In 2015, the family of Darryl Mount, Jr., filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the city of Saratoga Springs, NY, then Public Safety commissioner Christian Mathiesen and seven police officers, including the police chief, Gregory Veitch.
In August 2013 Mr. Mount was running from the police in downtown Saratoga Springs when police approached him after seeing him assault his girlfriend outside of a bar. He ended up at the bottom of a 19 foot scaffold with injuries that would prove to be fatal. He was taken to the hospital in a coma from which he never awoke.
Chief Veitch and Mr. Mathiesen denied there was any validity to the family's claims that the injuries had been inflicted by the police. In fact, Chief Veitch told the public that the department's own internal investigation concluded that there had been no police misconduct.
So far the tale is unremarkable. A black man dies in an encounter with the police. The police conduct an internal investigation. No one crosses the thin blue line and the officers in question are cleared. The DA's office is put on notice that the ball's in their court now.
The only problem is, there was never an internal police investigation conducted to determine whether there were any acts of police misconduct that night. There was a police investigation conducted - to determine whether Mr. Mount should be charged with attempted assault, disorderly conduct and resisting arrest.
We know there was no internal investigation conducted into the incident because Chief Veitch admitted that he lied to the press in a sworn deposition taken pursuant to the wrongful death suit. The lawsuit also turned up an e-mail in which Chief Veitch said it was important to give he public the impression that the police department was concerned with the allegations - even though they weren't.
When asked why he didn't conduct an investigation, Chief Veitch claimed it was because no one had alleged any incident of police misconduct. That is, except for family members at the hospital who made the allegations to Det. Tim Sicko. Det. Sicko, in turn, relayed the allegations to Chief Veitch.
Chief Veitch, despite his department's own General Order Section 25, failed to conduct an internal affairs review within 45 days of the allegations. Famed forensic pathologist Dr. Cyril Wecht reviewed the medical records, X-rays and photographs and came to the conclusion that Mr. Mount's injuries were more consistent with being beaten than falling from a scaffold. The forensic medical examiner used by local police, Dr. Michael Sikirica, issued a report supporting the police department's claims of no misconduct after reviewing statements from various witnesses and medical records - he never reviewed the photographs of Mr. Mount's injuries nor the actual X-rays or CAT scans.
This case illustrates why some type of external review board is necessary for investigating allegations of police misconduct. Any such board must have subpoena power to compel the production of witnesses and documents. The system in Saratoga Springs didn't fail. It did exactly what it was supposed to do - provide cover for the police. Only this time we got a peak behind the curtain.
h/t Scott Greenfield
Wednesday, August 29, 2018
Friday, August 24, 2018
Death, prayers and hypocrisy
After every school shooting the Republicans, the wingnuts and gun freaks yell from the tops of the tallest buildings that now is not the time for politics. They tell us that we should wait until the grieving parents have buried their children before we begin any policy discussions. They will argue about the definition of an assault rifle. They will ask what specific new law do you propose. They will argue that we don't need new laws, we just need to enforce the laws that are already on the books.
Then the politicians offer their worthless thoughts and prayers before cashing the latest check they received from the NRA.
Then something else hits the news cycle and everyone moves on to the next crisis.
After every mass shooting the Republicans, the wingnuts and the gun freaks yell from the tops of the tallest buildings that now is not the time for politics. They tell us we should wait until the grieving families have buried their loved ones before we can begin any policy discussions. They will argue about the definition of an assault rifle. They will ask what specific new law do you propose. They will argue that we don't need new laws, we just need to enforce the laws that are already on the books.
Then the politicians offer their worthless thoughts and prayers before cashing the latest check they received from the NRA.
And nothing ever happens because we, as a nation, have said that we're okay with mass shootings and that the deaths of school children are no big deal because we really, really, really want to be able to play with our guns.
But after a white middle-class girl from Iowa is found dead and a person here without our government's possession confesses to the murder, now is the time for the Republicans, the wingnuts and racists of all stripes to use this girl's murder to score political points in efforts to restrict immigration from non-white non-Europeans.
Now is the time to wave the bloody flag of a white girl killed by a dark-skinned man to incite hatred and fear in support of a president's racist policies.
Let's forget that the vast majority of murders and other violent crimes are committed by people who were born in this country. Let's forget about the fact that the government long turned a blind eye on illegal immigration because industries needed a cheap work force that would do jobs that citizens didn't want.
I find it utterly repulsive that the same folks who put off talking about gun issues while the bodies are still warm have no problem using the death of Mollie Tibbetts for political purposes. By now, however, hypocrisy on the right shouldn't be a surprise to anyone.
Then the politicians offer their worthless thoughts and prayers before cashing the latest check they received from the NRA.
Then something else hits the news cycle and everyone moves on to the next crisis.
After every mass shooting the Republicans, the wingnuts and the gun freaks yell from the tops of the tallest buildings that now is not the time for politics. They tell us we should wait until the grieving families have buried their loved ones before we can begin any policy discussions. They will argue about the definition of an assault rifle. They will ask what specific new law do you propose. They will argue that we don't need new laws, we just need to enforce the laws that are already on the books.
Then the politicians offer their worthless thoughts and prayers before cashing the latest check they received from the NRA.
And nothing ever happens because we, as a nation, have said that we're okay with mass shootings and that the deaths of school children are no big deal because we really, really, really want to be able to play with our guns.
But after a white middle-class girl from Iowa is found dead and a person here without our government's possession confesses to the murder, now is the time for the Republicans, the wingnuts and racists of all stripes to use this girl's murder to score political points in efforts to restrict immigration from non-white non-Europeans.
Now is the time to wave the bloody flag of a white girl killed by a dark-skinned man to incite hatred and fear in support of a president's racist policies.
Let's forget that the vast majority of murders and other violent crimes are committed by people who were born in this country. Let's forget about the fact that the government long turned a blind eye on illegal immigration because industries needed a cheap work force that would do jobs that citizens didn't want.
I find it utterly repulsive that the same folks who put off talking about gun issues while the bodies are still warm have no problem using the death of Mollie Tibbetts for political purposes. By now, however, hypocrisy on the right shouldn't be a surprise to anyone.
Tuesday, August 21, 2018
When all else fails, purge the voter rolls
One thing about the Trump era is that Republicans don't have to even pretend they aren't racial motives behind more restrictive voting laws and procedures.
The latest example is in southern Georgia. Randolph County is 61% black - double the statewide average. The Randolph County Board of Supervisors voted last week to close down 75% of the polling stations in Randolph County.
The Board will argue that they are making the move for financial reasons but that excuse doesn't hold any water because the real effect is to close as many polling stations in the black sections of the county as possible in order to aid Republican office seekers. If it costs more than the county wishes to pay to keep the stations open there is a perfectly fair solution -- raise the filing fee for running for office.
With the US Supreme Court's gutting of the Voting Rights Act, white Republicans have been knocking each other down to see who can pass the more restrictive voting laws and who can make it more difficult for the poor and minorities to vote. And the reason is clear -- as I've pointed out before, the old white power structure knows that due to demographic changes, its days of holding power are limited and they are doing everything they can to prolong the inevitable.
As white America showed that it is not afraid to vote for an outwardly racist candidate for president, these moves are to be expected. Those who vote Republican are supporting these efforts whether they wish to admit it or not. It would appear that no Republican candidate running for office has the guts to challenge the overt bigotry of Donald Trump and his administration. Their silence is affirmation of their support.
And, lest you think these shenanigans are used only in the Deep South, it's going on in Houston, too. Residents of the Third Ward, a mostly black area of Houston just east of downtown, received letters from the County's voter registrar, Ann Harris Bennett, informing them that they had but 30 days to return a letter confirming their address to her office in order to avoid being removed from the voter rolls. The letters were sent out to folks who hadn't moved and who had been living at their current address for years.
The letters were the result of challenges made by Republicans to voters in predominately minority parts of Houston. You see, Republican candidates will win the majority of votes in the suburbs since most of the residents moved away from Houston to get away from darker skinned folks. But elections in Harris County center on the turnout within the city limits of Houston. If there is a large turnout in the city, it will cancel out the Republican voters in the suburbs. And Republicans are anticipating that will be the case come November.
The latest example is in southern Georgia. Randolph County is 61% black - double the statewide average. The Randolph County Board of Supervisors voted last week to close down 75% of the polling stations in Randolph County.
The Board will argue that they are making the move for financial reasons but that excuse doesn't hold any water because the real effect is to close as many polling stations in the black sections of the county as possible in order to aid Republican office seekers. If it costs more than the county wishes to pay to keep the stations open there is a perfectly fair solution -- raise the filing fee for running for office.
With the US Supreme Court's gutting of the Voting Rights Act, white Republicans have been knocking each other down to see who can pass the more restrictive voting laws and who can make it more difficult for the poor and minorities to vote. And the reason is clear -- as I've pointed out before, the old white power structure knows that due to demographic changes, its days of holding power are limited and they are doing everything they can to prolong the inevitable.
As white America showed that it is not afraid to vote for an outwardly racist candidate for president, these moves are to be expected. Those who vote Republican are supporting these efforts whether they wish to admit it or not. It would appear that no Republican candidate running for office has the guts to challenge the overt bigotry of Donald Trump and his administration. Their silence is affirmation of their support.
And, lest you think these shenanigans are used only in the Deep South, it's going on in Houston, too. Residents of the Third Ward, a mostly black area of Houston just east of downtown, received letters from the County's voter registrar, Ann Harris Bennett, informing them that they had but 30 days to return a letter confirming their address to her office in order to avoid being removed from the voter rolls. The letters were sent out to folks who hadn't moved and who had been living at their current address for years.
“If you do not respond at all to this notice, your registration will be canceled if you have not confirmed your address either by completing the response form or confirming your address when voting before November 30 following the second general election for state and county officers that occurs after the date the confirmation notice is mailed.”
The letters were the result of challenges made by Republicans to voters in predominately minority parts of Houston. You see, Republican candidates will win the majority of votes in the suburbs since most of the residents moved away from Houston to get away from darker skinned folks. But elections in Harris County center on the turnout within the city limits of Houston. If there is a large turnout in the city, it will cancel out the Republican voters in the suburbs. And Republicans are anticipating that will be the case come November.
Friday, August 17, 2018
Goodbye, Aretha
In memory of Aretha Franklin, here's a couple of tunes guaranteed to make you happy today. Enjoy.
Thursday, August 16, 2018
A senseless death in the Harris County Jail
Debora Ann Lyons is the second inmate in the Harris County Jail to commit suicide in the last month. Ms. Lyons, who was taken into custody on July 22, 2018, hung herself on Tuesday night.
Ms. Lyons was arrested on misdemeanor theft charge. However, based upon her prior convictions, she was charged with a felony. Now, as an aside, I understand why the legislature allows prosecutors to enhance some offenses based upon prior convictions. The theory being that if you've been in trouble once or twice for the same offense the punishment needs to be a bit more severe. But, this doesn't work out so well on petty thefts.
I've had a client before who was charged with shoplifting toiletries from a drug store. What he did warranted no more than a Class B charge. But, since he had multiple theft convictions in the past, that little misdemeanor theft ended up landing him in district court with a felony charge. And I don't care how tough on crime you are, charging someone with felony theft over less than $100 worth of toiletries doesn't serve anyone's interests. Prison should be reserved for those who have done heinous crimes, sending someone to prison for petty theft is a waste of resources.
On the date she was charged, bail was set at $1,500. Ms. Lyons didn't have that kind of money -- but because the felony courts still rely on a piece of paper to determine how to set bond, that number was written down on a piece of paper without regard to Ms. Lyons' ability to pay.
Sound familiar?
It should.
This is the system which 14 Republican misdemeanor judges in Harris County are fighting to keep in place. Thus far they have spent over $6 million of taxpayer's money to defend a cash bail system that is unconstitutional. If US District Judge Lee Rosenthal's order applied to the district courts, Ms. Lyons would have been eligible for release on a PR bond within 48 hours of her arrest. Instead she sat in jail for nearly a month before she took her life.
The ultimate irony, of course, is that she was granted a PR bond on Wednesday -- the day after she hung herself.
So, even though this case was filed in district court as a felony, I still would like to hear one of the Republican misdemeanor judges defend the old system. It's the old system that killed Ms. Lyons. The last time I checked, the penalty for theft in Texas wasn't death.
It should come as no surprise to anyone that the 14 Republican misdemeanor judges who are fighting bail reform are all white. If you know anything about Harris County you also know that the vast majority of the people affected by bail reform aren't white. Racism, you see, plays real well out in the suburbs where the Republicans pick up most of their votes. And for all the talk you will hear from those judges, they aren't fighting bail reform to protect the public -- they are fighting it because the old system gave the state coercive power over minority defendants who couldn't afford to post bond. They were forced to plead guilty in order to get out of jail.
And, if they happened to get in trouble later, those convictions came back to bite them in the ass as their new cases were enhanced.
Ms. Lyons died because Harris County is doing everything it can to preserve a coercive system to force the poor to plead guilty regardless of the facts of their cases so they can get on with their lives.
In case you've forgotten the names of the judges who are fighting to preserve an unconstitutional system, here they are again:
The next time you see any of these judges, ask them why they are defending an unconstitutional cash bail system. Ask them why they are opposed to bail being set in a timely matter based upon the defendant's ability to pay. Ask them why they are wasting your tax dollars fighting bail reform.
Ask them why they haven't joined Judge Darrell Jordan and Judge Mike Fields on the other side of the coin.
Debora Ann Lyons was no angel. But she was someone's daughter. She was someone's mother. She had a family and she had friends. And she damn well didn't deserve to die in the Harris County Jail.
Ms. Lyons was arrested on misdemeanor theft charge. However, based upon her prior convictions, she was charged with a felony. Now, as an aside, I understand why the legislature allows prosecutors to enhance some offenses based upon prior convictions. The theory being that if you've been in trouble once or twice for the same offense the punishment needs to be a bit more severe. But, this doesn't work out so well on petty thefts.
I've had a client before who was charged with shoplifting toiletries from a drug store. What he did warranted no more than a Class B charge. But, since he had multiple theft convictions in the past, that little misdemeanor theft ended up landing him in district court with a felony charge. And I don't care how tough on crime you are, charging someone with felony theft over less than $100 worth of toiletries doesn't serve anyone's interests. Prison should be reserved for those who have done heinous crimes, sending someone to prison for petty theft is a waste of resources.
On the date she was charged, bail was set at $1,500. Ms. Lyons didn't have that kind of money -- but because the felony courts still rely on a piece of paper to determine how to set bond, that number was written down on a piece of paper without regard to Ms. Lyons' ability to pay.
Sound familiar?
It should.
This is the system which 14 Republican misdemeanor judges in Harris County are fighting to keep in place. Thus far they have spent over $6 million of taxpayer's money to defend a cash bail system that is unconstitutional. If US District Judge Lee Rosenthal's order applied to the district courts, Ms. Lyons would have been eligible for release on a PR bond within 48 hours of her arrest. Instead she sat in jail for nearly a month before she took her life.
The ultimate irony, of course, is that she was granted a PR bond on Wednesday -- the day after she hung herself.
So, even though this case was filed in district court as a felony, I still would like to hear one of the Republican misdemeanor judges defend the old system. It's the old system that killed Ms. Lyons. The last time I checked, the penalty for theft in Texas wasn't death.
It should come as no surprise to anyone that the 14 Republican misdemeanor judges who are fighting bail reform are all white. If you know anything about Harris County you also know that the vast majority of the people affected by bail reform aren't white. Racism, you see, plays real well out in the suburbs where the Republicans pick up most of their votes. And for all the talk you will hear from those judges, they aren't fighting bail reform to protect the public -- they are fighting it because the old system gave the state coercive power over minority defendants who couldn't afford to post bond. They were forced to plead guilty in order to get out of jail.
And, if they happened to get in trouble later, those convictions came back to bite them in the ass as their new cases were enhanced.
