Friday, March 4th, 2011
- William Anderson is reporting on another recovered memory sex abuse prosecution, this time in Maryland. According to Anderson, the prosecutor in the case had the defendant locked up in solitary confinement for a week, forbidden from showering, shaving, or changing his clothes. She then intended to bring him out in that condition to face the jury for the first time. She may as well have forced him to grow a pedistache. If true, this is pretty outrageous.
- Gawker reports that the FBI is borrowing technique from Neal Strauss, aka the world’s greatest pick-up artist.
- Tom Waits reads you Bukowski.
- These are amazing. And incredibly beautiful.
- I used to write a lot of stories as a kid. I’m relatively certain that if I had been born 25 years later, I’d probably be facing felony charges, or perhaps have spent time in a psychiatric ward somewhere, if school officials ever got hold of them.
- Lawyer for police union issues a vague threat on the Facebook page of state rep who voted for a union-busting bill. Note the first entry in the comments section.
- Looking at the state of citizen-shot video on the 20-year anniversary of the Rodney King video.
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on Friday, March 4th, 2011 at 8:15 am by Radley Balko
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TheAgitator.com
In the earliest 80′s (in 5th to 7th grade) my buddies and I used to compete with one another to make elaborate drawings depicting torture chambers, etc. To see who could come up with the most over-the-top drawings.
Despite this, I have not converted my cellar into a prison cell for a gimp. Yet.
[Update, Thursday, March 3, 11:13 AM]: I need to make a correction from an earlier post. Michael was permitted to shower once a day while in Charles County custody, but he was not permitted to have any change of clothes, and that includes underwear. He had to wash his underwear in the sink, and when he hung them up to dry, a guard threatened to have him punished. When Michael told the guard that he was not permitted to go to the commissary to get clean underwear, the guard replied, “I don’t give a sh*t.”
http://williamlanderson.blogspot.com/2011/03/stop-presses-kerwyn-discovers-mother.html
When I was an engineering undergrad, one of my best friends (named Matt, BTW) was an excellent sketch artist and and a funny guy. He could whip out fairly elaborate drawings in a couple minutes during class. During classes we shared, he would regularly lampoon people who were wasting time asking stupid questions and kissing up to the professor by sketching them tied up with grenades in their mouths, targeted by Rambo-like characters with machine guns, etc. Clearly, it was over the top, but there was never the slightest indication that he intended anyone any actual harm. Nowadays, if someone spotted one of his sketches, the school would probably go into lock-down and a SWAT team would be called in to arrest my buddy and send him off for re-education.
I used to be a prosecutor. One day I got a call from a school cop wanting to know if they could charge a girl because someone got a hold of her diary and in it she wrote that she wished that certain people were dead. Of course, I told him there was nothing they could charge her with. “Well, is there anything that we can do?” the school cop asked. “You can talk to her, I suppose,” was my response. He sounded dejected.
Booga is right. It’s not as easy as it seems to kill someone with an anvil. Mostly it just lands on your own head.
#3 Carl Drega- guards are the worst slime I’ve ever come across. the misery of being incarcerated is compounded many times by the cruel treatment dished out by these clowns.
the carved books are amazing! I want one of Huck Finn… I’ll never be able to afford a real one. Maybe my grandkids will buy me a truck stop plaster copy of one some day….
I hope there’s a statute of limitations on school drawings, insults, and prank calls!
Minors = second class citizens.
There was a story the other day about how soldiers were being told to use PsyOp techniques to influence Senators. Then I realized that Psyops are essentially the sole function of the commercial advertising industry.
Of course, only the government is trained and aggressively encouraged to engage in outright lies to accomplish a goal (get someone to say or do something that gives the government an excuse to prosecute them). And, of course, they are immunized from any liability for doing so.
The belief that most people have that the justice system in the U.S. is an impartial guarantor of fairness and relentless pursuer of truth ranks right up there with the view that the world is flat. Law enforcement in the U.S. is simply a machine to incarcerate people (and a jobs program for lower level humanoid primates with no other measurable capacity for contributing to civilization).
