Saturday, November 19, 2005
Relationships of Accretion
I’m afraid the same physiology that scabs cuts and erases scars will smooth away my memory of beautiful things. I keep writing reminders on my hand and then wiping them off in fits of self-loathing. The trouble with these words is that they wash away so fast. But tattoos are unthinkable: decisions are so risky. Before I went to college, I didn’t know about “risk aversion.” Back then it was just called fear.
teen age heart throbbing
One way to distract yourself from the tasks you are distractedly doing is reading and rereading the fifth canto of the Inferno for insight.
Ne marche pas.
Ne marche pas.
Thursday, November 17, 2005
Worship
I think I'll rededicate my blog to postings of the sexy things my Civil Procedure professor says in class. Today she used both "heuristic" and "penumbral." Pure, pure pearls.
Yow! Be still my beating heart!
I just looked up penumbral and it has a real legal meaning, not just the metaphorical one I thought she was implying. Penumbra: "a body of rights held to be guaranteed by implication in a civil constitution."
I am feeling inappropriate feelings toward that word.
Yow! Be still my beating heart!
I just looked up penumbral and it has a real legal meaning, not just the metaphorical one I thought she was implying. Penumbra: "a body of rights held to be guaranteed by implication in a civil constitution."
I am feeling inappropriate feelings toward that word.
Things that make you really feel sexy
I feel sexiest when I'm experiencing excruciating, uterus-ballooning cramps and can do nothing except double over on the toilet clutching my knees, expelling what feels like chunky bloody viscera into the bowl, expelling all manner of ancillary body fluids and solids and sounds just for yuks too, trying not to groan or cry so as not to panic the neatly-pressed law students sitting in adjacent stalls who never seem to shit, only to politely tinkle, trying not let the tail of my shirt touch down into the bowl, trying not to feel guilty while minutes pass and no reading is done, feeling guilty anyway, then feeling guilty enough to get out my crim law text book and my four-color pen and proceed to read, highlight, and scribe marginalia while undergoing all the aformentioned expelling, moaning, and noise-making.
That's HOT. That makes me feel SEXY. Here I am, sexily off the sexy toilet, still doubled over, not shitting, not bleeding, not reading, just blogging. Whaddya say, ladies? No need to fight, there's enough of me for all y'all. (917) 536-SEXY, gimme a jingle.
That's HOT. That makes me feel SEXY. Here I am, sexily off the sexy toilet, still doubled over, not shitting, not bleeding, not reading, just blogging. Whaddya say, ladies? No need to fight, there's enough of me for all y'all. (917) 536-SEXY, gimme a jingle.
Counter-offer
Homoeroticism in the woods, my turn:
Paul was an Eagle Scout. Paul is an Eagle Scout: these things stay with you for life. So he tells them what they should carry, he catalogues the food, he slings a compass from a string around his neck, and he carries the map. At a trail junction thirty minutes up the trail, he reaches up with one hand and unzips the brain of his external frame pack. He doesn’t take the pack off. He brings out a laminated map of the Appalachian Trail and flattens the creases against his knee.
The brain? Goody asks.
Paul replies, That’s the zippered pouch on top. You keep the map and the flashlight in it – where to go, what to see. The brain.
Where are we? Jitski says, shifting the pack and wriggling his shoulders.
Here, Paul says, pointing at an obscure topography of snaking lines. We’re heading toward Ethan Pond.
Jitski leans toward the map dangerously, the top of his borrowed backpack – Paul’s old 4,000 cubic inch green monster – tilting like a windmill. Where are we trying to get to? he asks.
Paul moves his thumb toward a tight ring of concentric circles. Zealand Hut, he says, Hopefully. It’s nine miles from here, with about 3,000 feet of elevation gain. But, you figure, average hikers are babies. The trail guide estimates seven hours, but we can do it in four.
They trust him to lead because they don’t have his experience. They don’t have the same weathered patches that Paul has sewn onto his pack; “Pacific Crest Trail,” “Appalachian Trail,” “NOLS.” Jitski is the indoorsy type, contented with his DVD/MP3/rumble pack and the undulating plasma of his wide-screen HDTV. He is dull, suburban, and adult, but comfortable. He hikes with the unsteady gait of a sleepwalker, knocking his heavy boots together as he trips along. Goody’s experience outdoors doesn’t come from organized activities but from his love for solitude and for long walks on secluded beaches holding hands with himself; his attention to the wildflowers in the state park across from his childhood home in Pennsylvania gives him a wide vocabulary to express his wonder at the pistils, stamens, and petals of the New Hampshire trail.
