Friday, October 24, 2003
Crime and Thoughtcrime!
Paul Howard is an incompetent boob.
For example, he had a blood trail from a murder scene at the Cobalt Lounge in Buckhead, to Ray Lewis's car, to Lewis's hotel room. Nonetheless, Lewis was able to leave town, decide for himself when he was going to offer testimony, dictate his terms for dealing with Howard, yuadda, yadda, yadda.
Yes, he beat the rap.
Now Howard has three skinhead punks (whites, by definition, I guess) accused of severely beating a couple of black men. He wins a conviction against two of them with one getting an increment for the thoughtcrime of expressing racist sentiments during the attack (instead of, what, psalms?); but the sentence is not enough to satisfy the family, which is complaining bitterly. So - mindful of next year's election and his stunning displays of incompetence to date - he's off to the US Attorney to troll for more.
Never mind that the sentences, one with two years tacked on for the thoughtcrime, are about as large as many murderers ever serve.
Then of course there's the judge in this case, Marvin Arrington. I'm pretty sure there's a videotape out there somewhere that shows him accepting a bribe from Harold Echols to reappoint Buddy Fowlkes as chairman of the Atlanta City Council's Transportation Committee. Something to do with making lots of money off the airport. Talk about being unfit for the office. Still, that's Atlanta.
Oh well, back to the skinheads.
Answer me this: would the people who were assaulted be any less brutalized if the skinheads had been shouting about the high school Underwater Basketweaving course they got B's in before heading off to college on a Hope Scholarship and dropping out after their first year?
No they wouldn't. So, the thoughtcrime under which the sentence was bumped up had nothing to do with the victims, and everything to do with what was in the perpetrators head. This is dangerous.
For now we have laws where sentences are bumped up based on what was in your head at the time of the crime. How long before we have sentencing simply for what you have in your head? Oh, sorry, they already have that in the Fulton school system.
So, what's next? Today, increases for bigotry, tomorrow, for what? Capitalist Roadism? Meritism? Love of Fat Matt's Ribs? Integral Calculus? (Liebnitz good, Newton bad.) I guess we're safe for the moment. But mark it: we will see a move to separate act and thought and make both punishable in law.
You know, like they talk about here
OK, that said, what the hell is the Federal Government doing getting involved in this?
This is not some Governor at the schoolhouse door. This is not 1956. This is a couple of punks. Under what interpretation of the Interstate Commerce Clause or the 14th Amendment does the Almighty Federal Government get to come swooping in on this? I mean, you had three white perpetrators, a black DA, a black judge, two black victims, in a predominantly blacm county. And you need the Federal Government to make sure they get a properly-long sentence? It simply boggles the mind.
Unless, of course, Arrington and Howard have some private fued they're playing out in court. They'd never do that, whould they? (Yes, that is dripping sarcasm you detect.)
My thought is that the Feds won't take it. There's a chance it'd get argued all the way to the Supreme Court, and they're in a mood these days to clip the Congress's feathers a little.
Now don't get me wrong about this: these punks, who attacked unprovoked, and who beat these men to pulp, deserve long sentences in big-boy prison where they can have plenty of time and reason to repent the errors of their ways. But please, convict them for what they did. Don't try to build a window on their souls and judge those too. For if you do, you'll soon be in the business of judging souls alone, and that way lies an autocracy as bad as anything an Arab despot ever dreamed.
Paul Howard is an incompetent boob.
For example, he had a blood trail from a murder scene at the Cobalt Lounge in Buckhead, to Ray Lewis's car, to Lewis's hotel room. Nonetheless, Lewis was able to leave town, decide for himself when he was going to offer testimony, dictate his terms for dealing with Howard, yuadda, yadda, yadda.
Yes, he beat the rap.
Now Howard has three skinhead punks (whites, by definition, I guess) accused of severely beating a couple of black men. He wins a conviction against two of them with one getting an increment for the thoughtcrime of expressing racist sentiments during the attack (instead of, what, psalms?); but the sentence is not enough to satisfy the family, which is complaining bitterly. So - mindful of next year's election and his stunning displays of incompetence to date - he's off to the US Attorney to troll for more.
Never mind that the sentences, one with two years tacked on for the thoughtcrime, are about as large as many murderers ever serve.
Then of course there's the judge in this case, Marvin Arrington. I'm pretty sure there's a videotape out there somewhere that shows him accepting a bribe from Harold Echols to reappoint Buddy Fowlkes as chairman of the Atlanta City Council's Transportation Committee. Something to do with making lots of money off the airport. Talk about being unfit for the office. Still, that's Atlanta.
Oh well, back to the skinheads.
Answer me this: would the people who were assaulted be any less brutalized if the skinheads had been shouting about the high school Underwater Basketweaving course they got B's in before heading off to college on a Hope Scholarship and dropping out after their first year?
No they wouldn't. So, the thoughtcrime under which the sentence was bumped up had nothing to do with the victims, and everything to do with what was in the perpetrators head. This is dangerous.
For now we have laws where sentences are bumped up based on what was in your head at the time of the crime. How long before we have sentencing simply for what you have in your head? Oh, sorry, they already have that in the Fulton school system.
So, what's next? Today, increases for bigotry, tomorrow, for what? Capitalist Roadism? Meritism? Love of Fat Matt's Ribs? Integral Calculus? (Liebnitz good, Newton bad.) I guess we're safe for the moment. But mark it: we will see a move to separate act and thought and make both punishable in law.
You know, like they talk about here
OK, that said, what the hell is the Federal Government doing getting involved in this?
This is not some Governor at the schoolhouse door. This is not 1956. This is a couple of punks. Under what interpretation of the Interstate Commerce Clause or the 14th Amendment does the Almighty Federal Government get to come swooping in on this? I mean, you had three white perpetrators, a black DA, a black judge, two black victims, in a predominantly blacm county. And you need the Federal Government to make sure they get a properly-long sentence? It simply boggles the mind.
Unless, of course, Arrington and Howard have some private fued they're playing out in court. They'd never do that, whould they? (Yes, that is dripping sarcasm you detect.)
My thought is that the Feds won't take it. There's a chance it'd get argued all the way to the Supreme Court, and they're in a mood these days to clip the Congress's feathers a little.
Now don't get me wrong about this: these punks, who attacked unprovoked, and who beat these men to pulp, deserve long sentences in big-boy prison where they can have plenty of time and reason to repent the errors of their ways. But please, convict them for what they did. Don't try to build a window on their souls and judge those too. For if you do, you'll soon be in the business of judging souls alone, and that way lies an autocracy as bad as anything an Arab despot ever dreamed.
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