TheAgitator.com
Late Morning Links
Thursday, July 22nd, 2010- Emily Bazelon on the prosecutorial overreach in the Phoebe Prince bullying case. Kudos to Bazelon for a skeptical, in-depth, really well-reported piece of journalism.
- The i-dosing silliness gets picked up by the British papers.
- Man has identity stolen by a sex offender, now likely to remain on sex offender list for the rest of his life.
- Jury awards man $855,000 in suit in which he claims he was beaten by Maricopa County sheriff’s deputies. He had been arrested for sexually abusing and killing his infant son. He was acquitted on those charges. I’m sure his last name had nothing to do with any of this.
- ABC News picks up the “arrested for recording cops” story.
- Blind couple nearly lost custody of their child because . . . they’re blind.
The poor man has to deal with his life falling apart with the death of his baby only to be tortured (yes, tortured) by terrorist cops while in custody for something he didn’t do. I’d say $100 million isn’t enough.
So, when does the FBI get off the throne and investigate the terrorists in charge of Maricopa?
Holy shit, this makes me utterly furious. That’s injustice on an absolutely staggering level.
the guy with his identity stolen by the sex offender… this is a HORRIBLE story, but I’m wondering what the sex offender did. If the sex offender was a kid having sex with his girlfriend or urinating in public or mooning someone, this story is compounded even more.
there’s a huge underground society that consists of illegal immigrants, people with drug convictions, sex offenders, and convicted felons. Try renting an apartment or living in a decent trailer park- you won’t be approved. Try getting a decent job. Of course, we’re all safer with all these people having to live illegally.
I think I would apply for asylum in another country on grounds that the government was persecuting me. Seriously someone explain to me how morally superior we are to “the axis of evil” countries if we can do such a thing?
That’s the part that staggers me. I’m not saying that if someone commited a crime they shouldn’t pay for the crime. They should always serve a punishment to fit the crime. No question in my mind. But way too many people are felled and called “acceptable casualties” in the war to protect us against .. Ourselves? Evil? Them? “Crime”? Ok. lets go with crime.
But I can’t for the life of me figure out how this works. How exactly are we safer when there are more and more people “cut out” of legitimate jobs, legitimate (ie, safe, regulated) housing, transportation, financial options and even schooling. The truth is, more and more jobs are requiring background checks. And more and more people are being kicked to this “underground society”, it’s not “just” sexual offenders but drug offenders and those slapped with any sort of felony or criminal arrest; no matter for what or how long ago it was. And then of course you got the chorus of people like this man that didn’t even do anything but find that being on The List is a lifetime sentence.
The fact is, these all encompassing drag nets, lists and databases don’t make society much safer then before – but they sure do keep a growing chunk of it floundering below a certain level of progress and under a very convenient, and short, leash of control.
For the last year or so, I have watched in horror as the media pumped up these “dead because of bullying” stories, and knew it was just a matter of time before some knee-jerk lawmakers wrote the laws that would send more of our kids into the prison-industrial complex, this time for words. Don’t get me wrong, I hate bullying too, and was bullied in school as well (who wasn’t) but in the end, they are just words.
I always knew there was more to the Phoebe Prince story than meets the eye. I look forward to the second installment.
“The fact is, these all encompassing drag nets, lists and databases don’t make society much safer then before”
That’s where you’re wrong. Huge databases are being compiled
to monitor felons, offenders, tax cheats, and hooligans. Along with information from closed circuit security cameras, private contractors, law enforcement SWAT teams, and vigilant citizens, these databases are then compiled into databases of databases with millions of computations being performed each second in order to combat crime, a hierarchical meta-database of bad people, many of whom are watched 24/7 with GPS and other forms of surveillance.
are you being sarcastic yizmo?
((((I always knew there was more to the Phoebe Prince story than meets the eye. I look forward to the second installment.)))
Me too. I mean, there’s something really, really wrong with anybody who posts nasty slurs to her facebook page after she’s dead, as many of these kids did, but I don’t think the solution is prison.
“Every once in a while you get an aberrational jury,” said MCSO Deputy Chief Jack MacIntyre. “That’s why we have a court of appeals to straighten these aberrations out.”
Wow, that has to be the most smug statement I have ever read.
Shorter Jack MacIntyre: “We’re the State. We never lose. Even when we ‘lose,’ we still win.”
What a smug, officious prick. He’s perfect for the job.
I admit to a certain amount of Agitator withdrawal having been at the Jersey shore for a week. I must get my tolerance back up before I read too much here.
they never call a Jury that convict someone and then it turns out they are innocent an “aberration”. I hope the appeals court treats them like it treats criminal defendants.
“A Phoenix-area man accused – and later acquitted – of murdering his infant son in 2003 won a second legal battle this month when a jury found two Maricopa County Sheriff’s detention officers liable for abuse and awarded him $855,000 in civil damages.”
