Adrian Dayton explains the Slackoisie aversion to being forced to show up for work.  Adrian has become the rational voice of his generation. He’s still wrong, of course, but he gets a “B” for his efforts.  He could bring that up to an “A” if he makes sure his quotes are accurate.

Over the past two weeks, I’ve deleted literally hundreds of spam comments here.  This is in addition to the ones I normally delete, from those who want to use the comments here as their soapbox or to expose their own blogs or posts to a different audience.  There are some very tenacious people posting comments that they hope will see the light of day, one particular commenter who was responsible for nearly 300 spam comments in the past week.

It’s not going to happen.  As much of a waste of my time as it may be, I will not allow the comments section to become your billboard, no matter how nice your comments may be (they are usually along the lines of, “great post . . .”) or how devious your challenge (“I will consider being a regular reader if you respect my point of view”). 

Amongst my many peculiarities is that I have not shown much concern over whether any particular reader loves or hates what I write here.  Nor have I cared a whit whether a reader shares my sensibilities on a particular issue; I’ve been as quick to delete a rant against the death penalty as one that ultimately proposes the efficacy of a drug to correct penile dysfunction.  I realize that commenters often find my rules hard to understand, seeing their comments are both informative and interesting when I see them as tangential and self-promotional.  The rule is:  My blog, my rules.  They aren’t subject to democratic approval.  I know this because I control the delete button and you don’t.

Deleting a few hundred purely spam comments is not merely a pain in the butt, but a waste of time.  Having a blawg isn’t nearly as glamorous as many think.  It requires that I keep an eye on things, as they can spin out of control quite quickly at times, particularly when a post draws a bunch of day-trippers who are unfamiliar with SJ, my rules, my prickly ways, my snarkiness and the limits of my tolerance.  Most of these comments I allow, even though I find them unbearably assumptive, a typical trait of many younger readers.  It’s a fault of the Slackoisie, the characterization they deny vehemently, who mistakenly project their shallowness and egocentricity on me because, well, that’s what the Slackoisie do.

I recently saw a comment about me on another blawg that struck me as interesting.  The comment, clearly by a new lawyer, said that I was a “decent” blawger, except when I went on an off topic rant.  I would be fine, the commenter said, if I stuck to criminal law.  This falls into the pigeonhole of readers who believe that my purpose here is to please them and provide posts that suit their interests.  Readers of this ilk can bite me.  Simple Justice is about whatever I decide it’s about, and until you pay for the privilege, you get no say in what that might be.  I’m not courting your approval, and you can stop reading at any time.

On Twitter, I am now at about 500 followers.  Some are young women with webcams showing them engaged in sex acts.  Why they follow me is unclear.  I doubt they are interested in much of anything I say or write about.  I have no plans to watch their webcams.  I also have many followers who are “consultants”, all of whom are “available for speaking engagements.”  They may or may not be interested in something I write about, but I am unlikely to consult with them, and I have no speaking engagements for them at all. 

One young lawyer wanted to engage me in a twittering discussion of my posts here.  I suggested he post his thoughts in a comment, as I won’t discuss my posts in twits, to which he took offense.  He complained that I was telling him what not to twit, and that nobody, but nobody, told him what not to twit.  I was telling him that I wasn’t going to engage in a twittering discussion.  He can twit whatever he wants.  I’ll just ignore it.  And I do.  It’s really easy to ignore people on Twitter.

There are lists of “must-read” blogs and “must-follow” twitterers.  I don’t think I’ve made either.  They are mostly put together by those with a marketing-bent, both as a promotional tool and a means of capturing attention.  Blawgers and twitterers have a obsessive thing about lists which eludes me.  When they make a “top 10” list put out by the Chopped Liver Association of America, they will promote themselves shamelessly for having been so honored. 

The more I think about it, the more I understand why I’ve been deluged with spam comment lately.  They aren’t necessarily different in kind from much of the flotsam and jetsam that finds its way onto the blogosphere or twittersphere, but merely more unabashed about it.  Being an unapologetic capitalist, I can appreciate the tenacity of someone who would make 300 tries to post a commercial comment on Simple Justice.  In fact, I can better appreciate that than the kids who argue that they truly deserve to have the world revolve around them.  I may rethink my definition of spam.

