Tuesday Talk*: Does Amy Cooper Need To Be Prosecuted?

One of the more notorious Karens, Amy Cooper, was fired, lost her dog and will be a social pariah for the foreseeable future. This was the punishment imposed by the mob for calling the police and claiming that her life was threatened by a “Black bird watcher.”

Wasn’t that enough? Nooooooo. No, says the social justice mob. No, says the Manhattan District Attorney, who might under other circumstances take responsibility for its actions but is now too vulnerable and subject to influence with Cy Vance being primaried for DA that appealing to the mob matters. And so, Amy Cooper, unemployed dogless pariah, will now be prosecuted for the misdemeanor of falsely reporting an incident.

On Monday, Ms. Cooper was charged with filing a false report, a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail, the latest fallout from an encounter that resonated across the country and provoked intense discussions about how Black people are harmed when sham reports to the police are made about them by white people.

Is this normal? Hardly.

The pending criminal charge against Ms. Cooper appears to be among the first that a white person in the United States has faced for wrongfully calling the police to make a complaint about a Black person.

It’s fairly clear that her description to police that her life was being threatened by a black man was false, unless one is of the view that any interaction involving a man challenging a woman inherently threatens her life. Had the bird watcher not been black, and almost certainly if Amy were black and the bird watcher white, it could very easily have gone that way, with the same woke folks screaming about men threatening women’s lives. Weird how their passions can be a bit inconsistent and hypocritical.

“We are strongly committed to holding perpetrators of this conduct accountable,” said Cyrus R. Vance Jr., the Manhattan district attorney.

Cy is running, and he won’t have Weinstein’s money to support his campaign this time around. But falsely reporting is almost never charged, so why here? Why now? And why are the same people who claim to abhor police and the punitive system suddenly demanding prosecution?

People are rarely charged with filing a false police report, legal experts said, because the authorities do not want to discourage the reporting of crimes and because it can be difficult to prove that a person made a false report knowingly.

There is a difference between what happened here and fabricating a crime wholesale, such as happens with accusations of rape. And yet the false accuser is almost never charged, and the rationale is that prosecutors don’t want to discourage victims from coming forward. Of course, people who fabricate crimes aren’t victims, but still.

But experts said that the evidence in the case against Ms. Cooper was strong and that it could have broader implications in other instances of white people making false police reports against Black people.

“To the extent that this woman was arguably deploying racial stereotypes and weaponizing them, it will make people think twice,” said Nancy Gertner, a Harvard Law School professor and a retired federal judge. “It is a big deal.”

To say “it’s a big deal” at this particular moment in time is an understatement, although whether it would have made a ripple at any other time is unlikely.

Lucy Lang, a former Manhattan prosecutor and the director of the Institute for Innovation in Prosecution at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said that filing a false report was “a very troubling crime.

Adding race to the equation, she added, created “just an absolute recipe for a tragic disaster.”

Sounds very serious. Does this mean that all the anti-carceral folk are now loving the cops, the system, prisons? After all, we have laws and the laws must be obeyed. Or has Amy Cooper suffered enough by the punishment inflicted by the mob, and further prosecution is excessive and unwarranted, particularly since the same people demanding it are the ones who reject it for defendants they prefer?

Ironically, some of the more thoughtful and principled activist lawyers have argued against further prosecution, only to find themselves the target of the mob.

The mob has already exacted its vengeance on Amy Cooper. What should come next? If “legal consequences” should be imposed, what of the white women who falsely accuse black men of rape? Or falsely accuse any man of rape? It’s highly unlikely that Cooper will be sentenced to incarceration for what happened in Central Park under any circumstances, but is there any purpose to be served by prosecuting her now?

*Tuesday Talk rules apply.

 

96 thoughts on “Tuesday Talk*: Does Amy Cooper Need To Be Prosecuted?

  1. Tracie Goldman

    Cy seems to be making a political statement here. While it is illegal to make a false claim, it has been done numerous times and not prosecuted. But Just because other false claims were not prosecuted doesnt make it right either. I guess Amy Cooper losing her job and dog and national public shaming of falsely accusing a black man is still not punishment enough for many it seems.

    1. MelK

      I hear though, she did eventually get her dog back.

      Because it is Tuesday: The reports say the dog “was surrendered to” the shelter she got it from, but not why it was surrendered. Is having your dog off the leash a crime requiring forfeiting the dog in NYC? Inquiring dog lovers want to know!

