Category Archives: Crime and Punishment

At least we don’t have to worry about Sanford doing things the CHICAGO way…

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Illinois_governor_wart

After more than three decades in this business, you can get sort of jaded. You hear that the governor of Illinois is arrested and charged with trying to sell Barack Obama’s Senate seat, and you think, here we go again. What’s new in the world? Hey, I’ve seen gubernatorial corruption. I was there in Nashville in January 2009 when they swore in Lamar Alexander several days early because Gov. Ray Blanton was expected to turn a bunch of prisoners loose in his last days in office.

And hey, this is Illinois we’re talking about, so what do you expect? They’re doing politics the Chicago way.

But then I saw that, among the nefarious things this Blagojevich was about to do is blackmail the troubled Chicago Tribune into firing the entire editorial board as the price of getting state aid. At that point I thought, now he’s gone to meddling! I mean, there oughta be a law, right? Fortunately, there is…

I’m still not sure exactly what happened. The NYT said:

The authorities also say Mr. Blagojevich threatened to withhold state assistance from the Tribune Company,
the publisher of the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times, which filed
for bankruptcy on Monday. According to the authorities, Mr. Blagojevich
wanted members of the Tribune’s editorial board, who had criticized
him, to be fired before he extended any state assistance.

What state aid, I wondered? Here I was thinking that my industry was the only one taking its lumps without asking for any government handouts. The WSJ described the plot differently:

Another incident that came from intercepted conversations involved
the Chicago Tribune.  The governor wasn’t pleased with the Tribune’s
coverage of him and its editorial content. According to the government,
the governor threatened to stall the sale of Wrigley Field if the
newspaper failed to fire certain members of the editorial board. Both
the newspaper and Wrigley Field are owned by Tribune Co.

According to Mr. Fitzgerald, the person who was targeted to be fired
is still at the newspaper. He wouldn’t offer specific names.

In a statement, Tribune said the actions of its executives and
advisers working on the Wrigley Field sale "have been appropriate at
all times." The company also said, "No one working for the company or
on its behalf has ever attempted to influence staffing decisions at the
Chicago Tribune or any aspect of the newspaper’s editorial coverage as
a result of conversations with officials in the governor’s
administration."

Apparently, the gov was upset about editorials such as these:

Hey, isn’t that the way a newspaper is supposed to write about its governor?

Anyway, we’ve got nothing to worry about. Aside from the fact that our governor is NOT a crook — and remember, you read it here — our governor doesn’t believe in the gummint getting involved with bailouts anyway, so what kind of leverage could he have if he DID go bad…

By the way, the photo above is of the Illinois gov arriving at da scene of da crime — Tribune Tower — on Monday. In the perp-drive photo below, that’s his (allegedly) naughty face peeping out from behind the cop’s headrest at extreme left.

Blagojevich_corruptio_wart_4

 

Thomas Smith and the pirates

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Among my e-mails today was one calling my attention to an interview (by someone I’m not familiar with, if you’ll forgive the dangling preposition) with Columbia’s Thomas Smith about the pirates. A sample:

TUSR: Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he was stunned
by the pirates’ reach. I was taken aback by Mullen’s surprise—the reach
has been well-documented in all manner of media, even a lengthy feature
in National Geographic this year that somewhat romanticized the
pirates. So why is an admiral stunned?
SMITH: Admiral
Mullen was ‘stunned’ by the pirate attack taking place so far from the
coast, about 450 miles offshore. The attack in fact was a bit
surprising. It was bold, very risky for the attackers, and much farther
out into the so-called ‘blue water’ than previous attacks we’ve seen by
similar bands in recent history.

Now, I’ve since seen a few
bloggers and others criticizing the admiral for his remarks –
suggesting that no true fighting admiral would say such – and perhaps
‘stunned’ was a less-than-stellar word choice. But the admiral is a
professional Naval officer, not a politician. And so I say, it’s easy
for those who have never been to war or to sea—and have no frame of
reference for an appreciation of just how vast and unforgiving the sea
can be—to criticize.

And as long as I’m on the subject, there was a nice piece in the WSJ Saturday drawing some parallels to the Barbary Pirates. I sort of knew the outline of all of that, being a history major who sorta kinda concentrated on that period, but I learned at least one interesting fact from the piece I don’t remember having known before:

By the 1790s, the U.S. was depositing an astonishing 20% of its federal income into North African coffers…

We finally decided maybe it would be better to build a Navy, and deal with the problem. Trying to buy off the pirates just encouraged piracy — which sort of stands to reason, if you think about it.

Anyway, the piece further encouraged a notion I’ve been kicking around, which might turn into a column: The idea that the Somali pirates actually pose an opportunity to President Obama once he’s in office. It’s a chance to show the willingness to use force in the defense of international peace and security, with a ready-made multinational coalition to dramatically demonstrate his unBushness:

Of course, the world is a vastly more complicated place than it was two
centuries ago and America’s role in it, once peripheral, is now
preeminent. Still, in the post-9/11 period, America would be
ill-advised to act unilaterally against the pirates. The good news is:
It does not have to. In contrast to the refusal to unite with America
during the Barbary Wars, or more recently the Iraq War, the European
states today share America’s interest in restoring peace to the seas.
Moreover, they have expressed a willingness to cooperate with American
military measures against the Somali bandits. Unlike Washington and
Jefferson, George W. Bush and Barack Obama need not stand alone.