Radley, thoughts on King? I don’t ever want to be on the side of defending LA cops, but isn’t King’s story one that counsels caution in the interpretation of citizen video? The video didn’t capture the high speed chase or King’s alleged aggressive behavior.
Dave, even more interesting IMO is that the use of PsyOps on members of Congress is illegal. Still validating, but I’m guessing someone actually did this! Would explain a lot about Jimmy Carter…who lost to a guy running with ex-CIA head on his ticket.
Looks like its time to put another layer on the ol’ tinfoil hat.
Not saying that you’re supporting LAPD, but no it didn’t capture any of that. Instead it showed a passive guy getting brutally beaten with batons over and over and over while a bunch of other cops watched in a city with a police force that had a looooong history of police brutality against minorities and widespread corruption. The chase and prior behavior-while being referenced as mitigating circumstances to support the police brutality-where not mitigating circumstances. That argument is just B9 in “Police FOP Excuses Bingo”.
Not to re-hash RK (had to live thru the original hashing), but yes video can sometimes tell only part of a story. I agree completely.
Re: the state rep’s facebook page. Sean Hannity and the rest of the boys have been telling me non stop for years that Hitler was a leftist socialist. This is false? *shocked*
The book carver is amazing. Wow.
I find that so much more interesting than much of the art and sculpture out there. Beyond being visually stunning and technically masterful, it says a lot about space, images, and the allegorical nature of art.
“I used to write a lot of stories as a kid. I’m relatively certain that if I had been born 25 years later, I’d probably be facing felony charges, or perhaps have spent time in a psychiatric ward somewhere, if school officials ever got hold of them. ”
Tenth grade, chose to take “Honors English.” Lazy teacher had us write
anything in a “confidential” journal. Just write whatever comes to mind,
she kept saying, while I lazily sit here at my desk in a Valium-induced stupor, and scratch my privates. Stream of consciousness, whatever, just write.
Bored one day, I scribbled a couple paragraphs about being the crazed arsonist who torched the school the previous Xmas Holiday. Evil Vice Principal found the journal, handed over to cops. Arrest, psych evaluation, the works.
Bonus anecdote. One of my character witnesses went on to become the “Travel Channel” host. And then the Rosetta Stone lady.
True story. Almost forgot, case dismissed… day of trial.
Re: the bogus sex crime prosecution–where the hell was this guy’s lawyer when this was going on? If this guy was my client I would be screaming from the rooftops. I can’t imagine a defendant not being able to change into decent clothes before facing a jury. For a judge to allow this is clearly an abuse of discretion and reversible error.
That is a great Bukowski poem. I suddenly had an urge for some bourbon, a sandwich, and Mozart.
As kids a few of us would draw cartoons of each other getting our limbs ripped off in various skateboarding accidents. Of course you kept trying to out do others, so the mayhem got worse and worse. It was fun at the time, but now we would likely be expelled from school and forced to take counseling.
The key to teaching kids is directing that raw energy. Not fearing it.
Pretty interesting and appalling story about the ‘Fast and Furious’ operation to intentionally allow guns to go to Mexico. Story hereLink
PDF file of the memo that was circulated hereLink
When I think about the Rodney King case, I recall reading about an incident that happened some years later, somewhere in the South. (Texas, maybe?) A group of white racists tied a black man to their car bumper with rope and began dragging him through the streets. The drivers of other cars who witnessed this gave chase and managed to get the guys dragging the poor man to pull over. They then held them there until the police arrived.
So, we have here a car chase not by police but by regular citizens. I recall no mention being made of the citizens beating these men repeatedly with billy clubs — or even their bare hands, for that matter. I do recall a friend of mine, a cop out on the West Coast, telling me how when he and his fellow officers pull someone over after having to give chase, they’re going to give the guy “a little schoolin’.”
That, to me, is what the Rodney King video demonstrates hands down. Cops don’t use “appropriate levels of force”; they enjoy beating people in the way your average person doesn’t.
Prosecutor Tiffany Rodentburger was simply employing a cheap, prosecutor’s trick to prejudice the jury.
