of Crime and Punishment

"Do you think the sentence is fair?"

"Are you satisfied with the outcome?"

"Do you feel justice has been served?"

These are the genius questions local media, in their penetrating thoroughness, have asked me since the sentencing of  Pop's killers. The questions are senseless. They have no meaning. A frustrating example of how little the media attempts to understand the victims and are looking for their sound bites. They wanted me to say how angry I was or how the DA chickened out. But the truth is, anger has no utility and the assistant DA worked his ass off. He thought he still had a case even to the day the deal was made. His boss, however, saw differently and I happened to agree.

Fairness is not a concept that can be applied in this matter. There is nothing our family can receive that would compensate our loss. What then is fair for the defendants? They killed someone, so should they lose their lives? I hardly think they would find that fair. Neither would it comfort us. So fairness is off the table.

Of satisfaction there can be none. The perpetrators were as young as fifteen at the time of the crime. To put a child in prison for life is not satisfaction. The charges against the accused are brought by the people, not the victims, so the law isn't designed to satisfy the victim of a violent crime.

That leaves us with justice. What justice is now comes down to a number, the years spent in prison. For losing Pop, there is no appreciable number. No number can satisfy the pain with which my family still struggles. The number, as it turns out is 11, each. Eleven years, mandatory serving a minimum of 85% of that time with good behavior. To view that number as a function of the value of my dad's life is to approach the sentence wrongly. First, it is the maximum that can be given for the charge of voluntary manslaughter. The media says the defendants, "avoided murder charges," but in actuality they admitted to acting stupidly and viciously and quite unintentionally took a man's life. That appears to have been the case. And in that sense they have gotten what they deserved.

I am not satisfied with the sentences nor do I think them fair, but only for the reasons I've so far discussed. I have called the sentence a gift. Eleven years may not seem like a long time in prison for having killed someone, but it is plenty of time to turn around their lives. The tragedy, the true injustice, would be for them to leave prison older, yet no wiser. To go home and continue their aimless lives, without goals or rules. To drink themselves out of sense and good judgment and one day act stupidly again, destroying another family. Eleven years gives them the time to get an education, find God, write a novel....

One reporter remarked at how I could be so generous. It isn't generosity so much as hope that wishes this ordeal to be a life changing experience for them. The cynical me is aware that the odds say they won't come out any different. But why should I be led by the cynical me? I do not forgive them, but I can't remain angry and vindictive. It is exhausting to wish ill on someone and a bad example to set for one's own children.

My goal throughout this whole ordeal has been to represent my family with grace and understanding. To be grateful for the hard work of the detectives and attorneys who worked to resolve this matter. I am grateful for it. I have been more than impressed with the professionalism and tact that most of them have displayed. At the sentencing, however, two attorneys attempted a maneuver that I found tactless. They asked the judge to amend the ruling in a way that minimizes their clients' participation. It was a maneuver so devoid of empathy that another attorney later contacted me to say that he too was disappointed in their behavior.

The outcry of righteous anger is appreciated. It is, however, the natural result of two deficiencies: information about the particulars of this case and an understanding of terms like 'malice' and 'malice aforethought,' which taken at face value can seem straightforward, but are malleable enough in the hands of a jury. The case was filed under penal code 187, but would never have gone to trial as such. Being present at the preliminary hearings showed me just how difficult the witnesses, what few they were and what little they saw (or said they saw) was going to be. It was enough to convince me that a jury could monumentally undo the ADA's hard work. Instead of five people sitting in prison, some of them may have gone home to their normal lives before summer. That would have been unacceptable.

The Case for Maryjane

On November 2, Californians have an opportunity to challenge the 73 year old federal prohibition on marijuana. Proposition 19 is a ballot initiative that will allow California residents, over the age of 21, to cultivate and consume marijuana. It makes specific provisions for personal transport (up to one ounce) and personal growing (up to 25 sq. ft.) as well as allows municipalities to create tax policy and licensure rules for commercial cultivation and consumption. While the Department of Justice has promised to continue enforcing existing drug laws, while state and local officials echo the federal support of the ban, and while Mexican officials are unconvinced of its effect on drug cartel violence, Prop 19 must be passed if California and the nation are ever to progress towards a sensible drug policy.

It is a straw man to argue that legalizing marijuana will not reduce cartel violence in Mexico and along its border with California. Of course it wouldn’t, at least not in any significant way. According to the law’s authors, violence and illegal activities surrounding growth and distribution are due to its legal status. Establishing regulated sales outlets would, it is reasoned, put the street dealers out of business. While there is credence to this logic, the fact is putting the bad guy out of business is neither necessary nor sufficient to passing Prop. 19. Certainly patrons would much prefer to engage in the legal purchase of legal substances. On the other hand there are still illicit transactions regarding prescription drugs, cigarettes and alcohol. Laws are broken regardless of the level of control of the substance because not everyone who uses a drug has permission to do so .

In essence, reducing crime is not the principal argument in favor of legalizing marijuana. By which I mean that illegal activities and violence along the Mexican border (or in Mexico) may or may not go away. What will go down is the number of people made criminals by engaging in otherwise innocuous behavior. To attack consumers of the product with the same fervor as those who cultivate and distribute it is, and always has been, misguided. A college senior who is experimenting for the first time is very different from a hardened cartel criminal. As Prop. 19 stipulates that international marijuana trade remains illegal, millions of dollars spent on consumption enforcement can be at least transferred to trafficking enforcement, at best saved altogether.