Ozmint wants to let prisoners go — what else can he do?

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This just in from the AP:

{BC-SC—State Budget-Prisons,0113}
{SC prison chief preps inmate-release plans}
{Eds: APNewsNow. Will be updated.}
   COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — South Carolina’s prison chief says he has a plan to release inmates early because of a budget shortfall.
   Prison agency director Jon Ozmint told the state’s financial oversight board Thursday he’s prepared to submit an early release plan to the Legislature to ease a deficit of more than $14 million. Earlier this year, legislators rejected Ozmint’s proposal to cut time off the end of sentences.
   The Budget and Control Board is monitoring Ozmint’s shortfall. Gov. Mark Sanford heads the board and says he’s not ready to endorse that kind of plan. He says people committing crimes should know sentences will be carried out.

That’s a short item, but it raises several points:

  • The governor is not the "head" of the Budget and Control Board, in the sense of controlling anything. He’s one of five votes.
  • He IS, however, the boss of Jon Ozmint. Meaning that any plan Mr. Ozmint comes up with that doesn’t have his blessing seems unlikely to see the light of day. Of course, maybe some of those lawmakers who give Ozmint such short shrift because he’s Sanford’s man will actually pay attention if they think it would irk the governor. But the smart money would be on lawmakers doing what they always do — continue to shamefully neglect Corrections, when they’re not pointlessly persecuting it.
  • Sanford picked Ozmint because he was a very conservative, small-gummint sort of Republican. So why would they disagree on this point? Because Mr. Ozmint has for several years had the responsibility, day after day, of actually trying to run the prisons and keep the prisoners inside them with a budget that has shrunk year after years. And faced with that reality, he knows he can’t keep doing it. Mark Sanford’s opinions regarding what it costs to run government properly are entirely theoretical, and immune to practical reality.
  • I recall Mr. Ozmint showing me a while back exactly how thin security was at the time — this many people per that many prisoners, THIS part of a perimeter covered but not THAT part. It was very alarming. And that was several budget cuts ago.
  • We’ve said this many times; perhaps someday the folks at the State House will listen: As much as we need to appropriate more for prisons, the REAL solution is to stop locking up so many people we don’t NEED to lock up — a category that covers most non-violent offenders.
  • Henry McMaster needs to back off on the "no-parole" stuff, and ramp up his efforts to push alternative sentencing.

My laptop was stolen last night

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Folks, this is awful timing, but you won’t be seeing as many blog posts from me as you normally would, on account of this:

Someone smashed the window out on my truck last night and stole the newpaper’s laptop, the one that is my primary work platform. I do all blogging, all e-mail, most working of photos and cartoons that I handle, plus all of the video and other stuff I do for the blog. All administrative files, such as evaluations and budget info, were on the laptop, plus all of the photos I had taken of candidates for this fall’s elections.

My truck was one of 10 broken into on my street.

That the computer was in my truck was just the worst possible luck. It’s probably been years since I’ve left it there overnight, and I only did it this time because on Monday I came to work without it, which put me way behind on the week, and with the confusion of election night and all, I wanted to make sure I remembered it this morning. Add to that the fact that I normally don’t take it home during the week, but only did so last night because it was election night and I was going to be working from home. I still can’t believe this.

Now I’ve got to run out and deal with the guy who came to replace the window in my truck; he’s here now.

Back to you later.

Now watch this: Lee will blame this on Obama.

Top Five courtroom dramas

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Got this e-mail yesterday from a local trial lawyer:

Mr. Warthen

Read with interest your brief comments about Ms. Brockovich’s appearance at our convention. Why not come listen to her before you judge? You might actually learn something.

By the way, Jonathan Harr, who wrote "A Civil Action," (the book is much, much better than the movie) spoke by invitation to a group of trial lawyers, hosted by former AAJ president Ken Suggs, a few years ago. Signed my copy of the book! And the lawyer who was portrayed (Jan Schlictmann) has been invited numerous times to speak to our group. Ask your daughter, Elizabeth — we trial lawyers have open minds!

First, I have a daughter who is a lawyer, but her name is not Elizabeth. I’m leaving this lawyer’s name off to protect him from my daughter.

I replied by saying I didn’t know I was "judging," I thought I was just riffing on the blog as usual. And sorry, but I really didn’t like the movie. I did mention another I liked — "Runaway Jury."

This brings us to the fact that we haven’t had a Top Five list in days. How about a Top Five Coutroom Dramas list? Here’s one to start the conversation with:

  1. "12 Angry Men" — Nothing else can touch this, of course. It’s to courtroom dramas what "High Noon" is to Westerns.
  2. "To Kill A Mockingbird" — Very close second, and even maybe a better movie — but only part of it happens in the courthouse.
  3. "A Few Good Men" — Does military justice count? I think so.
  4. "Witness for the Prosecution" — Just to get all snooty and throw in some foreign accents.
  5. "Primal Fear" —  Edward Norton’s breakout, and certainly scariest, performance. Richard Gere almost disqualifies this one, but Norton saves it.

Other candidates?

