Good dissection of the Tennessee version of the law from the Nashville Scene:
Such slapdash legislating is no way to build a sensible legal structure, says Terry Maroney, a criminal law professor at Vanderbilt University whose areas of expertise include the role of emotion in law. She says that, while she understands the instinct behind this and similar movements, it’s not a tendency she supports.
“I think the problem with this kind of approach to criminal law is that it’s shortsighted,” she says. “It takes something about a particular case, takes it out of context, and then builds this new legal rule around it and patches it onto the pre-existing legal framework.”
Ketron didn’t respond to a request for comment. In a recent Tennessean op-ed, he summoned the public frustration to prove a point no one is arguing: When it comes to reporting a child missing, time is of the essence.
To those who doubt the prudence of “Caylee’s Law,” that’s precisely the problem: What attentive parent would intentionally wait to report their child missing? And on the flip side, would a negligent parent — or one with murderous intent — be deterred by the threat of a Class E felony?
“It’s never a good idea to build rules around the exceptions,” Maroney says. “In the vast majority of cases, parents are going to report their children missing. What upsets people about the Casey Anthony case is that she didn’t for so long, but that’s extraordinarily aberrant.”
When I’ve pointed out some hypothetical situations where an innocent parent or caretaker could be unjustly charged with the death of a child—cases where a parent may be guilty of poor decisions or bad parenting, but hasn’t broken any laws—the response is usually that prosecutors would never a grieving parent or caretaker under those scenarios. If you’re a regular reader of this site, you’re probably already darkly chuckling at the naivete of that assumption. There already seems to be a rush to find criminal culpability when a child dies. This ProPublica investigation, which coincidentally came out just before the Casey Anthony verdict, documents a number of child death cases in which law enforcement officials have pressed for and won criminal convictions when the evidence strongly indicated that the death was an accident.
Enter the Marietta, Georgia, case of 30-year-old Raquel Nelson, which has been bandied about in the comments section the last few days. Last April, Nelson was crossing a street with her three children when her 4-year-old was struck and killed by a car. She was crossing at an intersection, but was apparently not in a designated crosswalk. The driver who killed her had been drinking, taking painkillers, and was blind in one eye. He also has two prior hit-and-run convictions. Nelson and her daughter were also struck and injured. Residents of Nelson’s apartment building have complained to the city about the intersection. The nearest crosswalk is a half mile away.
If we have as little to fear from overly aggressive prosecutors as supporters of Caylee’s Law claim, we could expect the prosecutor in this case to show some discretion and mercy for Nelson, right? Yes, she admits to jaywalking. Yes, she erred, and subjected her kids to unnecessary risk. But she just lost her son. It’s hard to fathom a more punishing, heartbreaking sentence. Moreover, the underlying “crime” here was a misdemeanor, one most of us commit every day. So mercy, right?
Of course not. Nelson was charged with second-degree vehicular homicide. Which is insane. She was convicted last week. When she’s sentenced later this month, she could spend more time in jail than the man who struck and killed her son. The prosecutor will say he was just enforcing the law. The jury will say they were just applying it. Both are excuses to duck responsibility (prosecutors can decline to bring charges, juries can nullify). But if both are true, then the time to prevent unjust the unjust application of well-intentioned laws is to anticipate those applications while the laws are being written and proposed. That means interpreting the most ridiculous, merciless, farfetched possible applications of the law, then assuming that somewhere, some prosecutor will attempt to apply the law in exactly those ways.
This morning, I debated Caylee’s Law on Oregon Public Radio with the legislator proposing the law in that state. He said prosecutors need another “tool in their toolbox” to go after bad parents like Casey Anthony. At the same time, he also acknowledge tha cases where the law would be necessary were probably extremely rare. (Challenge to supporters of this law: Find me three other cases where a parent failed to report a missing child for days on end, was widely suspected of killing that child, but was acquitted of murder charges in court.) But just because legislators intend for the law to be used in very limited circumstances doesn’t mean prosecutors won’t attempt to use the law more frequently.
Prosecutors don’t need more “tools” in these cases. They have plenty. They need more discretion. And empathy. And a more complete understanding of justice.
From a Washington Post article about Caylee’s Law:
[Michelle] Crowder said in a phone interview that she had not spoken to any law enforcement officials before coming up with the proposal — she relied on a quick Google search and the belief that lawmakers would look into the details.
This was a frequent response to my Huffington Post piece as well. Sure, the law may be flawed. But we can count on our careful, thoughtful lawmakers to sort out the details. That’s democracy!
Here in Tennessee, the Caylee’s Law bill is sponsored by state Sen. Bill Ketron. Here’s what Ketron wrote on Twitter yesterday:
Ketron didn’t Tweet, “I look forward to holding hearings on whether or not such a law is necessary in Tennessee.” No, he wants to get this done “quickly,” while outrage over the Casey Anthony verdict is still hot. And, presumably, while he can still claim the mantle of the politician who “speaks for children who can’t speak for themselves” or some similar self-aggrandizing nonsense.