Who cares if he was acquitted? The level of outrage should not be dependent upon his guilt or innocence. There is no justification for cops beating a suspect, no matter what he is accused of. I don’t care if he is the most vile man on earth, nothing justifies a cop abusing his power in such a way. To me, his guilt or innocence shouldn’t matter. Too often I see these stories take on the tone that the outrage is predicated upon the innocence of the victim or how upstanding a citizen they are or where they live or what they do for a living. The response is, “How could they do this to a (insert positive characteristic here).” The inevitable conclusion of that is that it is okay, or at least MORE okay, to do this to people who lack those positive characteristics. Nonsense. This is outrageous regardless of his guilt or innocence, because this is never appropriate or acceptable conduct from a police officer.
“are you being sarcastic yizmo?”
I’ll let you know when it’s safe. I think I’m being monitored.
“Man has identity stolen by a sex offender, now likely to remain on sex offender list for the rest of his life.”
Isn’t this a case for a lawsuit against the State of Washington for damages?
Wait a doggone sec. Are you saying that accused child abusers deserve a trial instead of summary execution? This is America, sir! We don’t take kindly to people who coddle child rapists. Just you remember that just ’cause the guy beat the rap doesn’t mean he didn’t do it. Those poor deputies probably delivered the only justice that child killer will ever see. They should get medals. In fact, I bet they did.
Dave-
Clearly I’m a child rapist myself for even holding such a position.
As usual, Mencken is the go-to guy:
“The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.”
I always knew there was more to the Phoebe Prince story than meets the eye. I look forward to the second installment.
All three installments are there – pages 2 and 3. Very insightful reading; the author did a really good job on this one.
If Dan Wheeler lived in Clark county Wisconsin all he would need to do is buddy up to the local DA, go to church on Sunday and the DA would help him expunge his record.
Cynical-
Great quote. The problem is when we accept the laws being used against the scoundrels and only raise objection when it hits close to home, which is far too often the case (not necessarily within this community, but in general).
#13 | Yizmo Gizmo
I need to have my sarcasm meter re-adjusted…
The prosecuter in the Phoebe Prince story should be holding that school responsible. Those teachers failed, and generaly do fail, misereably to stop bullying.
I’m trying to wrap my head around this observation; that teenagers regard sex as a means to stigmtize and alienate people by regarding normal human behavior as something bad. They aren’t moch different from prosecutors who want to destroy teenage lives for normal, consentual sexual activity. Apperantly, it’s obvious that bullies and mean girls grow up to be prosecutors. That, and they never really grow up either and stop being teenage drama queens.
Yeah. Sometimes they don’t believe lying thug cops.
Delano Yanes “was beaten by Maricopa County sheriff’s deputies. He had been arrested for sexually abusing and killing his infant son. He was acquitted on those charges. I’m sure his last name had nothing to do with any of this.”
The name of one of the deputies is Santos Hernandez.
Not sure if you’re suggesting Yanes was beaten or arrested or acquitted or awarded because of his last name, but the correct answer could just as likely be (e) none of the above.
George-
FWIW, racial profiling and other race-based discrimination by the cops has been demonstrated to transcend racial lines in terms of the race of the perpetrator (cop). The theories on this are that such instances demonstrate more implicit, institutional prejudice than explicit racism. While the portrayal has often been of white cops out to get black folks, the reality is more likely to be cops giving into stereotypes they have subconsciously internalized, something that can happen to folks of any color. Which is why you see black cops guilty of racial profiling or more trigger happy with black suspects than white suspects.
I’m not saying whether or not race played into THIS case. I don’t know enough about the specifics. I’m just talking about what is generally true if/when race (or other characteristics) DOES have something to do with this.
To clarify, the presence of a cop of the same race as the victim doesn’t rule out the possibility that race factored into his abuse. It also doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen. Ultimately, the data on racial profiling or race otherwise factoring into the actions of LEO demonstrates that it is the race of the victim that matters, not the race of the cop.
This is some of the more infuriating set of daily links we’ve had in a while. Radley, how do you do this every day and not go crazy?
*2nd sentence means it doesn’t mean it DID happen.
So, the dude who had his identity stolen has exhausted all legal recouse and just been told “tough shit”. His life is pretty much fucked. Well, there is one way out, they do take dead people off the sex offender regestry. Get the address of the guy who stole you identity off the Megan’s Law website, go to his house and murder him. Might as well take your chances that the cops won’t thoroughly investigate the death of some sex criminal.
The author kind of lost me in the second installment which seemed to imply that the prosecutor was going out of control for charging a kid with assault for unwantedly sticking his finger up another kid’s ass.
Really? Not the best case to illustrate your point.
#29 You could even argue that it was suicide since technically he killed himself.
Stories like that blind couple make me believe that we need to bring back the stocks and the whipping post specifically for government officials who overstep their authority and ignore common sense.
At times, I wish there were a law that specified that if a person deliberately acts to unjustly destroy another person’s life, that person shall be deemed to have earned any harm that may befall him as a consequence of such actions. An extension of the “battered spouse” defense. If the victim of such action takes otherwise-criminal action against his persecutor, but claims in his defense that the persecutor deliberately and unjustly destroyed his life, jurors would be instructed to be generally skeptical of such a defense, but to accept it when it truly applied.
While such a law might in some cases lead to chaos, I think it would have a stronger effect in persuading people not to destroy other people’s lives.