SLED’s antique helo

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Sometimes on the edit page, we get into a bit of a rut. There are so many ways in which our inadequate state government is underfunded that for simplicity’s sake we tend to fall back on certain standbys when we gripe about our Legislature’s failure to set priorities in budgeting. When we cite a litany of neglect, we usually fall on:

  • Mental Health — A favorite example is how the lack of state resources for the mentally ill unnecessarily overcrowd our jails and hospital emergency rooms.
  • Prisons — We keep locking up more and more people, and providing less and less resources even to guard, much less rehabilitate, them.
  • Highways — We let them crumble, and we don’t enforce speed limits or other laws.
  • Schools — Too many districts, no follow-through on the promise to do more in early childhood, the neglect of the most troubled and impoverished rural districts, etc.

And that’s a nice overview, as far as it goes. It’s fine for just a representation in passing of the overall problem. We refer to such examples when we’re complaining about everything from poorly considered tax cuts to spending on things the state doesn’t need to spend on.

But we could write about other examples as well, and probably should more often. I was reminded of this by new SLED Chief Reggie Lloyd when he spoke to the Columbia Rotary yesterday. He talked about how everywhere he’s been in either state or federal government, he always seemed to arrive just as the budget screws were being applied.

The wiretaps he spoke of, and which were cited in the brief in today’s paper, were related to this. SLED has the equipment and the authority to do wiretaps in drug and gang investigations. But the people haven’t been trained in how to do it, so the equipment has sat there (to the delight of libertarians, no doubt, but not to those of us who love Big Brother).

But my favorite anecdote was when he was talking about the department’s Huey. When I heard that, I thought maybe I heard wrong: They’re still flying a Huey? But that wasn’t the half of it. This particular Huey was salvaged from the rice paddy it once crashed into in Vietnam. Now, it’s being flown by pilots who weren’t yet born then. Not long ago, SLED did some sort of joint thing with some folks from the Coast Guard, and they all wanted to see the Huey. They had heard about it, but found it hard to believe.

Hamburgerhill

Another license plate, another bad idea

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Here we go again. I just got this release from S.C. DMV:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 21, 2008

GEORGIA TECH FOUNDATION LICENSE PLATE AVAILABLE
Blythewood, SC – The South Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles (SCDMV) announced today the availability of a new specialty license plate.
    The Georgia Tech Foundation license plate is now available in SCDMV offices across the state. The fee for the Georgia Tech Foundation license plate is $70 every two years in addition to the regular motor vehicle registration fee. The plate is available to the general public and has no special requirements for obtaining the plates.   
    A portion of the fees collected for the Georgia Tech Foundation plate will be used for scholarships to Georgia Tech for students from South Carolina.
     To view images of all the specialty license plates currently available, visit the SCDMV Web site at www.scdmvonline.com.
                    #####

We had another op-ed piece in today’s paper on the interminable debate over whether South Carolina should issue "I Believe" plates. I thought Kevin and Butch did pretty well with what their client gave themHumanists to work with. Gotta hand it to them, the "Secular Humanists of the Low Country" plate was a new one on me.

And it makes a certain kind of sense for the state to make "I Believe" plates if it’s going to make "In Reason We Trust" plates, and it should make those if it’s going to make, oh, I don’t know… "Surfrider Foundation" plates. (By the way, I am not making any of these up. You can look at all of them here.)

But as I’ve said before here, and as we’ve said editorially in the paper, we shouldn’t be making any of these specialty plates, especially not the ones that exist to raise money for some cause or other. I’m not going to repeat all the arguments. I set them out back here. But I will say this much again:

The purpose of a license plate is essentially a law enforcement one — they should be quickly identifiable as SC plates, which is a standard that all these special vanity plates blow out of the water.

With all these different plates already, how a cop is supposed to tell whether he’s looking at an SC plate or not at a glance is beyond me…

Mayor Bob defends his apartment security plan

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Coblebobnew

Mayor Bob came by the office this morning to try to sell us on his proposed ordinance to require security measures at apartment complexes. We talked for about 45 minutes. As you know, we have criticized the city in the past for trying to get the federal government to do the city’s job with regard to crime in poor North Columbia neighborhoods. Here’s what we said March 9:

