.
Their loyalty to an ideology trumps all others. This is the ideology of Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform: Starve the beast. It is that ideology as much as any that has put the country into the fiscal and regulatory mess it's in now.
We have tied ourselves into knots with a combination of governmental decisions and waves of voter initiatives whose most common characteristic, whether liberal or conservative, is short-sightedness. Among others:
• Unfunded multibillion-dollar bond issues for stem cell research, high-speed rail, children's hospitals and for paying off past debts. With interest, the long-term cost of each will be double the advertised price.
• A $6 billion annual "spending increase" to replace local government funding lost through an impulsive cut in the car tax.
• Autopilot sentencing laws hastily passed in the wake of one heinous crime that continue to cost billions in prison expenses.
• An inflexible class-size reduction program pushed through without study or serious debate by a petulant governor wishing to punish the teachers unions. It costs $2 billion a year.
• An unfunded initiative extending pre- and after-school programs that costs close to $500 million a year.
• Corporate tax loopholes written into the tax code in flush times that easily matched the increased spending on education and other programs that were enacted in the same years.
• And the grandfather of them all: the convoluted, accountability-defying, state-local tax and revenue system spawned thirty years ago by the passage of Proposition 13 and the long string of state measures to bail out the locals that have been enacted in the years since.
Those bailouts inadvertently taught all the wrong lessons: that you can have your local property tax limitations and good services, too; that the way to solve any major problem was through the initiative, not through electoral politics; that the legislature and governor who bailed you out were irrelevant and often worse; that the citizen's first concern was not community but what he could get from it.
Those ballot measures were almost always designed not to be respectful of political minorities – their very essence was to get a 51 percent majority – or to serve the state's long-term interests.
They were usually drawn by deep-pockets groups, and advertised to address an issue of the moment. As new problems arise, the remedy is a fix for problems present, rarely for problems yet to come.
It's long been a truism that we're living on the investments and foresight of the past: our once-pioneering highway systems, now in terrible disrepair; the state's unmatched public universities, now increasingly struggling against the effects of declining public support; the statesmanship that created a great water system by linking the need for water supplies in the south to flood control in the north.
Like much of the rest of the state's infrastructure, that too is now superannuated, the victim of chronic neglect. The miracle of the infrastructure – and the tribute to its farsighted creators – is that it served the state so well for so long.
It helped drive the great California boom of the postwar decades – attracted the talented, ambitious men and women who made California the great center of technology and creativity it became. They didn't come for low taxes, but for good schools, outstanding research universities, parks, recreation and transportation.
California historian Kevin Starr asks where the great leaders of California's future will come from. Where are the Pat Browns, the Clark Kerrs, the Earl Warrens, the Goodwin Knights, the Phil Burtons? Where are visionaries like the philosopher Josiah Royce, born in 1855 in Grass Valley, who believed that Californians would always understand that their interests lay in community, not self-aggrandizement?
What they shared was a vision of the future, a fundamental optimism about this place. It's that kind of hope and optimism, and that kind of people that, at this time of year especially, are so much worth wishing for.
Peter Schrag is the former editorial page editor of the Sacramento Bee. This article is published with his permission. Posted on December 30, 2008." Here is the website where I got this from:
http://www.californiaprogressreport.com/2008/12/schrag_a_series.html
Juxtapose this with the prison crisis. From an online article by New American Media.
"Prison Overcrowding Crisis Unhealthy for All Californians
New America Media, Commentary, Donna Willmott, Posted: Dec 04, 2008
Editor's Note: California prisons have become the largest mental health system for the poor, the largest battered women's shelter, and the largest system of public housing, observes NAM contributing writer, Donna Willmott, M.P.H. Willmott is the Family Advocacy Coordinator at Legal Services for Prisoners with Children and teaches in the Health Education and Community Health Studies Department of City College of San Francisco.
As a public health professional who has spent over 10 years advocating for prisoners' rights, I am dismayed to see the health of prisoners once again become a political football.More than two years ago, the federal courts acknowledged what every prisoner in California already knew – that there has been an "unconscionable degree of suffering and death" in our prisons. With all due respect to those who are working under the federal receivership to reform prison medical care, most of the systemic issues that underlie substandard care have, in our clients' experience, remained essentially unchanged. While the Receivership has succeeded in hiring a new cadre of qualified medical providers, the fact remains that progress has been painfully slow for the 178,000 prisoners trapped in this system, and many will continue to suffer needlessly in the meantime.
Overcrowding is at the root of this paralysis. The Receivership proposes to build 10,000 new medical and mental health beds, at a construction cost to taxpayers of over $7 billion dollars. Even if this project had the support of the legislature and received the required money, the crisis would not be solved. It's not possible to build and maintain these facilities, then recruit and retain sufficient numbers of well-trained staff for this constantly expanding enterprise without bankrupting the state. Without shrinking the prison system, it will be impossible to provide the required constitutional level of medical care to prisoners.
Decades of failed public policy frame this crisis. Years of a tough-on-crime approach have spelled disaster for the health and well-being of poor people and people of color who are incarcerated at dramatically disproportionate rates. We have tried to use prisons as an answer to social problems, with devastating results. Our prisons have become the largest mental health system for the poor, the largest battered women's shelter, and the largest system of public housing. The social cost of decimating our already frayed safety net in order to expand prisons is beyond calculation. We sacrifice precious community resources to maintain a prison system that creates instability, ill health and disease, while failing to keep us safe.
Perhaps taking a page from history will help us envision a new solution to this crisis. Over 150 years ago, Rudolf Virchow, the founder of "social medicine," was sent by the German government to report on the causes of a devastating 1848 typhus epidemic. Instead of recommending the simple solution of more doctors and more hospitals to avoid catastrophic loss of life in the future, Virchow called for full employment, universal education, and agricultural cooperatives as the path to preventing future epidemics. He analyzed the root causes of the epidemic, and called for a fundamental reconstruction of society to create conditions in which people could be healthy.
If Virchow were with us today, it's likely that he would be horrified by the idea of building 10,000 beds for prisoners who are extremely frail or mentally ill, people whose incarceration couldn't possibly serve public safety. He would no doubt want us to put our resources into sentencing reform, releasing low-risk prisoners, redirecting our state budget towards universal healthcare, quality public education, training and employment opportunities, and expanding drug treatment. In short, we should be ensuring the conditions in which people can be healthy as the basis for safe communities.
If Californians continue to pour billions into massive incarceration, it will mean more pink slips to school teachers, more children turned away from their doctors, more seniors denied in-home aid, more families forced into poverty and homelessness. What will it take to bring health care to California prisoners? It'll take a new way of looking at crime and punishment, a fundamental shift in our priorities and a commitment to social equity as the foundation for public safety. Bricks and mortar can't solve this one." Here is the website where I got this from:
http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=052dc71bc4ce373b68987e05bdcea735
Put these two together and we have a very clear picture of where we are and where we are going: nowhere fast. Our economy is melting down, and we cannot afford to pay for the basics. Our infrastructure has fizzled. And Three Strikes, as well as the bloated, horrifyingly bad and ridiculously expensive prison system in California is still a major cost in all of this. But no one, NO ONE is openly talking about sentencing reform.
Why? Why?
I believe it is because so many people have been such a huge, whopping lie about our cruel, unfair, and unrealistic sentencing policies, and their social costs, that standard reform is now impossible. The system will have to melt down, complete with a massive reduction in social services statewide, coupled with prison riots, for a full sentencing reform commission to be called into action. And even then change will be too slow.
No, folks, I'm afraid that we have to lose a LOT more money in California before we ever agree to actually fix this system. But it will happen. Sooner than you think.
Dennis Wilkins
The Guest PD Blogger
First the budget crisis. From "California Progress Report," an online publication about California politics and issues:
"Schrag: A Series of Bad Decisions Have Compounded Current Crisis
By Peter Schrag
This is usually the time for looking ahead, making resolutions, wishing for greater things. But in California we've locked ourselves into a mind-set and governmental processes that look like nothing so much as deliberate attempts to avoid thinking about the future, much less dealing with it.
Through term limits, we've created a Legislature that has neither an institutional memory nor members who can expect to be rewarded for long-term success, and thus, with rare exceptions, lack any motivation for leadership or inclination to sacrifice and compromise in the present.
We have refused to change a supermajority requirement, one of the few such absurdities in America, which allows any minority to veto any budget or tax increase. If five Republicans – three in the Assembly and two in the Senate – had been willing to negotiate such a compromise, the state would have had a budget long ago.
Their loyalty to an ideology trumps all others. This is the ideology of Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform: Starve the beast. It is that ideology as much as any that has put the country into the fiscal and regulatory mess it's in now.
We have tied ourselves into knots with a combination of governmental decisions and waves of voter initiatives whose most common characteristic, whether liberal or conservative, is short-sightedness. Among others:
• Unfunded multibillion-dollar bond issues for stem cell research, high-speed rail, children's hospitals and for paying off past debts. With interest, the long-term cost of each will be double the advertised price.