Most of believe that our life experiences run the gamut, enabling and entitling us to believe that we understand the full spectrum of experiences.  We are, of course, delusional.

Our experiences are ours.  Not being a “wise Latina,” the experiences of a wise Latina would not be mine.  Nor the experiences of a black man.  Not even an Italian man.  But I do have the experiences of a Jewish man.  The problem is that my experience as a Jewish man is likely to be different than Joel Rosenberg’s, also a Jewish man, but far better armed.

The latest blawg rage is discussion of a statement by Sonia Sotomayor, which made the New York Times’ editorial page today.

Police Officer Andrew P. Dunton will never be the same.  In an instant, a black man with a gun turned after Dunton yelled “police, drop the gun.”  Did he yell that?  Did Omar Edwards turn? Could Dunton have done something differently so that Police Officer Edwards wouldn’t be dead by his six shots? 

The story is everywhere, Whether the true story will ever be known is another matter.  The fact is that in a flash, two decisions were made on dark street in Harlem, one by each officer.  One of the decisions was wrong, but which one will depend on who you talk to.  Under the circumstances, the stories could all be true, as far as the witnesses to the event are concerned.  It’s almost impossible when shots ring out unexpectedly in the night to get the details straight.  The mind plays games to make sense out of situations that make no sense.

One television news report noted that the New York Police Department patrol guide has a policy to deal with this situation.  The police provides that the burden is on the off-duty officer to stand motionless and not turn when he hears the on-duty cop yell “police”.  It’s a policy that makes perfect sense, since the on-duty cop has no idea that the guy with the gun is a cop as well.  The problem is that it defies human nature. 

The off-duty cop, in this case Edwards, is pumped with adrenaline chasing the perp.  His focus is on getting the guy in front of him.  Suddenly, from behind him, he hears something that his brain tells him he ought to pay attention to.  But his mind wasn’t on the unanticipated shout from behind, but the guy in front.  It doesn’t quite register.  He hears it, but doesn’t really hear it.  It takes a moment to process.  So he turns . . .

Officer Dunton sees an unidentified man with gun running down a dark street.  He yells “police, drop your gun.”  What else can he yell (ignoring minor variations on the theme)?  The man with the gun turns toward him.  Maybe a full turn.  Maybe just a partial turn.  But any turn puts the aim of that gun closer to his heart.  He need not wait for the muzzle flash to decide what to do.  He fires six rounds at the gun pointed toward him.

It’s a conundrum.  We won’t know what Dunton actually yelled.  We won’t know what Edwards actually heard.  We won’t know what role, if any, the fact that Edwards was black played in Dunton’s decision.  At this point, everyone is playing catch-up, trying to piece things together in a way that causes the least exacerbation of the damage.  But none of it resolves the basic conundrum.  The policy sounds right, but doesn’t work.  Policy doesn’t supplant human experience.  Policy doesn’t trump human nature.

None of the post-hoc efforts to sort out this disaster strike me as credible.  The fix is always in when a disaster happens and it turns out that the dead body is a cop.  When it’s not a cop, they check his rap sheet so they can demean the dead man because of his priors.  That way, the public is informed that his death at the hand of a cop is no big deal.  He was a worthless criminal anyway.  That doesn’t work when the dead man is a cop.

But the needless death of a cop is no more, nor less, tragic than the death of any other human being.  And so we share in the grief of Officer Omar Edwards death as we do with any other person who was killed by mistake.  It’s unfortunate that the need to make it appear that no fault can be levied will cause us to gloss over the problems that gave rise to this tragic mistake.  It’s happened before and it will happen again, until someone figures out a better way to address a black man with a gun on the streets of Harlem.

Back at ya:

Willie McNair was executed last week after courts refused to review the trial judge’s decision to sentence him to death even though the jury decided he should be sentenced to life imprisonment without parole.

At the second and final sentencing, the jury returned a verdict of life imprisonment without possibility of parole. The trial judge, without explanation, rejected the jury’s verdict and sentenced Mr. McNair to death.

