Law & Justice: June 2004 Archives
Wanted: Someone to serve a 10 year jail sentence in place of a famous rapper. Pays $700,000 per year.
Jamal "Shyne" Barrow, the rapper currently serving a prison sentence stemming from the famous Sean "Puffy" Combs/P. Diddy shoot-and-run case from 1999, is getting $7 million from Island/Def JamRecords, still a division of Doug Morris's Universal Music Group — all still owned by Vivendi.That's right: Barrow's reward for his prison sentence is $7 million. He's releasing his first record from prison on August 10. It's called "Godfather Buried Alive," and will be issued on his very own label, called Gangland Records. Isn't that great?
Is it a coincidence that Combs/P. Diddy/Puff Daddy/Sean John, Broadway star and marathon runner, also has a deal at Island/Def Jam? Maybe. ...
There was a lot of complaining about the Clintons getting so much when their deals were announced. So far, I haven't heard a peep over a convicted felon getting $7 million. I guess all those struggling singers, writers and rappers who can't get deals will now feel compelled to commit crimes.
I think so-called "hate crime" laws are stupid. A murderer/rapist/thief shouldn't be punished any more or less severely because he was a racist or sexist. It's not illegal to be racist or sexist, so it doesn't make any sense to punish people more severely for criminal actions that stem from those motivations. Further, aren't all crimes "hate crimes" in a sense? If the offender doesn't hate the victim because of his race or gender, then there's generally some other reason. And if not, are crimes with randomly selected victims somehow less horrible?
And that's why I'm not a fan of genocide charges, such as are likely to be brought against Saddam Hussein. I don't care if most of his victims were of one ethnicity or religion, and I don't see why that's relevant. What's important is that he murdered hundreds of thousands -- even millions -- of people, all of whom have worth as individuals, not merely because they fit into some group or another. Would Saddam's crimes have been less atrocious if he had murdered without regard for race, religion, or gender? Not at all.
His motivation may have been to kill Shi'ites, Kurds, women, Jews, and so forth, but the actual crimes of which he is guilty are simple: countless individual acts of murder, rape, and torture. If he needs to be charged with some large over-arching crime, call it mass-murder, not genocide. But they should name as many specific victims as possible and create an accurate record of his offenses against real live human beings, not ethnic groups.
Update:
Commenter Cob writes:
After all if someone spray paints a building, what's the big deal? Is there no difference in degree if someone draws a swastika on a synagogue or write's 'kilroy was here' on a subway train?No, there should be no legal difference. Don't use "of course" to try to score rhetorical points by assuming we're in agreement when we're not. The only difference may be that a synagogue is likely private property, whereas a subway train is likely public property. (There may be a moral difference, but we're not talking about morality here, we're talking about what types of laws are good policy. All laws should be viewpoint-neutral.)Of course there is a difference and the difference is real and significant.
Update:
Eugene Volokh on hate crime laws.
This hasn't been a big national story, but the alleged gang-rape of a teenaged girl by three boys at a party -- one of whom is the son of an Orange County assistant sheriff -- has been pretty closely watched here in Southern California. The details are pretty simple: the girl passed out at a party and the boys then videotaped themselves having sex with her and sodomizing her on a pool table. Straight-forward, right? Nope, there's been a mistrial.
Why? The alleged crime is on video tape, but rape is inherently hard to prove and guilt hinges entirely on the state of mind of the woman involved, which is impossible to prove scientifically (until we get magical time-traveling mind-reading machines). Our system of justice doesn't require scientific proof, it only requires "reasonable doubt" proof, but even that's hard to come by when it's one person's word against another's (or three others).
The main reason for the wide range of opinions, said the juror named Michael, was that much of the evidence — including the videotape and testimony from medical experts — could be viewed from either the prosecution or defense point of view.The potential for a misunderstanding is rather high when the girl admits that she had sex with at least two of the boys willingly within the week before the alleged rape. There was also some controversy over whether the girl was actually unconscious at the time of the video taping, or whether the whole event was a staged attempt at making a porno, as the girl had previously indicated she wanted to do."Ambiguity ran rampant through the entire case," he said. "I would understand why some people could view [the incident] as a crime. I could understand why some people would view this as a misunderstanding. That's basically why we had a mistrial."
So what does this mean? That promiscuous girls can't be raped? No. But it does mean that promiscuous girls will have a very hard time proving that they were raped. The crime of rape exists entirely within the victim's mind, and she has to somehow convince other people of what she was thinking at the time it happened. (Similar to theft, where the owner of an object may or may not have agreed to transfer ownership to another person.) Sometimes this is relatively easy, because there will be evidence of a struggle or a known hostile relationship between the woman and her assailant. (Even then, the attacker can claim "role-playing", and how can one prove otherwise?)
But in this case, given the girl's past behavior, I don't think it would have been possible for these boys to have been convicted, nor should it have been. If she was raped, that's terrible, but it would have been even more terrible for the three boys to have been wrongly convicted based on emotion and the weak evidence available. There's no question that they had sex with her, but there's no way for her to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that it wasn't consensual -- and her lifestyle created that doubt. For example, if she had been a non-intoxicated virgin and had brought up witness after witness to testify that she had intended to wait to have sex until she was married, it would have been a lot easier for the jury to believe that she didn't consent to the activities in the video tape.
As an addendum, isn't this quote by the spokeswoman of the district attorney curious?
"It would take pretty strong information for us not to refile," said district attorney spokeswoman Susan Kang Schroeder, adding that no decision had been made.Since when should one not attribute significance to the decision of one jury? How many juries are needed? I suspect the DA might have felt differently if he'd gotten a conviction."Sometimes, when you present evidence to a different jury, they come up with a different decision. I wouldn't put too much stock in what one jury has to say," she said.
It seems like today's Supreme Court ruling that the detainees being held at Guantanamo must have access to US courts could pose major problems for the War on Terror, as well as for more conventional future wars. How is our military supposed to manage foreign military prisoners if each one must be given a lawyer and access to courts thousands of miles away? Justice Scalia apparently agrees with this objection (starting on page 26), and Amy Howe at SCOTUSblog agrees with my interpretation.
I think Congress and the President should draw a line in the sand and ignore this decision. The Constitution doesn't give sole authority for interpretation to the Supreme Court; that's a power they've taken on for themselves. The other two branches of government should be equally interested and equally involved in applying the Constitution, and they should respond to this order with a unified "Make us."
The other two related decisions handed "down" today (love the terminology) are a bit more complicated to parse, and aren't as interesting to me.
Update:
Much more (in agreement) from Eugene Volokh.
Glenn Reynolds asks why social conservatives aren't "all over" Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) for his blatant attempt to facilitate rent-seeking by the music industry.
Well, I'm a social conservative, and I've written about the issue before in "Common Law and Copyright", "Music Industry Starts to Face Reality", and Pornographers Are Smarter than the Music Industry". I've even sent links to Mr. Reynolds! Has he noticed?
So, I'm hereby "all over" Senator Hatch for this oppressive bill. It's dumb, unenforceable, and doomed to eventual failure. Good enough?
