law
Jury duty: Me vs. the KGB chief
In the mid-1980s, I sat on a jury in a Beverly Hills court deciding the fate of actor Walter Gotell on a charge of drunk driving. The German-English actor is best known for his portrayal as a KGB chief in James Bond movies.
The actor admitted he had drunk liquor at a couple of bars, then visited a woman and, before leaving, had another drink, “one for the road,” he explained. He was pulled over for erratic driving, failed a breathalyzer test, could not walk in a straight line, and could not recite letters of the alphabet. At the end of deliberations, I was the only juror holding out for a guilty verdict.
As I recall, the jury was about evenly divided between Black and White members, who quickly chose a Black woman as the jury foreman. She wore a hat during the proceedings.
In the mid-1980s, I sat on a jury in a Beverly Hills court deciding the fate of actor Walter Gotell on a charge of drunk driving. The German-English actor is best known for his portrayal as a KGB chief in James Bond movies.
The actor admitted he had drunk liquor at a couple of bars, then visited a woman and, before leaving, had another drink, “one for the road,” he explained. He was pulled over for erratic driving, failed a breathalyzer test, could not walk in a straight line, and could not recite letters of the alphabet. At the end of deliberations, I was the only juror holding out for a guilty verdict.
As I recall, the jury was about evenly divided between Black and White members, who quickly chose a Black woman as the jury foreman. She wore a hat during the proceedings.
Walter Gotell
During the trial, the actor said he could not walk a straight line because he had suffered a stroke. He said his doctor said it was good for his health to have an occasional drink. He said that in the school he went to, they did not memorize the alphabet, so he could not recite the letters from memory. His attorney claimed the breathalyzer test could not be relied on because the device was overdue for an accuracy check.
In his testimony, Gotell said he had visited the woman to discuss becoming a godfather to her two sons, which to me seemed an account fabricated to win sympathy with single mothers on the jury.
During a break in the trial, a juror broke the rules by striking up a conversation with a prosecution witness. She was replaced with an alternate.
In his closing presentation to the jury, the prosecutor, a chunky Hispanic man, presented a picture concealed by twelve panels. He explained that removing each panel would be like revealing a new piece of evidence, which in the end, would show the whole picture of the evidence against Gotell. After he removed all the panels, the final picture showed an Alpine setting of a peasant woman holding a basket of cherries.
During deliberations, one juror said the actor was only arrested because police had to meet a quota.
After the defense attorney polled jurors to detect the outlier, the judge dismissed the charge against Gotell. The actor died in 1997.
Prisons are good for the environment
Prisons benefit the environment by severely restricting inmate consumption of resources and fossil fuels. Prisons are the exact opposite of the car-centered suburban sprawl of single-family homes that environmentalists criticize.
Incarceration may provide other environmental benefits. On the outside, criminals. like most people, rely too much on plastic packaging when buying food. Prisons are more likely to buy food in non-plastic bulk containers such as sacks of rice or potatoes or very large metal cans.
More can be done, of course. We could adjust prisoners to a vegetarian or semi-vegetarian diet that would reduce pollution related to livestock. To save the planet, we need to put more people in prison, not less.
Prisons benefit the environment by severely restricting inmate consumption of resources and fossil fuels. Prisons are the exact opposite of the car-centered suburban sprawl of single-family homes that environmentalists criticize.
Incarceration may provide other environmental benefits. On the outside, criminals. like most people, rely too much on plastic packaging when buying food. Prisons are more likely to buy food in non-plastic bulk containers such as sacks of rice or potatoes or very large metal cans.
More can be done, of course. We could adjust prisoners to a vegetarian or semi-vegetarian diet that would reduce pollution related to livestock. To save the planet, we need to put more people in prison, not less.
The remorse fallacy
A criminal’s display of remorse if often used by a judge in determining length of sentence or by a parole board in deciding if a felon will be released from prison. But are demonstrations of remorse a valid consideration for anything?
Does a display of remorse simply give an advantage to the sly, manipulative offender who can say what the judge wants to hear and a disadvantage to the stupid pigheaded criminal who can’t talk his way out of anything? Even a seemingly genuine display of remorse can be suspect. We know, for example, that many wife beaters will tell their spouse how sorry they are and promise never to repeat what they did, but then they continue the abuse.
As for considering parole, the best and most objective standards would seem to be good behavior in prison, “aging out” of reckless youthful behavior, useful vocational training, and social contacts and job prospects outside the prison.