In 2004, the United States District Court for the Middle District of Alabama found that Mr. McNair’s death sentence was unconstitutional because his trial lawyers – who knew what had happened at the first trial – nonetheless failed at the second trial to present crucial information that would have explained the crime and persuaded the judge to follow the jury’s life verdict.

People who had known Willie McNair his whole life testified that such behavior was highly out of character for him and that he was held in extremely high esteem in his community. Expert witnesses explained that this offense would not have happened but for Mr. McNair’s tragic and severe substance addiction.

The federal court found that Mr. McNair’s lawyers failed to fulfill their constitutional duty to represent him effectively, and vacated his death sentence.

Having followed the trial of Yonkers Police Officer Wayne Simoes in the Southern District of New York, it would be wrong to leave you hanging.  The jury returned.  Was justice done?

Interest was peaked in the case when Simoes, accused of body slamming Irma Marquez after a bar fight involving her niece, ended up on the wrong side of the thin blue line.  The trial started with fellow officer John Liberatore testifying that, contrary to Simoes claim that he accidentally dropped Marquez, body slammed her to the group, causing her substantial injury.

Of course, it didn’t help that Liberatore didn’t find religion until the video tape of the conduct came out.  Before that, he saw nothing.

Then, the defense called an expert to deconstruct the video via a frame by frame parsing which, in the opinion of the expert, proved that Simoes didn’t body slam her on the ground, as it clearly appeared in the video, but merely dropped her when he slipped.  Unintentionally, of course.

The defense’s videotape expert had been precluded, after an in limine motion, from answering the ultimate question for the jury, but the question was asked anyway.  And the prosecution neglected to object.  “It came out of the blue,” the prosecutor explained.  The judge nonetheless struck the testimony afterward, and no doubt the jury forgot all about it since the jury does whatever the judge says.  Always. 

As all trials do, this one came to an end.  From LoHud, the outcome:

The jury of eight men and four women deliberated for a little more than five hours yesterday in U.S. District Court in White Plains before finding Simoes not guilty yesterday of the lone charge against him, violating the civil rights of Marquez.

“We watched the video and we watched the frame-by-frame,” Jhonna Van Dunk said, “and we could not determine that he intended to hurt her.”

While an acquittal is usually a cause for celebration, showing that not every arrest demands a conclusion of guilt, and that our system of trial by jury remains vital, I again find myself posting about an acquittal involving a cop.  Not merely the acquittal of a cop, but one where there was a videotape showing, as conclusively as one could dream possible, what happened.  And still, the officer was acquitted.

Don’t blame Wayne Simoes for the acquittal.  No one, cop included, wants to be convicted, and no one can blame a defendant for fighting the charges.  Certainly his lawyer, Andrew Quinn, did his job well.  But if you want someone to blame, blame ourselves.  Blame the fact that we can see a video of a cop body slamming a woman to the ground and still give the cop the benefit of the doubt. 

In New York, the jury is instructed that a person intends the natural consequences of his act.  Slam a woman to the ground and one intends to cause her harm.  If not, then don’t body slam her.  It’s not a difficult instruction, nor conclusion to reach.  Except when the slammer is a cop. 

Wayne Simoes is not guilty of the charges against him.  That’s how the system works.  But if you’re not a cop, I wouldn’t try to copy Simoes, because it doesn’t seem the system works the same for others.  And it will continue that way for as long as we can’t seem to get it into our heads that police officers, like anyone else, sometimes do harm.  And when they do, they should be subject to the same “benefit of the doubt” as anyone else, for better or worse.

Update:  In case you were wondering what an accident by Wayne Simoes looks like, here a photo of Irma Marquez, courtesy of BlackListedNews via Karl Mansour. 

Imagine what she would have look like if he meant to hurt here.

I’ve been meaning to post about this since Jdog first twitted about it, but there was a hole in my racket, the sun was in my eyes, the dog ate my homework.  Okay, I just didn’t get around to it.  But it’s too important to ignore, so I’m back to it now.