Paul knows the backcountry as though it were his. He can tie a clove hitch with his tongue. When he clambers skillfully over the bare granite on the first peak, familiar muscles knot in high relief along his legs. But he is no teacher. If they want to learn, he reasons, they will watch him and imitate. Follow the white blazes, he says at the trailhead.
Paul was an Eagle Scout. Paul is an Eagle Scout: these things stay with you for life. So he tells them what they should carry, he catalogues the food, he slings a compass from a string around his neck, and he carries the map. At a trail junction thirty minutes up the trail, he reaches up with one hand and unzips the brain of his external frame pack. He doesn’t take the pack off. He brings out a laminated map of the Appalachian Trail and flattens the creases against his knee.
The brain? Goody asks.
Paul replies, That’s the zippered pouch on top. You keep the map and the flashlight in it – where to go, what to see. The brain.
Where are we? Jitski says, shifting the pack and wriggling his shoulders.
Here, Paul says, pointing at an obscure topography of snaking lines. We’re heading toward Ethan Pond.
Jitski leans toward the map dangerously, the top of his borrowed backpack – Paul’s old 4,000 cubic inch green monster – tilting like a windmill. Where are we trying to get to? he asks.
Paul moves his thumb toward a tight ring of concentric circles. Zealand Hut, he says, Hopefully. It’s nine miles from here, with about 3,000 feet of elevation gain. But, you figure, average hikers are babies. The trail guide estimates seven hours, but we can do it in four.
They trust him to lead because they don’t have his experience. They don’t have the same weathered patches that Paul has sewn onto his pack; “Pacific Crest Trail,” “Appalachian Trail,” “NOLS.” Jitski is the indoorsy type, contented with his DVD/MP3/rumble pack and the undulating plasma of his wide-screen HDTV. He is dull, suburban, and adult, but comfortable. He hikes with the unsteady gait of a sleepwalker, knocking his heavy boots together as he trips along. Goody’s experience outdoors doesn’t come from organized activities but from his love for solitude and for long walks on secluded beaches holding hands with himself; his attention to the wildflowers in the state park across from his childhood home in Pennsylvania gives him a wide vocabulary to express his wonder at the pistils, stamens, and petals of the New Hampshire trail.
Paul knows the backcountry as though it were his. He can tie a clove hitch with his tongue. When he clambers skillfully over the bare granite on the first peak, familiar muscles knot in high relief along his legs. But he is no teacher. If they want to learn, he reasons, they will watch him and imitate. Follow the white blazes, he says at the trailhead.
The State of the State
The emotional state: I'm hearing Edith Piaf sing "Ma Vie En Flux." I hope everyone's well. School is interminable. Here, to illustrate, since I am incapable of expressing emotion within the strictures of my adoptive language (A LIE! A TERRIBLE, SELF-VICTIMIZING LIE!), I'll quote my favorite passage from Alice in Wonderland (said with false confidence, as if I know any other passages in that book):
'Now! Now!' cried the Queen. 'Faster! Faster!' And they went so fast that at last they seemed to skim through the air, hardly touching the ground with their feet, till suddenly, just as Alice was getting quite exhausted, they stopped, and she found herself sitting on the ground, breathless and giddy.
The Queen propped her up against a tree, and said kindly, 'You may rest a little, now.
Alice looked round her in great surprise. 'Why, I do believe we've been under this tree the whole time! Everything's just as it was!'
'Of course it is,' said the Queen. 'What would you have it?'
'Well, in our country, said Alice, still panting a little, 'you'd generally get to somewhere else - if you ran very fast for a long time as we've been doing.' 'A slow sort of country!' said the Queen. 'Now, here, 1 see. it takes all the running you can do, to keep in ;he same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!'
'I'd rather not try, please!' said Alice. 'I'm quite content to stay here - only I am so hot and thirsty!' 'I know what you'd like!' the Queen said good naturedly, taking a little box out of her pocket. 'Have a biscuit!'