Ms. Lyons died because Harris County is doing everything it can to preserve a coercive system to force the poor to plead guilty regardless of the facts of their cases so they can get on with their lives.
In case you've forgotten the names of the judges who are fighting to preserve an unconstitutional system, here they are again:
- Paula Goodhart, County Criminal Court at Law No. 1
- Bill Harmon, County Criminal Court at Law No. 2
- Natalie Fleming, County Criminal Court at Law No. 3
- John Clinton, County Criminal Court at Law No. 4
- Margaret Harris, County Criminal Court at Law No. 5
- Larry Standley, County Criminal Court at Law No. 6
- Pam Derbyshire, County Criminal Court at Law No. 7
- Jay Karahan, County Criminal Court at Law No. 8
- Analia Wilkerson, County Criminal Court at Law No. 9
- Dan Spjut, County Criminal Court at Law No. 10
- Diane Bull, County Criminal Court at Law No. 11
- Robin Brown, County Criminal Court at Law No. 12
- Don Smyth, County Criminal Court at Law No. 13
- Jean Spradling, County Criminal Court at Law No. 15
The next time you see any of these judges, ask them why they are defending an unconstitutional cash bail system. Ask them why they are opposed to bail being set in a timely matter based upon the defendant's ability to pay. Ask them why they are wasting your tax dollars fighting bail reform.
Ask them why they haven't joined Judge Darrell Jordan and Judge Mike Fields on the other side of the coin.
Debora Ann Lyons was no angel. But she was someone's daughter. She was someone's mother. She had a family and she had friends. And she damn well didn't deserve to die in the Harris County Jail.
Tuesday, August 14, 2018
A death in Nebraska and a governor out for bloodlust
Just how badly does Pete Ricketts want to kill people?
Enough that the Nebraska governor and his father spent $300,000 of their own money for a petition drive to put the death penalty on the ballot in 2018 after the state legislature voted to abolish it in May of 2015 (they even overrode the governor's veto).
Bound and determined to kill people, the governor vowed to execute as many inmates as possible before the deadline and even to kill inmates in defiance of the new law. It does seem a bit odd for a governor who swore to uphold the laws of the state tell all who will listen that he will ignore the law if he doesn't like it.
Currently Nebraska has ten inmates on death row and hasn't carried out an execution since 1997. So why on earth is Gov. Ricketts so hung up on the death penalty?
It certainly has nothing to do with deterrence or punishment or anything else to do with the criminal (in)justice system. There hasn't been an execution carried out in 20 years -- there doesn't appear to be any groundswell of support for killing inmates.
Until today, that is. Carey Dean Moore was executed this morning. He is the first inmate to be executed using a lethal cocktail containing fentanyl.
The execution was carried out when a panel of three federal judges denied drug maker Fresenius Kabi's request for a stay due to their concerns that Nebraska acquired the drugs for the execution (two of which were Fresenius Kabi believes were drugs they made) through back channels.
While Fresenius Kabi has not taken a stand on the death penalty, they only sell to suppliers who sign an agreement not to sell to federal or state correctional facilities. Nebraska has refused to release the name of the supplier who only agreed to sell the state one dose of the drugs.
For proponents of the death penalty such as Gov. Ricketts, it isn't about strapping an inmate to a gurney and injecting him with poison. It's about control. It's about having the power to make a life-or-death decision.
Ironically enough you see politicians like Gov. Ricketts try to justify their support of the death penalty with the bible. His position is at odds with Pope Francis who called the death penalty an attack on the dignity of the person. All of the governor's arguments (as well as all of the protestant supporters in the US) are based on the Old Testament. Sure, he will tell you he's pro-life and for the criminalization of abortion without once questioning the consistency of his beliefs.
But that's because it's not about what's supposedly written in a book that has been translated from multiple languages over the centuries and then edited to have a more "modern" appeal. That's just a rationalization.
So tell us, Gov. Ricketts, why the fuck is it so important for Nebraska to kill people?
Enough that the Nebraska governor and his father spent $300,000 of their own money for a petition drive to put the death penalty on the ballot in 2018 after the state legislature voted to abolish it in May of 2015 (they even overrode the governor's veto).
Bound and determined to kill people, the governor vowed to execute as many inmates as possible before the deadline and even to kill inmates in defiance of the new law. It does seem a bit odd for a governor who swore to uphold the laws of the state tell all who will listen that he will ignore the law if he doesn't like it.
Currently Nebraska has ten inmates on death row and hasn't carried out an execution since 1997. So why on earth is Gov. Ricketts so hung up on the death penalty?
It certainly has nothing to do with deterrence or punishment or anything else to do with the criminal (in)justice system. There hasn't been an execution carried out in 20 years -- there doesn't appear to be any groundswell of support for killing inmates.
Until today, that is. Carey Dean Moore was executed this morning. He is the first inmate to be executed using a lethal cocktail containing fentanyl.
The execution was carried out when a panel of three federal judges denied drug maker Fresenius Kabi's request for a stay due to their concerns that Nebraska acquired the drugs for the execution (two of which were Fresenius Kabi believes were drugs they made) through back channels.
While Fresenius Kabi has not taken a stand on the death penalty, they only sell to suppliers who sign an agreement not to sell to federal or state correctional facilities. Nebraska has refused to release the name of the supplier who only agreed to sell the state one dose of the drugs.
For proponents of the death penalty such as Gov. Ricketts, it isn't about strapping an inmate to a gurney and injecting him with poison. It's about control. It's about having the power to make a life-or-death decision.
Ironically enough you see politicians like Gov. Ricketts try to justify their support of the death penalty with the bible. His position is at odds with Pope Francis who called the death penalty an attack on the dignity of the person. All of the governor's arguments (as well as all of the protestant supporters in the US) are based on the Old Testament. Sure, he will tell you he's pro-life and for the criminalization of abortion without once questioning the consistency of his beliefs.
But that's because it's not about what's supposedly written in a book that has been translated from multiple languages over the centuries and then edited to have a more "modern" appeal. That's just a rationalization.
So tell us, Gov. Ricketts, why the fuck is it so important for Nebraska to kill people?
Monday, August 13, 2018
Former judge sanctioned for jailing a rape victim
On December 8, 2014, Jenny Doe (her real name may be found in court records but I choose not to publish it), was called to testify in the rape trial of Keith Hendricks in the 176th District Court in Harris County. Mr. Hendricks was on trial for raping Jane Doe.
While on the stand testifying at trial, Ms. Doe had a mental breakdown (she had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder). Fearing that his witness wouldn't show up to testify again, the prosecutor, Nicolas Socias, asked the judge, Stacy Bond, to issue an attachment and to order Ms. Doe taken into custody.
The judge set her bond at $10,000. That's right, Jenny hadn't been charged with a crime yet she was being held behind bars because she couldn't post a $10,000 bond.
Ms. Doe was first taken to the hospital to be checked out -- she was then booked into the Harris County Jail. Making matters even worse, someone at the jail fucked up and entered that she was charged with felony sexual assault. Because no one at the jail knew she was being held as a witness, she was placed in the general population. While in jail she got into at least one fight with an inmate. She was later charged with assaulting a guard, though that case was later dismissed.
Jenny was not called back to the stand until January 11, 2015. Let that just sink in for a bit. Here we have the victim of a sexual assault who was taken into custody and held against her will for over a month because she had a mental breakdown on the stand. And even though she testified on the 11th, she was held for an additional three days before being released.
Texas law does permit the court to order a witness taken into custody if the state issuing the subpoena has reason to believe that a witness residing in the county is on the verge of moving out of the county or if an out-of-county witness failed to appear when subpoenaed.
Neither of those conditions were met in this case. Jenny resided outside Harris County and appeared without being subpoenaed. Mr. Socias might have been worried about her not coming back to testify after her breakdown -- but that didn't justify his request to have her attached. It certainly didn't warrant her being held in jail for over a month.
Now Stacy Bond, who is running for the bench in the 185th, has been sanctioned with a public admonition for violating the Code of Judicial Conduct.
Ms. Bond's excuse is she was mistaken in signing a badly worded application for a bench warrant. The application would have been filled out by the prosecutor, Mr. Socias.
You would think that the least the judge could have done was read the application before signing off on it. Actually you would think the judge might have consulted Section 24 of the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure to see whether the action was warranted. At the very least you would have expected a judge to show just the slightest bit of compassion to a witness who was having a very bad day. But, hell, once you decide to treat those accused of crime as garbage, it's not a far walk to treat everyone like that.
Ms. Bond is running as a Republican in the upcoming election. I'm sure that many Republican voters in the suburbs don't give a flying fuck what Ms. Bond did on the bench in the past. The only criterion for their vote is that the candidate have an "R" after their name.
This is the problem with electing judges. No one outside the courthouse knows who the candidates are. No one outside the courthouse has any idea what type of attorney or judge a candidate is. No one outside the courthouse knows what goes on behind the scenes. And this is why we end up with some judges in Texas who aren't capable of walking and chewing gum at the same time.
(Yes, Galveston County, I'm talking about the mindless wingnuts on the mainland who voted straight-ticket Republican and ushered in the strange world of Christopher Dupuy, the single most unqualified person I've ever seen on the bench.)
Of course appointing judges brings about an entirely different set of problems that can be just as bad as electing them.
Ms. Bond doesn't deserve to sit on the bench anymore. I just hope this public reprimand resonates with voters in the 'burbs when they go to cast their ballots in November.
The judge set her bond at $10,000. That's right, Jenny hadn't been charged with a crime yet she was being held behind bars because she couldn't post a $10,000 bond.
Ms. Doe was first taken to the hospital to be checked out -- she was then booked into the Harris County Jail. Making matters even worse, someone at the jail fucked up and entered that she was charged with felony sexual assault. Because no one at the jail knew she was being held as a witness, she was placed in the general population. While in jail she got into at least one fight with an inmate. She was later charged with assaulting a guard, though that case was later dismissed.
Jenny was not called back to the stand until January 11, 2015. Let that just sink in for a bit. Here we have the victim of a sexual assault who was taken into custody and held against her will for over a month because she had a mental breakdown on the stand. And even though she testified on the 11th, she was held for an additional three days before being released.
Texas law does permit the court to order a witness taken into custody if the state issuing the subpoena has reason to believe that a witness residing in the county is on the verge of moving out of the county or if an out-of-county witness failed to appear when subpoenaed.
Neither of those conditions were met in this case. Jenny resided outside Harris County and appeared without being subpoenaed. Mr. Socias might have been worried about her not coming back to testify after her breakdown -- but that didn't justify his request to have her attached. It certainly didn't warrant her being held in jail for over a month.
Now Stacy Bond, who is running for the bench in the 185th, has been sanctioned with a public admonition for violating the Code of Judicial Conduct.
Ms. Bond's excuse is she was mistaken in signing a badly worded application for a bench warrant. The application would have been filled out by the prosecutor, Mr. Socias.
You would think that the least the judge could have done was read the application before signing off on it. Actually you would think the judge might have consulted Section 24 of the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure to see whether the action was warranted. At the very least you would have expected a judge to show just the slightest bit of compassion to a witness who was having a very bad day. But, hell, once you decide to treat those accused of crime as garbage, it's not a far walk to treat everyone like that.
Ms. Bond is running as a Republican in the upcoming election. I'm sure that many Republican voters in the suburbs don't give a flying fuck what Ms. Bond did on the bench in the past. The only criterion for their vote is that the candidate have an "R" after their name.
This is the problem with electing judges. No one outside the courthouse knows who the candidates are. No one outside the courthouse has any idea what type of attorney or judge a candidate is. No one outside the courthouse knows what goes on behind the scenes. And this is why we end up with some judges in Texas who aren't capable of walking and chewing gum at the same time.
(Yes, Galveston County, I'm talking about the mindless wingnuts on the mainland who voted straight-ticket Republican and ushered in the strange world of Christopher Dupuy, the single most unqualified person I've ever seen on the bench.)
Of course appointing judges brings about an entirely different set of problems that can be just as bad as electing them.
Ms. Bond doesn't deserve to sit on the bench anymore. I just hope this public reprimand resonates with voters in the 'burbs when they go to cast their ballots in November.
Friday, August 10, 2018
Sotomayor's scathing rebuke
Yesterday afternoon the US Supreme Court decided that the 8th Amendment is merely a useless appendage and denied Billy Ray Irick's request for a stay of execution.
But Justice Sonia Sotomayor wasn't having any of it. In her dissent she pointed out all of the problems with using midazolam as the first drug in a lethal cocktail. She wrote that the drug will cause Mr. Irick to feel the sensation of drowning, suffocating and being burned alive. She referred to the testimony given in Tennessee's recent trial over the legality of the three drug cocktail. She pointed out that once the paralytic takes effect, no one will know whether or not Mr. Irick is suffering because he will be unable to move and unable to speak.
She also referred to the absurdity of the Glossip decision's holding that the condemned inmate must not only present evidence that the state's selected method of execution is cruel but must also propose an alternative method to killing himself.
But she saved the best for last:
In refusing to grant Irick a stay, the Court today turns a blind eye to a proven likelihood that the State of Tennessee is on the verge of inflicting several minutes of torturous pain on an inmate in its custody, while shrouding him behind a veneer of paralysis. I cannot in good conscience join this "rush to execute" without first seeking every assurance that our precedent permits such a result. If the law permits this execution to go forward in spite of the horrific final minutes that Irick may well experience, then we have stopped being a civilized nation and accepted barbarism. I dissent.
Unfortunately I think we long ago accepted barbarism in this country.
But Justice Sonia Sotomayor wasn't having any of it. In her dissent she pointed out all of the problems with using midazolam as the first drug in a lethal cocktail. She wrote that the drug will cause Mr. Irick to feel the sensation of drowning, suffocating and being burned alive. She referred to the testimony given in Tennessee's recent trial over the legality of the three drug cocktail. She pointed out that once the paralytic takes effect, no one will know whether or not Mr. Irick is suffering because he will be unable to move and unable to speak.
She also referred to the absurdity of the Glossip decision's holding that the condemned inmate must not only present evidence that the state's selected method of execution is cruel but must also propose an alternative method to killing himself.
But she saved the best for last:
In refusing to grant Irick a stay, the Court today turns a blind eye to a proven likelihood that the State of Tennessee is on the verge of inflicting several minutes of torturous pain on an inmate in its custody, while shrouding him behind a veneer of paralysis. I cannot in good conscience join this "rush to execute" without first seeking every assurance that our precedent permits such a result. If the law permits this execution to go forward in spite of the horrific final minutes that Irick may well experience, then we have stopped being a civilized nation and accepted barbarism. I dissent.
Unfortunately I think we long ago accepted barbarism in this country.
Thursday, August 9, 2018
Torture in Tennessee
Today the state of Tennessee is set to murder inmate Billy Ray Irick using a lethal injection cocktail using midazolam, vecuronium bromide and potassium chloride.
Midazolam is a sedative that will supposedly render Mr. Irick unconscious. Vecuronium bromide is a paralytic that would prevent Mr. Irick from making any movements. Potassium chloride is the drug that will stop Mr. Irick's heart - and leave him dead on the gurney.
The question, however, is whether or not midazolam is an effective sedative for purposes of executing inmates. As has been seen in botched executions in Florida, Ohio, Arizona and Oklahoma, midazolam has led to excruciating pain for inmates and even aborted executions.
In 2013 William Happ was executed in Florida using midazolam. Witness accounts state that he remained conscious longer than usual and made more body movements after losing consciousness than normal.
In 2014 Dennis McGuire was executed in Ohio using midazolam. After being administered the drug, Mr. McGuire clenched his fists, gasped and struggled to breathe.
That same year Clayton Lockett died in Oklahoma after being administered midazolam. The drugs didn't kill him and the execution was called off abruptly in midstream. Mr. Lockett then died of cardiac arrest that night.
Still later that year Joseph Wood was executed in Arizona using midazolam. It took over two hours for Mr. Wood to die and one reporter said that Mr. Wood gasped for air more than 640 times.