And Ketron has a history of negligent lawmaking. A few highlights:
By the way, Ketron isn’t on the fringes of Tennessee politics. He heads up the state senate’s GOP caucus.
If your plan is to rely on politicians to “sort out the details” and temper the hysteria with calm, thoughtful legislating, you’re making a huge mistake.
I chatted with Alyona Minkovski about “Caylee’s Law” yesterday. Here’s the video.
I have a new piece up at Huffington Post explaining why.
We really need to stop naming laws after dead kids.
Their front yard was torn up after replacing a sewer line, so instead of replacing the dirt with grass, one Oak Park woman put in a vegetable garden and now the city is seeing green.
The list goes on: fresh basil, cabbage, carrots, tomatoes, cumbers and more all filling five large planter boxes that fill the Bass family’s front yard.
Julie Bass says, “We thought we’re minding our own business, doing something not ostentatious and certainly not obnoxious or nothing that is a blight on the neighborhood, so we didn’t think people would care very much.”
But some cared very much and called the city. The city then sent out code enforcement.
“They warned us at first that we had to move the vegetables from the front, that no vegetables were allowed in the front yard. We didn’t move them because we didn’t think we were doing anything wrong, even according to city code we didn’t think we were doing anything wrong. So they ticketed us and charged me with a misdemeanor,” Bass said . . .
City code says that all unpaved portions of the site shall be planted with grass or ground cover or shrubbery or other suitable live plant material. Tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers are what Basses see as suitable.
However, Oak Park’s Planning and Technology Director Kevin Rulkowski says the city disagrees. He says, “If you look at the dictionary, suitable means common. You can look all throughout the city and you’ll never find another vegetable garden that consumes the entire front yard.”
So what is suitable? From another local news report:
. . . we asked Rulkowski why it’s not suitable.
“If you look at the definition of what suitable is in Webster’s dictionary, it will say common. So, if you look around and you look in any other community, what’s common to a front yard is a nice, grass yard with beautiful trees and bushes and flowers,” he said.
God forbid your yard doesn’t include beautiful trees, bushes and flowers. It’s your job, Oak Park citizens, to give Kevin Rulkowski pretty things to look at. According to Bass’s blog, she’s demanding her right to a jury trial. So the city plans to throw the book at her.
our attorney spoke to the prosecutor today. (for the record, my crush on him is totally finished after today.)
his position: they are going to take this all the way.
officially, this means i am facing 93 days in jail if they win.
no joke.
Linkable stuff that piled up while I was away . . .
* I overlooked the portion of the article alleging that those attending the party delayed seeking medical attention in order to usher out underage drinkers and settle on a story. If those are allegations are true, then some criminal charges are appropriate. I was referring specifically to the punch that instigated it all.
A 17-year-old boy was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct in Oak Park, IL this week. His alleged crime? Creating and distributing a raunchy, offensive “girl ranking” list, otherwise known as “blatant jackassery.” This story made the rounds earlier this year, and his classmates say he’s previously been expelled for a similar stunt, but now the police are getting involved.
Jackassery aside, the kid, who has not been identified because he’s a minor (he should count his lucky stars), allegedly created and distributed a list ranking 50 high school girls by facial appearance, various body parts, and supposed sexual prowess. The list also reportedly included racial and ethnic slurs, and undoubtedly clever titles for each girl like “the Fallen Angel” or “the Hangover.” Witnesses claim that, after handing out paper copies of his list, he gave an impromptu speech in front of a group of boys, crowing “women are the future, unless we stop them.” In an utterly unsurprising culmination of events, the list ended up on Facebook (sounds familiar, right?). Oak Park police have charged him with disorderly conduct and have passed his case onto juvenile court.
Obviously, this boy is a repugnant little SOB who deserves to have the sense knocked out of him on a daily basis in prison or wherever his sorry ass lands in life. But criminal charges? Distributing fliers in school I suppose could be considered misdemeanor disorderly conduct, but I assume a good attorney could have this charge thrown out in court. Don’t the defamed students have recourse through a civil suit? Are the police just using disorderly conduct as a bludgeon towards a kid who said something unpopular? What free speech issues does this raise?
It sounds to me like this guy isn’t the brightest crayon in the box. He may be a plucky, audacious punk now, but a bright future of meth addiction and child support payments likely awaits him. If I were one of these girls, I’d be very tempted to “leak” the guy’s name and photo to Gawker, and let the internet’s collective snark decide his ranking. Then I’d wish him luck in ever again finding a women who’d be willing to touch him.
[Libby]
Addendum: Let’s just get the inevitable comparisons to Karen Owen and her Duke University F-list out of the way now: She was a jerk, too, and anyone who Googles her name now knows it.
