Crime

I haven’t written much about the Scruggses recently, but I would be remiss if I didn’t pass along this blurb from the Sun Herald:

Dickie Scruggs received the maximum 5 years in prison in $250,000 in fines for a crime Judge Neal D. Biggers Jr. called "reprehensible." […]

Biggers ordered Scruggs to report to prison at noon Aug. 4, saying he should be housed in a facility that offers mental health and drug treatment.

I’ll defer to Folo and David Rosmiller for continuing commentary on the subject.

You’ve probably already heard this, but just in case…quoting the New York Times:

The death penalty is unconstitutional as a punishment for the rape of a child, a sharply divided Supreme Court ruled Wednesday.[…]

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the majority, said there was “a distinction between intentional first-degree murder on the one hand and non-homicide crimes against individual persons,” even such “devastating” crimes as the rape of a child, on the other.

Hmmm….I wonder if spamming could be classified with treason as a crime against the state, which is also permitted to retain the death penalty under the ruling.

Seriously, I have issues with the death penalty on general principle, due to seeming inequities in its application, and due to the number of times that capital offense convictions have been overturned.  But, if  you are going to have a death penalty… I’m not sure that I agree that capital offenses require that the victim be a corpse.  If death is ever an appropriate punishment (and that’s a big “if”), the test of appropriateness should be heinousness.  There are some particularly vile crimes that don’t involve murder.

Justice Kennedy expressed concern that the criminal justice system would be bogged down if child-rape cases were capital offenses, or that family member victims/witnesses would be less likely to testify if the criminal was a family member and was up for the death penalty.   While those are valid concerns…isn’t that part of the reason why judges and district attorneys are given some latitude in prescribing sentences?

When I outlined the topics I wanted to cover in my “Centrist’s Platform” series of articles, “crime” was one of the topics on the list.

Unfortunately, when it came time to sit down and write this week’s post…I’ve been left wondering exactly what I was going to say…if I even had more than just a topic picked out.  That’s not a good thing, because there are so many sub-topics that could be touched upon….none of which seem to burn brightly in the sky of current events.

Consider the following:

• Earlier this year, headlines were blazing with the statistic that prison population had crept above 1% of the total population of the country — a higher rate than is seen in most other countries.  Is this a problem, or is it a statement about our culture?  How much of it is a testament to a lack of mental health and social services in certain communities, I wonder.
   
• The death penalty is usually a topic that can provoke heated debate.   Personally, I’m extremely uncomfortable with it. I think it’s entirely appropriate for perpetrators of certain heinous crimes to be completely excluded from the benefits from and support of society, which is something that can only really be achieved with banishment or execution.  I’d prefer banishment, but that isn’t practical in today’s world. 
   
  Also, certain apparent inequities in the awarding of the death sentence, leave me questioning whether justice is being applied equally to all.  Plus, if my tax dollars are going to be used to permanently remove someone from society, I want to be d*mn sure that the person really is guilty.
   
• Requiring judges to adhere to certain minimum sentencing requirements is something else I’m extremely uncomfortable with.  I can appreciate the need to foster some consistency, but real life is far more complex, filled with shades of grey, than any black-and-white legal text can attempt to prescribe for.  I’d prefer that judges have the authority to take into special circumstances, or even sometimes prescribe some form of creative, alternative sentence when the situation warrants.
   
• “Three strikes” laws and restrictions placed on where sexual offenders may live after they’ve served their sentence have a definite appeal to most Americans.  However, they always leave me wondering — if a person has paid his/her debt to society, shouldn’t they be treated the same as any other person?  Or, if a released convict is deemed “too risky” and therefore must have restrictions placed upon him/her after release — why the heck are they being released to begin with?

And the list could go on.

However, really, all that I want from a politician when it comes to crime is a sense of realism and fairness, rather than an inclination to pay lip service to the subject for political gain, without really thinking their stances through.

Seen in Insurance Journal:

The chairman of the Judiciary Committee in the Vermont House says he’d like lawmakers to consider lowering the threshold at which a driver is drunk behind the wheel from a blood-alcohol content of .08 percent to a lowest-in-the-nation .05.

Considering the volume of complaints when the threshold was dropped to 0.08% from the traditional mark of 0.10%, I’ve got to believe that there will be some pretty vocal opposition to any such move.

I have to admit that I have a certain bias on the subject, seeing as how the guy who hit my wife in her car accident six years ago had had a couple of drinks, but wasn’t legally over the limit.

Personally I’d like to see a multi-tiered approach taken to DUI laws, something like this:

• Let BAC at/above 0.08% be considered sufficient to deem a driver too impaired to drive safely.
   
• Let BAC of at least 0.05%, but less than 0.08% be considered evidence, but not proof, of being too impaired to drive safely. A citation for DUI would require other evidence of impairment, such as being at fault in a crash, or erratic driving behavior.
   
