Sheridan: Con-Law

TREVELYAN ON TORTURE IN ENGLAND

Yet, until the Code Napoleon was received on the Continent, it is possible that English justice, bad as it was, may have been the best in the world, as Blackstone boasted. 

It had at least two advantages over the European codes of the ancien regime. 

It gave the prisoner in political cases a real chance to defend himself against the government, an improvement made by the treason law of 1695, and by the general tendency of political and judicial practice since the Revolution [English, 1688, presumably].

And in no cases, political or other, was torture permitted to extort evidence or confession.

But it cannot be said that English justice eschewed torture as a means of punishment, for although breaking on the wheel was unknown in our island, the floggings, particularly in the army and navy, often amounted to torture.

    -Trevelyan, George Macauley,  English Social History, Longmans, London, 1944, 1978, p. 305, in the the chapter entitled Dr. Johnson's England I, circa 1780. 

William Blackstone wrote his Commentaries on the Laws of England in 1765. 

In four volumes, these became the bible of American colonial lawyers as they were portable in saddlebags as they traveled from town to town to appear in court by horseback, as I was informed by a professor of mine four decades ago.  He wasn't there either but he seemed to know whereof he spoke.

HAIR DRYERS

"Hello, God?"

"George W here.  Howyadoin' this morning?

Wonderful! 

Here, let me move this power cord so's I don't trip on it while we're talkin.'

I was wondering what your position was on torture in order to protect America.  You're okay with it right...? 

Excellent, so glad to hear you're on board. 

Gott mit uns, we always like to say that. 

Why don't I let you get back to your tsunamis and stuff. 

I'll be in touch.

You don't mind if I tell the folks about our little chat, do ya?

Thanks a bunch!"

"The President of the United States has claimed, on more than one occasion, to be in dialogue with God.  If he said that he was talking to God through his hairdryer, this would precipitate a national emergency.  I fail to see how the addition of a hairdryer makes the claim any more ludicrous or offensive."

                                                                                                        -Sam Harris.

I'm not yet familiar with Mr. Harris, but I plan on reading his book, "Letter to a Christian Nation" (Knopf, 2006). Knopf bills it as "The courageous new book that arms all rational Americans with powerful arguments against their opponents on the Christian right."  Right, we'll see.

From a full page ad, inside front cover, in the NYT Book Review, 9/17/06.

But why criticize Pres. Bush for doing what other presidents have done, also.

Do you know how we acquired the Philippines?

God gave them to us.

God, President William McKinley (assassinated; Theodore Roosevelt, regarded as a 'madman' by Mark Hanna, was his vice-president and successor) and Admiral George Dewey, the Hero of Manila Bay, whose monument stands in the center of Union Square in San Francisco.  My wife, Marie, was born in Manila, and arrived in California as an infant aboard an American rescue vessel after World War II freed the Philipines from the Japanese occupiers.  The U.S. relinquished the Philippines to independence in 1946, retaining the naval base at Subic Bay and Clark Air Base.

The book on U.S.- Philippine relations is "In Our Image," by Stanley Karnow.  I apeared before his son, Curtis, in the San Francisco Superior Court (Limited Jurisdiction) (the new name for the former San Francisco Municipal court before consolidation a few years ago).  I hope he's as clever as his father, whom I admire.  What I most admire in his reporting of history is his awareness of the lack of understanding key players had of what their adversaries understood.  Both sides typically suffered from substantial misunderstandings regarding the intentions and capabilities of the other side.  Karnow, pere, sets these forth when he becomes aware of them.  It's refreshing.

McKinley explained that when Dewey destroyed the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay in 1898, the Philippines became ours for the taking, if we wanted it.  We didn't want the Philippines, but took them anyway.  Why?  God blew in McKinley's ear.  McKinley explained it, quite clearly.  See the report, below.

THEY RISE TO THE TOP

Sometimes you hear something so good that you don't want to forget it, for it may come in handy some day.

These may be called 'audibles,' a coinage of comic sportswriter Dan Jenkins, after the name given for changes-in-the-play-called where the quarterback, lining up for the snap from center, sizes up the opposing team's defense and decides he needs to change the play he called in the huddle.  So he calls out an audible so that his teammates know what to do now that something has changed, like the next play.

This usage has carried over to other areas, male-female relations, for example.

She:  My place or yours?

He:  Well, if you want to fight about it, why don't we call the whole thing off?

An investigator friend and I were having coffee today at the Caffe Roma, across from the Hall of Injustice in San Francisco, where he told me the tale of an arrest where police undercover agents on stake-out see a car circle the block five times in the wee hours. When the car is stopped, two rocks of cocaine are found in the sleeping passenger's pants pocket.  The cops write up the report claiming the rocks were found not in the pocket but on the car console, in plain view, thus roping in all occupants as joint possessors.  The investigator's client was an immigrant who couldn't afford a drug conviction.

After several years of pre-hearing fooling around, the case is called and four cops show up in court, subpoenaed by the district attorney to establish probable cause, a good search, where they found the dope, etc.

My friend the investigator shows up in court with an old woman from Vietnam, the manager of the apartment building, the one the police claimed gave permission to enter a tenant's apartment.   

One of the cops asks the P.I. who she is.   

She is the person in the police report from whom you said you obtained consent to search the apartment of the defendant where more drugs were found, replied the P.I.   

The cops looked at each other with some degree of muted surprise, apparently.  Then they called the DA to confer outside.  The DA then came in and moved to dismiss the case against everybody except the kid who had the cocaine in his pocket. They apparently realized that the game of consent-to-search was up when they saw the manager they'd never seen before.

My friend the P.I. was busy shaking his head over the wasted effort of the police in this instance and the need for a certain threshold level of basic honesty for the system to operate properly.

There's two things the system has trouble with:  (a) lying on the part of the justice system operatives, from the complaining witness (usually the victim) to the cop to the juror, not to mention anyone else, and (b) craziness on the part of anyone.

Everyone is presumed sane in the Hall of Injustice, including the attorneys, so you can see the flaw in this system right off the bat.

I have a friend who is a psychiatrist.  I ship the occasional client over to him in dire situations where the ordinary attorney-client ministrations threaten not to work.

But before I do, the client has to pass a test.

A person is put in the room with a bathtub full of water, I say, and given a teaspoon, a teacup, and a bucket and told to empty the tub.  How would you empty the tub, is the question.

Most clients will say that they would use the bucket, except that the really paranoid ones, fearing a trick question, will sometimes pick the teacup or tea spoon.

Then I send them, with confidence, over to the shrink, secure in the knowledge that he can help.

Why?

Because most people would simply pull the drain plug, but I haven't actually seen any polling data.

"John, " I tell the good doctor, "psychiatrists have all the advantages over lawyers.  You know going in that your clients are nuts while we lawyers have to figure it out each time anew, and we're not as well trained."

All of which leads up to the private investigator's take on his experience with the creative-writing cops:

"Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large organizations."

And that, friends, is the audible of the day.