'Now! Now!' cried the Queen. 'Faster! Faster!' And they went so fast that at last they seemed to skim through the air, hardly touching the ground with their feet, till suddenly, just as Alice was getting quite exhausted, they stopped, and she found herself sitting on the ground, breathless and giddy.
The Queen propped her up against a tree, and said kindly, 'You may rest a little, now.
Alice looked round her in great surprise. 'Why, I do believe we've been under this tree the whole time! Everything's just as it was!'
'Of course it is,' said the Queen. 'What would you have it?'
'Well, in our country, said Alice, still panting a little, 'you'd generally get to somewhere else - if you ran very fast for a long time as we've been doing.' 'A slow sort of country!' said the Queen. 'Now, here, 1 see. it takes all the running you can do, to keep in ;he same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!'
'I'd rather not try, please!' said Alice. 'I'm quite content to stay here - only I am so hot and thirsty!' 'I know what you'd like!' the Queen said good naturedly, taking a little box out of her pocket. 'Have a biscuit!'
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
An argument about plea bargaining
The liberal argues with someone a bit more prosecutorial. We have legitimate reasons and mutual respect. Here's what we're talking about. Read from the bottom up. (Note: this thread was started after we watched The Plea, a Frontline documentary about several people who have been pressured, in some way or another, to accept plea bargains despite their belief that they are innocent.)
R---,
I don't disagree with most of what you say, specifically what you say about the abhorrence that is rape prosecution. All of this is fucked up and I agree that we ought to recognize the suffering of the victim. But I guess we will disagree and continue to disagree about what the
criminal justice system owes to those people who are not legitimately proven guilty, who might well be innocent.
My desire to make the criminal justice system accountable to these people goes back to Weber's description of the state as having a monopoly on the legitimate use of power. This is a terrifying power and it is an abused power. The victim has no resources, you say? Notwithstanding the fucked up notions of sexual stigma and permissability surrounding rape prosecutions, the victims in other crimes do have a tremendous resource: this forceful power of the state. Who brings the prosecution? Not the victim, you mentioned, but the state itself. The victim doesn't sue a criminal in tort, he or she invokes the state, which then moves its resources and attacks the alleged criminal as a moral monolith embodied with the legitimate power, in 34 states, to kill someone convicted of certain crimes.
You seem to have no sympathy for this, but I do, perhaps because our experiences may be different. I've been wrongfully arrested, kept in jail, and then exonerated. I've known many people who have been wrongfully arrested; I watched a five-foot tall woman get pushed and
twisted by a bunch of cops because she was pointing her videocamera at the site of these arrests and then get charged with felony assault on an officer. You know that statistic where 1/3 of all black men are, at any given point, being processed through the criminal justice system?
Well, I saw the effects of that on the high school where I taught, where you get fucked up kids who see fucked up things and then get their fucked up parents taken away from them and then they just become fucked up themselves. Amadou Diallo's nephew was a student at my high
school. I was friends with two women who were hitchhiking in Maine when a man who picked them up held them up at gunpoint and raped them; these women decided not to report the crime to the police not because, as in the cases you described, they would be repelled and shamed and doubted by the criminal justice system, but because they were radicals who did not believe that our retributive criminal justice system could do anything to prevent or remedy crimes.
So I think the power of the state is awesome, terrifying, and often misapplied. And I've seen it happen. So tell me, how do you know with any certainty that "most" plea bargaining cases don't involve innocent people? From where do you get this certainty in our million times over
fallible system? But nevermind that, I'll even cede to you that most, perhaps the majority, perhaps a large majority, of people facing plea bargains are guilty of whatever crime they were arrested for. Let's even pretend that all those people we saw in the video were completely
guilty. Let's just restrict this inquiry to the 121 people who have been exonerated after sitting on death row for decades. And then I'd like you to write letters to these 121 people telling them that they should have died for the state's mistake, that the state was too generous in reading them their Miranda rights, too generous in not making evidence up about them, too generous in not allowing police to barge in on any suspect's house without probable cause, too generous
in assigning them defense attorneys, and too generous in allowing appeals. How about that?