Some crime will be reduced, by definition, while violent crime and illegal trafficking may or may not budge. That is the honesty pill we supporters must swallow. The honesty pill that opponents must swallow is that legalizing marijuana may not effect consumption rates as dramatically as they’ve let on, or at all. Marijuana is the most used drug in the U.S. By percentage of population, it is used more in America than in Holland where it is legal and where studies have shown that even modest changes from strict prohibition have no effect on consumption rates. Strict laws do not entail strict obedience. The net effect of the Prohibition Era was that purveyors of illegal alcohol became millionaires; millionaires who paid no taxes on their illegal earnings. Why would anyone pay $3 for a glass of whiskey (at a time when a glass cost twenty cents)? Because no one else around had any whiskey to sell him. And dammit if he was going to give it up! A further result of Prohibition was a terrible decline in quality and safety of the illegal whiskey. Once imported, from Canada say, whiskey was thinned and cut with chemicals to stretch profits, $10,000 worth of Canadian whiskey would be stretched and marked up to $60,000 or much, much more. The same is true, the markup anyway, with marijuana. One kilogram is worth about $80 wholesale, the street value is upwards of $7,000. What legal, regulated good or service can boast an 8,650% retail markup? None, and neither would marijuana once the illicit factor is removed. While pricing itself may or may not go down, we can be assured that at least some of the marijuana revenue will benefit California and not just criminals.

The compelling reasons to legalize marijuana come down to these considerations. First, decriminalization of behavior that is consistent with, yet statistically less harmful and far and away less addictive than alcohol consumption. Second, it takes dollars out of the hands of criminals, if not forcing them into legitimate enterprise or at the very least providing them with legitimate competition. Finally, two words: tax; revenue. In a state as cash strapped as California, we cannot afford to sneer at any potential revenue source when it is nearly impossible to create new tax revenue. All opposition to Prop 19 has been rooted in moralistic, dystopian conjecture; the kind carted out every time the conservative status quo is challenged. It has been funded by special interest. What possible gain can the U.S. Chamber of Commerce expect from continued prohibition? Politicians are trying to protect their jobs. Prohibition of marijuana has not worked. There is no clear path to make prohibition work.

California needs to end the prohibition of recreational marijuana use and lead the country toward a sensible drug policy. Step one is Prop. 19. Next is a review of municipal licensing and tax revenues, leading to further policies to enhance revenues or protect entrepreneurs. No doubt the federal government would focus its attention on medical dispensaries and recreational clubs or weed bars, as the feds are likely not going to waste their resources on a guy growing a couple plants in his back yard. Then the real challenge begins. California must refine it drug policies to provide protections from the government. Other states will begin to pass similar laws. Court cases will be brought against Prop. 19, but cases will also be brought against existing federal laws at the same time. That is the process in this country. That is how we go from moralistic, unreasonable  prohibition to a drug policy that makes sense.

Share

What "Dr." Laura Did

As my Facebook friends know, I was... less than pleased to hear the following comments made by Dr. Laura Schlessinger on her radio show: 



Even more disconcerting, however, was her "apology" in which she made no attempt to walk back her blatant racism. I hope that I don't have to use scare quotes any more in this post, but I digress. Schlessinger apologized for saying an offensive word eleven times during an on air phone call. To be totally fair, it was the word itself that drew much of the criticism. But the focus on the N-word from the caller, the media and Schlessinger herself drew away from what to me seemed much, much more offensive.

Without going into the etymology and societal mores surrounding the history and use of the word 'nigger,' we can agree that it was at least insensitive, if not wrong for Schlessinger to use it eleven times during her conversation with an African American caller. The apology was justified, at the very least for her crassness but also because she did not offer any solutions to a person asking for her help. That said, she was right in the sense that she wasn't calling anyone a nigger, rather she was making a dubious point about who can and who can't use this particular word.

Hers was a tired, hackneyed complaint about moral equivalence. If a white person can't say, 'nigger,' why is it that a black person can? The answer has more to do with the nature of language and conversational convention than rights and equality. There is context and intention, understanding and uptake and so many factors that have absolutely nothing at all to do with racial worth. But as I've said before her focus, and the media's focus, on this word is at most ignorance.

At 3:48 Schlessinger says, "Don't take things out of context. Don't NAACP me." And that was the real beginning of her racist rant. About the only piece of advice she has for the caller is to not marry outside her race if she can't have a sense of humor. She goes on to say:

I really thought that once we had a black president, the attempt to demonize whites hating blacks would stop. But it seems to have grown, and I don't get it. Yes, I do. It's all about power.

Here Schlessinger is correct. It is all about power. It is about her disdain for African Americans declaring power over a derogatory word. The world makes better sense for her when only White people say 'nigger' pejoratively. There is something out of whack when a comedian uses it with humor or friends use it amicably. It's about the Grand Concession of electing a black president. With Obama in the White House racism, or at least sensitivity to racism, is over, right?

Schlessinger's entire attitude is one that embraces the marginalization of African Americans. Because she doesn't specifically hate or express superiority doesn't absolve her from her bigotry. She wholeheartedly accepts that Whites are "us" and Blacks are "them" and We Whites are put upon because Them Blacks are so dang sensitive. Them Blacks are always taking things out of context. Them Blacks are the real racists nowadays. No, no and no. Race relations is very much a hot button issue still in America. We should still be talking about our racist history and legacy. That conversation, however, has to be rooted in wisdom with the goals of healing and harmony. Schlessinger, with her marginalizing commentary, does not deserve to be the one to lead this conversation. She has a lot more to learn from it than contribute to it.