There is no proof that midazolam is the appropriate drug for use in killing inmates. Inmates awaiting execution in Tennessee filed suit against the state arguing that the lethal cocktail would violate their 8th Amendment right to protection from cruel and unusual punishment. The argument is that the paralytic will render the inmate incapable of letting anyone know he is undergoing extreme pain during the process. For those watching from the gallery there would be no way to know if anything was going awry in the process.
During the court proceedings a pathologist called by the plaintiff's testified that he reviewed autopsies on 32 inmates who were executed. In 27 of those cases, the pathologist performing the autopsy found signs of pulmonary edema meaning the inmates had suffered respiratory distress during the executions.
The court in Tennessee, however, denied the plaintiffs' request for relief on the grounds that while they may or may not have proven that the new drug protocol was cruel or unusual, they didn't provide the state with a viable alternative to kill themselves.
That's right. The U.S. Supreme Court held in Glossip v. Gross, if you're challenging the constitutionality of a drug protocol for executions, you have to give the state an alternative method of taking your life.
Now we can sidestep the absurdity of that test for purposes of this argument. If a state wishes to carry out executions, that state must come up with a protocol for killing inmates that doesn't run afoul of the 8th Amendment. If evidence is brought forth that the protocol in question amounted to torture, then it's the state's responsibility to draw up a new protocol. To place the burden on those awaiting execution to draw up a protocol for their own death is about as Kafkaesque as you can get.
It's also a cop out from a court that doesn't want to dirty its hands in death penalty litigation. I know that many folks out there couldn't care less about whether an inmate suffers during an execution because they are focused on the pain and suffering he or she caused by killing someone else. To them I would point out that the purpose of our criminal (in)justice system isn't to obtain revenge. The purpose is to rehabilitate as many folks as we can and release them back into society to become productive citizens - those who can't be rehabilitated are then kept behind bars so they can't harm anyone else.
In many cases of death row inmates we are also talking about men who did stupid and/or despicable things when they were in their 20's and who have sat behind bars, in isolation, for two decades or more. To believe that they are the same people now that they were when the committed their crimes is pure fantasy.
There is no place in civilized society for this barbarism.
Midazolam is a sedative that will supposedly render Mr. Irick unconscious. Vecuronium bromide is a paralytic that would prevent Mr. Irick from making any movements. Potassium chloride is the drug that will stop Mr. Irick's heart - and leave him dead on the gurney.
The question, however, is whether or not midazolam is an effective sedative for purposes of executing inmates. As has been seen in botched executions in Florida, Ohio, Arizona and Oklahoma, midazolam has led to excruciating pain for inmates and even aborted executions.
In 2013 William Happ was executed in Florida using midazolam. Witness accounts state that he remained conscious longer than usual and made more body movements after losing consciousness than normal.
In 2014 Dennis McGuire was executed in Ohio using midazolam. After being administered the drug, Mr. McGuire clenched his fists, gasped and struggled to breathe.
That same year Clayton Lockett died in Oklahoma after being administered midazolam. The drugs didn't kill him and the execution was called off abruptly in midstream. Mr. Lockett then died of cardiac arrest that night.
Still later that year Joseph Wood was executed in Arizona using midazolam. It took over two hours for Mr. Wood to die and one reporter said that Mr. Wood gasped for air more than 640 times.
There is no proof that midazolam is the appropriate drug for use in killing inmates. Inmates awaiting execution in Tennessee filed suit against the state arguing that the lethal cocktail would violate their 8th Amendment right to protection from cruel and unusual punishment. The argument is that the paralytic will render the inmate incapable of letting anyone know he is undergoing extreme pain during the process. For those watching from the gallery there would be no way to know if anything was going awry in the process.
During the court proceedings a pathologist called by the plaintiff's testified that he reviewed autopsies on 32 inmates who were executed. In 27 of those cases, the pathologist performing the autopsy found signs of pulmonary edema meaning the inmates had suffered respiratory distress during the executions.
The court in Tennessee, however, denied the plaintiffs' request for relief on the grounds that while they may or may not have proven that the new drug protocol was cruel or unusual, they didn't provide the state with a viable alternative to kill themselves.
That's right. The U.S. Supreme Court held in Glossip v. Gross, if you're challenging the constitutionality of a drug protocol for executions, you have to give the state an alternative method of taking your life.
Now we can sidestep the absurdity of that test for purposes of this argument. If a state wishes to carry out executions, that state must come up with a protocol for killing inmates that doesn't run afoul of the 8th Amendment. If evidence is brought forth that the protocol in question amounted to torture, then it's the state's responsibility to draw up a new protocol. To place the burden on those awaiting execution to draw up a protocol for their own death is about as Kafkaesque as you can get.
It's also a cop out from a court that doesn't want to dirty its hands in death penalty litigation. I know that many folks out there couldn't care less about whether an inmate suffers during an execution because they are focused on the pain and suffering he or she caused by killing someone else. To them I would point out that the purpose of our criminal (in)justice system isn't to obtain revenge. The purpose is to rehabilitate as many folks as we can and release them back into society to become productive citizens - those who can't be rehabilitated are then kept behind bars so they can't harm anyone else.
In many cases of death row inmates we are also talking about men who did stupid and/or despicable things when they were in their 20's and who have sat behind bars, in isolation, for two decades or more. To believe that they are the same people now that they were when the committed their crimes is pure fantasy.
There is no place in civilized society for this barbarism.
Wednesday, August 8, 2018
Fighting for injustice
Once again the Republican misdemeanor judges in Harris County have their panties in a wad. And, once again, it has to do with a federal judge telling them that the little bail bond scheme they followed for years is unconstitutional and must be changed.
The judges are upset because US District Judge Lee Rosenthal's revised order will force the county to release certain non-violent offenders within a certain time period. The judges claim this will endanger the public's safety.
Bullshit. What it will do is remove the coercive power the state had on criminal defendants to force them to plead guilty to crimes they didn't commit.
The way Harris County operated for years was to follow a bail bond schedule that didn't take the defendant's financial circumstances into effect when setting bail. The only things that mattered were the type of offense and whether the defendant had any prior convictions. Bond was set automatically by a piece of paper and thousands of folks were held in custody until they resolved their cases -- usually by pleading guilty in a mass plea for time served or some other token sentence.
Prosecutors got their convictions. Judges got cases off their dockets. And since those accused of criminal acts don't have an effective lobby - no one gave a fuck.
Anyone who has spent any time in this racket knows that it is a hell of a lot easier to fight one's case if one is not behind bars. When you're behind bars you're not working, not earning money, not seeing your family and all you can do is think about how many more days this hell is going to last.
When you're out on bond you can work and earn money. You sleep in your own bed. You see your friends and family. You can speak with you attorney face to face without a thick sheet of plexiglass between you. You're also not under the pressure to resolve the case quickly because you are able to resume your normal life.
And the misdemeanor judges in Harris County hate this. They hate the fact that defendants out on bond are able to fight their cases. They hate the fact that the state doesn't have the same coercive hold on them as they do on the defendants in the jumpsuits.
Well, let's be straight about one thing. It's unfair to lump all of the misdemeanor judges into the same pile. Darrell Jordan, a Democrat, and Michael Fields, a Republican, aren't part of the ongoing lawsuit. I don't think it's a coincidence that they are the only two black judges on the misdemeanor bench in Harris County.
Most of the defendants in the misdemeanor courts are black and Latino. These are the folks that conservative white voters in the suburbs have been taught to hate. As anyone who understands Harris County politics knows, Republican candidates rely on those suburban voters to get elected because they don't have a chance within the Houston city limits.
The judges who continue to spend our tax money to defend an unconstitutional bail bond system are spreading fear and hatred among their suburban supporters in a desperate measure to build up some sort of support for Republican candidates in what could very easily be a bloodbath for the wingnuts.
The Republican judges (minus Judge Fields) are furiously blowing on their dog whistles. And they are doing it, not to maintain public safety, but to maintain a criminal (in)justice system that targets the poor and those with dark skin.
And for those keeping tabs, the current bill for fighting the lawsuit is $6.6 million. How's that for financial responsibility?
The judges are upset because US District Judge Lee Rosenthal's revised order will force the county to release certain non-violent offenders within a certain time period. The judges claim this will endanger the public's safety.
Bullshit. What it will do is remove the coercive power the state had on criminal defendants to force them to plead guilty to crimes they didn't commit.
The way Harris County operated for years was to follow a bail bond schedule that didn't take the defendant's financial circumstances into effect when setting bail. The only things that mattered were the type of offense and whether the defendant had any prior convictions. Bond was set automatically by a piece of paper and thousands of folks were held in custody until they resolved their cases -- usually by pleading guilty in a mass plea for time served or some other token sentence.
Prosecutors got their convictions. Judges got cases off their dockets. And since those accused of criminal acts don't have an effective lobby - no one gave a fuck.
Anyone who has spent any time in this racket knows that it is a hell of a lot easier to fight one's case if one is not behind bars. When you're behind bars you're not working, not earning money, not seeing your family and all you can do is think about how many more days this hell is going to last.
When you're out on bond you can work and earn money. You sleep in your own bed. You see your friends and family. You can speak with you attorney face to face without a thick sheet of plexiglass between you. You're also not under the pressure to resolve the case quickly because you are able to resume your normal life.
And the misdemeanor judges in Harris County hate this. They hate the fact that defendants out on bond are able to fight their cases. They hate the fact that the state doesn't have the same coercive hold on them as they do on the defendants in the jumpsuits.
Well, let's be straight about one thing. It's unfair to lump all of the misdemeanor judges into the same pile. Darrell Jordan, a Democrat, and Michael Fields, a Republican, aren't part of the ongoing lawsuit. I don't think it's a coincidence that they are the only two black judges on the misdemeanor bench in Harris County.
Most of the defendants in the misdemeanor courts are black and Latino. These are the folks that conservative white voters in the suburbs have been taught to hate. As anyone who understands Harris County politics knows, Republican candidates rely on those suburban voters to get elected because they don't have a chance within the Houston city limits.
The judges who continue to spend our tax money to defend an unconstitutional bail bond system are spreading fear and hatred among their suburban supporters in a desperate measure to build up some sort of support for Republican candidates in what could very easily be a bloodbath for the wingnuts.
The Republican judges (minus Judge Fields) are furiously blowing on their dog whistles. And they are doing it, not to maintain public safety, but to maintain a criminal (in)justice system that targets the poor and those with dark skin.
And for those keeping tabs, the current bill for fighting the lawsuit is $6.6 million. How's that for financial responsibility?
Wednesday, August 1, 2018
We're not gonna take it
You might remember the name Darryl Fulton from an earlier blog post about his return to his grounds keeping job for the Chicago White Sox after being exonerated of a murder for which he spent over two decades behind bars.
Adding insult to injury, on two separate occasions, Chase Bank in Chicago refused to accept his deposit of a check for $169,876.00 paid to him by the State of Illinois for taking 23 years of his life.
The first time he tried to deposit the check, the bank refused to accept it because it hadn't been endorsed by his attorney -- even though the only payee on the check was Mr. Fulton. The second time he tried to deposit the check the bank refused to accept it because Mr. Fulton had signed the check over the attorney's name. The bank did say it could deposit the check into the lawyer's account, however.
While acknowledging that the check should have been accepted and deposited the first time Mr. Fulton presented it, bank officials refused to say whether or not the color of Mr. Fulton's skin had anything to do with the bank's reluctance to accept the check.
According to Mr. Fulton's attorney, the bank never offered to accept the check for deposit.
So it's not enough that Mr. Fulton was held in custody during the pendency of his case because he couldn't bond out. It's not enough that prosecutors obtained a conviction after not conducting DNA testing on an item because it didn't fit in the police narrative. It's not enough that the state fought tooth and nail to prevent the evidence from being tested, all in the name of honoring the jury's (wrong) verdict. Now he can't even deposit the meager check he received from the state to compensate him for his lost life.
One can only wonder whether Chase makes white executives go through such hoops in order to deposit a large check. Or is that experience reserved for black men with large checks to deposit?
Adding insult to injury, on two separate occasions, Chase Bank in Chicago refused to accept his deposit of a check for $169,876.00 paid to him by the State of Illinois for taking 23 years of his life.
The first time he tried to deposit the check, the bank refused to accept it because it hadn't been endorsed by his attorney -- even though the only payee on the check was Mr. Fulton. The second time he tried to deposit the check the bank refused to accept it because Mr. Fulton had signed the check over the attorney's name. The bank did say it could deposit the check into the lawyer's account, however.
While acknowledging that the check should have been accepted and deposited the first time Mr. Fulton presented it, bank officials refused to say whether or not the color of Mr. Fulton's skin had anything to do with the bank's reluctance to accept the check.
According to Mr. Fulton's attorney, the bank never offered to accept the check for deposit.
So it's not enough that Mr. Fulton was held in custody during the pendency of his case because he couldn't bond out. It's not enough that prosecutors obtained a conviction after not conducting DNA testing on an item because it didn't fit in the police narrative. It's not enough that the state fought tooth and nail to prevent the evidence from being tested, all in the name of honoring the jury's (wrong) verdict. Now he can't even deposit the meager check he received from the state to compensate him for his lost life.
One can only wonder whether Chase makes white executives go through such hoops in order to deposit a large check. Or is that experience reserved for black men with large checks to deposit?
Tuesday, July 31, 2018
AG calls for a task force for a return to segregation
For anyone who isn't a wingnut or a complete moron, Attorney General Jeff Session's announcement of a religious liberty task force stands as another milepost on the road back to the era of Jim Crow.
Mr. Sessions claims that the purpose of this task force is to protect religious groups from persecution, except, of course, those who pray to a different god in a different way than the white folks down at the Baptist or Methodist congregations.
Religion still stands as one of the last vestiges of public segregation - even more so than suburban school districts.
The real purpose of the task force has nothing to do with protecting those who choose to pray in their own way. The real purpose is to allow groups and organizations to discriminate against those with whom they disagree under the cover of law.
Catholic hospitals and dioceses don't want to provide contraceptive coverage for their female employees because it shocks their religious sensibilities. But these same religious leaders have no problem proclaiming their support for the latest US bombing raid on a non-white country.
Hobby Lobby didn't want to provide contraceptive coverage for their female employees because god told them it was bad. But that didn't stop executives in the company from smuggling religious artifacts out of the Middle East.
A cake shop owner didn't want to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding and he hid behind his hateful religious beliefs. When pressed, he believed in what a preacher told him was meant by a text that had been translated umpteen times from various sources.
The god-fearing hypocrites at protestant churches across the country voted en masse for a man who boasted of degrading women and looking at teenage girls in states of undress. They voted for a man who has been married three times - each time to a woman he had an affair with while married to someone else.
This cry to protect religious freedom can be seen for what it is by anyone who wants to open their eyes and look around them. We are flooded with religious messages by politicians, school officials, sports organizations, government leaders and even our own money.
The real mission of Mr. Session's task force is to provide cover for those who wish to discriminate against gays, foreigners, blacks, non-English speakers and anyone else who doesn't fit into the mold of 1950's America.
Mr. Sessions claims that the purpose of this task force is to protect religious groups from persecution, except, of course, those who pray to a different god in a different way than the white folks down at the Baptist or Methodist congregations.
Religion still stands as one of the last vestiges of public segregation - even more so than suburban school districts.
The real purpose of the task force has nothing to do with protecting those who choose to pray in their own way. The real purpose is to allow groups and organizations to discriminate against those with whom they disagree under the cover of law.
Catholic hospitals and dioceses don't want to provide contraceptive coverage for their female employees because it shocks their religious sensibilities. But these same religious leaders have no problem proclaiming their support for the latest US bombing raid on a non-white country.
Hobby Lobby didn't want to provide contraceptive coverage for their female employees because god told them it was bad. But that didn't stop executives in the company from smuggling religious artifacts out of the Middle East.
A cake shop owner didn't want to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding and he hid behind his hateful religious beliefs. When pressed, he believed in what a preacher told him was meant by a text that had been translated umpteen times from various sources.