From the Northern Muckraker via Boing Boing, somebody let slip an internal police memo from the New York Police Department.  For those who may not know, New York City has a police force with more officers than most cities have residents.  They have a cute nickname, New York’s Finest.  They considered calling themselves New York’s Brightest, but were unable to find anyone amongst that very large group of officers who would go along. 

Just to be clear, there are many police officers who are well educated, smart and dedicated, in the service of the City of New York.  There are a whole lot more, however, who make rocks look brilliant.  The standards have slipped a bit over the years, much to the consternation of the more intelligent officers, who are now forced to do send out things like this :



We await next month’s Memo, Investigation of Individuals Engaged in Suspicious Winking.  I know, it makes me proud to be a New Yorker too.

I was never much of a fan of inspirational posters.  I can remember that ubiquitous poster of a kitty cat hanging on a tree limb, with the words, “Hang in there, baby.  Friday’s coming,” in almost every woman’s dorm room at college.  I was also never much of a fan of cats. 

While the old poster is a cheesy reminder of the past, inspirational posts live on.  A particularly inspiring one comes from Susan Cartier Leibel, at her recently moved blog, http://buildasolopractice.solopracticeuniversity.com/2009/05/26/stop-telling-me-what-i-cant-do/.

The California Supreme Court’s decision in Strauss v. Horton upheld the referendum to amend the state Constitution to do away with the court’s own decision holding that denial of marriage to gay couples was unconstitutional in In Re Marriage Cases. Aside from it being a silly exercise in futility that will ultimately prove embarrassing to California, as other states pass laws entitling gay couples to marry, it raises an uglier question.

It is axiomatic that the Constitution, whether state or federal, protects the minority from the tyranny of the majority.  Granted, most people don’t realize this concept, being schooled in the idea that the will of the majority should always prevail and often confused when courts don’t seem to rule the way that the masses think it should.  But for those familiar with the concept, and those who have the capacity to understand it once explained, the idea that there are basic rights guaranteed by the Constitution to all, and these cannot be taken away because the majority doesn’t like the minority, it seems an awfully important protection.

What if the majority of this country, perceiving itself to be good, law-abiding folk, decides that it’s had enough of coddling criminals, appreciates the fine work done by law enforcement in protecting us, and concludes that it’s a terrible waste of time and effort to handcuff the police in doing their job when it comes to career criminals. 

Somebody offers an amendment to the Constitution that any person who has been previously convicted of a serious violent crime will not be entitled to due process thereafter, but if determined by a police officer to have committed a second serious crime may be summarily punished according to law.  Don’t quibble about  the details of the amendment, as they aren’t important.  What’s important is that a majority could amend the Constitution to deprive an unpopular citizen of what was previously considered a fundamental right.  Sure, it would be wrong to upend due process, but recidivist serious criminals have few friends, and they do take a toll on society.

Why not?  If the fine people of California can decide that gays don’t deserve equal protection, why can’t criminals not deserve due process?  We can go down the list of groups we don’t like and identify which of our fundamental rights should be denied them.  I bet the 4th Amendment would be gone in a flash; after all, law-abiding folks have nothing to fear from the cops.  And the 6th is just a full-employment for lawyers amendment, and nobody likes lawyers. 

The California Supreme Court’s Strauss decision dealt with a technical issue, whether Proposition 8 was an amendment or a revision.  Typical of the limited focus of lawyers and courts, it didn’t deal with the heart of the problem.  Is our constitutional democracy so fragile that a well-financed group that is able to muster a majority of votes, that disapproves of rights being given a discrete and unpopular group, can change a Constitution so as to deprive that unpopular group of a fundamental right?

Apparently so, as I’ve seen no one consider that if gays are not entitled to equal protection in marriage, then they can be denied equal protection as to any other right by dint of majority vote.  If the tyranny of the majority is constitutionally permissible, what group is next on the agenda?  I’m probably a member of a few groups that might not fair well.

According to who you talk to, there’s a long list of minority groups in this nation who are looked at askance by the majority.  Can an angry majority decide to eliminate the basic rights to people we don’t like?  Are due process and equal protection that fragile?