• For drivers of commercial vehicles, drivers under the legal drinking age, or drivers under restriction for prior offenses, adopt a no-tolerance limit of 0.02%, for hopefully obvious reasons.

Seen in the Sun Herald:

Attorneys for Dickie Scruggs are asking the state Supreme Court to dismiss a Mississippi Bar complaint that calls for his disbarment as the result of his guilty plea on one charge of conspiring to bribe a north Mississippi judge.

Scruggs’ attorneys argue that the formal complaint is premature because U.S. District Judge Neal B. Biggers Jr. has not yet accepted his plea. Scruggs is represented before the Supreme Court by Michael Martz, the Mississippi Bar’s former general counsel.

Dude, you’ve admitted to bribing a judge? Regardless of where you are in the process after an admission like that, you shouldn’t get to practice law!

One item that is making the rounds (judging by the number of places it appeared in my reading list) is this report at news.com on a new tactic being used by the feds to combat kiddie pr0n:

The FBI has recently adopted a novel investigative technique: posting hyperlinks that purport to be illegal videos of minors having sex, and then raiding the homes of anyone willing to click on them.

Undercover FBI agents used this hyperlink-enticement technique, which directed Internet users to a clandestine government server, to stage armed raids of homes in Pennsylvania, New York, and Nevada last year. The supposed video files actually were gibberish and contained no illegal images.

The story continues with a discussion of the details and legalities in one particular case, concluding:

Civil libertarians warn that anyone who clicks on a hyperlink advertising something illegal—perhaps found while Web browsing or received through e-mail—could face the same fate.

When asked what would stop the FBI from expanding its hyperlink sting operation, Harvey Silverglate, a longtime criminal defense lawyer in Cambridge, Mass. and author of a forthcoming book on the Justice Department, replied: “Because the courts have been so narrow in their definition of ‘entrapment,’ and so expansive in their definition of ‘probable cause,’ there is nothing to stop the Feds from acting as you posit.”

Although I tend to side with civil liberties folks when it comes to net-related issues, I have to admit that I personally don’t mind this tactic, especially when it comes to attempting to combat consumers of material such as this. If you’re caught actively seeking such illicit material….

However, where I do get to be somewhat uncomfortable is the ways in which such a tactic could be abused. For example, while it seems perfectly kosher to pursue folks who are actively seeking kiddie pr0n, I’d hope that there would be some care taken to not even raise suspicion about folks who accidentally click a link, either due to it’s placement near other, legitimate links (or the close button, when it comes to spam messages), or because the link was disguised as something innocuous.

Folo is passing along news as it comes in about Zach pleading guilty, and likely getting probation.

If I’m not mistaken, we might soon be done with this circus.

Well, this is the second most surprising thing I’ve encountered today. (It’s been a interesting day, in an Irish curse kind of way.) From the New York Times:

One of the best-known plaintiffs’ lawyers in the country, Richard Scruggs, unexpectedly agreed to plead guilty on Friday to a criminal charge of conspiracy in the attempted bribery of a judge.[...]

The single charge — five others were dismissed under the agreement — carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine, according to the agreement.

Dickie’s son, Zach, is still reported to be heading to trial.

I’ll defer to David Rossmiller, who (among others) has been providing a good running commentary of the circus.

However, I can’t resist once again sharing some artwork I posted earlier:

What has to be my favorite comment to reports of Spitzer’s misdeeds comes from the mother of John Cole at Balloon Juice:

Good Lord!

Good Lord!

He was obviously paying too much. What can you possibly do for $5,000 an hour? Surgery. Life-saving surgery performed on me is worth $5,000 an hour.

Good Lord

You know, health care issues are considered to be at the top of the priority list, based on public interest in politicians’ talking points. I’ve commented previously that the cost of care, inflated in part due to inefficiencies in the system, is where I believe the core of the problem is.

So, let’s say that we were to move to a government funded program and, by some miracle, got costs under control.

I can only speculate on how the politicians could use the excess funds to celebrate….

My goodness….what is it about these mighty foes of business being brought low by suspicions of bribery…or where those suspicions might lead?

From ABC’s Blotter:

The federal investigation of a New York prostitution ring was triggered by Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s suspicious money transfers, initially leading agents to believe Spitzer was hiding bribes, according to federal officials.

It was only months later that the IRS and the FBI determined that Spitzer wasn’t hiding bribes but payments to a company called QAT, what prosecutors say is a prostitution operation operating under the name of the Emperors Club.[...]

The suspicious financial activity was initially reported by a bank to the IRS which, under direction from the Justice Department, brought kin the FBI’s Public Corruption Squad.

“We had no interest at all in the prostitution ring until the thing with Spitzer led us to learn about it,” said one Justice Department official.

Of course, now that that’s cleared up, I’m sure that the financial faux pas is what the media will focus on, right?