• A $6 billion annual "spending increase" to replace local government funding lost through an impulsive cut in the car tax.
• Autopilot sentencing laws hastily passed in the wake of one heinous crime that continue to cost billions in prison expenses.
• An inflexible class-size reduction program pushed through without study or serious debate by a petulant governor wishing to punish the teachers unions. It costs $2 billion a year.
• An unfunded initiative extending pre- and after-school programs that costs close to $500 million a year.
• Corporate tax loopholes written into the tax code in flush times that easily matched the increased spending on education and other programs that were enacted in the same years.
• And the grandfather of them all: the convoluted, accountability-defying, state-local tax and revenue system spawned thirty years ago by the passage of Proposition 13 and the long string of state measures to bail out the locals that have been enacted in the years since.
Those bailouts inadvertently taught all the wrong lessons: that you can have your local property tax limitations and good services, too; that the way to solve any major problem was through the initiative, not through electoral politics; that the legislature and governor who bailed you out were irrelevant and often worse; that the citizen's first concern was not community but what he could get from it.
Those ballot measures were almost always designed not to be respectful of political minorities – their very essence was to get a 51 percent majority – or to serve the state's long-term interests.
They were usually drawn by deep-pockets groups, and advertised to address an issue of the moment. As new problems arise, the remedy is a fix for problems present, rarely for problems yet to come.
It's long been a truism that we're living on the investments and foresight of the past: our once-pioneering highway systems, now in terrible disrepair; the state's unmatched public universities, now increasingly struggling against the effects of declining public support; the statesmanship that created a great water system by linking the need for water supplies in the south to flood control in the north.
Like much of the rest of the state's infrastructure, that too is now superannuated, the victim of chronic neglect. The miracle of the infrastructure – and the tribute to its farsighted creators – is that it served the state so well for so long.
It helped drive the great California boom of the postwar decades – attracted the talented, ambitious men and women who made California the great center of technology and creativity it became. They didn't come for low taxes, but for good schools, outstanding research universities, parks, recreation and transportation.
California historian Kevin Starr asks where the great leaders of California's future will come from. Where are the Pat Browns, the Clark Kerrs, the Earl Warrens, the Goodwin Knights, the Phil Burtons? Where are visionaries like the philosopher Josiah Royce, born in 1855 in Grass Valley, who believed that Californians would always understand that their interests lay in community, not self-aggrandizement?
What they shared was a vision of the future, a fundamental optimism about this place. It's that kind of hope and optimism, and that kind of people that, at this time of year especially, are so much worth wishing for.
Peter Schrag is the former editorial page editor of the Sacramento Bee. This article is published with his permission. Posted on December 30, 2008." Here is the website where I got this from:
http://www.californiaprogressreport.com/2008/12/schrag_a_series.html
Juxtapose this with the prison crisis. From an online article by New American Media.
"Prison Overcrowding Crisis Unhealthy for All Californians
New America Media, Commentary, Donna Willmott, Posted: Dec 04, 2008
Editor's Note: California prisons have become the largest mental health system for the poor, the largest battered women's shelter, and the largest system of public housing, observes NAM contributing writer, Donna Willmott, M.P.H. Willmott is the Family Advocacy Coordinator at Legal Services for Prisoners with Children and teaches in the Health Education and Community Health Studies Department of City College of San Francisco.
As a public health professional who has spent over 10 years advocating for prisoners' rights, I am dismayed to see the health of prisoners once again become a political football.More than two years ago, the federal courts acknowledged what every prisoner in California already knew – that there has been an "unconscionable degree of suffering and death" in our prisons. With all due respect to those who are working under the federal receivership to reform prison medical care, most of the systemic issues that underlie substandard care have, in our clients' experience, remained essentially unchanged. While the Receivership has succeeded in hiring a new cadre of qualified medical providers, the fact remains that progress has been painfully slow for the 178,000 prisoners trapped in this system, and many will continue to suffer needlessly in the meantime.
Overcrowding is at the root of this paralysis. The Receivership proposes to build 10,000 new medical and mental health beds, at a construction cost to taxpayers of over $7 billion dollars. Even if this project had the support of the legislature and received the required money, the crisis would not be solved. It's not possible to build and maintain these facilities, then recruit and retain sufficient numbers of well-trained staff for this constantly expanding enterprise without bankrupting the state. Without shrinking the prison system, it will be impossible to provide the required constitutional level of medical care to prisoners.
Decades of failed public policy frame this crisis. Years of a tough-on-crime approach have spelled disaster for the health and well-being of poor people and people of color who are incarcerated at dramatically disproportionate rates. We have tried to use prisons as an answer to social problems, with devastating results. Our prisons have become the largest mental health system for the poor, the largest battered women's shelter, and the largest system of public housing. The social cost of decimating our already frayed safety net in order to expand prisons is beyond calculation. We sacrifice precious community resources to maintain a prison system that creates instability, ill health and disease, while failing to keep us safe.
Perhaps taking a page from history will help us envision a new solution to this crisis. Over 150 years ago, Rudolf Virchow, the founder of "social medicine," was sent by the German government to report on the causes of a devastating 1848 typhus epidemic. Instead of recommending the simple solution of more doctors and more hospitals to avoid catastrophic loss of life in the future, Virchow called for full employment, universal education, and agricultural cooperatives as the path to preventing future epidemics. He analyzed the root causes of the epidemic, and called for a fundamental reconstruction of society to create conditions in which people could be healthy.
If Virchow were with us today, it's likely that he would be horrified by the idea of building 10,000 beds for prisoners who are extremely frail or mentally ill, people whose incarceration couldn't possibly serve public safety. He would no doubt want us to put our resources into sentencing reform, releasing low-risk prisoners, redirecting our state budget towards universal healthcare, quality public education, training and employment opportunities, and expanding drug treatment. In short, we should be ensuring the conditions in which people can be healthy as the basis for safe communities.
If Californians continue to pour billions into massive incarceration, it will mean more pink slips to school teachers, more children turned away from their doctors, more seniors denied in-home aid, more families forced into poverty and homelessness. What will it take to bring health care to California prisoners? It'll take a new way of looking at crime and punishment, a fundamental shift in our priorities and a commitment to social equity as the foundation for public safety. Bricks and mortar can't solve this one." Here is the website where I got this from:
http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=052dc71bc4ce373b68987e05bdcea735
Put these two together and we have a very clear picture of where we are and where we are going: nowhere fast. Our economy is melting down, and we cannot afford to pay for the basics. Our infrastructure has fizzled. And Three Strikes, as well as the bloated, horrifyingly bad and ridiculously expensive prison system in California is still a major cost in all of this. But no one, NO ONE is openly talking about sentencing reform.
Why? Why?
I believe it is because so many people have been such a huge, whopping lie about our cruel, unfair, and unrealistic sentencing policies, and their social costs, that standard reform is now impossible. The system will have to melt down, complete with a massive reduction in social services statewide, coupled with prison riots, for a full sentencing reform commission to be called into action. And even then change will be too slow.
No, folks, I'm afraid that we have to lose a LOT more money in California before we ever agree to actually fix this system. But it will happen. Sooner than you think.
Dennis Wilkins
The Guest PD Blogger
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
The Mental Health System
I mentioned in my last post, a month ago, that I am doing a new area of criminal defense. I'm still a PD, but I now handle those defendants who have been found Not Guilty by Reason of Inasanity (NGI), and are being held within the web of the criminal mental health system. It is a frightening system, and that is being said by an attorney.
First, juries are notoriously skeptical of NGI defenses in the first place, so I don't get many "close" cases. I have two cases, out of around 90, where the defendant was found NGI after a jury trial. The rest pled (or did a "slow plea" court trial in front of a judge) into NGI land. The vast majority of defendants who went into NGI land by plea have done far more time than they would have had they simply worked out a deal in the first place. Let me be clear: I haven't seen one case where the defendant isn't at a minimum, mentally ill. I have a tiny number of cases where the mental illness is in remission, but they were clearly mentally ill at one time, and were almost certainly mentally ill at the time of the crime. Whether they were actually NGI at the time of the crime we will likely never know, but a fair number would not have passed muster in front of a jury. The irony is that the vast majority of my clientele would have done far LESS time in prison than they end up doing in the mental institution.
But that is only where the fun begins. Under the NGI system, defendants can be extended past their maximum commitment date (based on their plea) every two years. They get a jury trial in extension cases, court trial when it is a life case. But some of these guys are so institutionalized that they don't want a trial. They hate being in a mental institution, but they have no idea where else they would go. So they end up begging to admit the extension and stay in. And the social workers and mental health workers constantly prey on their insecurities and try to get them to admit petition xtensions, "for their own good." Those with a life sentence never reach their maximum time, so the trial they would get is very weird (PC 1026.2 - Burden of proof on defendant, and trial is by court, not jury) and difficult to win. Lifers do a lot of time, but then again, lifers in prison do a lot of time as well.
