Crime

After all the punditry last week about the legality and morality of Roman Polanski’s extradition, two recently publicized items are relevant.

1.    Those who demean the crime Polanski was charged with — “the so-called” crime, as one film producer called it — should read the extracts of the grand jury testimony of the victim. It is available on the Internet, here, here and here.

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I never agree with Bob Herbert, the New York Times columnist. But on this one, he may have a point. He wrote a column today about the plight of Cameron Todd Willingham, a Texan who was put to death for the crime of starting a fire in his own home, a fire that killed his three small children.

He was charged with murder, and refused to take a plea deal because he insisted that he was innocent. It turned out that he was right and the folks who had him executed him were wrong. Later evidence proved to exonerate him, but that exoneration did little good. He is still dead.

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It’s an Irish thing to work out differences over a beer.

When Officer Crowley told the president, “Let’s talk about it over a beer,” he was inviting Mr. Obama and Mr. Gates into a longstanding Irish tradition of fostering better relationships over some libations.

The Irish are friendlier when they have a couple of beers in them. It loosens them up a bit and gives them a chance to relax their inhibitions.

Drinking at the local pub is, of course, an Irish tradition stretching back generations. Back in the old country, it was at the local pub where information was shared, music was played, stories told, politics discussed. Read more...

If you want an interesting take on the Professor Gates hullabaloo, read Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson’s piece this week. In it, he argues that Cambridge, Mass., locals should be used to interacting with proud macaronis like Harvard professors because, well, they’re smart and doggone it, they know it. But I don’t buy that “Big Cheese” line of reasoning. Just because Ivy League professors teach students to question authority doesn’t mean they now have license to flaunt it.

Robinson then ignorantly presumes to place himself on the doorstep of Gates’s home that evening. He opines, “Apparently, there was something about the power relationship involved — uppity, jet-setting black professor vs. regular-guy, working-class white cop — that Crowley couldn't abide. Judging by the overheated commentary that followed, that same something, whatever it might be, also makes conservatives forget that they believe in individual rights and oppose intrusive state power.” Read more...

This piece is also published in The Washington Times.

President Obama did the right thing and some quick damage control when he went himself to the White House press room Friday to admit that he had inadvertently "ratcheted up" the issue of the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. He had fueled the controversy when, Wednesday night, he stated that the "Cambridge police had acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home." Read more...

Just when most Americans were beginning to feel that we had reached a significant milestone in our racial history, we must confront the story of the professor, the police officer and the president of the United States.

That’s right, Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. and President Barack Obama thought it appropriate to insult and mischaracterize an entire profession after Cambridge, Mass., police responded to a burglary at the professor’s home. Read more...

The first step toward tolerance is respect and the first step toward respect is knowledge.
— Henry Louis Gates Jr.

Respect is a two-way street.

What happened in Cambridge is regrettable, but it is also a teaching moment.

Harvard Professor Henry Gates prefers to teach an old lesson: that racism is alive and well in America. But teaching that old lesson doesn’t necessarily move us forward. Read more...

I tried a class action lawsuit against the District of Columbia Jail years ago, questioning (successfully) whether the conditions of overcrowding and isolation of prisoners constituted cruel and unusual punishment. Experts — John Calhoun of NIH; Robert Ardrey, author of The Territorial Imperative; psychiatrists Karl Menninger and Hans Esser; an architect and others — visited the jail and testified in the federal court that conditions at the jail were likely to cause aggression, suicide and rape. They could have been describing conditions at most prisons and jails in America, then and now.

So it comes as no surprise that Congress’s National Prison Rape Elimination Commission reported last week that over 60,000 prisoners reported they were sexually assaulted in 2007, a likely lower figure than the actual one since these horrible events are underreported for fear of reprisals and embarrassment, and often involved repeated acts of violence. The victims include women, young offenders, people in jail (not convicted but awaiting trial), and in community programs. The perpetrators are predatory fellow prisoners and exploitative correctional officers. Youngsters (under 16) and women are victims more than adults and men, and the women are more likely to be abused by staff than peers. Even immigrants in detention facilities are abused, vulnerable as they are by the remote and exploitative conditions of their detention. Read more...

In case you've missed it: Earlier this year, President Obama told the CBS “60 Minutes” program and the American people that he didn't believe terrorists were entitled to Miranda rights. We've all seen and heard these rights being read on television, but I'll put them here for handy reference:

You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, an attorney will be appointed for you.

Prior to interrogating a suspect in police custody, officers must read words similar to those above and the suspect must acknowledge the waiver of such rights if an interrogation is to commence to satisfy Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination. Read more...