I write that because I see that as your proposal. Would you prefer a criminal justice system with no safeguards for the defendant? That's only a decent proposal if you're lucky enough to never to encounter the criminal justice system as a defendant, which is easy for us in
the highly educated, culturally conversant, low-crime, upper-middle class ivory tower to believe. If you're a defendant in the Kafkaesque system that you propose, however, too bad, so sad.
I think we're stuck trying to figure out an apparently unresolvable dilemma: advantage the prosecution and you risk locking up innocent people; advantage the defense and you risk not adequately punishing a criminal for a crime. I think you have too much prosecutorial zeal;
you think I'm a Willie Horton-loving liberal with my head dangerously in the clouds. Now I'm not sure where to go from here.
Still, thanks for having this conversation with me. At least on my part I'm finding this really a useful and necessary issue to write and think about, and I hope I'm not pissing you off too much. Let me know if we should stop before we never speak again.
Mandy
----- Original Message -----
From:
Date: Tuesday, November 15, 2005 9:35 pm
Subject: Re: RE: hey
I disagree with your portrayal.
You write: "And it's simply not true that the victim does not have resources. The victim has access to a city of police, all of whom do investigation on his or her behalf. (Who investigates/does discovery for the defendant? Himself? His drunk or sleeping lawyer?) The
victim has access to a prosecuting attorney who is versed in the system. The victim has the huge advantage of being able to detain the alleged criminal, to deprive someone of liberty without proving a damned thing."
Do you seriously believe that the "victim has access to a city of police, all of whom do investigation on his or her behalf"? Do you really think that the victim is telling police: "You, George, go knock door-to-door. Sam, you check the alley for clues..." In fact, the police do not work on behalf of the victim. Sometimes victims of rape are not even believed by the police. Most of the time the police have little time to spend investigating the case. Even when they want to investigate, they often have more pressing issues. Hell, DNA testing is backed up for months even for the most serious cases, and you think the police are seriously at the beck and call of a victim?
Further, the police are not "against" the defendant. The police investigate a crime and sometimes they are able to identify the person they think did it -- that is the defendant. But they don't begin investigations out to get a specific individual (unless you believe OJ, who got
off anyway -- and despite 911 calls from his ex-wife as he came to beat her -- ask that dead woman if she felt the police who asked OJ for his autograph as they sent him away were at her "beck and call").
Similarly, the victim has no "power" to detain the alleged criminal. The victim absolutely does not have this power. The prosecution and the police do not work on the behest of the victim. The victim has no power to do anything, and in fact, does not even have the power to force the prosecution to bring charges, much less to detain people at will. So I strongly disagree with your characterization of the power of the victim.
Moving on -- you cite a case of a DA who might have made up evidence. (I don't know this case, but I'll take your word on it.) How common is that? Are we seriously comparing that to the situations that happen every day with victims of crime? I am talking the typical case, not some bizarre example used by a documentary as a propaganda tool to influence viewers to adopt a pro-defense towards the justice system. Rapes happen every few seconds -- the stuff I'm talking about is happening all the time.
To even get to a trial, a rape victim not only has to choose to go forward, the doctors, the sociologists, the rape counselors, the police investigators and the prosecutor must all be convinced of the truth of what happened to her. (This despite the fact that victims of
such trauma are often confused, sometimes block out portions of their memory, sometimes can't speak straight -- this is in court too, they often can not concentrate or answer questions clearly out of their ongoing terror.) Whatever the law may be, we should tend to believe
the woman who says in court that the man raped her. What's more, rapists tend to be repeat offenders; they enjoy the power of what they do. If they are not stopped, they will do it again.
So: Are there innocent people unfairly locked up in prison? Yes. Is this the typical plea bargaining situation? No. Was it presented that way? Yes. On the other hand, was the typical plea bargaining situation presented from the perspective of the victim? No.
Our documentary and our class lecturer and our role-playing exercise all pretended that innocent defendants were the norm. Are you kidding me? We role-play five cases of counseling clients, and every one of these clients is a supposedly innocent defendant? We watch a
movie about plea bargaining and we hear nothing from the perspective of the victims? All we've heard about in this school is from the perspective of defendants. When did any professor or anyone in an official capacity in Crim Law or in the Lawyering class or during the movie, at
any point, ever speak seriously on behalf of victims of crime? Do they even have rights?