THE STATE
POLICE OBLIGATED TO PROTECT ALL CITY NEIGHBORHOODS
Published on: 03/09/2008
Section: EDITORIAL
Edition: FINAL
Page: A22
IT MAKES GOOD sense for the owner of troubled Gable Oaks apartments to beef up security, but that doesn’t relieve Columbia police of their duty to adequately patrol and enforce the law at the omplex.
    City officials seem to believe it’s largely up to the owner of the apartment complex to provide what amounts to basic police protection.
    They say the onus is on Transom Development, a subsidiary of Atlanta-based SunTrust Banks, to ensure residents’ safety. Some council members want the federal government to require — and help pay for — security at apartment complexes, such as Gable Oaks, that accept federal housing vouchers. Last week, some S.C. House members got into they act by filing legislation that would offer income tax credits in exchange for providing security at low-income, multifamily housing complexes.
    Considering the fact that three people have been killed in or near Gable Oaks since December, it’s understandable that residents and city officials are very concerned. It’s perfectly appropriate for Transom to do all it can to provide extra security for its residents. And it should pay for that higher level of service. Transom plans to do just that; it has agreed to hire security guards and to issue residents parking decals.
    But make no mistake about it, the primary responsibility for protecting residents of Gable Oaks or any other part of the city lies with the city. Gable Oaks is in the city limits, and its tenants are city residents. City residents should be able to expect a certain level and quality of service from the police department.
    We can’t help but believe that if there was a spike in crime in Shandon or Wales Garden — no matter how minor — the city would aggressively patrol the area, get matters under control and pay more attention going forward. Gable Oaks deserves no less.
    But the tone and tack city officials have used when discussing Gable Oaks make it seem as if residents are on their own if the owner doesn’t provide maximum protection. That would be unfair and discriminatory.
    While Gable Oaks is in the spotlight, north Columbia residents have taken this opportunity to express concern that the city neglects their area of town. During a meeting last Monday night, about 50 residents complained of poor police presence, indifferent landlords and a City Council focused more on downtown than north Columbia. There’s no doubt that over the years, the city has paid inadequate attention to certain areas of town, and north Columbia is one of them.
    While city officials say the owner should police Gable Oaks, some acknowledge that tenants from the complex aren’t necessarily the troublemakers. Visitors and people passing through cause some of the problems. That means those people are passing through — or even coming from — other city neighborhoods. And it’s the city’s responsibility to police all its neighborhoods and ensure people’s safety.
    By all means, Gable Oaks’ owner should improve security. But city police shouldn’t take that as a sign they don’t have to be vigilant in policing the area.
    Ultimately, the quality of law enforcement residents in Gable Oaks, or other parts of Columbia, receive will be determined by how committed the city is to help make it safe.

Here are some of the main points that the mayor made to us this morning:

  • The federal government, since it provides subsidies for housing in these complexes, should require security just as it has architectural requirements.
  • The feds have refused twice to ge involved, but suggested the city would be within its rights to require lighting, fencing, private security guards and other measures by ordinance — if the rules applied to ALL apartment complexes in the city.
  • There is some chance the federal position might change with a new administration, but crime-beleaguered residents can’t wait for that.
  • Whatever the philosophical objections (such as our objection that if the crime were in Shandon, the police would deal with it), there is the very real problem of people being exposed to crime. The city has had real-life success stopping crime in Gable Oaks using the approach he is now proposing to apply to ALL apartments in the city, and there is no good reason not to implement something that works.
  • One difference between this and crime involving single-family residences is that an apartment complex is a large business being conducted within the city, and is thereby subject to regulation.
  • Requiring the complexes to provide security is no different from requiring USC to come up with off-duty cops to handle traffic for Williams-Brice Stadium events: If you’re running an enterprise that causes a problem, you deal with the problem.
  • It’s not appropriate for city police to stay in one such business 24 hours a day, at the neglect of nearby areas.
  • Private security guards can enforce rules that city police can’t — such as a complex’s own covenants or lease provisions.

Near as I can recall, those were his main points. Maybe I’ll post video from the interview on Saturday Extra this week. (In fact, I’m sure I will unless something better comes up.)

Oh, and by the way — the mayor shrugged off the friction between him and Kirkman Finlay III (below, from a previous edit board meeting) over the issue. When Warren kidded him that "I thought you were about to rip your tie off," from Adam Beam’s report this a.m. "No," said the mayor, "we were hugging and kissing by the time the day was over."

Finlaykirkman

Lawmaker to level charges at police chief

26 Replies

This release struck me as unusual when I got it, but I set it aside because I didn’t have time to blog about it. But when I receive a phone message from a someone making sure I had received the message and knew about the coming news conference, I decided to give y’all a heads-up on this:

SOUTH CAROLINA HOUSE DEMOCRATIC CAUCUS
Media advisory for June 16, 2008

REPRESENTATIVE TODD RUTHERFORD TO HOLD PRESS CONFERENCE IN RESPONSE TO THE CLUB LEVEL SHOOTING INCIDENT
    Rep. Todd Rutherford [D-Richland] will hold a press conference in room 305 of the Blatt building.   His remarks will highlight the Club Level shooting incident, and pinpoint precautionary measures that could have been taken by Columbia Police Chief Tandy P. Carter. 

WHO: Representative Todd Rutherford
WHEN:  Tomorrow (Tuesday, June 17, 2007) at 10:00 a.m.
WHERE: 1105 Pendleton Street, Blatt Building Room 305, Columbia, SC 29201

Kelly S. Adams
Director
SC House Democratic Caucus
P.O. Box 12049
Columbia, SC 29211

Maybe it’s not all that unusual for a state lawmaker to poke his nose into a municipal police matter. But to do so under the aegis of his party’s caucus is weird. To go to such lengths to call attention to it makes it sort of weird squared.

Wow. This police chief just got here, and he’s got this much heat coming down already?

