Confirmation that I'm hard core

Two of my friends witnessed all of the critical moments of my arm break. They were there for the actual fall. They took me to the ER. Spent the night with me and took me back to the ER the next morning. They  were there the day I had surgery. So they witnessed all of the worst moments, including the most painful of all, the lidocaine injection right before the external reduction.

One of those friends is a St. Louis native, so he's a Cardinals fan. (He roots for the Royals when they're not playing the Cards, so he's not all bad.) Thus, he saw when Royal Wilson Betemit broke Albert Pujols' arm. This Cardinals fan assures me that I was much less of a wuss when I broke my arm than Pujols was. I didn't cry or swear or throw things or stomp my feet. I just asked for some water and a trash can (because I felt so queasy) and calmly made my way to the car.

So there you have it. Confirmation that when it comes to handling pain, I am harder core than an All-Star baseball player widely considered to be one of the (if not the) best player in the game.

A simple, money-saving suggestion

We spend a lot of money on our criminal justice system. Way too much money. And we spend our money in really stupid ways. We cut funding to education, Head Start, programs for at risk kids. We don't spend money on social services or mental health programs. And we couldn't possibly spend money on rehabilitation programs for inmates or ex-cons after they've been discharged. Spending money on those things would be cheaper than endlessly incarcerating people. Preventing crime is cheaper than dealing with the aftermath.

Then there's the fact that we have way too many crimes and incarcerate people for all kinds of silly things. But that's an entirely different rant.

The number 1 way we waste money on criminal justice? The death penalty, of course! Perhaps there is no better example of that than California. Where they have 714 people on death row but have only executed 13 people since 1978. California's system is just a big, bogged-down mess where they don't have anywhere near enough attorneys to handle the cases, among other problems. They've spent about $4 billion to kill 13 people. So just over $300 billion per death. Definitely cost-effective. And we all know how much money California has just lying around these days.

Might I respectfully submit, California, that you could really make a big dent in your budget woes by giving up on the death penalty? Commute all those 714 sentences to life. Stop pursuing new death sentences. Boom. Billions of dollars saved. You wouldn't need to find as many attorneys because non-capital cases don't require as many attorneys or as much expertise in the issues unique to capital proceedings. For the guys currently on death row, you'd cut half the issues out of their appeals. For cases yet to go to trial, you'd cut out a big phase of the trial and you'd eliminate the costliest part of the defense work, the mitigation investigation.

Unless you really want to go bankrupt, California, eliminating the death penalty seems like a pretty great place to start on your budget woes.

(And as a bonus suggestion, you might re-think your whole implementation of the three strikes law...)

Write away

Back in February, one of my quirky friends told me about a writer's workshop she wanted to attend over the summer, asking me to join her. I said, "what the hell, I'm in!" The more I work on my writing, the more effective I can be in advocating for my clients, after all.

So I called up my college roomie, who I hadn't seen in years. She's a writer, too. Pretty much on the spot, she said, "what the hell, I'm in, too!"

So this morning, the three of us made our way to the pretty little college town, chauffeured by my quirky friend's man friend. (We ride in style like that.)

It's probably a good thing I'm here for the weekend. Maybe now I can learn how not to write juvenile, naive, uneducated, stupid little blog posts that display my inability to understand the intricacies of criminal law...

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

David C. Baldus

Anyone who has studied the death penalty, follows the case law and research, has run across the work of David C. Baldus. My comprehensive exercise (comps), basically a senior thesis, in college was on the death penalty. Professor Baldus' work factored heavily into my paper.

I never met the man, never even came close. (If only I'd chosen Iowa instead of Wisconsin, but my heart was in Madison despite Professor Baldus.) But his work definitely affected me, inspired me. I couldn't let his passing go without comment.

In this time of sadness, I hope his family finds comfort in the fact that he did lots of good work on an issue he was passionate about. May we all be so lucky.

An ounce of prevention and all that

I know my state has no money. I know something has to be done to address that. I know that my governor and legislature only consider one side of the ledger and will only make cuts. I am frustrated beyond belief that they will not even consider raising any tax, eliminating any tax credits or incentives, or basically anything that might cause more money to come into the state's coffers. I find it so frustrating because there is a dogged unwillingness to think about the fact that maybe, just maybe, by continuing to just cut, cut, cut, we're shooting ourselves in the foot. Cutting off our nose to spite our face. Any other similar cliche you can think of.

In the Wichita Eagle today, I saw this story about various groups focused on crime prevention begging the County Commission not to cut their funding. But the commission doesn't have much choice because the grant they get from the state was cut by more than 2/3. The county commission doesn't have much choice as they just don't have the money. But the state legislature had a choice. They didn't have to slash funding of the Juvenile Justice Authority to such a degree that the JJA had to make such drastic cuts in its grants to counties.