      More on topic, I think Social Media has both the punitive and deterrent aspects of punishment down pat here. What further purpose is served by convicting her?

      1. davep

        MelK: “Is having your dog off the leash a crime requiring forfeiting the dog in NYC?”

        Did you watch the video?

        She spent a lot of time choking the dog while mostly being mad about being recorded.

  2. Bob

    “It’s fairly clear that her description to police that her life was being threatened by a black man was false . . . .”

    In the video we see, she threatens to tell the cops her life has been threatened, but when she calls she actually just says that she’s been “threatened.” The man basically admitted to making an ambiguous and vaguely threatening statement (something like “you’re not going to like what I’m going to do next”) and then messing with her dog. That, along with the woman’s obvious distress in the video, suggests to me that this is far from a “clear” case of her knowingly making a baseless or false report. Am I missing something?

    1. SHG Post author

      You know that pathetically puny mind that can’t focus on the issue and instead argues collateral bullshit? That’s you, Bob. Reddit is calling.

      1. Bob

        I was sincerely asking whether you knew something I didn’t. I assumed you’d care whether you were inadvertently slandering this woman, given your sympathy for all the unfairness she’s already suffered.

        Let me take a stab at stretching my tiny brain thin enough to wrap it around your preferred topic. I agree that appeals to high-minded principles are often pretextual and insincere, and that that appears to be the case here. The “mob” has always been like that (hypocrites on twitter—news at 11!), but I do think there’s something new and scary about how thoroughly that attitude is displacing liberalism in our institutions and public discourse. Unfortunately, I seem to be straying from the subject again, so I’ll leave it there.

        1. SHG Post author

          Sorry, Bob, but you’re not allowed to be the center of my universe. Jake already owns that spot.

        2. davep

          Bob: did you watch the video?

          After the “ambiguous and vaguely threatening statement” (not in the video), she walked over to the person recording waving her finger/hand loudly complaining about being recorded. After that, she said she was going to tell the cops “her life was being threatened by an african-american man”.

          If she felt any sort of threatened, why didn’t she move away?

  3. PseudonymousKid

    To the extent that Cooper was arguably unreasonably terrified and stupid, punishing her won’t change a damn thing. It’s bloodsport. That fancy law prof sure knows how to couch her language.

    I thought Cooper was so last week and then she pops up on the radar again. Too bad for her there wasn’t a sufficiently big-time story elsewhere to take our minds off her outburst. Not that she could ever be saved from politicians trying to make names for themselves. So she gets to spend yet more time in the stockade taking rotten hits. Hanging her now might be more merciful.

    Cops still suck. There are still too many crimes and too many poorly written laws. Politicians still suck. And we’re all still out for blood from our enemies. Situation normal.

  4. B. McLeod

    I think she got the dog back. Also, this seems appropriate in that it will help teach the defendant that, yes, rules do apply to her.

    1. SHG Post author

      Between you and MelK, did she get the dog back or not? If you can’t be bothered to find out, then why waste my bandwidth with bullshit?

      1. B. McLeod

        I wasn’t there. Internet reports alleged that she got the dog back, and I have not seen contrary reports.

      2. B. McLeod

        Also, whether she did or didn’t get the dog back, her punishment at the hands of the mob is no reason for her to be excused from legal consequences of her actions.

  5. jeffrey gamso

    In response to a string of posts on the NACDL listserv yesterday, I posted this:

    Like Peter, my sense from watching the video is that, however irrationally, she was afraid – a fear that, it must be said, grew out of racist stereotypes and inherent if not direct racial bias.
    But I’m bothered not only because I think they’re bringing a weak case. I’m bothered by the enthusiasm I’m seeing here for the bringing of it. The woman lost her job, lost her dog (however horribly she yanked it), became the international symbol of both systemic and explicit racism. Is that not enough sufficient vilification? Ought she suffer more punishment? Need she also be dragged through the legal system to satisfy the PR needs of the local DA by showing that while he may not successfully prosecute cops he can demonstrate his social justice bona fides by bringing criminal charges against her.
    Are we not criminal defense lawyers trained (and inclined) to look askance at and think critically about the actions of prosecutors and not just to applaud when they go after folks we don’t like?

    1. SHG Post author

      My sense is that there is a clear, and growing, distinction between the older and younger CDLs on this point. And no matter how factual, rational or principled we are, they just don’t give a damn. They know who they like and they know who they hate, and the rest is just coming up with excuses to justify it.