Marking time at the State House

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By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
IN THE LAST 15 minutes of the 2008 session of the S.C. General Assembly, there were three things going on in the House chamber: The speaker and clerks and others up on the podium were fussing about finishing important paperwork of some sort. All of the other House members were wandering about on the floor, socializing, saying goodbye, slapping backs, shaking hands, sharing stories and so forth.
    All, that is, but two members, Reps. Chris Hart and Walt McLeod. Mr. Hart was at the lectern. Mr. McLeod was at his desk. Their microphoned voices rose indistinctly above the buzz of their milling, meandering colleagues. A sample of their vaudevillian dialogue:

Rep. McLEOD: Is it correct to say that, at the present time, our state prison system is operating at a deficit?
Rep. HART: That’s absolutely correct, and I’m glad you mentioned that, Mr. McLeod…

    They were discussing a two-part proposal made by Attorney General Henry McMaster earlier in the session. He had proposed to do away with what’s left of parole in our state prisons, while simultaneously creating a new “middle court” that would punish first-time, nonviolent wrongdoers in ways other than sending them to prison.
    What Messrs. McLeod and Hart were teaming up to say — between Mr. McLeod’s friendly, leading questions and Mr. Hart’s “thank you for that good question” answers — was that it would be crazy to do the former without first doing the latter. (Their language was more polite; I’m just cutting to the chase.)
    That’s because, as Mr. Hart explained, South Carolina already did away with parole for violent offenders long ago. And since then, we’ve been jamming more and more prisoners (violent and nonviolent) into our prisons, while cutting the budget of the Corrections Department year after year. We now spend less per prisoner than any other state in the union, while locking up more of our population than most. We lock up more prisoners with fewer guards, and make basically no effort to rehabilitate them. So our prisons are increasingly dangerous places — for the guards, for the prisoners and for those of us on the outside who depend on the worst criminals staying inside.
    Some of you will say, Oh, isn’t that just like a couple of liberal Democrats, prattling on about mollycoddling prisoners. If you say that, you’re not paying attention.
    One of Gov. Mark Sanford’s biggest gripes about the budget the Legislature just passed — and remember, this is Mark Sanford, the most fanatical enemy of “growing government” ever to enter the State House — was that it does not spend enough to run our prisons safely and responsibly.
    He is guided in this by his hyper-conservative director of Corrections, Jon Ozmint. (I once toured a prison with Mr. Ozmint, a former prosecutor. He kept striking up chats with the prisoners. He’d ask, “Who sent you here?” The prisoner would name a judge. Mr. Ozmint would say, “Oh, Judge So-and-So! He’s a really good judge! He’s really fair, isn’t he?” The prisoner would gape at Mr. Ozmint as though he were a Martian.) Mr. Ozmint, after years of refusing to complain on the record, wrote an op-ed piece this year to beg lawmakers not to abolish parole, suggesting that if they did, he and his shrunken staff would not be able to keep the lid on the pressure-cooker.
    Everybody who is familiar with these facts knows these things. Henry McMaster knows these things. So why did he propose something that flew in the face of the facts (abolishing parole), at the same time as proposing something that made perfect sense in light of the same facts (alternative sentencing for nonviolent offenders, to reserve prison space for the worst criminals)?
    Because he is a political realist. He knows the South Carolina General Assembly. “No parole” was the tooth-rotting sweetener to help the alternative-sentencing medicine go down.
    The good news here is that the Legislature didn’t abolish parole this year. The bad news is that it didn’t provide for alternative sentencing, either. What it did, in the end, was neglect the whole problem as usual, sending more people behind bars while we pay less and less to keep them there.
    It was the same approach lawmakers took to early-childhood education; our crumbling, unsafe roads; our emergency rooms crammed with mental patients; our struggling rural schools — leave it all to fester.
    What did lawmakers do this year besides throw up their hands over the lack of money, after having cut taxes by about a billion dollars over the last few sessions? Well, they passed an “immigration reform” bill that will accomplish two things: force businesses to do a lot of paperwork, and enable lawmakers to tell the voters in this election year that they had “done something” about illegal immigration. And boy did they spend a lot of time and energy on that.
    Back to Mr. Hart and Mr. McLeod. If the whole abolish parole/alternative sentencing thing was already dead for the year, why were they going on so earnestly? Well, they’re just that way; they’re very earnest guys. It was pointless, really — perhaps even a bit priggish of them. They knew they were just marking time and so did everybody else, so you can’t blame anybody for ignoring them. It was just political theater; they were actors in a play with a “what if?” plot, as in, “What if lawmakers realistically and intelligently engaged the actual challenges facing their state?”
    Only an easily distracted fool who didn’t have the slightest idea what was going on would have paid attention to them at all.

See the video of Hart and McLeod here.

Proving the innocent innocent, and the guilty guilty

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Joe McCulloch called me this morning to give us a heads-up on something. The House agreed on Thursday to recall a bill from committee that would allow people who are convicted of murder, rape and a handful of other violent crimes to have DNA testing done if they can convince a judge it would likely prove them innocent. The bill has passed the Senate, so there’s a chance it could become law this year, if the House approves it this coming week. Here’s the editorial we wrote about it earlier this month:

