Crime and Punishment

Our Earl Problem

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Some years back while visiting a relative in a rural area and I saw two Sheriffs cars go by with their lights on. I commented on the rare sight and my relative said, “Yea, they’ve been out a lot recently. A drunk driver wrecked his car and knocked down a hundred yards of fence. We’ve had an outbuilding set on fire by an arsonist, some stolen equipment and a wife beating.”

“Holy cow!” I replied, knowing just how sedate the country usually is, “sounds like you’ve developed a little crime problem out here.”

My relative looked askance at me and said, “We don’t have a crime problem, we have a Earl problem.”

Turned out that one guy committed all the destructive acts. When the Sheriff finally got enough evidence to haul him off, the little crime wave disappeared.

I thought about this little episode while reading Carl From Chicago’s post on the drug war.

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What are You Going to Do About It?

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David Foster’s post got me to thinking about the ex-Mayor of Bogota. Unfortunately, my real world experiences are closer to this guy’s observations than what happened in Bogota. In general, I like the Mockus approach to re-establishing an atmosphere of intolerance for incivility. Being a libertarian, I prefer to rely on social opprobrium to discourage behavior that I think is fairly negative, but not negative enough to warrant giving the government more power to regulate.

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Even heavy drinkers are still responsible for their actions

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It really is no excuse:

Intoxicated people have much greater control over their behavior than generally recognized. For example, in those societies in which people don’t believe that alcohol causes disinhibition, intoxication never leads to unacceptable behavior.

Research in the US has found that when males are falsely led to believe that they have been drinking alcohol, they tend to become more aggressive.
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So it isn’t simply a case of “the alcohol made me do it.”

The article goes on to note that in tests drinkers performed as well as sober people if they were offered small rewards.

It doesn’t take a genius to realize that absolving criminals from responsibility for their actions for any reason whatsoever is going to increase crime, especially violent crime. Until 2003, when our most senior federal court here in Germany decided otherwise in a fundamental test case, intoxication was generally considered an extenuating circumstance; in cases of extreme intoxication defendants could literally get away with murder. Quite predictably, habitual drinkers who planned to murder someone, usually their wifes or girlfriends, made sure that they had blood alcohol levels upwards of 0.2 percent before they did the crime. Especially galling was that this very obviously required premeditated planning, but bleeding-heart judges were only too happy to let them get off with a slap on the wrist: “The poor man, losing his wife in such a tragic manner!”

Googling didn’t really tell me how the issue is handled in the US, it seems that the various states have quite different laws.

At any rate, in my personal opinion it should nver be an excuse. There may be some rare cases where somebody loses control under the influence after all, but it then is their personal responsibility to keep their hands off of alcoholic beverages.

Share Your Juror Narratives — A Bleg

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My new site, Jury Experiences, is up and running. The main idea behind the site is to create a central forum for juror narratives and related discussions. The site needs more user-generated content!

If you’ve ever served as a trial juror and are at all interested in writing about your experiences, and have not yet done so, please consider contributing a post to the Jury Experiences discussion forum. (If you want to post to the forum you will have to register first, but this is quick and easy to do.)

Thanks.

UPDATE: A commenter points out that the Jury Experiences forum registration system is a hassle that discourages reader participation. I agree entirely. I think the forum paradigm is inappropriate for many potential contributors for this reason, and am considering easier alternatives. Suggestions are welcome.

Quote of the Day

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Later, of course, the same prosecutors who so vigorously defended Nifong’s conduct became vocal proponents of a severe sanction. Marquis has worried over the undermining of prosecutorial authority, due to the “Nifong effect,” and Murphy has also recently edged away from the former DA. What once played as reasonable conduct is now portrayed as the misdeeds of an outlier. A simple calculus explains the shift: If Mike Nifong’s conduct is commonplace, then the whole system is corrupt. If other DAs do what he did, then we have to face up to how widespread and corrosive prosecutorial misconduct really is—a discussion Marquis and Murphy and other prosecutors would strongly prefer to avoid.
 
Though the Duke case has been spun from the outset as a parable about race, it has always been far more about class, access, and power. From the beginning, the three boys had extraordinary legal talent, unusual political access, and significant press savvy. With a steady stream of exculpatory evidence and investigative triumphs that would have eluded all but the wealthiest of defendants, the defense team mounted an extremely well-funded and successful public campaign, exerting tremendous pressure on Nifong and other state officials. In the end, the Duke defendants orchestrated Mr. Nifong’s downfall and also won an outcome almost unheard of in our criminal justice system—a pretrial exoneration.
 
The disbarment of Mike Nifong, and the civil suit or even criminal charges that are almost sure to follow, might seem a pleasing end to a sad saga. And yet Nifong is a scapegoat. Despite their terrifying power to ruin lives, prosecutors are afforded almost unparalleled discretion to do their jobs and extraordinary deference from the courts. As a result, serious sanctions for prosecutorial misdeeds are virtually unheard of. This makes it highly unlikely that Nifong’s comeuppance will deter aggressive prosecutors. Instead, his punishment will be seen for what it is: a freakish anomaly.

–David Feige