The god-fearing hypocrites at protestant churches across the country voted en masse for a man who boasted of degrading women and looking at teenage girls in states of undress. They voted for a man who has been married three times - each time to a woman he had an affair with while married to someone else.
This cry to protect religious freedom can be seen for what it is by anyone who wants to open their eyes and look around them. We are flooded with religious messages by politicians, school officials, sports organizations, government leaders and even our own money.
The real mission of Mr. Session's task force is to provide cover for those who wish to discriminate against gays, foreigners, blacks, non-English speakers and anyone else who doesn't fit into the mold of 1950's America.
Thursday, July 26, 2018
Houston's white elephant
One of the casualties of Hurricane Harvey was the Harris County Criminal Justice Center - a 20-story white elephant that has had a laundry list of problems since it opened less than 20 years ago.
Now comes word that it is going to cost some $86 million to repair and upgrade the building before it can be re-opened to the public. But, as a colleague pointed out this morning on Twitter, no bids have gone out for the repair work and the idea that the jobs can be bid out and completed in less than 2 years seems a little bit absurd.
The design of the building and the placement of offices and courtrooms never made much sense to anyone who has spent any amount of time inside the courthouse. The building has long been plagued with long lines at security and at the elevators as well as maintenance issues with those same elevators. Stairwells - necessary in case the building needed to be evacuated - were located behind closed doors and out of reach for anyone other than court staff or attorneys.
And while I understand that it is cheaper to build upward in Houston rather than outward, the basic design of a skyscraper and the functionality of a courthouse aren't congruent.
But these concerns are ignored because there is no viable constituency for a new courthouse. The taxpayers don't want to spend any additional money building a new courthouse for the benefit of criminal defendants. Unless they find themselves inside the building, they have no clue how useless it is.
So now for at least the next year-and-a-half (and likely a lot longer), misdemeanor courts will continue to be doubled up in the decrepit old Family Law Center while defendants who can't post bond will sit and wait for even longer in the county jail for their day in court. And that day will only get bumped back further and further when you consider that there is one trial court for every four misdemeanor courts. You do the math. Attorneys and defendants will continue to have to depend on two elevators to service 7 floors and 17 courts.
The felony courts will continue their uneasy alliance with the family courts in the Civil Courthouse where the elevators are proving to be as inadequate as those in the old criminal courthouse.
Attorneys and defendants will continue having to deal with split dockets in multiple courthouses and the inherent delays.
And good luck figuring out where the hell the district clerks or prosecutors are since they are spread over multiple office buildings throughout the city.
This is the living embodiment of insanity -- doing the same thing over and over again thinking it will somehow come out different this one time.
See also:
"Proposal for problem-plagued criminal justice center: Start Over," Chris Tritico, Houston Chronicle (10/16/17)
Now comes word that it is going to cost some $86 million to repair and upgrade the building before it can be re-opened to the public. But, as a colleague pointed out this morning on Twitter, no bids have gone out for the repair work and the idea that the jobs can be bid out and completed in less than 2 years seems a little bit absurd.
The design of the building and the placement of offices and courtrooms never made much sense to anyone who has spent any amount of time inside the courthouse. The building has long been plagued with long lines at security and at the elevators as well as maintenance issues with those same elevators. Stairwells - necessary in case the building needed to be evacuated - were located behind closed doors and out of reach for anyone other than court staff or attorneys.
And while I understand that it is cheaper to build upward in Houston rather than outward, the basic design of a skyscraper and the functionality of a courthouse aren't congruent.
But these concerns are ignored because there is no viable constituency for a new courthouse. The taxpayers don't want to spend any additional money building a new courthouse for the benefit of criminal defendants. Unless they find themselves inside the building, they have no clue how useless it is.
So now for at least the next year-and-a-half (and likely a lot longer), misdemeanor courts will continue to be doubled up in the decrepit old Family Law Center while defendants who can't post bond will sit and wait for even longer in the county jail for their day in court. And that day will only get bumped back further and further when you consider that there is one trial court for every four misdemeanor courts. You do the math. Attorneys and defendants will continue to have to depend on two elevators to service 7 floors and 17 courts.
The felony courts will continue their uneasy alliance with the family courts in the Civil Courthouse where the elevators are proving to be as inadequate as those in the old criminal courthouse.
Attorneys and defendants will continue having to deal with split dockets in multiple courthouses and the inherent delays.
And good luck figuring out where the hell the district clerks or prosecutors are since they are spread over multiple office buildings throughout the city.
This is the living embodiment of insanity -- doing the same thing over and over again thinking it will somehow come out different this one time.
See also:
"Proposal for problem-plagued criminal justice center: Start Over," Chris Tritico, Houston Chronicle (10/16/17)
Wednesday, July 25, 2018
Blood spatter backlash
Before we begin, let us never forget that the foremost ethical duty of a prosecutor is to see that justice is done (whatever that means), not to obtain convictions.
Adam Sibley, the Bosque County District Attorney, is the latest prosecutor in a high-profile case involving flawed forensic evidence to have to make a choice to do what's right or what's necessary to maintain a conviction.
Joe Bryan, a high school principal in Clifton, Texas, was charged with murdering his wife, an elementary school teacher, back in 1985. Mr. Bryan steadfastly claimed he was at a conference in Austin at the time of the killing.
But with the help of some voodoo, I mean, blood spatter analysis, by a police detective who barely understood the principals of the so-called forensic science, Mr. Bryan was convicted. Despite the fact he had but 40 hours training in the discipline, Robert Thorman took the stand and testified that the blood found on a flashlight in the trunk of Mr. Bryan's car showed evidence of back spatter which, according to Mr. Thorman, was a telltale sign that the flashlight was used in a close range shooting.
Let's forget for a second that no one ever tied the flashlight to the murder. Let's further forget that the blood found on the flashlight was Type O which is found in approximately half the population. And let's not forget that no DNA testing was conducted on the blood specks found on the flashlight.
Last Friday, Celestina Rossi, a crime scene investigator for the Montgomery County (Texas) Sheriff's Office Crime Lab, testified before the Texas Forensic Science Commission and testified that Mr. Thorman's testimony was "egregiously wrong" in the Bryan case.
Ms. Rossi spent some 60 hours researching the case and concluded that Mr. Thorman "misstated scientific concepts, used flawed methodology and incorrectly interpreted evidence." She said Mr. Thorman's analysis was not scientifically accurate and could not be supported by any published data.
Driving another nail into the state's coffin, Ms. Rossi testified that the back spatter Mr. Thorman testified indicated the flashlight was used in the murder wasn't back spatter at all and that there was no evidence that the flashlight had been present at the murder scene.
Another problem for the state was a state crime lab technician by the name of Patricia Almanza who was allowed to give opinions during direct examination that exceeded the scope of her expertise.
Mr. Bryan's attorneys have been seeking to have DNA testing performed on the untested evidence for years. In 2017 a court ruled that the items were to be tested. Mr. Sibley appealed that decision.
And why would Mr. Sibley do everything in his power to block that testing? Simple. He wants to maintain the conviction and doesn't care who or what gets in his way. He will stand up on a table and shout to the rafters that it's about finality and respecting a jury's verdict - but that's bullshit.
Mr. Sibley, and most prosecutors, don't get their ethical duty. A defense attorney, by contrast, has no ethical duty but to provide a vigorous defense for his client and maintain his confidences. That's a lot different that seeing that justice is done.
If Mr. Sibley were really interested in seeing that justice is done, he would withdraw his appeal and allow the items to be tested. If the tests confirm that Mr. Bryan is the killer, so be it, but, if they don't, then someone got away with murder and walked around free for more than 30 years. Is that justice?
Next month, Mr. Bryan's attorneys will argue in an evidentiary hearing for a new trial for their client. The presiding judge will then send his recommendation to the Court of Criminal Appeals which will be the final arbiter.
Adam Sibley, the Bosque County District Attorney, is the latest prosecutor in a high-profile case involving flawed forensic evidence to have to make a choice to do what's right or what's necessary to maintain a conviction.
Joe Bryan, a high school principal in Clifton, Texas, was charged with murdering his wife, an elementary school teacher, back in 1985. Mr. Bryan steadfastly claimed he was at a conference in Austin at the time of the killing.
But with the help of some voodoo, I mean, blood spatter analysis, by a police detective who barely understood the principals of the so-called forensic science, Mr. Bryan was convicted. Despite the fact he had but 40 hours training in the discipline, Robert Thorman took the stand and testified that the blood found on a flashlight in the trunk of Mr. Bryan's car showed evidence of back spatter which, according to Mr. Thorman, was a telltale sign that the flashlight was used in a close range shooting.
Let's forget for a second that no one ever tied the flashlight to the murder. Let's further forget that the blood found on the flashlight was Type O which is found in approximately half the population. And let's not forget that no DNA testing was conducted on the blood specks found on the flashlight.
Last Friday, Celestina Rossi, a crime scene investigator for the Montgomery County (Texas) Sheriff's Office Crime Lab, testified before the Texas Forensic Science Commission and testified that Mr. Thorman's testimony was "egregiously wrong" in the Bryan case.
Ms. Rossi spent some 60 hours researching the case and concluded that Mr. Thorman "misstated scientific concepts, used flawed methodology and incorrectly interpreted evidence." She said Mr. Thorman's analysis was not scientifically accurate and could not be supported by any published data.
Driving another nail into the state's coffin, Ms. Rossi testified that the back spatter Mr. Thorman testified indicated the flashlight was used in the murder wasn't back spatter at all and that there was no evidence that the flashlight had been present at the murder scene.
Another problem for the state was a state crime lab technician by the name of Patricia Almanza who was allowed to give opinions during direct examination that exceeded the scope of her expertise.
Mr. Bryan's attorneys have been seeking to have DNA testing performed on the untested evidence for years. In 2017 a court ruled that the items were to be tested. Mr. Sibley appealed that decision.
And why would Mr. Sibley do everything in his power to block that testing? Simple. He wants to maintain the conviction and doesn't care who or what gets in his way. He will stand up on a table and shout to the rafters that it's about finality and respecting a jury's verdict - but that's bullshit.
Mr. Sibley, and most prosecutors, don't get their ethical duty. A defense attorney, by contrast, has no ethical duty but to provide a vigorous defense for his client and maintain his confidences. That's a lot different that seeing that justice is done.
If Mr. Sibley were really interested in seeing that justice is done, he would withdraw his appeal and allow the items to be tested. If the tests confirm that Mr. Bryan is the killer, so be it, but, if they don't, then someone got away with murder and walked around free for more than 30 years. Is that justice?
Next month, Mr. Bryan's attorneys will argue in an evidentiary hearing for a new trial for their client. The presiding judge will then send his recommendation to the Court of Criminal Appeals which will be the final arbiter.
Tuesday, July 24, 2018
Trying to throw a little shade around
In 2014, attorneys for three death row inmates filed open records requests with the State of Texas seeking to find the source of the drugs used for executing inmates. Then Attorney General Greg Abbott (now governor) decided that the state could withhold that information because the suppliers faced actual harm if their identities were revealed. Interestingly enough, on three previous occasions, Mr. Abbott determined the information was public.
Texas, in its ongoing quest to continue murdering inmates in god's name, fought like a cornered cat to keep the names of the pharmacies secret. They lost at the district court level. They lost at the Court of Appeals. And in June they lost at the State Supreme Court.
But has that stopped the state from continuing to withhold the information? Not a chance. The state filed a motion for rehearing last week.
Both Texas and Arizona are embroiled in litigation over whether the identities of pharmacies that provide drugs for lethal injections should be made public. The state argues that this is a guerrilla tactic from death penalty opponents to shut down the supply of drugs available to states for murdering inmates. They argue that the publicity that would rain down on such a pharmacy would make them think twice before supplying drugs for to the state.
The Republican led state legislature agreed and passed a law in 2015 that shielded the names of the suppliers from the public. Now I could go on for a while about how ironic it is that a bunch of bible-thumping christian conservatives are doing everything they can to make it easier for the state to violate one of their sacred commandments -- but that would just be picking the low-hanging fruit.
Instead we can talk about why the state wants to keep that information secret. First, however, we have to return to 2014 since the law passed by the legislature in 2015 was not retroactive. Once drug suppliers decided not to sell their drugs to states for the purpose of executing inmates, the states had two choices. The first was to "extend" the expiration date of the drugs on hand -- having no idea whether or not the drugs would be as effective after the manufacturer's expiration date. The second was to find compounding pharmacies that would manufacture the drug specifically for the state.
Since the drugs are made at the pharmacy, there is no way to test whether or not they are effective, how potent they are or if they carry any side effects. But what if that's not what was taking place? What if the purpose of shielding the names of the pharmacies is to keep the drug companies from finding out that the pharmacists are selling the manufacturers' drugs under veil of secrecy?
Sure, the compounding pharmacies would get a lot of bad publicity for supplying the drugs to the state -- but in some cases, customers would have no choice but to go to that pharmacy for their drugs. But if a manufacturer cut that pharmacy off from its supply of drugs, the pharmacy would have no choice but to stop providing drugs to the state.
I'm not saying this is what's actually happening - only that it might explain the state's doggedness in the fight.
The bigger issue, however, is the notion that elected officials run this state in our name. We have a right to know what's being done in our name. If the state wants to keep killing inmates, fine, but let's not try to be shady or secretive about it. And if a pharmacy is willing to play footsy with the state's killing machine, then the owner of the pharmacy needs to stand up and own it. His or her customers have a right to know if their pharmacist is aiding in the murder of inmates.
Texas Solicitor General Scott Keller is correct. Death penalty opponents have put pressure on manufacturers to cut off the supply of drugs needed to kill inmates. The belief is that a majority of Americans would be appalled if we went back to electrocuting, suffocating, hanging or shooting inmates. Such a course would run the death penalty right back into a confrontation with the Eighth Amendments ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
And death penalty advocates know that day is coming.
Texas, in its ongoing quest to continue murdering inmates in god's name, fought like a cornered cat to keep the names of the pharmacies secret. They lost at the district court level. They lost at the Court of Appeals. And in June they lost at the State Supreme Court.
But has that stopped the state from continuing to withhold the information? Not a chance. The state filed a motion for rehearing last week.
Both Texas and Arizona are embroiled in litigation over whether the identities of pharmacies that provide drugs for lethal injections should be made public. The state argues that this is a guerrilla tactic from death penalty opponents to shut down the supply of drugs available to states for murdering inmates. They argue that the publicity that would rain down on such a pharmacy would make them think twice before supplying drugs for to the state.
The Republican led state legislature agreed and passed a law in 2015 that shielded the names of the suppliers from the public. Now I could go on for a while about how ironic it is that a bunch of bible-thumping christian conservatives are doing everything they can to make it easier for the state to violate one of their sacred commandments -- but that would just be picking the low-hanging fruit.
Instead we can talk about why the state wants to keep that information secret. First, however, we have to return to 2014 since the law passed by the legislature in 2015 was not retroactive. Once drug suppliers decided not to sell their drugs to states for the purpose of executing inmates, the states had two choices. The first was to "extend" the expiration date of the drugs on hand -- having no idea whether or not the drugs would be as effective after the manufacturer's expiration date. The second was to find compounding pharmacies that would manufacture the drug specifically for the state.
Since the drugs are made at the pharmacy, there is no way to test whether or not they are effective, how potent they are or if they carry any side effects. But what if that's not what was taking place? What if the purpose of shielding the names of the pharmacies is to keep the drug companies from finding out that the pharmacists are selling the manufacturers' drugs under veil of secrecy?
Sure, the compounding pharmacies would get a lot of bad publicity for supplying the drugs to the state -- but in some cases, customers would have no choice but to go to that pharmacy for their drugs. But if a manufacturer cut that pharmacy off from its supply of drugs, the pharmacy would have no choice but to stop providing drugs to the state.
I'm not saying this is what's actually happening - only that it might explain the state's doggedness in the fight.