The cost to house defendants at one of the mental institutions in this state is $130,000+. Many of my defendants are nowhere near violent enough to justify being in a mental institution (some are, of course), but the state hasn't made anywhere else available to put them. We have something called the Conrep program, but its capacity is staggeringly, woefully inadequate for the demand. Plus, Conrep picks and chooses who they want, such that the people they take are really not worthy of such close scrutiny, but ought to be released outright. And the mental hospitals (like Patton State Hospital or Metropolitan State Hospital) simply never want to let to let NGI defendants back into the community outright - they steer their huge patient loads toward Conrep, even when Conrep has no place to put them (and no incentive to take them).
Even though I'd rather not simply release these guys to the community without some sort of outpatient treatment, there really isn't any. The choice is keep them in an institution that costs $130,000 per year, or nothing. The LPS system isn't any better, because many of those guys are also housed at Metropolitan State Hospital, but on a different wing.
I have people that I am trying to get out (and some that I have successfully gotten out) who really only need minimal help. But the mental institutions (and the DA, who fights with me on just about everything) won't let anyone go without a fight, and when they do let someone go they boot them in the ass on the way out. And there is a viciousness in this system that is frightening. I had a guy who had been in a mental institution for 13+ years and we did his trial. He was adamantly opposed to the idea that he was mentally ill (his attorney (me) respectfully disagreed), his case was nonetheless a decent case. His actions had been relatively benign on the unit, and he pretty much refrained from fighting and the like. But when we went to trial to fight his extension, at trial the state's doctors diagnosed him with an Axis II Anti-Social Personality Disorder, an affliction I like to call the "asshole diagnosis." After treating this guy for 13+ years, no one EVER realized he had an Anti-Social Personality Disorder until he decided to go to trial for the first time. THEN they stick him with that bogus diagnosis. Mean, very mean.
As I said, a broken system. I will post more later within a week.
Dennis Wilkins
The Guest PD Blogger
First, juries are notoriously skeptical of NGI defenses in the first place, so I don't get many "close" cases. I have two cases, out of around 90, where the defendant was found NGI after a jury trial. The rest pled (or did a "slow plea" court trial in front of a judge) into NGI land. The vast majority of defendants who went into NGI land by plea have done far more time than they would have had they simply worked out a deal in the first place. Let me be clear: I haven't seen one case where the defendant isn't at a minimum, mentally ill. I have a tiny number of cases where the mental illness is in remission, but they were clearly mentally ill at one time, and were almost certainly mentally ill at the time of the crime. Whether they were actually NGI at the time of the crime we will likely never know, but a fair number would not have passed muster in front of a jury. The irony is that the vast majority of my clientele would have done far LESS time in prison than they end up doing in the mental institution.
But that is only where the fun begins. Under the NGI system, defendants can be extended past their maximum commitment date (based on their plea) every two years. They get a jury trial in extension cases, court trial when it is a life case. But some of these guys are so institutionalized that they don't want a trial. They hate being in a mental institution, but they have no idea where else they would go. So they end up begging to admit the extension and stay in. And the social workers and mental health workers constantly prey on their insecurities and try to get them to admit petition xtensions, "for their own good." Those with a life sentence never reach their maximum time, so the trial they would get is very weird (PC 1026.2 - Burden of proof on defendant, and trial is by court, not jury) and difficult to win. Lifers do a lot of time, but then again, lifers in prison do a lot of time as well.
The cost to house defendants at one of the mental institutions in this state is $130,000+. Many of my defendants are nowhere near violent enough to justify being in a mental institution (some are, of course), but the state hasn't made anywhere else available to put them. We have something called the Conrep program, but its capacity is staggeringly, woefully inadequate for the demand. Plus, Conrep picks and chooses who they want, such that the people they take are really not worthy of such close scrutiny, but ought to be released outright. And the mental hospitals (like Patton State Hospital or Metropolitan State Hospital) simply never want to let to let NGI defendants back into the community outright - they steer their huge patient loads toward Conrep, even when Conrep has no place to put them (and no incentive to take them).
Even though I'd rather not simply release these guys to the community without some sort of outpatient treatment, there really isn't any. The choice is keep them in an institution that costs $130,000 per year, or nothing. The LPS system isn't any better, because many of those guys are also housed at Metropolitan State Hospital, but on a different wing.
I have people that I am trying to get out (and some that I have successfully gotten out) who really only need minimal help. But the mental institutions (and the DA, who fights with me on just about everything) won't let anyone go without a fight, and when they do let someone go they boot them in the ass on the way out. And there is a viciousness in this system that is frightening. I had a guy who had been in a mental institution for 13+ years and we did his trial. He was adamantly opposed to the idea that he was mentally ill (his attorney (me) respectfully disagreed), his case was nonetheless a decent case. His actions had been relatively benign on the unit, and he pretty much refrained from fighting and the like. But when we went to trial to fight his extension, at trial the state's doctors diagnosed him with an Axis II Anti-Social Personality Disorder, an affliction I like to call the "asshole diagnosis." After treating this guy for 13+ years, no one EVER realized he had an Anti-Social Personality Disorder until he decided to go to trial for the first time. THEN they stick him with that bogus diagnosis. Mean, very mean.
As I said, a broken system. I will post more later within a week.
Dennis Wilkins
The Guest PD Blogger
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Has it Really Been THAT Long?
Awesome election results. The senate races in Alaska, Minnesota, and Georgia are all still pending. I hope that Lieberman loses his chairmanship of the Homeland Security Panel, but I won't hold my breath.
I haven't posted in months because I have been killing myself with work. It seems that I have been under fire from the moment I went into my new position, and I don't like being where I am at in my life professionally. Suffice it to say that if I didn't have a wife and children to support that I would have left the public defender long ago.
Or would I? You know, most of the private defense attorneys I have met are motivated primarily by money. Not that I wouldn't be as well if I were a private attorney. It is critical to get paid for what you do, and legal clients, ESPECIALLY in the criminal justice realm, aren't know for being thankful. I have had many a client promise to write a nice thank-you note after a not guilty disappear, only to reappear again with a new charge with no letter of thanks to be found. Only requests for more and better work.
Years ago I wrote a motion to suppress for this guy on a drug charge. I got the motion granted - the DA essentially conceded without filing a response. About two years later the same guy comes back with a new drug charge, but this time with a legal search. He starts lambasting me about how I'm not working for him, and how he was able to get a similar charge kicked out two years ago because "everyone knew he was falsely accused." Seriously - he didn't even remember that I was the guy who got his case kicked two years earlier. And he went on and on about how innocent he was. I asked him whether he was as innocent now as he had been then, and he said yes. That was the only really honest answer I got from him.
But the pressures and the options with being with the PD are sometimes very different than private work. A few years ago a private attorney I know admitted that he loved the way I could talk to my clients. I basically don't take any crap from my clients. I fight like hell for them, but I don't pull any punches with them either. People, especially criminal defendants, are basically terrified of going to jail/prison (who wouldn't be?) and they constantly want you to tell them whatever it is they want to hear. "Yes, I know that you're not guilty and we are going to win at trial, despite all that pesky evidence against you." I tend to be brually honest with my defendants, believing that it's beeter they know more than less about their defense. But he couldn't do that, because if he did, his clients would up and leave him and go to someone who says what they want to hear.
The private attorneys I talk to make it clear that they must engage in a PR offensive with their clients most of the time. So many attorneys can spin a line of BS about how good they are that what client can actually tell how good or bad the attorney is until the results (i.e. NG? Evidence suppressed? DA won't file? Etc.) are in? And even then, the worst case a defense attorney can get is a "sure winner" because those are the ones that hurt the worst to lose and make us all doubt that we know what we are doing.
I watched a 1538.5 five years ago where a private attorney argued with a straight face that the cop cannot follow a guy around for a few miles JUST BECAUSE HE LEFT A BAR AT 2:00 A.M. I mean, really, police can't just follow some guy around for a few miles because they leave the bar at closing time. "Was the car weaving, officer?" "Why, yes it was. And your client rolled the stop sign as well. That's why I wrote all that stuff in my report." "Your Honor, this just isn't fair, following my client home from a bar and waiting for him to mess up. It's a predatory practice, your Honor." Yes, the attorney really did argue that. Note that he never actually disagreed with the officer, he just got offended that the cop would wait at the bar until closing time and follow drivers home.
It just seems like, for the private attorney, the issue isn't whether the isues are good, but whether the client can pay.
That being said, having a boss and a massive caseload sucks. I want to help people, bt I also don't want to go to an early grave because I wanted to help. I don't want my epitaph to be: "Here lies a Deputy Public defender who could defend, he won his fair share of cases but in the end, he worked too hard for his pay, he was emotionally distant from his family at the end of the day, so to his widow the life insurance please send."
Great election. Let's see if Obama will close Guantanamo now. Let's see if I can post a bit more frequently now.