      1. Jay

        Oh good, you’re back to claiming you’re principled. Remember the other day when you were talking about how we still need police to charge people to keep us safe, that there really are bad guys out there, yada yada? And then you pull dumb shit like this.

        How would you feel if the cops showed up and killed the man she called them on Greenfield? Would you still be pushing this “she suffered enough” narrative? She knew she might get him a beating. hell, she probably hoped he would. So fuck her. And fuck you.

  6. Jamison

    The first thing I said to my wife upon watching the video was that I hoped they would charge her with making a false police report.

    I disagree with Gamso: She did not seem scared to me. I interpreted her actions instead as a cynical manipulation of our system’s biases against black people. She calmly and deliberately called police and lied to them. It is a good thing he was so calm. It is also a good thing he was filming things. I hate to think what might have happened otherwise.

    I know we often make this argument on behalf of clients, but is it really relevant to the prosecution that she was punished in so many other ways?

    1. SHG Post author

      Is it? Gamso thinks so. Squawk thinks so. I think so. You don’t. To us, the scope of punishment matters. A lot. Why do you think it’s irrelevant, because it was imposed by a mob rather than a prosecutor and judge?

      1. Jamison

        Although I know nothing about the law in New York, I assume filing a false police report is a very minor misdemeanor, probably just a step above a traffic infraction. How does that equate to life plus cancer?

        I also don’t know how often this type of charge is prosecuted in New York. But if they charge other people with it, why wouldn’t they charge her?

        They are not charging her with racism. That is being litigated through social media. What they are charging her with is tying up police resources with a frivolous complaint. No one disputes that she was guilty of that.

          1. PseudonymousKid

            Cooper arguably committed a crime. It’s Vance’s job to prosecute and push for the penalties endorsed by our grand and hard-working legislators. The alternative is to surrender to the mob on both crime and punishment. The government should collect its fine and court costs because it’s the mob “justice” that is the excess punishment and not the government prosecuting a crime lawfully.

            I thought the law and order crowd would do better than worry about stupid shit like what happened to a dog.

            1. SHG Post author

              This is a crime almost never prosecuted, for sound institutional reasons that militate against it. Now try again.

  7. Appellate Squawk

    In 20/20 hindsight, it was criminally racist that a woman alone in an empty area of Central Park where crimes never happen would overreact to a guy who, by his own account, was offering “treats” to get her unlawfully unleashed dog to come back. Thank heaven for this ethical DA who gives press conferences about pending prosecutions. If Vance pursues the case, he’ll likely reduce the charge to attempted false reporting to deprive her of a jury trial. And what judge would dare acquit? If the woman blows her life savings on a decent lawyer, maybe she can get a plea to disorderly conduct.

    1. SHG Post author

      If she gets a bullet, she can always try to get into shock to get out early and return to her life as a pariah. No ACD for her.

  8. Schmendrick

    I’m not sure there’s as much of a disconnect between the anti-cop/anti-carceral argument and wanting to throw the book at Ms. Goodman as there might seem to be. I’m that worldview, every interaction a black person has with a cop has a strong likelihood of ending in the black person dead, wounded, or with a ruined life through biased incarceration, etc. Therefore, what Goodman really did (or so the theory goes) was try to get the birder killed/hurt, which is much more serious than “making a false police report” by itself sounds). And if she did it out of racial prejudice, that’s basically an attempted hate crime by proxy.

    To be clear, I think this argument takes too many liberties with extrapolations and generalizations, but it seemed worth considering in a “know your enemy” sense.

    1. SHG Post author

      At least try to stick within a few miles of reality: the likelihood of an interaction between a black man and a cop ending in the black man’s death is infinitesimal. To date in 2020, “a total 506 civilians having been shot, 105 of whom were Black, as of June 30, 2020,” out of millions of interactions. And that’s the total, not those deaths that weren’t justified.

      1. Schmendrick

        I agree (though I would note that the data you cited isn’t complete – George Floyd, Eric Garner, and presumably others would not be counted, as they weren’t shot) that this perspective is almost certainly wrong as a matter of fact. But how much do facts matter these days (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFPH4NCHZZo)?

  9. Richard Parker

    Twitter is Evil. It’s the public platform for the Emotionally Dysfunctional and the Terminally Stupid. She would have been better off killing her mother-in-law. She would still have her job and her dog.