The bigger issue, however, is the notion that elected officials run this state in our name. We have a right to know what's being done in our name. If the state wants to keep killing inmates, fine, but let's not try to be shady or secretive about it. And if a pharmacy is willing to play footsy with the state's killing machine, then the owner of the pharmacy needs to stand up and own it. His or her customers have a right to know if their pharmacist is aiding in the murder of inmates.
Texas Solicitor General Scott Keller is correct. Death penalty opponents have put pressure on manufacturers to cut off the supply of drugs needed to kill inmates. The belief is that a majority of Americans would be appalled if we went back to electrocuting, suffocating, hanging or shooting inmates. Such a course would run the death penalty right back into a confrontation with the Eighth Amendments ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
And death penalty advocates know that day is coming.
Thursday, July 19, 2018
Fun with the lexicon
President Donny has done a lot of highly questionable things but, at least according to the Constitution, treason is not one of them.
Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court.
Let's break it down, shall we.
According to the definition of treason found in Article III, Section 3, one commits treason if one levies war against the US. Levy means to "enlist someone for military service." In other words, to levy war against the US would be to raise troops to fight against the US. Thus, everyone involved with the secessionist movement and the Confederate government committed treason.
The next part of the definition is "adhering to their enemies." Adhere means "to believe in and follow the practices of." Enemy means "a hostile nation or its armed forces...especially in time of war."
The first thing we need to look at is whether Russia is a hostile nation. From 1945 until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, the Soviets were considered an enemy of the US. They were considered an enemy because they stood for the destruction of capitalism. Let's make no bones about this - the Cold War was never about expanding freedom or democracy or any of the other things our government told us. The Cold War was about making the world "safe" for capitalism.
During the Cold War era the US overthrew, orchestrated the overthrow of or funded the overthrow of countless democratically elected governments that espoused socialist ideas.
Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia has been as much of an ally as anything else. Sure, the Russian government flexes its muscle at times when dealing with some of its former allied states and republics (but just look at US foreign policy in Central America)., but both states are for the expansion of capitalism.
Aside from that, the US and Russia are not at war with one another. The US and Russia are not in a state of armed conflict with each other. I know we like to throw the word war around like its cheap candy, but there is nothing resembling armed conflict between our nations.
So, before we throw around terms like treason, maybe we should make sure we know what that term means. Otherwise it makes you look like a raving lunatic. Donald Trump is a lot of things, but traitor isn't one of them.
Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court.
Let's break it down, shall we.
According to the definition of treason found in Article III, Section 3, one commits treason if one levies war against the US. Levy means to "enlist someone for military service." In other words, to levy war against the US would be to raise troops to fight against the US. Thus, everyone involved with the secessionist movement and the Confederate government committed treason.
The next part of the definition is "adhering to their enemies." Adhere means "to believe in and follow the practices of." Enemy means "a hostile nation or its armed forces...especially in time of war."
The first thing we need to look at is whether Russia is a hostile nation. From 1945 until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, the Soviets were considered an enemy of the US. They were considered an enemy because they stood for the destruction of capitalism. Let's make no bones about this - the Cold War was never about expanding freedom or democracy or any of the other things our government told us. The Cold War was about making the world "safe" for capitalism.
During the Cold War era the US overthrew, orchestrated the overthrow of or funded the overthrow of countless democratically elected governments that espoused socialist ideas.
Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia has been as much of an ally as anything else. Sure, the Russian government flexes its muscle at times when dealing with some of its former allied states and republics (but just look at US foreign policy in Central America)., but both states are for the expansion of capitalism.
Aside from that, the US and Russia are not at war with one another. The US and Russia are not in a state of armed conflict with each other. I know we like to throw the word war around like its cheap candy, but there is nothing resembling armed conflict between our nations.
So, before we throw around terms like treason, maybe we should make sure we know what that term means. Otherwise it makes you look like a raving lunatic. Donald Trump is a lot of things, but traitor isn't one of them.
Tuesday, July 17, 2018
Execution Watch: 7/17/2018
It's Tuesday night and Texas is looking to kill again...
CHRISTOPHER YOUNG. Mr. Young was sentenced to death in 2006 for the murder of a San Antonio convenience store owner. His lawyers said religious discrimination occurred during jury selection when a black woman was ruled ineligible to serve because she belongs to a church that has a prison ministry. The victim's son has asked the state to spare Mr. Young's life. Mr. Young's attorneys urged Gov. Abbott to halt the execution to consider their allegations that race was a factor in the refusal to grant Mr. Young clemency. They said a white man with a situation similar to Mr. Young's was recently spared (Click here to read about Thomas Whitaker's case). The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles turned down Mr. Young's request for clemency.
Just like in the case of Thomas Whitaker, a relative of the victim, in this case his son, has asked the state not to kill. However, in Mr. Whitaker's case, the Board voted unanimously to grant clemency and the governor agreed. The difference? Thomas Whitaker is white and Christopher Young is black.
In defending the Board's decision not to grant clemency in Mr. Young's case, Assistant AG Stephen Hoffman points out that Mr. Young pulled the trigger in his case while Mr. Whitaker merely set the murders in motion. This raises a couple of other questions. First, should we be killing folks who took part in a murder but didn't actually pull the trigger? Second, what's worse: pulling the trigger or hiring someone else to do it?
This case does illustrate a unique aspect of criminal law. When the alleged victim or victim's family wants the defendant punished a certain way (jail instead of probation, for instance), the DA is only too quick to cut off negotiations because of the opposition. But, when the alleged victim or victim's family doesn't want the defendant punished harshly -- or sometimes, not at all -- the DA is quick to point out that he or she represents the State, not the victim. Go figure.
RADIO SHOW PREVIEW
CHRISTOPHER YOUNG. Mr. Young was sentenced to death in 2006 for the murder of a San Antonio convenience store owner. His lawyers said religious discrimination occurred during jury selection when a black woman was ruled ineligible to serve because she belongs to a church that has a prison ministry. The victim's son has asked the state to spare Mr. Young's life. Mr. Young's attorneys urged Gov. Abbott to halt the execution to consider their allegations that race was a factor in the refusal to grant Mr. Young clemency. They said a white man with a situation similar to Mr. Young's was recently spared (Click here to read about Thomas Whitaker's case). The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles turned down Mr. Young's request for clemency.
Just like in the case of Thomas Whitaker, a relative of the victim, in this case his son, has asked the state not to kill. However, in Mr. Whitaker's case, the Board voted unanimously to grant clemency and the governor agreed. The difference? Thomas Whitaker is white and Christopher Young is black.
In defending the Board's decision not to grant clemency in Mr. Young's case, Assistant AG Stephen Hoffman points out that Mr. Young pulled the trigger in his case while Mr. Whitaker merely set the murders in motion. This raises a couple of other questions. First, should we be killing folks who took part in a murder but didn't actually pull the trigger? Second, what's worse: pulling the trigger or hiring someone else to do it?
This case does illustrate a unique aspect of criminal law. When the alleged victim or victim's family wants the defendant punished a certain way (jail instead of probation, for instance), the DA is only too quick to cut off negotiations because of the opposition. But, when the alleged victim or victim's family doesn't want the defendant punished harshly -- or sometimes, not at all -- the DA is quick to point out that he or she represents the State, not the victim. Go figure.
RADIO SHOW PREVIEW
EXECUTION WATCH
Unless a stay is issued, Execution Watch will broadcast live:
Tuesday, July 17, 6-7 PM Central Time
KPFT-FM Houston 90.1, HD 3 or online at:
Thursday, July 12, 2018
Nevada execution halted over drugs
It would appear to the outside viewer that Nevada has just been caught with its pants down.
Nevada was looking to be the first state to murder an inmate using the synthetic opioid fentanyl. What they didn't count on was the manufacturer of midazolam, Alvgoen, filing suit to halt the execution because the state had used deception to obtain midazolam.
The execution was halted by Clark County District Judge Elizabeth Gonzalez.
Alvogen has been very vocal in its opposition to the use of its drugs in executions. The state obtained midazolam after its stocks of diazepam expired. And, just to demonstrate that its acquisition of midazolam was no fluke, last year Nevada refused to return unused doses of fentanyl and diazepam to Pfizer on request.
Alvogen claims in its lawsuit that Nevada got its hands on the drug illegally "despite and clear and unambiguous prior warning" that the company did not want its drug used for executions. What does it say when a state is only too willing to lie, cheat and steal to obtain a drug? Officials did this believing there was no way their actions would become known to the public.
This marks only the second time a drug manufacturer has filed suit to prevent one of its drugs from being used in an execution. The first suit, filed in Arkansas, failed.
But the larger problem is whether or not the various toxic cocktails states have chosen to use (largely because of drug manufacturer objections to the use of their drugs in killing people), are, for lack of a better term, humane.
The Nevada legislature approved a cocktail involving midazolam, fentanyl and the paralytic agent, cisatracurium. At a hearing last November, a district court judge told the state they could use midazolam and fentanyl, but not cistracurium. The concern is that cistracurium induces paralyis in the inmate and would mask any pain he was feeling as he suffocated. Of course there is also the issue of whether fentanyl is an appropriate drug since it has never been used in an execution.
And then there's midazolam. If you recall the botched executions in Ohio and Oklahoma you will remember that midazolam was the drug of choice. Inmates strapped to the gurney have complained about a burning sensation after being injected with the drug.
But, back to Nevada for a second. After the district court ruling, the state appealed to the State Supreme Court which held - on procedural grounds, not pharmacological grounds, that the state was free to use the three-drug cocktail approved by the legislature.
It never ceases to amaze me the number of states who will do whatever it takes to kill inmates in the name of the people. The death penalty is slowly grinding to a halt. Soon there will come a day when there are no drugs available and no pharmacists are willing to play footsy with the state-sponsored killing machine.
I just hope everyone can see the hypocrisy for what it is.
Nevada was looking to be the first state to murder an inmate using the synthetic opioid fentanyl. What they didn't count on was the manufacturer of midazolam, Alvgoen, filing suit to halt the execution because the state had used deception to obtain midazolam.
The execution was halted by Clark County District Judge Elizabeth Gonzalez.
Alvogen has been very vocal in its opposition to the use of its drugs in executions. The state obtained midazolam after its stocks of diazepam expired. And, just to demonstrate that its acquisition of midazolam was no fluke, last year Nevada refused to return unused doses of fentanyl and diazepam to Pfizer on request.
Alvogen claims in its lawsuit that Nevada got its hands on the drug illegally "despite and clear and unambiguous prior warning" that the company did not want its drug used for executions. What does it say when a state is only too willing to lie, cheat and steal to obtain a drug? Officials did this believing there was no way their actions would become known to the public.
This marks only the second time a drug manufacturer has filed suit to prevent one of its drugs from being used in an execution. The first suit, filed in Arkansas, failed.
But the larger problem is whether or not the various toxic cocktails states have chosen to use (largely because of drug manufacturer objections to the use of their drugs in killing people), are, for lack of a better term, humane.
The Nevada legislature approved a cocktail involving midazolam, fentanyl and the paralytic agent, cisatracurium. At a hearing last November, a district court judge told the state they could use midazolam and fentanyl, but not cistracurium. The concern is that cistracurium induces paralyis in the inmate and would mask any pain he was feeling as he suffocated. Of course there is also the issue of whether fentanyl is an appropriate drug since it has never been used in an execution.
And then there's midazolam. If you recall the botched executions in Ohio and Oklahoma you will remember that midazolam was the drug of choice. Inmates strapped to the gurney have complained about a burning sensation after being injected with the drug.
But, back to Nevada for a second. After the district court ruling, the state appealed to the State Supreme Court which held - on procedural grounds, not pharmacological grounds, that the state was free to use the three-drug cocktail approved by the legislature.
It never ceases to amaze me the number of states who will do whatever it takes to kill inmates in the name of the people. The death penalty is slowly grinding to a halt. Soon there will come a day when there are no drugs available and no pharmacists are willing to play footsy with the state-sponsored killing machine.
I just hope everyone can see the hypocrisy for what it is.
Wednesday, July 11, 2018
I think that just about covers it
I can't recall if I've ever recommended Phoebe Judge's excellent podcast Criminal. If you haven't listened, you should give it a try. Every episode deals with someone who did something wrong, was the victim of something wrong or finds themselves somewhere in the middle.
The latest episode is one of the funniest things I've heard in a while. It's about Mark Roberts, a painter from Liverpool, who has attended some of the world's biggest sporting events, took his clothes off and ran around the field.
The latest episode is one of the funniest things I've heard in a while. It's about Mark Roberts, a painter from Liverpool, who has attended some of the world's biggest sporting events, took his clothes off and ran around the field.
Monday, July 9, 2018
Where did the drugs come from?
Back in February we looked at the stockpile of drugs the State of Texas had on hand to kill inmates. At that time there were 8 doses set to expire in late July and 4 doses set to expire in October.
Just last month Texas somehow came into possession of an additional 15 doses of pentobarbital.
According to Robert Dunham with the Death Penalty Information Center, most drug manufacturers have placed controls on pentobarbital (and other drugs used in executions) that prohibit the sale of drugs for unapproved medical purposes - a category that includes the use of the drugs in executions.
Due to the fact that Texas still has a "middle of the night" mentality when it comes to executions, state law forbids the state from disclosing its source of the drugs used in executions. This means that no one can check the reliability or potency of the drugs in question. It also shields compounding pharmacies from bad publicity.
Is the State of Texas doing an end run around drug manufacturer restrictions on the use of certain drugs? Is the State of Texas, or an entity acquiring the drugs on behalf of the State of Texas, lying on forms asking for what purpose the drugs are needed?
Maybe you don't think it's a big deal where the drugs come from. Maybe you don't have a problem with the death penalty.
But there are more and more reports coming out that inmates are complaining of a burning sensation or pain during the process. These reports constitute violations of the 8th Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
These are issues that are important to execution litigation. In order to mount a serious challenge to an execution method, attorneys need to know the type and provenance of each drug. And if a state violates an end user agreement or lies on a form specifying what the drug is to be used for, those are issues that need to be litigated. Just because you are carrying out an execution authorized by law doesn't mean you get to lie, cheat and cut corners to get the drugs you need to do it.
It is time for the State of Texas to reveal the source of the new drugs. It is time to examine the paperwork. It is time to find out whether Texas has extended drug expiration dates on its own. It is time to hold the State of Texas accountable for what it does in our name.
Just last month Texas somehow came into possession of an additional 15 doses of pentobarbital.
According to Robert Dunham with the Death Penalty Information Center, most drug manufacturers have placed controls on pentobarbital (and other drugs used in executions) that prohibit the sale of drugs for unapproved medical purposes - a category that includes the use of the drugs in executions.
Due to the fact that Texas still has a "middle of the night" mentality when it comes to executions, state law forbids the state from disclosing its source of the drugs used in executions. This means that no one can check the reliability or potency of the drugs in question. It also shields compounding pharmacies from bad publicity.
"If Texas is getting these drugs legally that's important to know for death penalty cases across the country. If they're getting them illegally or by making misrepresentations to pharmaceutical distributors that's also important to know because states should not be violating the law or breaching contracts in the name of law enforcement." -- Robert Dunham
Is the State of Texas doing an end run around drug manufacturer restrictions on the use of certain drugs? Is the State of Texas, or an entity acquiring the drugs on behalf of the State of Texas, lying on forms asking for what purpose the drugs are needed?
Maybe you don't think it's a big deal where the drugs come from. Maybe you don't have a problem with the death penalty.
But there are more and more reports coming out that inmates are complaining of a burning sensation or pain during the process. These reports constitute violations of the 8th Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
These are issues that are important to execution litigation. In order to mount a serious challenge to an execution method, attorneys need to know the type and provenance of each drug. And if a state violates an end user agreement or lies on a form specifying what the drug is to be used for, those are issues that need to be litigated. Just because you are carrying out an execution authorized by law doesn't mean you get to lie, cheat and cut corners to get the drugs you need to do it.