Dennis Wilkins
The Guest PD Blogger
I haven't posted in months because I have been killing myself with work. It seems that I have been under fire from the moment I went into my new position, and I don't like being where I am at in my life professionally. Suffice it to say that if I didn't have a wife and children to support that I would have left the public defender long ago.
Or would I? You know, most of the private defense attorneys I have met are motivated primarily by money. Not that I wouldn't be as well if I were a private attorney. It is critical to get paid for what you do, and legal clients, ESPECIALLY in the criminal justice realm, aren't know for being thankful. I have had many a client promise to write a nice thank-you note after a not guilty disappear, only to reappear again with a new charge with no letter of thanks to be found. Only requests for more and better work.
Years ago I wrote a motion to suppress for this guy on a drug charge. I got the motion granted - the DA essentially conceded without filing a response. About two years later the same guy comes back with a new drug charge, but this time with a legal search. He starts lambasting me about how I'm not working for him, and how he was able to get a similar charge kicked out two years ago because "everyone knew he was falsely accused." Seriously - he didn't even remember that I was the guy who got his case kicked two years earlier. And he went on and on about how innocent he was. I asked him whether he was as innocent now as he had been then, and he said yes. That was the only really honest answer I got from him.
But the pressures and the options with being with the PD are sometimes very different than private work. A few years ago a private attorney I know admitted that he loved the way I could talk to my clients. I basically don't take any crap from my clients. I fight like hell for them, but I don't pull any punches with them either. People, especially criminal defendants, are basically terrified of going to jail/prison (who wouldn't be?) and they constantly want you to tell them whatever it is they want to hear. "Yes, I know that you're not guilty and we are going to win at trial, despite all that pesky evidence against you." I tend to be brually honest with my defendants, believing that it's beeter they know more than less about their defense. But he couldn't do that, because if he did, his clients would up and leave him and go to someone who says what they want to hear.
The private attorneys I talk to make it clear that they must engage in a PR offensive with their clients most of the time. So many attorneys can spin a line of BS about how good they are that what client can actually tell how good or bad the attorney is until the results (i.e. NG? Evidence suppressed? DA won't file? Etc.) are in? And even then, the worst case a defense attorney can get is a "sure winner" because those are the ones that hurt the worst to lose and make us all doubt that we know what we are doing.
I watched a 1538.5 five years ago where a private attorney argued with a straight face that the cop cannot follow a guy around for a few miles JUST BECAUSE HE LEFT A BAR AT 2:00 A.M. I mean, really, police can't just follow some guy around for a few miles because they leave the bar at closing time. "Was the car weaving, officer?" "Why, yes it was. And your client rolled the stop sign as well. That's why I wrote all that stuff in my report." "Your Honor, this just isn't fair, following my client home from a bar and waiting for him to mess up. It's a predatory practice, your Honor." Yes, the attorney really did argue that. Note that he never actually disagreed with the officer, he just got offended that the cop would wait at the bar until closing time and follow drivers home.
It just seems like, for the private attorney, the issue isn't whether the isues are good, but whether the client can pay.
That being said, having a boss and a massive caseload sucks. I want to help people, bt I also don't want to go to an early grave because I wanted to help. I don't want my epitaph to be: "Here lies a Deputy Public defender who could defend, he won his fair share of cases but in the end, he worked too hard for his pay, he was emotionally distant from his family at the end of the day, so to his widow the life insurance please send."
Great election. Let's see if Obama will close Guantanamo now. Let's see if I can post a bit more frequently now.
Dennis Wilkins
The Guest PD Blogger
Monday, September 08, 2008
Deeper Musings About Sara Palin
The polls are shifting not so well for Obama (Tremors!) and there are lots and lots of theories. I am swayed by the idea that Sara Palin is having an impact on the race. Conservatives love her, and they are rallying around McCain in response. I will give an additional critique of Palin to add to what PD Dude has said.
I am bothered that many people seem to treat Palin without ANY scrutiny. She is a fresh face in politics, she's pretty, and she has very little political history from which to judge her. She also has a multi-multi-million dollar attack machine behind her known as the GOP to get her message shaped. It is in this context that we should look at Palin.
First, how did we get here? McCain was probably desperate after looking at the polls and seeing Obama's convention speech, and he wanted a "game changer." You don't need to believe me. The reports are there that McCain was going to pick Lieberman or Romney, but he realized he wasn't going to win that way. He wanted someone who would energize the Republican base and who wouldn't detract. He went deep, deep into the bench (more precisely, he picked from the grandstands) to find Palin. She is a perfect example of the politics of today and how some people win who otherwise wouldn't.
Those of you who remember what happened to Governor Gray Davis in California will understand this. In 2003 Governor Gray Davis was deeply unpopular. California has been truly mismanaged for years, thanks to an uninformed electorate scolded by lots and lots of "special interests." Davis won re-election in 2002 through a deeply cynical maneuver: He should have faced Richard Riordan, a very popular Republican mayor of Los Angeles. But the problem with Republicans is that they won't elect those who fall a little outside orthodoxy. Riordan was pro-gay rights and pro-abortion, two really big no-no's for a Republican. But he was highly popular, and very likely could have beaten Davis. So Davis intervened in the Republican primary and spent millions of dollars trashing Riordan by saying those two things: he was pro-gay and pro-abortion. These two issues would have HELPED him in the general election, and they were pretty much the same positions held by Davis. But this was toxic to the Republicans. Bill Simon, a very conservative Republican, beat Riordan and then went on to lose. It was inevitable. Simon was great for the Republicans, but no one else liked him. Davis was tolerable by comparison and he cake walked to victory. The Republicans were pissed.
They got even when Davis kept stumbling. Davis got gamed by Enron and others, and he just couldn't bring himself to raise electricity rates (or undo the whole "open market" electricity thing that was being gamed by private electricity companies). People in California are, were, and have been pissed for a long time about how their government is so dysfunctional. Davis was a great example of what people hate in politicians. Although he is a Democrat, he mercilessly shook down the teachers union for campaign contributions, and even changed some of his core positions when the CCPOA (California Correctional Peace Officers Association) cut him some checks. He just didn't seem to have any moral center, and he didn't have many supporters when he needed it. He even took some money from energy companies like Enron, and this made it look like he was dragging his feet and costing California billions. Voters were mad.
The recall election in 2003 was the first time ever that a state public official was removed from office in California, although 17 other recall efforts had been done before. It was ugly. Davis was removed by a margin of 55.4% to 44.6%. Schwarzenegger was then elected governor (by the same ballot) with 48.6 percent of the vote. Schwarzenegger would NEVER, EVER have made it through the Republican primary process. Just ask some Republicans now how much they like Schwarzenegger and they will likely say that he is a "Socialist," or a "Democrat," or some other epithet that they hate. Point is, only through this extraordinary process did Schwarzenegger come to office.
One to Palin. Palin supports abstinence-only education, and that means what it says: no sex ed in the schools. This isn't just her opinion, but the opinion of someone a heartbeat away from the presidency. She has a 17 year old daughter who is now pregnant. Palin denied funds recently (she used her line-item veto and zeroed the funds out) to a home for underage, unwed mothers, particularly those suffering from domestic violence. Message: I don't want your kids taught about sex education on the government's dime, and I don't want poor unwed mothers cared for on the government's dime, but I, myself, have a 17 year old who didn't get the message and is having a child early. Palin's own pregnancy is the subject of some really questionable judgment about why she flew 8+ hours from Texas (after waiting hours to give a speech), then drove to a little hospital, all after she was leaking amniotic fluid (technically she was in labor) one month early with a special needs child (i.e. Down syndrome).
Palin lied about the bridge to nowhere (she advocated for it, then claimed in her first national address that she said "no thanks") and lied when claims to be against earmarks, yet eagerly sought them both as mayor of a small town and as governor of Alaska.
As governor, Palin sought to fire her sister's ex-husband from the state police (and if what he did was true, he no doubt is a jerk), then instead fired the head of the state police (also a jerk who probably deserved to be fired) when he refused to fire the guy she wanted to be fired. But then she lied about the whole thing and has repeatedly sought to have the whole investigation placed under the control of a three person panel that she controls.
Palin tried to get the librarian to ban certain books from the library because she thought they were offensive, and when the librarian refused to do so, Palin started the process to fire her.
Palin did a nasty speech at the Republican convention where she mocked Obama's time as a "community organizer" and essentially labeled him as a guy with no real experience. What chutzpah. But now she hides from the press, afraid of what questions they might ask HER about HER experience, and the issues above. Her surrogates in the media, meanwhile, blow smoke about legitimate questions about her, claiming that such questions are really about the fact that she has 5 kids (So what?), or that she is a woman and Democrats are being sexist (Wow!). Never mind the fact that she is simply a political unknown,and she hasn't been through the process to find out who she is and what she stands for.
And that is actually the point I was getting at regarding Schwarzenegger. He was a political nobody, with no previous office experience. He would have been eaten alive in the Republican primary because he is a "creature of Hollywood" and he is, in fact, a closet moderate. Republicans would have avoided him if they had the chance. Palin, on the other hand, would have been a darling of the Republicans. Until, of course, someone like Huckabee, or Romney, tore her apart for her clear lack of experience. Now she is the #2 girl to the oldest man to seek the presidency ever. McCain is 72. He's got a great chance of dying in office, and Palin will then take his place.