  10. Bob S.

    I think it’s important to note that, as Gamso pointed out (miss your blog btw) that it’s a pretty weak case from the publicly available info. From Christian Cooper’s own post of the incident, It’s not a stretch to conclude that a person could feel like a threat was made, which is not to excuse Ms. Cooper’s performative bullshit.

    Is there a purpose to prosecution here? I think yes, and it’s not a good one. It’s a concession by the powers that be to the mob. The mob may be righteously furious about years of incidents like the killing of John Crawford in Ohio (Caller Ronald Ritchie was never charged, despite a blatant lie), or the mob may just be gathering their individual social awareness credits. It’s impossible to say, that’s the thing about mobs, they don’t sit for interviews, although they do vote and occasionally burn things. That’s enough for Prosecutors here to bring a bad case. When they lose they can pillory a judge (what fool would take this to a jury?).

    This is a sacrificial burning of one citizen, hateable as she may be, in lieu of all the ‘ones that got away’. It is plainly unprincipled, and would only be undertaken by cowards eager to push others to the front of the line.

  11. Jake

    If I were the Cy Vance, I would prosecute this case because:

    1. The accused was caught red-handed violating the law on camera.
    2. Prosecuting this crime will have a general deterrent effect.
    3. I would want to avoid the appearance of improper bias in the pursuit of justice in a racially charged proceeding.

    I would reject arguments against prosecution based upon suffering the accused has purportedly already endured because it is alleged, undefined, and outside the scope of my duty to the people of New York.

        1. SHG Post author

          Nah. Your substance was fairly pedestrian. It could apply to black guys busted for weed just as easily, but I wouldn’t expect you to grasp the implications of your views because that wouldn’t be you.

          1. Jake

            Interestingly, something I have learned from you is every case considers an individual with uniquely mitigating circumstances.

            1. SHG Post author

              See, your time here hasn’t been completely wasted, even if you still don’t understand when, how or why any of this applies.

              [Ed. Note: Enough comments already. Stop.]

    1. Charles

      If your first two points were true, should it have taken six weeks to decide to bring charges?

      And as for your third point, you’re cool with bias so long as it’s proper and/or nobody notices it?

      1. Jake

        I don’t know anything about how prosecutors prioritize cases, but I assume they do.

        No, I am not cool with improper bias under any circumstances. I didn’t come up with the principle of avoiding the appearance of improper bias, but I understand it. The ABA lists it in its guidelines for prosecutors.

  12. Steve White

    Her extra judicial punishment was sufficient, but that is not the point. Because this incident was publicized nationwide, a criminal prosecution of her may have some deterrent effect on other would-be false accusers. Based on your background on the DA and general practices, it is a corrupt and hypocritical prosecution and it seems to me is based on the (temporary ) elevation in the victim hierarchy, of blacks above women – but still, if it discourages false accusations – and I mean by women generally, not just by white women against black men – because not every false accusing women knows the unspoken rule that men of the right race will still be fair game – then it may have a good effect. Calling the police, to falsely accuse anyone of anything,, should be a serious crime.
    All of which does not address the facts in this particular case, which I do not know. Obviously, if the defendant is not guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, of an absolutely clear violation of existing law, they should never be prosecuted.

    1. SHG Post author

      I often wonder why people believe in “deterrent effects.” If they worked, we would have no crime because so many “serious crimes” have been prosecute before. Yet here we are. Why will it work this time when it’s never worked in the past?

      1. Bob

        Surely you’ve wanted to do something but decided against it because of the consequences, not just because you thought it was morally wrong. Like just the other day, Lowes stiffed me out of $50. The only thing that kept me from walking out of the store with something to balance the books was fear of the consequences. That’s deterrence, and it works 99.99% of the time. Not 100%, but it’s pretty good if you think about it.

        Deterrence is, after all, what these “Karen” incidents are really about. The twitter mob ruined this woman’s life because it wants to make people, especially white people, afraid to call the cops on black (sorry, Black) people. Remember the video of that poor woman sobbing and covering her license plate? It works.

        1. SHG Post author

          Are these “Karen” incidents really about criminal deterrence, or are they about the mob asserting their hegemony to keep heretics silenced, if not constrained to be part of the mob to avoid personal ruination?

          1. Bob

            It’s not criminal deterrence, just deterrence.* What’s the difference?

            * I guess should have said the Karen videos are more about deterrence of confronting black people in general than calling the cops specifically. That’s why the media and the mob love to promote dubious cases. They want you to be afraid you’ll be ruined even if you’re in the right.