Post-conviction DNA testing
protects all of us

WHEN THE WRONG person is convicted of a crime, the only clear winner is the actual criminal – although police and prosecutors might appear to be winners, since they were able to score a conviction. The person wrongly convicted certainly doesn’t win, and in fact we do incomprehensibly grave harm to that person. Neither do the rest of us, who are less safe because the real criminal remains free to harm others.
    We don’t have reason to believe that a large number of people are wrongly convicted in South Carolina, but we do know that our laws are not adequate to right the wrong when it does occur. A bill passed last month by the Senate (S.429) would correct part of the problem, by adding our state to the 44 others that allow people convicted of murder, rape and a handful of other violent crimes to have DNA testing done if they can convince a judge it would likely prove them innocent.
    Under current law, there’s no mechanism for such testing; in most cases, judges can’t order DNA testing – or do anything about it if such testing is somehow done and demonstrates the convict’s innocence – unless the solicitor agrees to the request.
    That wouldn’t be a problem in an ideal world, because the job of prosecutors is to do justice, and so they would be just as anxious as anyone to make sure the wrong person isn’t in prison. The reality is different. Prosecutors are human and dislike admitting their mistakes; and besides, they grow cynical from hearing the inevitable claims of innocence from criminals who really aren’t innocent, so with rare exceptions, they fight tooth and nail against those claims.
    One of the main criticisms of laws to facilitate claims of innocence is that they would be abused by prisoners who, with all the time in the world on their hands, will pursue any avenue of appeal that’s opened to them. That’s always a risk, but the bill’s sponsor, Sen. Gerald Malloy, projects that no more than five to 10 requests would be made each year. That’s in part because the bill is a double-edged sword for prisoners who really are guilty: If the DNA testing confirms their guilt, they are subject to contempt of court, revocation of good-time credits and denial of parole requests. Perhaps more importantly, it requires that any new DNA samples be run through state and federal databases, to see whether the prisoner can be tied to unsolved crimes.
    Senators tried to address concerns about the cost by putting an annual limit of $150,000 on the amount of money the state would spend to provide DNA testing for prisoners who can’t afford it themselves. But that doesn’t address the larger potential cost, in increased demand on our already overburdened and underfunded courts. That cost is not a sufficient reason to reject the legislation – but it is reason to give the courts the resources they need to do their job. Another way to hold down the cost might be to eliminate the appeals procedure, and make the judge’s decision on whether to order testing final.
    There is certainly room for debate over precisely how such a program should operate – and we hope that the House will engage that debate before lawmakers adjourn for the year. But we have not heard any convincing arguments why our state should continue to bar the courthouse door to inmates with reasonable claims that a simple test can prove their innocence.

A way to prove the innocent innocent, and the guilty guilty. It’s hard to see why this wouldn’t pass in a heartbeat.

Guys at the Bada-Bing must LOVE S.C. lawmakers

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Pork_store

As part of my never-ending quest to be fair-minded and see the silver lining, I’ve managed to think of one group of citizens who will benefit from, and have reason to appreciate, the otherwise contemptible, ridiculous failure of the S.C. House to override Mark Sanford’s veto of the cigarette tax increase. They’re not citizens of S.C. (and come to think of it, Furio’s not even a citizen of this country), but let’s not get picky.

In case you haven’t done the math on this, the S.C. tax on cigarettes is 7 cents (yes, 7 cents) a pack. In New York City, it’s $4.25 a pack. Imagine the profit on a truckload of cartons, even if you don’t steal the truck. As if I-95 needed MORE traffic…

The Wall Street Journal recently explained the profitability to O.C. of the New York taxes. Of course, being the WSJ — the only publication in the world that actually believes Mark Sanford is a contender for John McCain’s running mate (and even then it’s just the ideologues on the editorial board) — was arguing that the N.Y. tax was a bad thing.

    While the problem first surfaced during the Great
Depression, tax hikes in the early 1960s created a major profit
opportunity for smugglers and kicked the epidemic into high gear. By
1967, a quarter of the cigarettes consumed in the Empire State were
bootlegged. New York City’s finance administrator labeled cigarette
smuggling the "principal stoking facility of the engine of organized
crime."

    Crime rapidly spread beyond New York’s borders, as
trucks carrying cigarettes across the country were hijacked and
businesses selling them robbed to supply New York’s black market. In
1972, the chairman of a New York commission told Congress that
retailers and other workers were "confronted almost daily with the risk
and dangers of personal violence which are now inherent in their
industry."

But from a South Carolina perspective, what that math says is that we could stop that traffic from coming out of our state — but only if we were willing to raise the tax by several times the lousy 50 cents we were talking about. But being South Carolina, and having our Legislature and our governor, we couldn’t even manage that, which is of course beneath pitiful.

I should add that the WSJ piece also dealt with the connection between cigarette smuggling and terrorism. But thanks to South Carolina, ordinary decent American criminals are in a position to keep competing with the foreign bad guys.

How I vote is none of New York’s business

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Keep meaning to tell you about this bit of propaganda that I enjoyed…

Some anti-union group sent out a release a week or two ago, with the headline "Johnny Sack in the Voting Booth?" and a link to the above video.

My reaction was, what business is it of New York’s how I vote? Maybe when Carmine was around, yeah (not little Carmine, but old Carmine), but not any more. Johnny Sack doesn’t command that kind of respect.

Now if Tony wants to know how I vote, OK, maybe…

Free Thomas Ravenel

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Ravenel2

Did I get your attention? I expect I did. Well, calm down. I’m not here to praise Thomas Ravenel, or defend him.

But I am here to raise the question: Why do we want to pay to feed, clothe and house him for the next 10 months?