Update (5/10/11): Apparently, I dropped the ball, neglected to do the legwork, failed to RTFM on this story. This story was passed along to me by a friend late yesterday afternoon, and in my hurry to get a post up and get out of the office, I didn’t notice that the article was 3 years old. The friend who sent it along pulled the link from a post at BoingBoing, which has also been removed as of this writing. A thousand apologies for this oversight. #LessonLearned
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Readers in Maine, look out: peering at a child could land you on the wrong side of a anti-child predator law. Rep. Dawn Hill is championing a bill that would make “visual sexual aggression” (whatever the hell that means) an offense for viewing children in a public place.
The bill was prompted by the admittedly-creepy story of a guy watching children enter and exit a public restroom.
Her involvement started when Ogunquit Police Lt. David Alexander was called to a local beach to deal with a man who appeared to be observing children entering the community bathrooms. Because the state statute prevents arrests for visual sexual aggression of a child in a public place, Alexander said he and his fellow officer could only ask the man to move along.
“There was no violation of law that we could enforce. There was nothing we could charge him with,” Alexander said.He attended a talk with Hill a week later and brought the case to her attention. Hill pledged to do what she could, Alexander said, and the result was a change through the Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee in the House, which made the law applicable in both private and public places.
Hill said she believes the move was necessary to correct what she called a “loophole” in the state’s criminal law statutes.
Is visual sexual aggression really a thing? Like, a thing that police can arrest you for? How do they define it? Is it a gaze lasting more than 3.2 seconds? Or is it one of those “you know it when you see it” kind of laws that’s left entirely up to the officers to define and enforce?
Listen: being a creeper is not illegal as long as you aren’t actually harming anyone. I don’t like what may be playing out in that guy’s head, and if he ever made even the slightest gesture that indicated harm to a child or anyone else, I’d be the first person to punch him in the windpipe (figuratively speaking). Protecting children from actual harm should be the police’s job, not harassing Boo Radley because he makes the locals uncomfortable. I get that it sucks when the presence of creepers makes going to the beach or the pool less fun. But the answer to dealing with the few creeps out there is not to pass another vague law that could apply to anyone and for which the definition is determined by the arresting officer. This could easily turn into a law against irritating a cop while in close proximity to a public restroom.
Sheesh.
[Libby]
Two men were attacked in a bar for flashing signs. Not gang signs. Sign language, according to the AP: “Two hearing-impaired South Florida men were stabbed at a bar when their sign language was mistaken for gang signs.” Man… I didn’t stab them till after I told them to stop. What?! I did. They wouldn’t listen.
There should be an award for such criminal stupidity. Not a standard Darwin Award, but something for idiots who demonstrate not only that they can hate and hurt, but even, by their own demented standards, hate the wrong stranger.
Reminds me of an old joke (or is it a movie line?) my dad liked to tell in which a Jew and a non-Jew are being taken away on the train to Auschwitz. The Jew says, “What a tragedy.” The goy replies, “For you it’s a tragedy. For me it’s a mistake!”
[-- Peter Moskos]
The Village Voice posts a devastating debunking of a widely-cited report claiming that sites like Backpage.com are facilitating a spike in the sex trafficking of underage girls.
“An independent tracking study released today by the Women’s Funding Network shows that over the past six months, the number of underage girls trafficked online has risen exponentially in three diverse states,” Richardson claimed. “Michigan: a 39.2 percent increase; New York: a 20.7 percent increase; and Minnesota: a staggering 64.7 percent increase.”
In the wake of this bombshell revelation, Richardson’s disturbing figures found their way into some of the biggest newspapers in the country. USA Today, the Houston Chronicle, the Miami Herald, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and the Detroit Free Press all repeated the dire statistics as gospel.
The successful assault on Craigslist was followed by a cross-country tour by Richardson and the Women’s Funding Network.
None of the media that published Richardson’s astonishing numbers bothered to examine the study at the heart of her claim. If they had, they would have found what we did after asking independent experts to examine the research: It’s junk science.
After all, the numbers are all guesses.
The data are based merely on looking at photos on the Internet. There is no science.
The group based its estimates on guesses of the ages of women depicted in escort service ads on sites like Craigslist and Backpage.com. (Backpage is owned by Village Voice media, which has resisted pressure to shut down its adult services section). And that’s just how they got the raw numbers. They then magnified the error by applying those numbers in all sorts of misleading and statistically dubious ways. There wasn’t an academic or statistician among the group that authored the study. This was PR.
Nevertheless, the “study” spawned hysterical media reports, outrage from indignant attorneys general, and sweet government grants for groups like the Women’s Funding Network. Most astonishing is this admission from one peddler of sex panic:
“We pitch it the way we think you’re going to read it and pick up on it,” says Kaffie McCullough, the director of Atlanta-based anti-prostitution group A Future Not a Past. “If we give it to you with all the words and the stuff that is actually accurate—I mean, I’ve tried to do that with our PR firm, and they say, ‘They won’t read that much.’”
That about says it all.
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