            1. SHG Post author

              If it’s not about criminal deterrence, hasn’t viral shaming by social media already done the trick?

            2. Bob

              That’s a different argument. You’re probably right that there are diminishing returns after a point, though keeping this story in the news probably advances that cause a little.

              Now, to me personally, there’s quite a bit more deterrence. Like I said, I don’t think this woman committed a crime, and everyone agrees that almost no one is prosecuted for filing a false report. So not only are the twitter mobs and the mainstream media going to lynch the lady, but the district attorney is going to jump in?

            3. SHG Post author

              Now that you’ve wasted way too much of my space and attention, while contributing absolutely nothing of value, you’re done here.

            4. Bob

              Fair enough. I’ll return only when I’m worthy of adding to your insights.* Off to look for hypocrisy on twitter!

              * I actually do enjoy your blog most of the time. I get it, it’s hard to come up with something to write about every day.

            5. Miles

              Between Jake and Bob, this has not been a banner comment section today. Thankfully, Jay redeemed it for some lulz and Gamso and Squawk reminded us why comments are worthwhile, dolts notwithstanding.

      2. Charles

        “Deterrent effects” aren’t intended to result in “no” crime, just “less” crime. But deterring others should only be a secondary purpose of punishment, never the primary purpose.

  13. John Barleycorn

    Speaking of social media, the mob, and the every widening baby lawyer cultural divide….

    I think it is time for the republic to adopt The Exploding Hammer Festival!

    And mind you not yearly, in a calm and deliberate manner as culture has it in San Juan de la Vega, this newly adopted tradition should become a socially accepted daily occurrence.

    In fact it should be mandatory to drop your hammer before going about being a twit on Twitter, or sharing that photo of the look on your dogs face after removing his testicles on Facebook.

    Socially accepted norm across the socioeconomic spectrum of the republic, I’ll tell ya!

    Then and only then will the collateral shrapnel fly freely, in the home of the brave and the land of the free, without blame….

  14. Bryan Burroughs

    You are framing this as “she’s already been punished by by the mob, isn’t that enough? Should we go further with prosecuting her?” I’d argue that’s completely backwards. Prosecution for filing a false police report was always the proper remedy for addressing her behaviour. All the crap the mob did in the interim is not, and never was, appropriate. We, as a society, have a law that she might have violated. We have a process that we say should be used to determine if she has broken that law. And we have a prescribed punishment for those who break that law.

    As far as why she is being prosecuted when DAs don’t normally bother, sure, there’s an element of politics and posturing involved. But it’s also very rare that you get the defendant, on video, possibly admitting to committing the crime as she does it. I suppose that level of evidence, publicly available, reduces the risk of such a prosecution dissuading others from reporting potential crimes. It’s also radically different from a battered woman recanting her report out of fear of what her husband might do next, or a rape accuser recanting because she was drunk and is hazy on the details. Here, the evidence seems clear-cut.

    1. Bryan Burroughs

      What level of mob asshattery must take place in order to preclude prosecution, then? Does that apply to all crimes (maybe with a sliding scale of necessary asshattery), or just low-level ones such as this? If someone robs a bank and is beaten mercilessly by random bystanders and the community shames them before an indictment can be handed down, does that mean we shouldn’t prosecute that person for bank robbery? In my mind, that would seem to push us further towards mob reactions. The DAs electoral motivations aside, we’re not sea-lawyering here and nitpicking for any excuse to file charges of any sort; there’s an actual, honest-to-God crime that has been alleged here which is of a serious enough nature to prosecute. Should we really ignore that just because the mob got to her before our criminal justice system could be bothered?

      1. SHG Post author

        There’s no answer. This is new ground, as this wasn’t a nation of mob rule until very recently.

  15. szr

    Prosecuting Amy Cooper is utter hyena dung. Even if we assume she is guilty (which just about the entire twitterverse has already done), this is still absurd.

    Should Ms. Cooper face retribution? Maybe, but how much more can you pile on to a one person for one bad act?

    Would locking Ms. Cooper up rehabilitate her? No. Leaving aside that there is no evidence that she is some kind of unrepentant criminal in need of rehabilitation, and leaving aside her public apology, there is no evidence that branding Ms. Cooper a criminal, in addition to social pariah, is what she needs reenter polite society.

    Would locking up Ms. Cooper deter future bad acts? No. There is no evidence that the community is in danger of seeing Ms. Cooper’s non-prosecution as an invitation to file false police reports.