This brings me to the larger question — one of the biggest facing the state of South Carolina, in fact: Why do we want to imprison nonviolent offenders? Sure, we may do it cheaper than any other state in the union, but even then it’s a huge waste of resources that could be better spent. And our cheapskate, insecure way of running prisons is going to bite us in the long run (actually, it already does, in terms of recidivism rates).

This is a recurring theme. Today, we raised the question on the local level — Columbia is finally having to own up to the fact that its penchant for locking people up for more offenses than the county does actually costs money.

Of course, T-Rav is neither state nor local, but we pay federal taxes, too. And it’s hard to imagine a better example of someone who could have paid another way. If you have a multi-millionaire partying on cocaine, why not give him a multi-million-dollar fine? As the sage Billy Ray Valentine said, "You know, it occurs to me that the best way you hurt rich people is by turning them into poor people." In other words, why isn’t he paying us, instead of the other way around?

That would make a lot more sense than sending him off to commune with Kevin Geddings in Georgia.

Here’s a free psych eval: It you’re planning to whack Jesus, you’ve got problems

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Yes, I know that’s an insensitive headline on a number of levels, but sometimes I lose patience with quiet, sober discussions of whether someone has psychological problems when the naked fact is staring us in the face. Take this kid who wanted to blow up his high school. An investigator says he has owned up to planning to kill Jesus. Specifically:

    Townsend testified Schallenberger told a Chesterfield County sheriff’s
detective that "once he got to heaven, he was gonna kill Jesus or
something like that."

We’re going to be paying money to determine whether this kid’s got mental problems?

Killing Jesus in heaven? That’s less likely than Sollozzo getting to Don Corleone when he’s in his bedroom inside the family mall on Long Island — not gonna happen.

Yeah, I know that we’re talking legal definitions of insanity, and that involves all sorts of "how-many-angels-on-the-head-of-a-pin" distinctions. But my point is that we know this kid is messed up, deeply and profoundly and tragically. And thank God his parents were alert enough to stop him. The problem, the thing that causes us to call in the experts, is that society still has trouble making up its mind about whether an insane person is culpable. In a sense, almost anybody who commits murder or plans to do so is in a psychologically abnormal state — either temporarily, through anger or fear, or permanently, such as in the case of a psychopathic personality. So we come up with all these rules and tripwires and technicalities, whereby it takes dueling experts and something akin to a coin toss to decide whether the person in question is legally insane according to the ultimately arbitrary rules that we’ve come up with.

The fact is, only God knows to what extent another human being is culpable — no matter how many tests or guidelines or whatever we set up. If we really think we know, we’re crazy. In the end, about all we can do is act to prevent crimes. Which, in this case, seems to have happened. Not that anybody is likely to pat himself on the back over it.

His poor parents…

Aunt Joy’s Cakes

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Here’s another excellent example of the places you can go when you combine an attention deficit problem with the magic of hypertext links.

I was reading the comments on this post, and decided to answer some points Peter brought up. In particular, I took issue with this assertion:

From the problems at Corrections, Health and Human Services, Commerce
and others, the blame ALWAYS stays at the agency and never seems to
rise to the governor….

In part, I said:

As for Corrections, please tell me what problems you think there are
that stem from the administrative side. The problem with Corrections is
deep, profound, fundamental, and lies with the Legislature. It is this:
That our lawmakers embrace locking people up when it is unnecessary,
and refuse to fund Corrections sufficiently to imprison that many
people effectively and safely, much less do anything in the way of
rehabilitation.

It’s an enormous waste of money to lock up nonviolent offenders,
people who pose no physical threat to the citizenry. In their own
perverse way, lawmakers agree with this equation. So they lock them up
anyway (because of some atavistic urge they have to do so), and just
don’t appropriate the money. The results are predictable.

Or were you suggesting there is something wrong with what Ozmint and
Sanford have done with the situation handed them? Personally, I don’t
see any failings on their parts that pose even a measurable fraction of
the systemic problem our laws create. (Ozmint’s greatest sin is
refusing to criticize the underlying situation more forcefully and on
the record, although he has recently begun to crawl out of that shell.) Here’s a column I wrote about that problem , back in 2005. Things have not changed since then…

There’s more, but I won’t bore you further, but will move on to the fun, ADD stuff.

Looking for links to support my assertions without having to go into even greater detail (yes, my comment was, unfortunately, much, much longer than that — as was Peter’s let me hasten to add), I ran across this old post.

I found myself rather frustrated in reading the comments on that one, because … well, for the usual reason that I get frustrated. I had simply noted that something Jon Ozmint had said was like something the Captain had said in "Cool Hand Luke." I thought that was cool in and of itself. For me the connection is the thing. It releases dopamine in my brain or whatever.

But to some of my correspondents, to whom everything has to be this big black-vs.-white argument, preferably of the ideological variety, my pointing that out was some kind of huge, bleeding-heart whine for the poor criminals or something. Such people ascribe to me an affinity for relevance that I don’t possess.

So, to prove to them that it WAS like what the Captain said (yes, we’re talking Strother Martin here), I went looking for the appropriate clip, and here it is. Now this next part is not my fault, because the YouTube page suggested it under "Related videos." It’s the scene in which the girl whom Dragline dubs "Lucille" washes the car. I had to go ahead and look at it for research purposes.