Hats off to Republicans for getting their "stealth candidate" into the ring. I have no doubt that, between her and McCain that Roe v. Wade will be overturned. I have no doubt that people will grow more and more pissed at their dysfunctional government. I sure hate to lose this round (and I hated losing when Bush took it in 2000 and 2004), but I know that, if McCain wins, the American people will be getting exactly what we deserve. Maybe not what we want, but definitely what we deserve.
Dennis Wilkins
The Guest PD Blogger
I am bothered that many people seem to treat Palin without ANY scrutiny. She is a fresh face in politics, she's pretty, and she has very little political history from which to judge her. She also has a multi-multi-million dollar attack machine behind her known as the GOP to get her message shaped. It is in this context that we should look at Palin.
First, how did we get here? McCain was probably desperate after looking at the polls and seeing Obama's convention speech, and he wanted a "game changer." You don't need to believe me. The reports are there that McCain was going to pick Lieberman or Romney, but he realized he wasn't going to win that way. He wanted someone who would energize the Republican base and who wouldn't detract. He went deep, deep into the bench (more precisely, he picked from the grandstands) to find Palin. She is a perfect example of the politics of today and how some people win who otherwise wouldn't.
Those of you who remember what happened to Governor Gray Davis in California will understand this. In 2003 Governor Gray Davis was deeply unpopular. California has been truly mismanaged for years, thanks to an uninformed electorate scolded by lots and lots of "special interests." Davis won re-election in 2002 through a deeply cynical maneuver: He should have faced Richard Riordan, a very popular Republican mayor of Los Angeles. But the problem with Republicans is that they won't elect those who fall a little outside orthodoxy. Riordan was pro-gay rights and pro-abortion, two really big no-no's for a Republican. But he was highly popular, and very likely could have beaten Davis. So Davis intervened in the Republican primary and spent millions of dollars trashing Riordan by saying those two things: he was pro-gay and pro-abortion. These two issues would have HELPED him in the general election, and they were pretty much the same positions held by Davis. But this was toxic to the Republicans. Bill Simon, a very conservative Republican, beat Riordan and then went on to lose. It was inevitable. Simon was great for the Republicans, but no one else liked him. Davis was tolerable by comparison and he cake walked to victory. The Republicans were pissed.
They got even when Davis kept stumbling. Davis got gamed by Enron and others, and he just couldn't bring himself to raise electricity rates (or undo the whole "open market" electricity thing that was being gamed by private electricity companies). People in California are, were, and have been pissed for a long time about how their government is so dysfunctional. Davis was a great example of what people hate in politicians. Although he is a Democrat, he mercilessly shook down the teachers union for campaign contributions, and even changed some of his core positions when the CCPOA (California Correctional Peace Officers Association) cut him some checks. He just didn't seem to have any moral center, and he didn't have many supporters when he needed it. He even took some money from energy companies like Enron, and this made it look like he was dragging his feet and costing California billions. Voters were mad.
The recall election in 2003 was the first time ever that a state public official was removed from office in California, although 17 other recall efforts had been done before. It was ugly. Davis was removed by a margin of 55.4% to 44.6%. Schwarzenegger was then elected governor (by the same ballot) with 48.6 percent of the vote. Schwarzenegger would NEVER, EVER have made it through the Republican primary process. Just ask some Republicans now how much they like Schwarzenegger and they will likely say that he is a "Socialist," or a "Democrat," or some other epithet that they hate. Point is, only through this extraordinary process did Schwarzenegger come to office.
One to Palin. Palin supports abstinence-only education, and that means what it says: no sex ed in the schools. This isn't just her opinion, but the opinion of someone a heartbeat away from the presidency. She has a 17 year old daughter who is now pregnant. Palin denied funds recently (she used her line-item veto and zeroed the funds out) to a home for underage, unwed mothers, particularly those suffering from domestic violence. Message: I don't want your kids taught about sex education on the government's dime, and I don't want poor unwed mothers cared for on the government's dime, but I, myself, have a 17 year old who didn't get the message and is having a child early. Palin's own pregnancy is the subject of some really questionable judgment about why she flew 8+ hours from Texas (after waiting hours to give a speech), then drove to a little hospital, all after she was leaking amniotic fluid (technically she was in labor) one month early with a special needs child (i.e. Down syndrome).
Palin lied about the bridge to nowhere (she advocated for it, then claimed in her first national address that she said "no thanks") and lied when claims to be against earmarks, yet eagerly sought them both as mayor of a small town and as governor of Alaska.
As governor, Palin sought to fire her sister's ex-husband from the state police (and if what he did was true, he no doubt is a jerk), then instead fired the head of the state police (also a jerk who probably deserved to be fired) when he refused to fire the guy she wanted to be fired. But then she lied about the whole thing and has repeatedly sought to have the whole investigation placed under the control of a three person panel that she controls.
Palin tried to get the librarian to ban certain books from the library because she thought they were offensive, and when the librarian refused to do so, Palin started the process to fire her.
Palin did a nasty speech at the Republican convention where she mocked Obama's time as a "community organizer" and essentially labeled him as a guy with no real experience. What chutzpah. But now she hides from the press, afraid of what questions they might ask HER about HER experience, and the issues above. Her surrogates in the media, meanwhile, blow smoke about legitimate questions about her, claiming that such questions are really about the fact that she has 5 kids (So what?), or that she is a woman and Democrats are being sexist (Wow!). Never mind the fact that she is simply a political unknown,and she hasn't been through the process to find out who she is and what she stands for.
And that is actually the point I was getting at regarding Schwarzenegger. He was a political nobody, with no previous office experience. He would have been eaten alive in the Republican primary because he is a "creature of Hollywood" and he is, in fact, a closet moderate. Republicans would have avoided him if they had the chance. Palin, on the other hand, would have been a darling of the Republicans. Until, of course, someone like Huckabee, or Romney, tore her apart for her clear lack of experience. Now she is the #2 girl to the oldest man to seek the presidency ever. McCain is 72. He's got a great chance of dying in office, and Palin will then take his place.
Hats off to Republicans for getting their "stealth candidate" into the ring. I have no doubt that, between her and McCain that Roe v. Wade will be overturned. I have no doubt that people will grow more and more pissed at their dysfunctional government. I sure hate to lose this round (and I hated losing when Bush took it in 2000 and 2004), but I know that, if McCain wins, the American people will be getting exactly what we deserve. Maybe not what we want, but definitely what we deserve.
Dennis Wilkins
The Guest PD Blogger
Tuesday, September 02, 2008
About the Aquittal of Former marine Nazario
Just before the weekend started, the federal jury in the trial of former Luis Nazario found the former marine not guilty. Good for him, I suppose. As a public defender, I enjoy hearing when the DA loses a case. I like it when someone is found not guilty, and a jury stands up for the rule of law. Whenever I hear a jury say (to me or to anyone else) "there just wasn't enough evidence to justify a guilty verdict," my heart skips a beat. That means that the jury was actually listening to the instructions about reasonable doubt.
Of course, the Nazario verdict cuts another way, a way that I am not fond of. He's a cop (temporarily former, but he'll probably get his job back) and he was a marine at the time. A jury will typically bend over backwards to help this kind of defendant. The minority defendant who claims that the rock of crack was planted on him by a bad cop will lose every time, but the former war-hero-turned-cop will win every time.
In fairness, the case against Nazario was actullay pretty tough to prove. Two witnesses, Sgt. Ryan Wheemer (whose confession during a background check started the whole thing) and Sgt. Jermaine Nelson, both refused to testify against Nazario and were found in contempt of court. Both still face murder charges in their upcoming courts-martial trials (although I seriously question whether there will be a different result). Both Wheemer and Nelson had been granted immunity, but neither was willing to rat on Nazario.
The witnesses called by the prosecution said that they did not see Nazario kill anyone, but heard the gunshots. There apparently were no forensics and no identities to back up the prosecution case.
There has been some discussion about whether civilian juries are "prepared to judge in cases of soldiers in combat" and I suppose that that is a fair question. But I have a different one: what on earth was the US Attorney thinking when he prepared and tried this case? I mean, really, how did he expect to get a conviction without eyewitnesses? Without forensic evidence? He knew these two witnesses would not testify. Why didn't he stop there? Without some serious proof that Nazario either killed people after they had surrendered, or that he had ordered their killing, why did he/she proceed?
The killing of people after they have surrenedered is, and always has been, a bad thing. I was and am against all the torture stuff that happened at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib (and the whole Iraq War, for that matter), primarily because of the human costs and atrocities. But I also don't like the idea of doing those things because later, when our people are captured, I want to be able to raise some righteous indignation to possibly prevent torture of our people if and when they are captured. That's the whole point of the Geneva Conventions - our people have some hope that their captors will treat them better if they are afraid that the whole world will vilify them if they mistreat captured soldiers.