    Would locking up Ms. Cooper protect the community from her? Almost certainly not. There is no evidence she is some kind of serial false-report filer who is a danger to the community if allowed to walk the streets.

    The world had largely forgotten about Ms. Cooper until Cy Vance decided she would be a useful punching bag for his political career. Maybe Mr. Vance’s political calculus is correct. But he’s advancing his career goals using public money and resources in a way that will do little or nothing to improve public safety. He’s also further destroying a fellow citizen’s life.

    Yes, there is a villain in this saga, but it isn’t Ms. Cooper.

  16. Miles

    It seems clear that the problem with prosecution is the mobbing came first and couldn’t be stopped. As we’ve gone into the age of due-process-free extra-judicial punishment, and the woke (here and, obviously on social media) only want to inflict more and greater punishment, what’s a prosecutor to do?

    Remember when the fight was over whether a crime was committed? Seems quaint now that it has if the mob says it has, and immediately executes the “guilty.”

    1. SHG Post author

      Is there any way to control, limit or stop the mob? I don’t see it until the mob devours itself. It could happen, but until then, there’s little to stop it.

      1. Hunting Guy

        To control the mob it would take companies and individuals to tell the mob to go to hell and then ignore them.

        But that takes guts and the modern individual has been brainwashed to avoid any conflict so it goes on.

        1. SHG Post author

          The nature of a mob is mass action, which is hard enough to face alone and even harder when seized upon by an adoring media who amplifies the mob’s feelz. The 60% of the country in the middle has no mob to swarm to the defense of the individual, and few individuals want to risk being the mob’s next victim.

  17. Julia

    Then the man who filmed her should be charged as a co-conspirator. He encouraged her to call police.

  18. Richard Kopf

    Would I be unkind, or worse, insufficiently concerned with important stuff, if I observed:

    1. I have serious reservations about Harvard graduates who are bird watchers not because that is uncommon but rather because it’s emblematic of an Ivy education.

    2. How I wish there was a Silent Spring.

    All the best.

    Richard Kopf

  19. Richard Parker

    You Know, the Birder could have walked away defusing the whole situation. It would have been nice if one of the two was an adult.

    1. PML

      This mornings news says he is refusing to cooperate with the DA because he does not think she should be prosecuted, or he would have to tell the real truth about the whole interaction.

  20. Tim Cushing

    created an account just to say fuck Cy Vance, that showboating asshole* **

    *did not just create an account
    **my feelings towards Cy Vance remain unchanged

  21. Dan J

    Fine her, or give her some community service hours. Or both, and move on. The thought of this going to any kind of trial is too depressing to contemplate.

    I think it is becoming clear that the same progressives who complain about the quantity of people in jail really just want different people filling the jails.

  22. LocoYokel

    Ordinarily I would argue for prosecution as this type of thing should be discouraged and there are laws against it. Unfortunately, they are typically not enforced as they should be. However, in this instance, the mob has dished out far more punishment than any court would for this action which would hopefully have some smidgen of the deterrence effect.

    Given that this is being pushed for political reasons (why else announce it to the papers rather than just file and notice the defendant?) rather than rule of law I believe that the prosecution is improper due to the motive. If they can find a reason within the law to do so the court should just dismiss and let it go.

  23. rsf

    Working in the field, but on the other side, I tend to agree with your observation here. A disturbing number of the younger CDLs we deal with are blinded by their emotional reaction to situations based on their political/philosophical perspectives. Sadly, my side is seeing this problem developing as well.

    1. SHG Post author

      Between us, the PDs more experienced supervisors tell me that they’re unteachable and, mostly, incompetent. Filled with passion where a little skill might better serve their clients.

      1. John Barleycorn

        Get on the phone esteemed one and create a fellowship program within the fold… You could bring a cool metal lunch box from the 70’s full of props. It would be fun!

        Cy might even take you to lunch…

  24. James

    93 comments and counting, that’s got to be a record.

    I actually did an FRI jury trial years ago (upstate Justice court, of course). Good times.

      1. Anonymous

        Two of your previous declarations come to mind:

        1. We have lost the ability to communicate.
        2. We have all said something terrible to another human being at some point.

        We can’t undo the mob punishment, wrong as it may be. But forgiveness should follow punishment. Does the mob ever offer that in earnest even for the slightest transgressions? Should every everybody be expected to handle every situation in a state perfect grace when on camera or off?

        P.S. Forgive me; my writing sucks; English is my first language.

Comments are closed.