“I am not aware of any studies that show that insight and remorse are correlated to recidivism,” says Heidi Rummel, the director of the Post-Conviction Justice Project at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law. (Source: “How to Get Out of Prison,” The New York Times Magazine, Jan. 5, 2020.)
A criminal’s display of remorse if often used by a judge in determining length of sentence or by a parole board in deciding if a felon will be released from prison. But are demonstrations of remorse a valid consideration for anything?
Does a display of remorse simply give an advantage to the sly, manipulative offender who can say what the judge wants to hear and a disadvantage to the stupid pigheaded criminal who can’t talk his way out of anything? Even a seemingly genuine display of remorse can be suspect. We know, for example, that many wife beaters will tell their spouse how sorry they are and promise never to repeat what they did, but then they continue the abuse.
As for considering parole, the best and most objective standards would seem to be good behavior in prison, “aging out” of reckless youthful behavior, useful vocational training, and social contacts and job prospects outside the prison.
“I am not aware of any studies that show that insight and remorse are correlated to recidivism,” says Heidi Rummel, the director of the Post-Conviction Justice Project at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law. (Source: “How to Get Out of Prison,” The New York Times Magazine, Jan. 5, 2020.)
Stop pretending the U.S. is a democracy
Most people understand that the electoral college is a farce, giving us two presidents in this century who took office despite losing the popular vote. In most places on the globe, that result would be seen as a seizure of power by a dictator.
But less widely understood is that, under our constitution, Congress is an even larger farce. The U.S. House of Representative can lay some claim to be a truly representative body if you discount the distortions of gerrymandering. But the Senate, where any legislation must also be approved, has no such pretense. Every state has the same power, regardless of population.
Thus, voters in Wyoming, the least populous state, with about 577,000 people, have the same political power as the voters in any of the more populous states. If you live in Texas or California, only the first 577,000 people have the same power as those in Wyoming; the rest have no effective representation. Just do the math. Multiply 577,000 by 50 to give you the population truly represented in the Senate: 28,850,000. The remaining 302,600,000 people (U.S. population of 331,450,000 minus 28,850,000) have no effective voice in the Senate. And since the Senate is the roadblock to legislation, no effective representation in the Senate equals no effective representation in Congress.
Now admittedly, sometimes legislation is passed because the interests of the smaller states and the larger states are the same. Or sometimes the senators from big states will bribe senators from little states with pork barrel projects to pass legislation. Or sometimes Congress will move on an issue because the alternative is revolution, such as with the Great Depression. But all in all, representation is a joke. And any claim that the U.S. is a democracy is also a joke.
Nor is the U.S. a genuine republic, as some conservatives will claim. Even in a republic, laws are made by representatives chosen by the people, not by a process that distorts and seriously limits such representation.
Most people understand that the electoral college is a farce, giving us two presidents in this century who took office despite losing the popular vote. In most places on the globe, that result would be seen as a seizure of power by a dictator.
But less widely understood is that, under our constitution, Congress is an even larger farce. The U.S. House of Representative can lay some claim to be a truly representative body if you discount the distortions of gerrymandering. But the Senate, where any legislation must also be approved, has no such pretense. Every state has the same power, regardless of population.
Thus, voters in Wyoming, the least populous state, with about 577,000 people, have the same political power as the voters in any of the more populous states. If you live in Texas or California, only the first 577,000 people have the same power as those in Wyoming; the rest have no effective representation. Just do the math. Multiply 577,000 by 50 to give you the population truly represented in the Senate: 28,850,000. The remaining 302,600,000 people (U.S. population of 331,450,000 minus 28,850,000) have no effective voice in the Senate. And since the Senate is the roadblock to legislation, no effective representation in the Senate equals no effective representation in Congress.
Now admittedly, sometimes legislation is passed because the interests of the smaller states and the larger states are the same. Or sometimes the senators from big states will bribe senators from little states with pork barrel projects to pass legislation. Or sometimes Congress will move on an issue because the alternative is revolution, such as with the Great Depression. But all in all, representation is a joke. And any claim that the U.S. is a democracy is also a joke.
Nor is the U.S. a genuine republic, as some conservatives will claim. Even in a republic, laws are made by representatives chosen by the people, not by a process that distorts and seriously limits such representation.
Images The inscription Equal Justice Under Law on frieze of U.S. Supreme Court building, Matt H. Wade, CC-BY-SA-3.0; Walter Gotell as General Anatol Gogol in The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), fair use