Long ago I was in the National Guard (and the Army before that) and there was talk of us being activated to go to the first Iraq War. It never happened (thankfully), and that war turned out to be very brief. But during that time my fellow soldiers and I had a great discussion about the Geneva Conventions. I remember one guy in particular saying he simply wouldn't abide by "any of that stuff" and that he would kill everyone, even those who surrendered to him. To him the Geneva Conventions was "for pussies." I think he was joking (he sure sounded serious), and I remember that some were swayed by his nonsense talk. I even quizzed what he would do if, like 20 or 30 Iraqis surrendered to him all at once. He said that he would kill all "those ragheads" (his words, definitely not mine). Again, some others were swayed by his nonsense talk.
Later, when Desert Storm turned into such a huge cakewalk (thankfully) and the Iraqis were surrendering in droves, I saw a tape where 1000+ Iraqis tried to surrender to a predator drone. I'm really glad that neither I, nor my fellow Guardsmen went to that war. Or any war, for that matter. Learning how to kill is important in the military. But learning when NOT to kill is also important. I think that this kind of testing, moral and otherwise, happens all the time in Iraq today. And it is also frequently present on our city streets, tested by police officers frequently.
Dennis Wilkins
The Guest PD Blogger
Of course, the Nazario verdict cuts another way, a way that I am not fond of. He's a cop (temporarily former, but he'll probably get his job back) and he was a marine at the time. A jury will typically bend over backwards to help this kind of defendant. The minority defendant who claims that the rock of crack was planted on him by a bad cop will lose every time, but the former war-hero-turned-cop will win every time.
In fairness, the case against Nazario was actullay pretty tough to prove. Two witnesses, Sgt. Ryan Wheemer (whose confession during a background check started the whole thing) and Sgt. Jermaine Nelson, both refused to testify against Nazario and were found in contempt of court. Both still face murder charges in their upcoming courts-martial trials (although I seriously question whether there will be a different result). Both Wheemer and Nelson had been granted immunity, but neither was willing to rat on Nazario.
The witnesses called by the prosecution said that they did not see Nazario kill anyone, but heard the gunshots. There apparently were no forensics and no identities to back up the prosecution case.
There has been some discussion about whether civilian juries are "prepared to judge in cases of soldiers in combat" and I suppose that that is a fair question. But I have a different one: what on earth was the US Attorney thinking when he prepared and tried this case? I mean, really, how did he expect to get a conviction without eyewitnesses? Without forensic evidence? He knew these two witnesses would not testify. Why didn't he stop there? Without some serious proof that Nazario either killed people after they had surrendered, or that he had ordered their killing, why did he/she proceed?
The killing of people after they have surrenedered is, and always has been, a bad thing. I was and am against all the torture stuff that happened at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib (and the whole Iraq War, for that matter), primarily because of the human costs and atrocities. But I also don't like the idea of doing those things because later, when our people are captured, I want to be able to raise some righteous indignation to possibly prevent torture of our people if and when they are captured. That's the whole point of the Geneva Conventions - our people have some hope that their captors will treat them better if they are afraid that the whole world will vilify them if they mistreat captured soldiers.
Long ago I was in the National Guard (and the Army before that) and there was talk of us being activated to go to the first Iraq War. It never happened (thankfully), and that war turned out to be very brief. But during that time my fellow soldiers and I had a great discussion about the Geneva Conventions. I remember one guy in particular saying he simply wouldn't abide by "any of that stuff" and that he would kill everyone, even those who surrendered to him. To him the Geneva Conventions was "for pussies." I think he was joking (he sure sounded serious), and I remember that some were swayed by his nonsense talk. I even quizzed what he would do if, like 20 or 30 Iraqis surrendered to him all at once. He said that he would kill all "those ragheads" (his words, definitely not mine). Again, some others were swayed by his nonsense talk.
Later, when Desert Storm turned into such a huge cakewalk (thankfully) and the Iraqis were surrendering in droves, I saw a tape where 1000+ Iraqis tried to surrender to a predator drone. I'm really glad that neither I, nor my fellow Guardsmen went to that war. Or any war, for that matter. Learning how to kill is important in the military. But learning when NOT to kill is also important. I think that this kind of testing, moral and otherwise, happens all the time in Iraq today. And it is also frequently present on our city streets, tested by police officers frequently.
Dennis Wilkins
The Guest PD Blogger
Monday, September 01, 2008
Musings about the Sarah Palin thing
It feels a little like shooting fish in a barrel, or piling on, or something of the sort, but there is just so many places to go with this Sarah Palin pick as McCain's VP pick, that I just don't know where to begin. And I just can't leave it alone, because some of it is too glaring. A few random thoughts:
1) Alright, I understand it, she's your precious little daughter, and we want to protect her privacy. So the question is, when she's 5 months pregnant and due in, when is that, oh, election time, WHY THE HELL ARE YOU ACCEPTING A BID TO BECOME VP KNOWING IT WILL BECOME A PUBLIC SPECTACLE????? Maybe you don't support your daughter that much after all.
2) Why are we hearing this stuff from Palin and McCain that her daughter has "chosen" to have the baby and will marry the father (at some undetermined time - 10 years from now?)? In their view, having a child is not a choice, it's a crime to abort! Why use the language of her having a choice when they feel that this choice is akin to taking your live child and drowning it in a bathtub. They don't lionize their children by saying "she's chosen not to kill her 3 year old child after losing her job and going on welfare." By suggesting that a choice exists, they totally contradict their language on abortion equalling murder.
3) So both McCain and Palin are running on this whole family values thing, like liberals are anti-American because they suggest that women can do equal work to men, and that they can choose to do so even after having children and starting families, or waiting to have families if that's what they want. And yet, we have this mother giving birth to a special needs child 5 months ago, her 17 year old daughter has clearly not absorbed much of what her mother has imparted to her on the "family values" front, and yet, Mom is going to decamp 8,000 miles to Washington DC for the next 8 years and leave her 5 month old to the care of who - her 17 year old pregnant and unmarried mother while she goes off to help a 72 year old man with cancer run the free world? Am I missing something here? What family are they valuing if not their own?
4) Finally, this one's too good. The Eagle Forum in Alaska, a right wing organization dedicated to ensuring traditional American values in our politicians, sent a questionnaire to Alaskan Gubernatorial candidates back in 2006. Gov. Palin was kind enough to respond. You can read her responses here on the Eagle Forum's website, but here's some goodies.
Regarding a woman's right to choose, Palin responded: "I am pro-life. With the exception of a doctor’s determination that the mother’s life would end if the pregnancy continued. I believe that no matter what mistakes we make as a society, we cannot condone ending an innocent’s life." good thing her daughter has "chosen" to have the child.
Regarding support for "abstinence-only" education instead of explicit sexual education, talk of contraceptive and things of the like: "Yes, the explicit sex-ed programs will not find my support." Obviously her daughter heard nothing of them either.
Regarding allowing parents to opt out of school curriculum's that they morally disagree with, such as, well, Sex-ed: "Yes. Parents should have the ultimate control over what their children are taught." I'm telling you, it's getting harder and harder not to think that this came from a Saturday Night Live skit or an Onion article at this point. I mean, obviously, she opted her daughter out, to these results.
There is so much more to talk about, it's almost not fair. The funniest thing is, most people won't care. They'll support her for whatever idiotic reason that they do, despite the fact that had she been a Democrat, they'd vilify her as a closet lesbian spear chucker who doesn't shave and wants to burn society's bras, imprison it's men, and establish worldwide female hegemony.
Don't worry, there will be more, I mean, she's only been the candidate for 3 days. But like I said, it won't matter, most Republicans would rather vote for a 3rd term for George Bush than vote for any Democrat (and this is essentially what they'll be doing when they vote for McCain).
1) Alright, I understand it, she's your precious little daughter, and we want to protect her privacy. So the question is, when she's 5 months pregnant and due in, when is that, oh, election time, WHY THE HELL ARE YOU ACCEPTING A BID TO BECOME VP KNOWING IT WILL BECOME A PUBLIC SPECTACLE????? Maybe you don't support your daughter that much after all.
2) Why are we hearing this stuff from Palin and McCain that her daughter has "chosen" to have the baby and will marry the father (at some undetermined time - 10 years from now?)? In their view, having a child is not a choice, it's a crime to abort! Why use the language of her having a choice when they feel that this choice is akin to taking your live child and drowning it in a bathtub. They don't lionize their children by saying "she's chosen not to kill her 3 year old child after losing her job and going on welfare." By suggesting that a choice exists, they totally contradict their language on abortion equalling murder.