The jailers, deputies and bailiffs control the prisoner until brought into the courtroom. The suspect’s attorney would have had not prior knowledge before to the hearing that the prisoner was not properly attired for a court hearing.
Nothing like seeing a police brutality video to wake you up in the morning. I had forgotten how brutal the cops were to Rodney. And to think, people wanted that jury nullified, what were those guys smoking?: http://lawblog.legalmatch.com/2011/03/03/informing-the-public-of-jury-nullification-is-it-jury-tampering/
Back when I was a kid, there were a lot of TV shows about World War II (Combat, Gallant Men, McHale’s Navy, 12 O’ Clock High, etc), so we were always drawing pictures of war (airplanes, tanks, ships, bombs, etc).
If all that preoccupation with war really influenced us, my generation would have grown up, run for office, and gotten the U.S. into a continuous state of war with a bunch of different countries with an eye open to every opportunity to expand that even further. Hey, wait…
“According to Anderson, the prosecutor in the case had the defendant locked up in solitary confinement for a week, forbidden from showering, shaving, or changing his clothes. ”
Did the defendant have to put the lotion on the skin, lest it get the hose?
#23–Whim–first of all if my client was going to trial I would sure as hell be meeting with him at the jail at least a couple of times in the week before the trial, so his atty certainly should have known what was going on. Second, it is the attorney’s responsibility to make sure the client has decent clothes and to make prior arrangements with court personnel for the client to have time and a place to change into the clothes prior to coming into the courtroom. If the atty doesn’t do that who will? The judge? The prosecutor?
It’s very simple, really. You just learn your victim’s class schedule and which staircases they habitually use. Then you wait on the landing above where they will go and drop the anvil when they appear. (Getting on the school roof and doing it from there when they leave the building gives you a bigger splat, but it’s harder to aim.
(If my revenge fantasies from high school had ever been carried out, I’d be known as “The Anvil Mass Killer”.)
:)))
Wile E. Coyote @ #28
Do you have any idea how many ways this plan of yours could go wrong and backfire? I mean, did you not own a TV as a kid?
Yeah, that was my thought, too–Wily E Coyote to the white courtesy phone, there’s an ACME package in the shape of an anvil for you….
Didn’t anyone notice that the case William Anderson reported on is from Prince Georges County? Man oh man, that place is hell on Earth.
@Mario & albatross
Not to mention the Law of Gravity ceasing to operate until I went down and looked at it from underneath!
;)
Radley, I know you don’t give hat tips but thanks for finding the anvil story worthy of the morning links. :)
Bukowski and Tom Waits is definitely a match made in heaven. I love Bukowski because he’s awful, drunk, mysoginstic, vulgar, depressing and then suddenly he writes something stunningly beautiful and optimistic. Somewhere on youtube is Waits reading my very favorite Bukowski poem and the reason I love poetry. It’s called “Nirvana.”
My dad smoked a joint with Bukowski I am fairly certain. There’s definitely a picture of them sitting together.
Aresen, you are guilty of ThoughtCrime. Prepare to be TSA’d.
@ #18
Pablo,
I am a bit perplexed by your reversible error analysis. Do you honestly believe that this treatment resulted from a judge’s exercise of discretion? Do you think a judge ever ordered or ruled on this? It seems clear to me that this is something this despicable prosecutor was pulling behind the court’s back. Further, it seems likely that if this issue were raised on appeal, an appeals court would likely find it harmless, as opposed to reversible, error. Such is the state of the criminal er, um, “justice” system in which we operate.
God damn it, when are we going to say, “Enough is enough!” when it comes to prosecutorial abuses and misconduct? When are we going to stop simply wringing our hands, writing seething condemnations of our ill-mannered masters, and then do nothing more to hold them accountable? When are we finally going to rise up and demand that something actually be done to people like Rodenberger, instead of idly amusing ourselves with our indignation?
Figured you guys might get a kick out of todays xkcd
http://xkcd.com/868/
@37, “rise up and demand” has been tried for eons. The time for asking for change is long past. Why would a master listen to a slave?
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