Of all the things to cut spending on, I can't think of anything more short-sighted than to cut funding to crime prevention programs that work. The state is going to pay for that short-sightedness some day. And we're going to pay a whole heck of a lot more than the crime prevention programs would cost now. Why couldn't we spend $1 million this year to avoid spending ten times that much down the road? How hard is it to understand that it's a lot cheaper to prevent crime than to prosecute and incarcerate criminals?

Muslim schools in the US: good, bad, or indifferent?

This story on msnbc caught my attention. I confess, I hadn't given any thought to the idea of Islamic schools in the U.S., but it makes sense that they exist.

I am leery of any school built around a religion, Muslim, Catholic, or otherwise. I don’t think approaching education from one particular religious world view jibes with true academic rigor. That's my own bias toward religious schools, just to be up front about it.

Now, on to the point. I'm dismayed by the poll results at the end of this story. Over 60% of respondents expressed concern about the rise of Islamic schools in the US because it could encourage Muslim separatism.

I have to wonder: did anyone ever express that concern about Catholic schools and Catholic separatism? I know there was concern about JFK as a presidential candidate, that he would defer to the Pope. But certainly now, there is no such objection to Catholic schools that I've heard. The likeliest response is, "Well, Catholics don't blow people up." That argument for why Catholic schools don't raise the same concerns as Muslim schools might not go very far in the UK, especially Northern Ireland.

I don't think it's all that reasonable to fear that Muslim schools in the US could lead to a rise in Muslim separatism. We aren't talking about the kind of madrassas we've heard about in Afghanistan. But if non-Muslim US citizens react to Muslim schools with hostility and fear, well that just might create a self-fulfilling prophecy. The surest way to make a group feel like they're not wanted and thus separate themselves from the whole is, well, to tell them they're not wanted.

I think I have a new favorite judge

Once upon a time, a judge presided over a trial at which one side presented absolutely no viable case and then issued a lengthy, thoughtful, well-reasoned decision ruling against the side that had no case. The losers, having had no evidence and no argument on their side, turned their attention to the judge. It must be the judge's fault their failure to present evidence or any sound legal evidence led to them losing! Bad, biased judge!

Remember that? The Prop 8 backers put on a horrible, terrible, no good, very bad case and lost to no lawyer's great surprise. They then pitched a fit because the judge was gay. Eww! Gays are icky and bad, they said. We nice, good, straight people can't possibly be expected to have our cases judged by one of them! Ok, that's not quite what they said. I'm paraphrasing.

So the Prop 8 backers got a hearing yesterday, a chance to explain why Judge Walker's "sexual proclivities" meant he should have recused himself. Actually, by this time they had actually amended their complaint to make it clear they were not concerned about his proclivities, but about his long-term same-sex relationship which necessarily gave him a greater stake in the outcome of the Prop 8 case. Because if Prop 8 were found unconstitutional, the judge and his honey could finally get married just like they always wanted. Not that they could show that Judge Walker was itching to get married. And, of course, if Judge Walker had wanted to get married so badly, it seems like something he might have done in that 18-month window of time when same-sex marriage was legal in California.

It was an obnoxious, disgraceful argument to claim that Judge Walker should have recused himself because of his relationship. Happily, it didn't take long for the judge who heard the motion to issue his decision denying it. You can read it here. But I just want to include this one section because I love it so.

Alternatively, Defendant-Intervenors contend that Judge Walker should be disqualified
because his same-sex relationship gave him a markedly greater interest in a case challenging
restrictions on same-sex marriage than the interest held by the general public. The Court rejects this argument on two readily apparent grounds. First, it is inconsistent with the general principles of constitutional adjudication to presume that a member of a minority group reaps a greater benefit from application of the substantive protections of our Constitution than would a member of the majority. The fact that this is a case challenging a law on equal protection and due process grounds being prosecuted by members of a minority group does not mean that members of the minority group have a greater interest in equal protection and due process than the rest of society. In our society, a variety of citizens of different backgrounds coexist because we have constitutionally bound ourselves to protect the fundamental rights of one another from being violated by unlawful treatment. Thus, we all have an equal stake in a case that challenges the constitutionality of a restriction on a fundamental right. One of the duties placed on the shoulders of federal judges is the obligation to review the law to determine when unequal treatment violates our Constitution and when it does not. To the extent that a law is adjudged violative, enjoining enforcement of that law is a public good that benefits all in our society equally. Although this case was filed by same-sex couples seeking to end a California constitutional restriction on their right to marry, all Californians have an equal interest in the outcome of the case. The single characteristic that Judge Walker shares with the Plaintiffs, albeit one that might not have been shared with the majority of Californians, gave him no greater interest in a proper decision on the merits than would exist for any other judge or citizen.

Amen, Judge Ware. Amen.