3) So both McCain and Palin are running on this whole family values thing, like liberals are anti-American because they suggest that women can do equal work to men, and that they can choose to do so even after having children and starting families, or waiting to have families if that's what they want. And yet, we have this mother giving birth to a special needs child 5 months ago, her 17 year old daughter has clearly not absorbed much of what her mother has imparted to her on the "family values" front, and yet, Mom is going to decamp 8,000 miles to Washington DC for the next 8 years and leave her 5 month old to the care of who - her 17 year old pregnant and unmarried mother while she goes off to help a 72 year old man with cancer run the free world? Am I missing something here? What family are they valuing if not their own?
4) Finally, this one's too good. The Eagle Forum in Alaska, a right wing organization dedicated to ensuring traditional American values in our politicians, sent a questionnaire to Alaskan Gubernatorial candidates back in 2006. Gov. Palin was kind enough to respond. You can read her responses here on the Eagle Forum's website, but here's some goodies.
Regarding a woman's right to choose, Palin responded: "I am pro-life. With the exception of a doctor’s determination that the mother’s life would end if the pregnancy continued. I believe that no matter what mistakes we make as a society, we cannot condone ending an innocent’s life." good thing her daughter has "chosen" to have the child.
Regarding support for "abstinence-only" education instead of explicit sexual education, talk of contraceptive and things of the like: "Yes, the explicit sex-ed programs will not find my support." Obviously her daughter heard nothing of them either.
Regarding allowing parents to opt out of school curriculum's that they morally disagree with, such as, well, Sex-ed: "Yes. Parents should have the ultimate control over what their children are taught." I'm telling you, it's getting harder and harder not to think that this came from a Saturday Night Live skit or an Onion article at this point. I mean, obviously, she opted her daughter out, to these results.
There is so much more to talk about, it's almost not fair. The funniest thing is, most people won't care. They'll support her for whatever idiotic reason that they do, despite the fact that had she been a Democrat, they'd vilify her as a closet lesbian spear chucker who doesn't shave and wants to burn society's bras, imprison it's men, and establish worldwide female hegemony.
Don't worry, there will be more, I mean, she's only been the candidate for 3 days. But like I said, it won't matter, most Republicans would rather vote for a 3rd term for George Bush than vote for any Democrat (and this is essentially what they'll be doing when they vote for McCain).
Friday, August 29, 2008
A Not-So-Quick Rant on the Drug War in America
I watched Obama's acceptance speech last night and I thought it was wonderful. The best I have ever seen. Just now, I started thinking about a few things. How about a brief, and I do mean brief, moral discussion? About the drug war? Please, please, let there be some law and order types to sign on and discuss this.
I am opposed to the drug war. I believe that it has been a waste and that we are, essentially, punishing a vice crime that hurts very few. Obama, possibly the next President of the United States, has used cocaine. (Had he been caught in the wrong place doing exactly what he has admitted doing, we wouldn't be talking about him being the President of the U.S., we'd be talking about him being a resident of a penal institution.) He admitted that he had a problem with it. So has Rush Limbaugh, icon of the right. Oxycontin was Rush's drug of choice, but that's just a different version of a similar drug. Oxycontin is called "hillbilly heroin" because it is a cheap, pharma version of heroin. Similar effects and all that. Bill Clinton used marijuana, but he stuck to the lie that he never inhaled. Billionaire Henry Nicholas III, the promoter of the evil tough-on-crime Prop. 6 and 9 on the ballot in November has a video that was pulled from YouTube where he is using cocaine - he even admitted that it was him in the video.
There are people in prison doing larger and larger amounts of time, sometimes even 25-life or more, for possessing tiny amounts of these drugs. The punishments for meth and ectasy are set to increase more and more, primarily because "bad things happen when people do drugs" and "people should control their bad habits." Okay, then why did Rush Limbaugh beat his rap? Why is he still on the air espousing his "personal responsibility" crap? Who listens to him? What IDIOT thinks that he has ANY moral authority to talk about ANYTHING crime-related when he "beat the system," when he constantly claimed that drug users should be "just shot?" (He said it - if not that exactly, pretty close.) I want Obama to win, but how does he have the moral authority to talk about drug sentencing, when he was once a drug user himself. Note: I have ZERO faith that if McCain were elected he would do ANYTHING to change federal (or influence State) drug laws for the good (e.g.more compassion, less prison) - Republicans have run on tough on crime for a long time now.
How do people constantly justify not even talking about the drug war and its failure? How can we keep people in prison for decades, and keep imprisoning them, when people we know are addicted to drugs? Where is the disconnect here? Perhaps it is time to treat this as a war. In the Civil War, Sherman's strategy was to tear the heart from the Confederacy - burn everything on the way to Atlanta, burn the fields, and there will be no more resistance. When Germany invaded the USSR in WWII, Stalin's strategy was to burn everything when retreating, leaving nothing behind. Brutal strategies, but they worked. In war, you can afford to use scorched earth as a viable strategy, because everything is called for in war.
Well how about it, conservatives? Let's just make it automatic prison for all drug offenses, regardless of what they are, no treatment, no nothing. And let's start with YOUR CHILDREN if they get addicted to drugs. Your friends. Your precious Limbaugh. Henry Nicholas III. That conservative preacher that "went astray" with a male hooker and meth in his hotel room. How about house-to-house searches to get every last speck of drugs from our communities? How do you think it will it feel when your communities are devastated, like those of the poor have become? When your kids cannot get student loans or jobs because they had a drug conviction? Perhaps that is the only answer to these "tough on crime" types who refuse to admit that drug abuse is an addiction.
By the way, I am not of the opinion that someone who commits crimes while high should be "forgiven" or get a pass somehow. Commit a crime, whether high or not, and you face punishment. But I don't see prison, or jail for that matter, as an answer. Drugs are an escape and so many people use them. And when safe drugs aren't present, they MAKE UNSAFE ONES. People who cannot get a job, who do not see their future abuse drugs. People who have nothing to care about abuse drugs. Jail and prison don't change this.
But I suppose the real point is, WHY AREN'T WE HAVING THIS DEBATE? Why do the "tough on crime" types always win and prevent even the mere discussion of substance abuse laws reform? Why do we keep pouring billions and billions and billions of our hard-earned tax money into a failed prison system without even debating whether we should be punishing this conduct in the first place.
The exact same argument goes for prostitution, by the way. I am a liberal and damned proud of it, but there are far too many liberals in this state who constantly join with conservatives and everyone else to pass dumber and crueler laws, imprisoning more and more people. I have a pretty strong libertarian streak in me. I have children I love very much, and I don't want them to become junkies or prostitutes, but the best way to ensure they become good citizens is not to pass more stupid, cruel and expensive laws, but to make sure they have a better education, and the people around them have a reason to get up in the morning (like for, you know, a job). It is hard to respect a criminal justice system that we have built to breed disrespect.
I had to get that off my chest. The hypocrisy of our criminal justice system, and how it treats the poor and the despised, has been killing me lately. Whew - I feel better now.
Dennis Wilkins
The Guest PD Blogger
I am opposed to the drug war. I believe that it has been a waste and that we are, essentially, punishing a vice crime that hurts very few. Obama, possibly the next President of the United States, has used cocaine. (Had he been caught in the wrong place doing exactly what he has admitted doing, we wouldn't be talking about him being the President of the U.S., we'd be talking about him being a resident of a penal institution.) He admitted that he had a problem with it. So has Rush Limbaugh, icon of the right. Oxycontin was Rush's drug of choice, but that's just a different version of a similar drug. Oxycontin is called "hillbilly heroin" because it is a cheap, pharma version of heroin. Similar effects and all that. Bill Clinton used marijuana, but he stuck to the lie that he never inhaled. Billionaire Henry Nicholas III, the promoter of the evil tough-on-crime Prop. 6 and 9 on the ballot in November has a video that was pulled from YouTube where he is using cocaine - he even admitted that it was him in the video.
There are people in prison doing larger and larger amounts of time, sometimes even 25-life or more, for possessing tiny amounts of these drugs. The punishments for meth and ectasy are set to increase more and more, primarily because "bad things happen when people do drugs" and "people should control their bad habits." Okay, then why did Rush Limbaugh beat his rap? Why is he still on the air espousing his "personal responsibility" crap? Who listens to him? What IDIOT thinks that he has ANY moral authority to talk about ANYTHING crime-related when he "beat the system," when he constantly claimed that drug users should be "just shot?" (He said it - if not that exactly, pretty close.) I want Obama to win, but how does he have the moral authority to talk about drug sentencing, when he was once a drug user himself. Note: I have ZERO faith that if McCain were elected he would do ANYTHING to change federal (or influence State) drug laws for the good (e.g.more compassion, less prison) - Republicans have run on tough on crime for a long time now.
How do people constantly justify not even talking about the drug war and its failure? How can we keep people in prison for decades, and keep imprisoning them, when people we know are addicted to drugs? Where is the disconnect here? Perhaps it is time to treat this as a war. In the Civil War, Sherman's strategy was to tear the heart from the Confederacy - burn everything on the way to Atlanta, burn the fields, and there will be no more resistance. When Germany invaded the USSR in WWII, Stalin's strategy was to burn everything when retreating, leaving nothing behind. Brutal strategies, but they worked. In war, you can afford to use scorched earth as a viable strategy, because everything is called for in war.