It is time for the State of Texas to reveal the source of the new drugs. It is time to examine the paperwork. It is time to find out whether Texas has extended drug expiration dates on its own. It is time to hold the State of Texas accountable for what it does in our name.
Friday, July 6, 2018
Iowa takes exception to shrinking 4th Amendment
Take that, SCOTUS!
And with the stroke of a pen (or, more accurately, the tapping of a few keys), the Iowa Supreme Court decided it wasn't playing games with the search and seizure clause of the state's constitution. As Justice Appell put it:
In the words of another state supreme court, we do not allow the words of our Iowa Constitution to be “balloons to be blown up or deflated every time, and precisely in accord with the interpretation of the U.S. Supreme Court, following some tortious trail.”
The question at hand was whether a so-called "inventory" search was a valid exception to the 4th Amendment's prohibition of unreasonable search and seizure. Art. 1, Sec. 8 of the Iowa Constitution contains the same wording as the 4th Amendment.
Bion Ingram was driving to work one morning when he was pulled over for a defective license plate lamp (one of those little lovelies that a motorist can never disprove). The officer then determined that the registration affixed to Mr. Ingram's car didn't quite match the car itself. The officer told Mr. Ingram he was going to have to impound the car but he offered to give him a ride to the nearest gas station so a friend could take him to work.
Then the officer asked if Mr. Ingram has anything of value in the car. He said no. The police then told him they were going to do an inventory search of the car before they towed it. And wouldn't you know it, they found a bag with a glass pipe and a gram of meth. Mr. Ingram was arrested. He challenged the search on the grounds there was no probable cause to search and that there was no warrant.
The trial court said who cares? He was convicted of possession of a controlled substance and filed an appeal.
The court decided that it wasn't going to allow the whims of the US Supreme Court to determine just what an unreasonable search was in Iowa. In its ruling the court held that the Supreme Court's determination of what was reasonable under the 4th Amendment wasn't the law of the land -- just the minimum guaranteed right.
The opinion offers a fairly comprehensive history of automobile exceptions to the 4th Amendment.
The opinion also offers advise to trial attorneys -- when making an objection based on federal constitutional law, make damn sure you make the same objection on state constitutional (or statutory) grounds when available. Failing to do so could open you up for a claim of ineffective assistance.
h/t Owen Barcala
And with the stroke of a pen (or, more accurately, the tapping of a few keys), the Iowa Supreme Court decided it wasn't playing games with the search and seizure clause of the state's constitution. As Justice Appell put it:
In the words of another state supreme court, we do not allow the words of our Iowa Constitution to be “balloons to be blown up or deflated every time, and precisely in accord with the interpretation of the U.S. Supreme Court, following some tortious trail.”
The question at hand was whether a so-called "inventory" search was a valid exception to the 4th Amendment's prohibition of unreasonable search and seizure. Art. 1, Sec. 8 of the Iowa Constitution contains the same wording as the 4th Amendment.
Bion Ingram was driving to work one morning when he was pulled over for a defective license plate lamp (one of those little lovelies that a motorist can never disprove). The officer then determined that the registration affixed to Mr. Ingram's car didn't quite match the car itself. The officer told Mr. Ingram he was going to have to impound the car but he offered to give him a ride to the nearest gas station so a friend could take him to work.
Then the officer asked if Mr. Ingram has anything of value in the car. He said no. The police then told him they were going to do an inventory search of the car before they towed it. And wouldn't you know it, they found a bag with a glass pipe and a gram of meth. Mr. Ingram was arrested. He challenged the search on the grounds there was no probable cause to search and that there was no warrant.
The trial court said who cares? He was convicted of possession of a controlled substance and filed an appeal.
The court decided that it wasn't going to allow the whims of the US Supreme Court to determine just what an unreasonable search was in Iowa. In its ruling the court held that the Supreme Court's determination of what was reasonable under the 4th Amendment wasn't the law of the land -- just the minimum guaranteed right.
The opinion offers a fairly comprehensive history of automobile exceptions to the 4th Amendment.
The opinion also offers advise to trial attorneys -- when making an objection based on federal constitutional law, make damn sure you make the same objection on state constitutional (or statutory) grounds when available. Failing to do so could open you up for a claim of ineffective assistance.
h/t Owen Barcala
Thursday, July 5, 2018
The contradictions of July 4
Okay, I know, it's a day late. But you try getting in front of the computer with a houseful of kids wanting to watch YouTube and Netflix.
With thanks to many folks on Twitter who posted links to this, here is Frederick Douglass' "What to the Slave is the 4th of July" delivered on July 4, 1852 in Rochester, NY.
Never forget that black men fought for the Union in the Civil War and fought in both World War I and World War II and they call came home to a world in which they were treated as second-class citizens.
We live in a world in which unarmed black men are shot down with impunity by the police but the President of the United States calls a black man taking a knee in peaceful protest an SOB.
With thanks to many folks on Twitter who posted links to this, here is Frederick Douglass' "What to the Slave is the 4th of July" delivered on July 4, 1852 in Rochester, NY.
Never forget that black men fought for the Union in the Civil War and fought in both World War I and World War II and they call came home to a world in which they were treated as second-class citizens.
We live in a world in which unarmed black men are shot down with impunity by the police but the President of the United States calls a black man taking a knee in peaceful protest an SOB.
Mr. President, Friends and Fellow Citizens:
He who could address this audience without a quailing sensation, has stronger nerves than I have. I do not remember ever to have appeared as a speaker before any assembly more shrinkingly, nor with greater distrust of my ability, than I do this day. A feeling has crept over me, quite unfavorable to the exercise of my limited powers of speech. The task before me is one which requires much previous thought and study for its proper performance. I know that apologies of this sort are generally considered flat and unmeaning. I trust, however, that mine will not be so considered. Should I seem at ease, my appearance would much misrepresent me. The little experience I have had in addressing public meetings, in country schoolhouses, avails me nothing on the present occasion.
The papers and placards say, that I am to deliver a 4th [of] July oration. This certainly sounds large, and out of the common way, for it is true that I have often had the privilege to speak in this beautiful Hall, and to address many who now honor me with their presence. But neither their familiar faces, nor the perfect gage I think I have of Corinthian Hall, seems to free me from embarrassment.
The fact is, ladies and gentlemen, the distance between this platform and the slave plantation, from which I escaped, is considerable — and the difficulties to be overcome in getting from the latter to the former, are by no means slight. That I am here to-day is, to me, a matter of astonishment as well as of gratitude. You will not, therefore, be surprised, if in what I have to say I evince no elaborate preparation, nor grace my speech with any high sounding exordium. With little experience and with less learning, I have been able to throw my thoughts hastily and imperfectly together; and trusting to your patient and generous indulgence, I will proceed to lay them before you.
This, for the purpose of this celebration, is the 4th of July. It is the birthday of your National Independence, and of your political freedom. This, to you, is what the Passover was to the emancipated people of God. It carries your minds back to the day, and to the act of your great deliverance; and to the signs, and to the wonders, associated with that act, and that day. This celebration also marks the beginning of another year of your national life; and reminds you that the Republic of America is now 76 years old. I am glad, fellow-citizens, that your nation is so young. Seventy-six years, though a good old age for a man, is but a mere speck in the life of a nation. Three score years and ten is the allotted time for individual men; but nations number their years by thousands. According to this fact, you are, even now, only in the beginning of your national career, still lingering in the period of childhood. I repeat, I am glad this is so. There is hope in the thought, and hope is much needed, under the dark clouds which lower above the horizon. The eye of the reformer is met with angry flashes, portending disastrous times; but his heart may well beat lighter at the thought that America is young, and that she is still in the impressible stage of her existence. May he not hope that high lessons of wisdom, of justice and of truth, will yet give direction to her destiny? Were the nation older, the patriot’s heart might be sadder, and the reformer’s brow heavier. Its future might be shrouded in gloom, and the hope of its prophets go out in sorrow. There is consolation in the thought that America is young. Great streams are not easily turned from channels, worn deep in the course of ages. They may sometimes rise in quiet and stately majesty, and inundate the land, refreshing and fertilizing the earth with their mysterious properties. They may also rise in wrath and fury, and bear away, on their angry waves, the accumulated wealth of years of toil and hardship. They, however, gradually flow back to the same old channel, and flow on as serenely as ever. But, while the river may not be turned aside, it may dry up, and leave nothing behind but the withered branch, and the unsightly rock, to howl in the abyss-sweeping wind, the sad tale of departed glory. As with rivers so with nations.
Fellow-citizens, I shall not presume to dwell at length on the associations that cluster about this day. The simple story of it is that, 76 years ago, the people of this country were British subjects. The style and title of your “sovereign people” (in which you now glory) was not then born. You were under the British Crown. Your fathers esteemed the English Government as the home government; and England as the fatherland. This home government, you know, although a considerable distance from your home, did, in the exercise of its parental prerogatives, impose upon its colonial children, such restraints, burdens and limitations, as, in its mature judgment, it deemed wise, right and proper.
But, your fathers, who had not adopted the fashionable idea of this day, of the infallibility of government, and the absolute character of its acts, presumed to differ from the home government in respect to the wisdom and the justice of some of those burdens and restraints. They went so far in their excitement as to pronounce the measures of government unjust, unreasonable, and oppressive, and altogether such as ought not to be quietly submitted to. I scarcely need say, fellow-citizens, that my opinion of those measures fully accords with that of your fathers. Such a declaration of agreement on my part would not be worth much to anybody. It would, certainly, prove nothing, as to what part I might have taken, had I lived during the great controversy of 1776. To say now that America was right, and England wrong, is exceedingly easy. Everybody can say it; the dastard, not less than the noble brave, can flippantly discant on the tyranny of England towards the American Colonies. It is fashionable to do so; but there was a time when to pronounce against England, and in favor of the cause of the colonies, tried men’s souls. They who did so were accounted in their day, plotters of mischief, agitators and rebels, dangerous men. To side with the right, against the wrong, with the weak against the strong, and with the oppressed against the oppressor! here lies the merit, and the one which, of all others, seems unfashionable in our day. The cause of liberty may be stabbed by the men who glory in the deeds of your fathers. But, to proceed.
Feeling themselves harshly and unjustly treated by the home government, your fathers, like men of honesty, and men of spirit, earnestly sought redress. They petitioned and remonstrated; they did so in a decorous, respectful, and loyal manner. Their conduct was wholly unexceptionable. This, however, did not answer the purpose. They saw themselves treated with sovereign indifference, coldness and scorn. Yet they persevered. They were not the men to look back.
As the sheet anchor takes a firmer hold, when the ship is tossed by the storm, so did the cause of your fathers grow stronger, as it breasted the chilling blasts of kingly displeasure. The greatest and best of British statesmen admitted its justice, and the loftiest eloquence of the British Senate came to its support. But, with that blindness which seems to be the unvarying characteristic of tyrants, since Pharaoh and his hosts were drowned in the Red Sea, the British Government persisted in the exactions complained of.
The madness of this course, we believe, is admitted now, even by England; but we fear the lesson is wholly lost on our present ruler.
Oppression makes a wise man mad. Your fathers were wise men, and if they did not go mad, they became restive under this treatment. They felt themselves the victims of grievous wrongs, wholly incurable in their colonial capacity. With brave men there is always a remedy for oppression. Just here, the idea of a total separation of the colonies from the crown was born! It was a startling idea, much more so, than we, at this distance of time, regard it. The timid and the prudent (as has been intimated) of that day, were, of course, shocked and alarmed by it.
Such people lived then, had lived before, and will, probably, ever have a place on this planet; and their course, in respect to any great change, (no matter how great the good to be attained, or the wrong to be redressed by it), may be calculated with as much precision as can be the course of the stars. They hate all changes, but silver, gold and copper change! Of this sort of change they are always strongly in favor.
These people were called Tories in the days of your fathers; and the appellation, probably, conveyed the same idea that is meant by a more modern, though a somewhat less euphonious term, which we often find in our papers, applied to some of our old politicians.
Their opposition to the then dangerous thought was earnest and powerful; but, amid all their terror and affrighted vociferations against it, the alarming and revolutionary idea moved on, and the country with it.
On the 2d of July, 1776, the old Continental Congress, to the dismay of the lovers of ease, and the worshipers of property, clothed that dreadful idea with all the authority of national sanction. They did so in the form of a resolution; and as we seldom hit upon resolutions, drawn up in our day whose transparency is at all equal to this, it may refresh your minds and help my story if I read it. “Resolved, That these united colonies are, and of right, ought to be free and Independent States; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown; and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, dissolved.”
Citizens, your fathers made good that resolution. They succeeded; and to-day you reap the fruits of their success. The freedom gained is yours; and you, therefore, may properly celebrate this anniversary. The 4th of July is the first great fact in your nation’s history — the very ring-bolt in the chain of your yet undeveloped destiny.
Pride and patriotism, not less than gratitude, prompt you to celebrate and to hold it in perpetual remembrance. I have said that the Declaration of Independence is the ring-bolt to the chain of your nation’s destiny; so, indeed, I regard it. The principles contained in that instrument are saving principles. Stand by those principles, be true to them on all occasions, in all places, against all foes, and at whatever cost.
From the round top of your ship of state, dark and threatening clouds may be seen. Heavy billows, like mountains in the distance, disclose to the leeward huge forms of flinty rocks! That bolt drawn, that chain broken, and all is lost. Cling to this day — cling to it, and to its principles, with the grasp of a storm-tossed mariner to a spar at midnight.
The coming into being of a nation, in any circumstances, is an interesting event. But, besides general considerations, there were peculiar circumstances which make the advent of this republic an event of special attractiveness.
The whole scene, as I look back to it, was simple, dignified and sublime.
The population of the country, at the time, stood at the insignificant number of three millions. The country was poor in the munitions of war. The population was weak and scattered, and the country a wilderness unsubdued. There were then no means of concert and combination, such as exist now. Neither steam nor lightning had then been reduced to order and discipline. From the Potomac to the Delaware was a journey of many days. Under these, and innumerable other disadvantages, your fathers declared for liberty and independence and triumphed.
Fellow Citizens, I am not wanting in respect for the fathers of this republic. The signers of the Declaration of Independence were brave men. They were great men too — great enough to give fame to a great age. It does not often happen to a nation to raise, at one time, such a number of truly great men. The point from which I am compelled to view them is not, certainly, the most favorable; and yet I cannot contemplate their great deeds with less than admiration. They were statesmen, patriots and heroes, and for the good they did, and the principles they contended for, I will unite with you to honor their memory.
They loved their country better than their own private interests; and, though this is not the highest form of human excellence, all will concede that it is a rare virtue, and that when it is exhibited, it ought to command respect. He who will, intelligently, lay down his life for his country, is a man whom it is not in human nature to despise. Your fathers staked their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor, on the cause of their country. In their admiration of liberty, they lost sight of all other interests.
They were peace men; but they preferred revolution to peaceful submission to bondage. They were quiet men; but they did not shrink from agitating against oppression. They showed forbearance; but that they knew its limits. They believed in order; but not in the order of tyranny. With them, nothing was “settled” that was not right. With them, justice, liberty and humanity were “final;” not slavery and oppression. You may well cherish the memory of such men. They were great in their day and generation. Their solid manhood stands out the more as we contrast it with these degenerate times.
How circumspect, exact and proportionate were all their movements! How unlike the politicians of an hour! Their statesmanship looked beyond the passing moment, and stretched away in strength into the distant future. They seized upon eternal principles, and set a glorious example in their defense. Mark them!
Fully appreciating the hardship to be encountered, firmly believing in the right of their cause, honorably inviting the scrutiny of an on-looking world, reverently appealing to heaven to attest their sincerity, soundly comprehending the solemn responsibility they were about to assume, wisely measuring the terrible odds against them, your fathers, the fathers of this republic, did, most deliberately, under the inspiration of a glorious patriotism, and with a sublime faith in the great principles of justice and freedom, lay deep the corner-stone of the national superstructure, which has risen and still rises in grandeur around you.