And then I got to wondering about the um, actress who portrayed "Lucille" with such compelling force. Turns out her name was "Joy Harmon," and she also portrayed a 30-foot-tall woman in "Village of the Giants," which is not to be confused with the 50-foot-woman Maureen Dowd recently referred to.

Now here’s the icing, as it were. Turns out that Wikipedia refers to Joy Patricia Harmon as "a baker and former American actress." It also says she wore a bikini in the famous "Cool Hand Luke" scene, which we know she did NOT do, but then everybody says Wikipedia gets things wrong. (Come on, safety pin — Pop!)

A baker?, you’re thinking. Exactly. So I had to read a little further, and I discovered that after she retired from washing cars and being abnormally tall, Ms. Harmon started a business in beautiful downtown Burbank, and it’s called "Aunt Joy’s Cakes." Really. She started the business because "The demand for her delicious treats became too great for her to do alone in her kitchen." (You hush now; Dragline doesn’t want you talking that way about his Lucille.)

So now you know. And now you see how pointless it is to argue against government restructuring.

A black, Jewish Texan walks into a police station…

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… and ends up cleaning up the whole town.

A reader sent me a link to this article that reminds us of the accomplishments of Reuben Greenberg, who had such a distinguished career as police chief in Charleston. As we mull over just how big a mess the Columbia police department is in these days, and view the latest Highway Patrol video, we might long for such a top cop:

Reuben Greenberg was undoubtedly the ultimate "man bites dog" story, for what could be more unlikely than a black, observant Jew from Texas transforming a city in the heart of the Confederacy from a crime-ridden center of corruption to a uniquely well-managed place that cracked down on crime at the same time it virtually eliminated police brutality — and even rudeness? Greenberg told his cops that their job was not to punish (that was up to the courts), but to make arrests, and in order to do that they had to be on good terms with the citizens. Thus, he said early on in his memorable tenure, he would defend a policeman for using "excessive force" to make an arrest, but he would fire anyone who used abusive language with a citizen.

Jimmy Breslin is a Moustache Pete

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This morning on NPR, Jimmy Breslin was talking about his new book, The Good Rat. It was, of course, an interview replete with his raspy assertions that he knew what the real mob was all about, and that stuff in the movies is a lot of hooey.

Yeah, I know Breslin knows more about the mob than I do, but as an enthusiast of mob flicks, I find his attitude kind of irritating. Sure I know "The Godfather" wasn’t for real — it was less about the Mafia and more a sort of grand American morality play centering around the questions of which is right and good: a society built on laws or one on personal relationships between men. Sure, I know that The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight was probably closer to the truth, but it’s a parody, and I suspect "Mean Streets" is even closer. And "Goodfellas" closer than that.

What about "The Sopranos?" the interviewer asked. He copped a plea: "I was working doing columns on… Sunday nights. I never saw it."

Never saw it? Come ahhhn! Who, in the 21st century, is dependent on watching something when the network (is HBO technically a network? maybe not) shows it? It’s better on DVD. I, who didn’t have HBO anyway, am currently in the middle of the fourth season. Somehow, you get the idea that Mr. Breslin is so Old School, he doesn’t own a DVD player, and still lives life in real time.

But I think he’d like it if he watched it. Don’t you?

Anyway, he did admit that DeNiro is really good at playing a wise guy, so that’s something.

How is crime in Columbia a federal responsibility?

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OK, I get it that there should be standards for federally subsidized housing. But "security?" In what sense? Today’s story seems to suggest that those looking to the federal government to require beefed-up security are thinking in terms of — I’m not sure, but it looks like this — landlords having to hire rent-a-cops, or turning subsidized housing developments into gated communities:

Columbia City Council members on Thursday will lobby the state’s
Congressional delegation to attach security requirements to laws
governing apartment complexes that accept federal housing vouchers…

I’ve got another idea. How about if city council members "lobby" their own city administration to enforce the law within the city limits? How about that? Note in this other story today that a lot of folks in that part of town feel like it’s not doing that. Doesn’t the city manager’s responsibility in this matter extend beyond declaring a portion of the city "a community in crisis?"

You would think so. An interesting topic to have in mind as we begin interviews with city council candidates today.

Top guys at Safety, Highway Patrol out

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Not much that I can say about this at the moment — it being late on my worst day of the week, and my not having seen the video yet — but I thought I’d let y’all know what happened today, so you can go ahead and comment if you’re so disposed and ready:

Racial slur video leads to shake-up at Highway Patrol
Heads of the S.C. Department of Public Safety, S.C.Highway Patrol step down
    Gov. Mark Sanford announced today the head of the state’s Department of Public Safety and the head of the state Highway Patrol have both stepped down after a video of a 2004 incident surfaced of a Highway Patrolman threatening a motorist and using a racial slur.
    Public Safety Director James Schweitzer, who was appointed by Sanford during his first term, had been seeking reappointment to his post. But that was held up by the Legislative Black Caucus, who had obtained a video of the incident and shared it with other lawmakers and Sanford.
    Caucus members said the videos, and other issues, were reasons lawmakers should question how Schweitzer ran the department and disciplined officers. Sanford met Thursday with Rep. Leon Howard, D-Richland, who is chairman of the Black Caucus, to discuss the video and problems within the DPS….