Well how about it, conservatives? Let's just make it automatic prison for all drug offenses, regardless of what they are, no treatment, no nothing. And let's start with YOUR CHILDREN if they get addicted to drugs. Your friends. Your precious Limbaugh. Henry Nicholas III. That conservative preacher that "went astray" with a male hooker and meth in his hotel room. How about house-to-house searches to get every last speck of drugs from our communities? How do you think it will it feel when your communities are devastated, like those of the poor have become? When your kids cannot get student loans or jobs because they had a drug conviction? Perhaps that is the only answer to these "tough on crime" types who refuse to admit that drug abuse is an addiction.
By the way, I am not of the opinion that someone who commits crimes while high should be "forgiven" or get a pass somehow. Commit a crime, whether high or not, and you face punishment. But I don't see prison, or jail for that matter, as an answer. Drugs are an escape and so many people use them. And when safe drugs aren't present, they MAKE UNSAFE ONES. People who cannot get a job, who do not see their future abuse drugs. People who have nothing to care about abuse drugs. Jail and prison don't change this.
But I suppose the real point is, WHY AREN'T WE HAVING THIS DEBATE? Why do the "tough on crime" types always win and prevent even the mere discussion of substance abuse laws reform? Why do we keep pouring billions and billions and billions of our hard-earned tax money into a failed prison system without even debating whether we should be punishing this conduct in the first place.
The exact same argument goes for prostitution, by the way. I am a liberal and damned proud of it, but there are far too many liberals in this state who constantly join with conservatives and everyone else to pass dumber and crueler laws, imprisoning more and more people. I have a pretty strong libertarian streak in me. I have children I love very much, and I don't want them to become junkies or prostitutes, but the best way to ensure they become good citizens is not to pass more stupid, cruel and expensive laws, but to make sure they have a better education, and the people around them have a reason to get up in the morning (like for, you know, a job). It is hard to respect a criminal justice system that we have built to breed disrespect.
I had to get that off my chest. The hypocrisy of our criminal justice system, and how it treats the poor and the despised, has been killing me lately. Whew - I feel better now.
Dennis Wilkins
The Guest PD Blogger
Only in California - Pregnancy is Great Bodily Injury
So California has a rule which says that if you commit a crime against someone and cause them great bodily injury, then you get an enhancement. The law says that it has to be a significant injury, and has to be intentionally caused. Here's the rub, while it only adds 3 years to a sentence in most circumstances, in the last 14 years, it has also made any crime a "strike" (you all have heard of 3 strikes, right?). It also forces people to serve 85% of their time if the allegation is found true.
So, as you can probably guess, prosecutors love this enhancement. And when they love something, they misuse it. Now, let's think of the way in which they can misuse this one: it requires GREAT bodily injury, so perhaps they could stretch the meaning of great so that every minor injury now constitutes great bodily injury; and it requires that the injury be caused intentionally, so perhaps they could try to extend accidents to "intentionally.
If that sounds absurd, or insidious, or something else, you are right, it is. It's also what's happened.
Just about every injury, no matter how minor, when blood is drawn, is now charged as great bodily injury. Get into a fight with someone and give them a bloody nose? Great bodily injury. Scratch someone and cut them? Great bodily injury. It used to be that the injury had to be significant. Now, no matter how minor it is, it is charged. And, since it is almost always a factual determination, no judge will ever dismiss a great bodily injury allegation based on insufficient evidence, so everyone charged with this must go to trial for it, no matter how minor a case it really is. Or, the prosecution can squeeze a plea out of someone in a bullshit case out of fear of going to trial. Very effective.
The other aspect, that it must be willfully and intentionally caused, has also been under assault. The best example of that is in the area of DUI accidents. Now, I'm no big fan of drunk drivers, but if you get into an accident, someone is likely to get injured. Can anyone say that this is an intentional causing of great bodily injury like stabbing someone? Do we really call these people violent offenders and give them strikes? And think about it, more than one person is likely to be injured in this situation, so while someone who shoots at a person may come out with only one strike, a person who gets into a car accident while drunk and where no one is significantly hurt can walk out with multiple strikes (meaning he gets a life sentence if he picks up a forgery or drug possession in the future) and a very long prison sentence. Again, I'm not saying I have some great love for drunk drivers, but let's call a spade a spade - unless there's some evidence they do it serially in some manner, it's hardly violent (potentially dangerous, sure, but violent?).
Now the California Supreme Court has just validated the latest absurdity - pregnancy is great bodily injury. I did realize that I caused great bodily injury to my wife when I got her pregnant for our two kids, but evidently I'm a violent felon worth of 25 to life. In the case at bar, some dude raped his step-daughter (not an action I advocate, by the way, I'm even willing to go out on a limb and call it evil), and got her pregnant. Now, if he is convicted of this, he faces 16 years in prison (and he has to do 85%), but if he causes great bodily injury (of course, this was originally intended to mean something like pistol whipping the person, or stabbing them, or beating them to a pulp) in a case like this, it turns into a life case. Now, again, I have no sympathy for those who bang their 13 year old stepdaughters, and if he really did cause her great bodily injury, and this is the law, the fine, give him life.
But, let's face it, these prosecutors basically said "I want to give this guy life even though the law doesn't call for it, so I'm going to make up some bullshit to get him a life sentence." And the Cal Supreme Court went along with it - absolutely incredible. Once again, it just blows me away the extent to which California Courts will go along with whatever absurdity some idiotic prosecutor comes up with.
The funny thing is if this was a civil lawsuit, where someone was claiming great bodily injury for becoming pregnant, the lawsuit would be thrown out as frivolous (especially if it was against some big business or corporate interest). But, if the only sanction is not money, but someone merely spending the rest of their life in prison, then whatever, let's suspend critical thinking.
So, as you can probably guess, prosecutors love this enhancement. And when they love something, they misuse it. Now, let's think of the way in which they can misuse this one: it requires GREAT bodily injury, so perhaps they could stretch the meaning of great so that every minor injury now constitutes great bodily injury; and it requires that the injury be caused intentionally, so perhaps they could try to extend accidents to "intentionally.
If that sounds absurd, or insidious, or something else, you are right, it is. It's also what's happened.
Just about every injury, no matter how minor, when blood is drawn, is now charged as great bodily injury. Get into a fight with someone and give them a bloody nose? Great bodily injury. Scratch someone and cut them? Great bodily injury. It used to be that the injury had to be significant. Now, no matter how minor it is, it is charged. And, since it is almost always a factual determination, no judge will ever dismiss a great bodily injury allegation based on insufficient evidence, so everyone charged with this must go to trial for it, no matter how minor a case it really is. Or, the prosecution can squeeze a plea out of someone in a bullshit case out of fear of going to trial. Very effective.
The other aspect, that it must be willfully and intentionally caused, has also been under assault. The best example of that is in the area of DUI accidents. Now, I'm no big fan of drunk drivers, but if you get into an accident, someone is likely to get injured. Can anyone say that this is an intentional causing of great bodily injury like stabbing someone? Do we really call these people violent offenders and give them strikes? And think about it, more than one person is likely to be injured in this situation, so while someone who shoots at a person may come out with only one strike, a person who gets into a car accident while drunk and where no one is significantly hurt can walk out with multiple strikes (meaning he gets a life sentence if he picks up a forgery or drug possession in the future) and a very long prison sentence. Again, I'm not saying I have some great love for drunk drivers, but let's call a spade a spade - unless there's some evidence they do it serially in some manner, it's hardly violent (potentially dangerous, sure, but violent?).
Now the California Supreme Court has just validated the latest absurdity - pregnancy is great bodily injury. I did realize that I caused great bodily injury to my wife when I got her pregnant for our two kids, but evidently I'm a violent felon worth of 25 to life. In the case at bar, some dude raped his step-daughter (not an action I advocate, by the way, I'm even willing to go out on a limb and call it evil), and got her pregnant. Now, if he is convicted of this, he faces 16 years in prison (and he has to do 85%), but if he causes great bodily injury (of course, this was originally intended to mean something like pistol whipping the person, or stabbing them, or beating them to a pulp) in a case like this, it turns into a life case. Now, again, I have no sympathy for those who bang their 13 year old stepdaughters, and if he really did cause her great bodily injury, and this is the law, the fine, give him life.
But, let's face it, these prosecutors basically said "I want to give this guy life even though the law doesn't call for it, so I'm going to make up some bullshit to get him a life sentence." And the Cal Supreme Court went along with it - absolutely incredible. Once again, it just blows me away the extent to which California Courts will go along with whatever absurdity some idiotic prosecutor comes up with.
The funny thing is if this was a civil lawsuit, where someone was claiming great bodily injury for becoming pregnant, the lawsuit would be thrown out as frivolous (especially if it was against some big business or corporate interest). But, if the only sanction is not money, but someone merely spending the rest of their life in prison, then whatever, let's suspend critical thinking.
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