Of this fundamental work, this day is the anniversary. Our eyes are met with demonstrations of joyous enthusiasm. Banners and pennants wave exultingly on the breeze. The din of business, too, is hushed. Even Mammon seems to have quitted his grasp on this day. The ear-piercing fife and the stirring drum unite their accents with the ascending peal of a thousand church bells. Prayers are made, hymns are sung, and sermons are preached in honor of this day; while the quick martial tramp of a great and multitudinous nation, echoed back by all the hills, valleys and mountains of a vast continent, bespeak the occasion one of thrilling and universal interest — a nation’s jubilee.
Friends and citizens, I need not enter further into the causes which led to this anniversary. Many of you understand them better than I do. You could instruct me in regard to them. That is a branch of knowledge in which you feel, perhaps, a much deeper interest than your speaker. The causes which led to the separation of the colonies from the British crown have never lacked for a tongue. They have all been taught in your common schools, narrated at your firesides, unfolded from your pulpits, and thundered from your legislative halls, and are as familiar to you as household words. They form the staple of your national poetry and eloquence.
I remember, also, that, as a people, Americans are remarkably familiar with all facts which make in their own favor. This is esteemed by some as a national trait — perhaps a national weakness. It is a fact, that whatever makes for the wealth or for the reputation of Americans, and can be had cheap! will be found by Americans. I shall not be charged with slandering Americans, if I say I think the American side of any question may be safely left in American hands.
I leave, therefore, the great deeds of your fathers to other gentlemen whose claim to have been regularly descended will be less likely to be disputed than mine!
My business, if I have any here to-day, is with the present. The accepted time with God and his cause is the ever-living now.
Trust no future, however pleasant,
Let the dead past bury its dead;
Act, act in the living present,
Heart within, and God overhead.
We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and to the future. To all inspiring motives, to noble deeds which can be gained from the past, we are welcome. But now is the time, the important time. Your fathers have lived, died, and have done their work, and have done much of it well. You live and must die, and you must do your work. You have no right to enjoy a child’s share in the labor of your fathers, unless your children are to be blest by your labors. You have no right to wear out and waste the hard-earned fame of your fathers to cover your indolence. Sydney Smith tells us that men seldom eulogize the wisdom and virtues of their fathers, but to excuse some folly or wickedness of their own. This truth is not a doubtful one. There are illustrations of it near and remote, ancient and modern. It was fashionable, hundreds of years ago, for the children of Jacob to boast, we have “Abraham to our father,” when they had long lost Abraham’s faith and spirit. That people contented themselves under the shadow of Abraham’s great name, while they repudiated the deeds which made his name great. Need I remind you that a similar thing is being done all over this country to-day? Need I tell you that the Jews are not the only people who built the tombs of the prophets, and garnished the sepulchres of the righteous? Washington could not die till he had broken the chains of his slaves. Yet his monument is built up by the price of human blood, and the traders in the bodies and souls of men shout — “We have Washington to our father.” — Alas! that it should be so; yet so it is.
The evil that men do, lives after them, The good is oft-interred with their bones.
Fellow-citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here to-day? What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? and am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us?
Would to God, both for your sakes and ours, that an affirmative answer could be truthfully returned to these questions! Then would my task be light, and my burden easy and delightful. For who is there so cold, that a nation’s sympathy could not warm him? Who so obdurate and dead to the claims of gratitude, that would not thankfully acknowledge such priceless benefits? Who so stolid and selfish, that would not give his voice to swell the hallelujahs of a nation’s jubilee, when the chains of servitude had been torn from his limbs? I am not that man. In a case like that, the dumb might eloquently speak, and the “lame man leap as an hart.”
But, such is not the state of the case. I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. — The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth [of] July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak to-day? If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. And let me warn you that it is dangerous to copy the example of a nation whose crimes, lowering up to heaven, were thrown down by the breath of the Almighty, burying that nation in irrecoverable ruin! I can to-day take up the plaintive lament of a peeled and woe-smitten people!
“By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down. Yea! we wept when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. For there, they that carried us away captive, required of us a song; and they who wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land? If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth.”
Fellow-citizens; above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions! whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, to-day, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them. If I do forget, if I do not faithfully remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, “may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!” To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs, and to chime in with the popular theme, would be treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the world. My subject, then fellow-citizens, is AMERICAN SLAVERY. I shall see, this day, and its popular characteristics, from the slave’s point of view. Standing, there, identified with the American bondman, making his wrongs mine, I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this 4th of July! Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I will, in the name of humanity which is outraged, in the name of liberty which is fettered, in the name of the constitution and the Bible, which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare to call in question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery — the great sin and shame of America! “I will not equivocate; I will not excuse;” I will use the severest language I can command; and yet not one word shall escape me that any man, whose judgment is not blinded by prejudice, or who is not at heart a slaveholder, shall not confess to be right and just.
But I fancy I hear some one of my audience say, it is just in this circumstance that you and your brother abolitionists fail to make a favorable impression on the public mind. Would you argue more, and denounce less, would you persuade more, and rebuke less, your cause would be much more likely to succeed. But, I submit, where all is plain there is nothing to be argued. What point in the anti-slavery creed would you have me argue? On what branch of the subject do the people of this country need light? Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? That point is conceded already. Nobody doubts it. The slaveholders themselves acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their government. They acknowledge it when they punish disobedience on the part of the slave. There are seventy-two crimes in the State of Virginia, which, if committed by a black man, (no matter how ignorant he be), subject him to the punishment of death; while only two of the same crimes will subject a white man to the like punishment. What is this but the acknowledgement that the slave is a moral, intellectual and responsible being? The manhood of the slave is conceded. It is admitted in the fact that Southern statute books are covered with enactments forbidding, under severe fines and penalties, the teaching of the slave to read or to write. When you can point to any such laws, in reference to the beasts of the field, then I may consent to argue the manhood of the slave. When the dogs in your streets, when the fowls of the air, when the cattle on your hills, when the fish of the sea, and the reptiles that crawl, shall be unable to distinguish the slave from a brute, then will I argue with you that the slave is a man!
For the present, it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the Negro race. Is it not astonishing that, while we are ploughing, planting and reaping, using all kinds of mechanical tools, erecting houses, constructing bridges, building ships, working in metals of brass, iron, copper, silver and gold; that, while we are reading, writing and cyphering, acting as clerks, merchants and secretaries, having among us lawyers, doctors, ministers, poets, authors, editors, orators and teachers; that, while we are engaged in all manner of enterprises common to other men, digging gold in California, capturing the whale in the Pacific, feeding sheep and cattle on the hill-side, living, moving, acting, thinking, planning, living in families as husbands, wives and children, and, above all, confessing and worshipping the Christian’s God, and looking hopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave, we are called upon to prove that we are men!
Would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty? that he is the rightful owner of his own body? You have already declared it. Must I argue the wrongfulness of slavery? Is that a question for Republicans? Is it to be settled by the rules of logic and argumentation, as a matter beset with great difficulty, involving a doubtful application of the principle of justice, hard to be understood? How should I look to-day, in the presence of Americans, dividing, and subdividing a discourse, to show that men have a natural right to freedom? speaking of it relatively, and positively, negatively, and affirmatively. To do so, would be to make myself ridiculous, and to offer an insult to your understanding. — There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven, that does not know that slavery is wrong for him.
What, am I to argue that it is wrong to make men brutes, to rob them of their liberty, to work them without wages, to keep them ignorant of their relations to their fellow men, to beat them with sticks, to flay their flesh with the lash, to load their limbs with irons, to hunt them with dogs, to sell them at auction, to sunder their families, to knock out their teeth, to burn their flesh, to starve them into obedience and submission to their masters? Must I argue that a system thus marked with blood, and stained with pollution, is wrong? No! I will not. I have better employments for my time and strength than such arguments would imply.
What, then, remains to be argued? Is it that slavery is not divine; that God did not establish it; that our doctors of divinity are mistaken? There is blasphemy in the thought. That which is inhuman, cannot be divine! Who can reason on such a proposition? They that can, may; I cannot. The time for such argument is passed.
At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O! had I the ability, and could I reach the nation’s ear, I would, to-day, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.
What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy — a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour.
Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the old world, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.
Take the American slave-trade, which, we are told by the papers, is especially prosperous just now. Ex-Senator Benton tells us that the price of men was never higher than now. He mentions the fact to show that slavery is in no danger. This trade is one of the peculiarities of American institutions. It is carried on in all the large towns and cities in one-half of this confederacy; and millions are pocketed every year, by dealers in this horrid traffic. In several states, this trade is a chief source of wealth. It is called (in contradistinction to the foreign slave-trade) “the internal slave trade.” It is, probably, called so, too, in order to divert from it the horror with which the foreign slave-trade is contemplated. That trade has long since been denounced by this government, as piracy. It has been denounced with burning words, from the high places of the nation, as an execrable traffic. To arrest it, to put an end to it, this nation keeps a squadron, at immense cost, on the coast of Africa. Everywhere, in this country, it is safe to speak of this foreign slave-trade, as a most inhuman traffic, opposed alike to the laws of God and of man. The duty to extirpate and destroy it, is admitted even by our DOCTORS OF DIVINITY. In order to put an end to it, some of these last have consented that their colored brethren (nominally free) should leave this country, and establish themselves on the western coast of Africa! It is, however, a notable fact that, while so much execration is poured out by Americans upon those engaged in the foreign slave-trade, the men engaged in the slave-trade between the states pass without condemnation, and their business is deemed honorable.
Behold the practical operation of this internal slave-trade, the American slave-trade, sustained by American politics and America religion. Here you will see men and women reared like swine for the market. You know what is a swine-drover? I will show you a man-drover. They inhabit all our Southern States. They perambulate the country, and crowd the highways of the nation, with droves of human stock. You will see one of these human flesh-jobbers, armed with pistol, whip and bowie-knife, driving a company of a hundred men, women, and children, from the Potomac to the slave market at New Orleans. These wretched people are to be sold singly, or in lots, to suit purchasers. They are food for the cotton-field, and the deadly sugar-mill. Mark the sad procession, as it moves wearily along, and the inhuman wretch who drives them. Hear his savage yells and his blood-chilling oaths, as he hurries on his affrighted captives! There, see the old man, with locks thinned and gray. Cast one glance, if you please, upon that young mother, whose shoulders are bare to the scorching sun, her briny tears falling on the brow of the babe in her arms. See, too, that girl of thirteen, weeping, yes! weeping, as she thinks of the mother from whom she has been torn! The drove moves tardily. Heat and sorrow have nearly consumed their strength; suddenly you hear a quick snap, like the discharge of a rifle; the fetters clank, and the chain rattles simultaneously; your ears are saluted with a scream, that seems to have torn its way to the center of your soul! The crack you heard, was the sound of the slave-whip; the scream you heard, was from the woman you saw with the babe. Her speed had faltered under the weight of her child and her chains! that gash on her shoulder tells her to move on. Follow the drove to New Orleans. Attend the auction; see men examined like horses; see the forms of women rudely and brutally exposed to the shocking gaze of American slave-buyers. See this drove sold and separated forever; and never forget the deep, sad sobs that arose from that scattered multitude. Tell me citizens, WHERE, under the sun, you can witness a spectacle more fiendish and shocking. Yet this is but a glance at the American slave-trade, as it exists, at this moment, in the ruling part of the United States.
I was born amid such sights and scenes. To me the American slave-trade is a terrible reality. When a child, my soul was often pierced with a sense of its horrors. I lived on Philpot Street, Fell’s Point, Baltimore, and have watched from the wharves, the slave ships in the Basin, anchored from the shore, with their cargoes of human flesh, waiting for favorable winds to waft them down the Chesapeake. There was, at that time, a grand slave mart kept at the head of Pratt Street, by Austin Woldfolk. His agents were sent into every town and county in Maryland, announcing their arrival, through the papers, and on flaming “hand-bills,” headed CASH FOR NEGROES. These men were generally well dressed men, and very captivating in their manners. Ever ready to drink, to treat, and to gamble. The fate of many a slave has depended upon the turn of a single card; and many a child has been snatched from the arms of its mother by bargains arranged in a state of brutal drunkenness.
The flesh-mongers gather up their victims by dozens, and drive them, chained, to the general depot at Baltimore. When a sufficient number have been collected here, a ship is chartered, for the purpose of conveying the forlorn crew to Mobile, or to New Orleans. From the slave prison to the ship, they are usually driven in the darkness of night; for since the antislavery agitation, a certain caution is observed.
In the deep still darkness of midnight, I have been often aroused by the dead heavy footsteps, and the piteous cries of the chained gangs that passed our door. The anguish of my boyish heart was intense; and I was often consoled, when speaking to my mistress in the morning, to hear her say that the custom was very wicked; that she hated to hear the rattle of the chains, and the heart-rending cries. I was glad to find one who sympathized with me in my horror.
Fellow-citizens, this murderous traffic is, to-day, in active operation in this boasted republic. In the solitude of my spirit, I see clouds of dust raised on the highways of the South; I see the bleeding footsteps; I hear the doleful wail of fettered humanity, on the way to the slave-markets, where the victims are to be sold like horses, sheep, and swine, knocked off to the highest bidder. There I see the tenderest ties ruthlessly broken, to gratify the lust, caprice and rapacity of the buyers and sellers of men. My soul sickens at the sight.
Is this the land your Fathers loved,
The freedom which they toiled to win?
Is this the earth whereon they moved?
Are these the graves they slumber in?
But a still more inhuman, disgraceful, and scandalous state of things remains to be presented. By an act of the American Congress, not yet two years old, slavery has been nationalized in its most horrible and revolting form. By that act, Mason and Dixon’s line has been obliterated; New York has become as Virginia; and the power to hold, hunt, and sell men, women, and children as slaves remains no longer a mere state institution, but is now an institution of the whole United States. The power is co-extensive with the Star-Spangled Banner and American Christianity. Where these go, may also go the merciless slave-hunter. Where these are, man is not sacred. He is a bird for the sportsman’s gun. By that most foul and fiendish of all human decrees, the liberty and person of every man are put in peril. Your broad republican domain is hunting ground for men. Not for thieves and robbers, enemies of society, merely, but for men guilty of no crime. Your lawmakers have commanded all good citizens to engage in this hellish sport. Your President, your Secretary of State, our lords, nobles, and ecclesiastics, enforce, as a duty you owe to your free and glorious country, and to your God, that you do this accursed thing. Not fewer than forty Americans have, within the past two years, been hunted down and, without a moment’s warning, hurried away in chains, and consigned to slavery and excruciating torture. Some of these have had wives and children, dependent on them for bread; but of this, no account was made. The right of the hunter to his prey stands superior to the right of marriage, and to all rights in this republic, the rights of God included! For black men there are neither law, justice, humanity, not religion. The Fugitive Slave Law makes mercy to them a crime; and bribes the judge who tries them. An American judge gets ten dollars for every victim he consigns to slavery, and five, when he fails to do so. The oath of any two villains is sufficient, under this hell-black enactment, to send the most pious and exemplary black man into the remorseless jaws of slavery! His own testimony is nothing. He can bring no witnesses for himself. The minister of American justice is bound by the law to hear but one side; and that side, is the side of the oppressor. Let this damning fact be perpetually told. Let it be thundered around the world, that, in tyrant-killing, king-hating, people-loving, democratic, Christian America, the seats of justice are filled with judges, who hold their offices under an open and palpable bribe, and are bound, in deciding in the case of a man’s liberty, hear only his accusers!
In glaring violation of justice, in shameless disregard of the forms of administering law, in cunning arrangement to entrap the defenseless, and in diabolical intent, this Fugitive Slave Law stands alone in the annals of tyrannical legislation. I doubt if there be another nation on the globe, having the brass and the baseness to put such a law on the statute-book. If any man in this assembly thinks differently from me in this matter, and feels able to disprove my statements, I will gladly confront him at any suitable time and place he may select.
I take this law to be one of the grossest infringements of Christian Liberty, and, if the churches and ministers of our country were not stupidly blind, or most wickedly indifferent, they, too, would so regard it.
At the very moment that they are thanking God for the enjoyment of civil and religious liberty, and for the right to worship God according to the dictates of their own consciences, they are utterly silent in respect to a law which robs religion of its chief significance, and makes it utterly worthless to a world lying in wickedness. Did this law concern the “mint, anise, and cumin” — abridge the right to sing psalms, to partake of the sacrament, or to engage in any of the ceremonies of religion, it would be smitten by the thunder of a thousand pulpits. A general shout would go up from the church, demanding repeal, repeal, instant repeal! — And it would go hard with that politician who presumed to solicit the votes of the people without inscribing this motto on his banner. Further, if this demand were not complied with, another Scotland would be added to the history of religious liberty, and the stern old Covenanters would be thrown into the shade. A John Knox would be seen at every church door, and heard from every pulpit, and Fillmore would have no more quarter than was shown by Knox, to the beautiful, but treacherous queen Mary of Scotland. The fact that the church of our country, (with fractional exceptions), does not esteem “the Fugitive Slave Law” as a declaration of war against religious liberty, implies that that church regards religion simply as a form of worship, an empty ceremony, and not a vital principle, requiring active benevolence, justice, love and good will towards man. It esteems sacrifice above mercy; psalm-singing above right doing; solemn meetings above practical righteousness. A worship that can be conducted by persons who refuse to give shelter to the houseless, to give bread to the hungry, clothing to the naked, and who enjoin obedience to a law forbidding these acts of mercy, is a curse, not a blessing to mankind. The Bible addresses all such persons as “scribes, Pharisees, hypocrites, who pay tithe of mint, anise, and cumin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy and faith.”
But the church of this country is not only indifferent to the wrongs of the slave, it actually takes sides with the oppressors. It has made itself the bulwark of American slavery, and the shield of American slave-hunters. Many of its most eloquent Divines. who stand as the very lights of the church, have shamelessly given the sanction of religion and the Bible to the whole slave system. They have taught that man may, properly, be a slave; that the relation of master and slave is ordained of God; that to send back an escaped bondman to his master is clearly the duty of all the followers of the Lord Jesus Christ; and this horrible blasphemy is palmed off upon the world for Christianity.
For my part, I would say, welcome infidelity! welcome atheism! welcome anything! in preference to the gospel, as preached by those Divines! They convert the very name of religion into an engine of tyranny, and barbarous cruelty, and serve to confirm more infidels, in this age, than all the infidel writings of Thomas Paine, Voltaire, and Bolingbroke, put together, have done! These ministers make religion a cold and flinty-hearted thing, having neither principles of right action, nor bowels of compassion. They strip the love of God of its beauty, and leave the throng of religion a huge, horrible, repulsive form. It is a religion for oppressors, tyrants, man-stealers, and thugs. It is not that “pure and undefiled religion” which is from above, and which is “first pure, then peaceable, easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy.” But a religion which favors the rich against the poor; which exalts the proud above the humble; which divides mankind into two classes, tyrants and slaves; which says to the man in chains, stay there; and to the oppressor, oppress on; it is a religion which may be professed and enjoyed by all the robbers and enslavers of mankind; it makes God a respecter of persons, denies his fatherhood of the race, and tramples in the dust the great truth of the brotherhood of man. All this we affirm to be true of the popular church, and the popular worship of our land and nation — a religion, a church, and a worship which, on the authority of inspired wisdom, we pronounce to be an abomination in the sight of God. In the language of Isaiah, the American church might be well addressed, “Bring no more vain ablations; incense is an abomination unto me: the new moons and Sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity even the solemn meeting. Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth. They are a trouble to me; I am weary to bear them; and when ye spread forth your hands I will hide mine eyes from you. Yea! when ye make many prayers, I will not hear. YOUR HANDS ARE FULL OF BLOOD; cease to do evil, learn to do well; seek judgment; relieve the oppressed; judge for the fatherless; plead for the widow.”
The American church is guilty, when viewed in connection with what it is doing to uphold slavery; but it is superlatively guilty when viewed in connection with its ability to abolish slavery. The sin of which it is guilty is one of omission as well as of commission. Albert Barnes but uttered what the common sense of every man at all observant of the actual state of the case will receive as truth, when he declared that “There is no power out of the church that could sustain slavery an hour, if it were not sustained in it.”
Let the religious press, the pulpit, the Sunday school, the conference meeting, the great ecclesiastical, missionary, Bible and tract associations of the land array their immense powers against slavery and slave-holding; and the whole system of crime and blood would be scattered to the winds; and that they do not do this involves them in the most awful responsibility of which the mind can conceive.
In prosecuting the anti-slavery enterprise, we have been asked to spare the church, to spare the ministry; but how, we ask, could such a thing be done? We are met on the threshold of our efforts for the redemption of the slave, by the church and ministry of the country, in battle arrayed against us; and we are compelled to fight or flee. From what quarter, I beg to know, has proceeded a fire so deadly upon our ranks, during the last two years, as from the Northern pulpit? As the champions of oppressors, the chosen men of American theology have appeared — men, honored for their so-called piety, and their real learning. The Lords of Buffalo, the Springs of New York, the Lathrops of Auburn, the Coxes and Spencers of Brooklyn, the Gannets and Sharps of Boston, the Deweys of Washington, and other great religious lights of the land have, in utter denial of the authority of Him by whom they professed to be called to the ministry, deliberately taught us, against the example or the Hebrews and against the remonstrance of the Apostles, they teach that we ought to obey man’s law before the law of God.
My spirit wearies of such blasphemy; and how such men can be supported, as the “standing types and representatives of Jesus Christ,” is a mystery which I leave others to penetrate. In speaking of the American church, however, let it be distinctly understood that I mean the great mass of the religious organizations of our land. There are exceptions, and I thank God that there are. Noble men may be found, scattered all over these Northern States, of whom Henry Ward Beecher of Brooklyn, Samuel J. May of Syracuse, and my esteemed friend (Rev. R. R. Raymond) on the platform, are shining examples; and let me say further, that upon these men lies the duty to inspire our ranks with high religious faith and zeal, and to cheer us on in the great mission of the slave’s redemption from his chains.
One is struck with the difference between the attitude of the American church towards the anti-slavery movement, and that occupied by the churches in England towards a similar movement in that country. There, the church, true to its mission of ameliorating, elevating, and improving the condition of mankind, came forward promptly, bound up the wounds of the West Indian slave, and restored him to his liberty. There, the question of emancipation was a high religious question. It was demanded, in the name of humanity, and according to the law of the living God. The Sharps, the Clarksons, the Wilberforces, the Buxtons, and Burchells and the Knibbs, were alike famous for their piety, and for their philanthropy. The anti-slavery movement there was not an anti-church movement, for the reason that the church took its full share in prosecuting that movement: and the anti-slavery movement in this country will cease to be an anti-church movement, when the church of this country shall assume a favorable, instead of a hostile position towards that movement. Americans! your republican politics, not less than your republican religion, are flagrantly inconsistent. You boast of your love of liberty, your superior civilization, and your pure Christianity, while the whole political power of the nation (as embodied in the two great political parties), is solemnly pledged to support and perpetuate the enslavement of three millions of your countrymen. You hurl your anathemas at the crowned headed tyrants of Russia and Austria, and pride yourselves on your Democratic institutions, while you yourselves consent to be the mere tools and body-guards of the tyrants of Virginia and Carolina. You invite to your shores fugitives of oppression from abroad, honor them with banquets, greet them with ovations, cheer them, toast them, salute them, protect them, and pour out your money to them like water; but the fugitives from your own land you advertise, hunt, arrest, shoot and kill. You glory in your refinement and your universal education yet you maintain a system as barbarous and dreadful as ever stained the character of a nation — a system begun in avarice, supported in pride, and perpetuated in cruelty. You shed tears over fallen Hungary, and make the sad story of her wrongs the theme of your poets, statesmen and orators, till your gallant sons are ready to fly to arms to vindicate her cause against her oppressors; but, in regard to the ten thousand wrongs of the American slave, you would enforce the strictest silence, and would hail him as an enemy of the nation who dares to make those wrongs the subject of public discourse! You are all on fire at the mention of liberty for France or for Ireland; but are as cold as an iceberg at the thought of liberty for the enslaved of America. You discourse eloquently on the dignity of labor; yet, you sustain a system which, in its very essence, casts a stigma upon labor. You can bare your bosom to the storm of British artillery to throw off a threepenny tax on tea; and yet wring the last hard-earned farthing from the grasp of the black laborers of your country. You profess to believe “that, of one blood, God made all nations of men to dwell on the face of all the earth,” and hath commanded all men, everywhere to love one another; yet you notoriously hate, (and glory in your hatred), all men whose skins are not colored like your own. You declare, before the world, and are understood by the world to declare, that you “hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal; and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; and that, among these are, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness;” and yet, you hold securely, in a bondage which, according to your own Thomas Jefferson, “is worse than ages of that which your fathers rose in rebellion to oppose,” a seventh part of the inhabitants of your country.
Fellow-citizens! I will not enlarge further on your national inconsistencies. The existence of slavery in this country brands your republicanism as a sham, your humanity as a base pretence, and your Christianity as a lie. It destroys your moral power abroad; it corrupts your politicians at home. It saps the foundation of religion; it makes your name a hissing, and a bye-word to a mocking earth. It is the antagonistic force in your government, the only thing that seriously disturbs and endangers your Union. It fetters your progress; it is the enemy of improvement, the deadly foe of education; it fosters pride; it breeds insolence; it promotes vice; it shelters crime; it is a curse to the earth that supports it; and yet, you cling to it, as if it were the sheet anchor of all your hopes. Oh! be warned! be warned! a horrible reptile is coiled up in your nation’s bosom; the venomous creature is nursing at the tender breast of your youthful republic; for the love of God, tear away, and fling from you the hideous monster, and let the weight of twenty millions crush and destroy it forever!
But it is answered in reply to all this, that precisely what I have now denounced is, in fact, guaranteed and sanctioned by the Constitution of the United States; that the right to hold and to hunt slaves is a part of that Constitution framed by the illustrious Fathers of this Republic.
Then, I dare to affirm, notwithstanding all I have said before, your fathers stooped, basely stooped
To palter with us in a double sense:
And keep the word of promise to the ear,
But break it to the heart.
And instead of being the honest men I have before declared them to be, they were the veriest imposters that ever practiced on mankind. This is the inevitable conclusion, and from it there is no escape. But I differ from those who charge this baseness on the framers of the Constitution of the United States. It is a slander upon their memory, at least, so I believe. There is not time now to argue the constitutional question at length — nor have I the ability to discuss it as it ought to be discussed. The subject has been handled with masterly power by Lysander Spooner, Esq., by William Goodell, by Samuel E. Sewall, Esq., and last, though not least, by Gerritt Smith, Esq. These gentlemen have, as I think, fully and clearly vindicated the Constitution from any design to support slavery for an hour.
Fellow-citizens! there is no matter in respect to which, the people of the North have allowed themselves to be so ruinously imposed upon, as that of the pro-slavery character of the Constitution. In that instrument I hold there is neither warrant, license, nor sanction of the hateful thing; but, interpreted as it ought to be interpreted, the Constitution is a GLORIOUS LIBERTY DOCUMENT. Read its preamble, consider its purposes. Is slavery among them? Is it at the gateway? or is it in the temple? It is neither. While I do not intend to argue this question on the present occasion, let me ask, if it be not somewhat singular that, if the Constitution were intended to be, by its framers and adopters, a slave-holding instrument, why neither slavery, slaveholding, nor slave can anywhere be found in it. What would be thought of an instrument, drawn up, legally drawn up, for the purpose of entitling the city of Rochester to a track of land, in which no mention of land was made? Now, there are certain rules of interpretation, for the proper understanding of all legal instruments. These rules are well established. They are plain, common-sense rules, such as you and I, and all of us, can understand and apply, without having passed years in the study of law. I scout the idea that the question of the constitutionality or unconstitutionality of slavery is not a question for the people. I hold that every American citizen has a right to form an opinion of the constitution, and to propagate that opinion, and to use all honorable means to make his opinion the prevailing one. Without this right, the liberty of an American citizen would be as insecure as that of a Frenchman. Ex-Vice-President Dallas tells us that the Constitution is an object to which no American mind can be too attentive, and no American heart too devoted. He further says, the Constitution, in its words, is plain and intelligible, and is meant for the home-bred, unsophisticated understandings of our fellow-citizens. Senator Berrien tell us that the Constitution is the fundamental law, that which controls all others. The charter of our liberties, which every citizen has a personal interest in understanding thoroughly. The testimony of Senator Breese, Lewis Cass, and many others that might be named, who are everywhere esteemed as sound lawyers, so regard the constitution. I take it, therefore, that it is not presumption in a private citizen to form an opinion of that instrument.
Now, take the Constitution according to its plain reading, and I defy the presentation of a single pro-slavery clause in it. On the other hand it will be found to contain principles and purposes, entirely hostile to the existence of slavery.
I have detained my audience entirely too long already. At some future period I will gladly avail myself of an opportunity to give this subject a full and fair discussion.
Allow me to say, in conclusion, notwithstanding the dark picture I have this day presented of the state of the nation, I do not despair of this country. There are forces in operation, which must inevitably work the downfall of slavery. “The arm of the Lord is not shortened,” and the doom of slavery is certain. I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope. While drawing encouragement from the Declaration of Independence, the great principles it contains, and the genius of American Institutions, my spirit is also cheered by the obvious tendencies of the age. Nations do not now stand in the same relation to each other that they did ages ago. No nation can now shut itself up from the surrounding world, and trot round in the same old path of its fathers without interference. The time was when such could be done. Long established customs of hurtful character could formerly fence themselves in, and do their evil work with social impunity. Knowledge was then confined and enjoyed by the privileged few, and the multitude walked on in mental darkness. But a change has now come over the affairs of mankind. Walled cities and empires have become unfashionable. The arm of commerce has borne away the gates of the strong city. Intelligence is penetrating the darkest corners of the globe. It makes its pathway over and under the sea, as well as on the earth. Wind, steam, and lightning are its chartered agents. Oceans no longer divide, but link nations together. From Boston to London is now a holiday excursion. Space is comparatively annihilated. Thoughts expressed on one side of the Atlantic, are distinctly heard on the other. The far off and almost fabulous Pacific rolls in grandeur at our feet. The Celestial Empire, the mystery of ages, is being solved. The fiat of the Almighty, “Let there be Light,” has not yet spent its force. No abuse, no outrage whether in taste, sport or avarice, can now hide itself from the all-pervading light. The iron shoe, and crippled foot of China must be seen, in contrast with nature. Africa must rise and put on her yet unwoven garment. “Ethiopia shall stretch out her hand unto God.” In the fervent aspirations of William Lloyd Garrison, I say, and let every heart join in saying it:
God speed the year of jubilee
The wide world o’er
When from their galling chains set free,
Th’ oppress’d shall vilely bend the knee,And wear the yoke of tyranny
Like brutes no more.
That year will come, and freedom’s reign,
To man his plundered fights again
Restore.God speed the day when human blood
Shall cease to flow!
In every clime be understood,
The claims of human brotherhood,
And each return for evil, good,
Not blow for blow;
That day will come all feuds to end.
And change into a faithful friend
Each foe.God speed the hour, the glorious hour,
When none on earth
Shall exercise a lordly power,
Nor in a tyrant’s presence cower;
But all to manhood’s stature tower,
By equal birth!
That hour will come, to each, to all,
And from his prison-house, the thrall
Go forth.Until that year, day, hour, arrive,
With head, and heart, and hand I’ll strive,
To break the rod, and rend the gyve,
The spoiler of his prey deprive —
So witness Heaven!
And never from my chosen post,
Whate’er the peril or the cost,
Be driven.
Source: Frederick Douglass: Selected Speeches and Writings, ed. Philip S. Foner (Chicago: Lawrence Hill, 1999), 188-206.
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