You mention racist juries -- at NYU, I often hear about the plight of minority and impoverished defendants. Somehow the people in this school don't know or don't care about minority and impoverished victims. Last statistics I saw showed 42% of US homicide victims were black. Rape, kidnapping, molestation, stalking -- these are primarily perpetrated against women or children. Victims are minorities too, and in almost all cases they are more vulnerable minorities than the thugs committing the crimes.
We have endless safeguards in place for defendants; there are no safeguards to protect victims. Do you feel that the current system is correct in not allowing evidence that the defendant raped 24 other people after this alleged rape? Or that the system is correct in not allowing a retrial when evidence surfaces (such as videotapes, confessions and DNA) showing that a defendant who "got off" is actually guilty? Or that the system is correct in paying defense attorneys to badger rape victims and argue on behalf of rapists even when they know the client is actually guilty? Or that the system is correct in allowing courts to toss out evidence because the police
didn't follow meaningless technicalities in collecting it? (Actual example: Last month the Connecticut Supreme Court tossed out blood- soaked clothes that had been key evidence in a murder conviction. The killer was living with his parents, and police got the signed permission of the father before searching the home, where they discovered the bloody clothes in the killer's room and in the washing machine. But the court ruled that they should also have gotten
the killer's mother's permission to search the home, so the clothes can not be admitted in trial, and the killer will almost certainly go free. Fair? To the murdered woman? To her family? To society?)
So, no, I disagree with you completely about the system. And the culture at NYU is out of wack. We have a club in which people volunteer to teach law to prisoners, but we have no club for helping victims of crime. I didn't hear anyone speak up today about victims until I did. Correct me if I'm wrong.
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Mandy Hu
> Date: Tuesday, November 15, 2005 7:51 pm
> Subject: RE: hey
>
> > R---,
> >
> > Hm, I see your point. But I guess this goes back to what we were
> > talking about earlier. Society has made a calculation here. It says
> > that convicting an innocent person--depriving a single mother of
> > two of her liberty and condemning those children to a lifetime of physical and
> > sexual abuse and neglect in foster homes, executing an innocent person
> > because a racist jury was looking for any black man 5'9" to 6'2" to pin
> > their insecurities upon, allowing an innocent man to be repeatedly
> > raped and tortured by his cellmates because someone had a vendetta
> > against him and proffered false testimony that a hack DA (see
> > http://www.truthinjustice.org/peasley.htm) who wanted to look good and
> > was absolutely convinced of his own righteousness and concocted even
> > more evidence to nab this innocent person, etc., and I could go on
> > withstories as grisly and violent as yours--society has calculated
> > that the injury committed by convicting an innocent person is so great that it
> > requires those safeguards that you listed.
> >
> > And it's simply not true that the victim does not have resources. The
> > victim has access to a city of police, all of whom do investigation on
> > his or her behalf. (Who investigates/does discovery for the defendant?
> > Himself? His drunk or sleeping lawyer?) The victim has access to a
> > prosecuting attorney who is versed in the system. The victim has the
> > huge advantage of being able to detain the alleged criminal, to
> > deprive someone of liberty without proving a damned thing.
> >
> > So, yeah, I understand that it's a grotesque miscarriage of
> > justice when a criminal is not adequately punished for his crime or is punished
> > for a crime that does not properly capture the severity of what he did. But
> > you must understand, and this is the point the movie makes, is that
> > injustice is not a one-way street. You tell the mother, or child, or
> > wife, or even victim's family for that matter, of the person executed
>> for murder and then exonerated post mortem that this defendant got too
> > many safeguards. You tell the person who just spent 25 years in jail for
> > a crime they didn't commit and got news of their parents' death only
> > through a collect call and whose children got dumped into the public
> > system and then became criminals themselves--you tell that person that
> > they shouldn't get the right to appeal. You know that's utter
> > bullshit.Both sides are grisly--it's disgusting when a criminal is
> > not punished, it's disgusting when an innocent person is punished. I just don't see
> > how you can't accept that there are cases in which the latter is just as
> > unjust as the former, and that's our disagreement. Am I correct?
> >
> > And my opposition to the plea bargain in general is predicated on the
> > desire to avoid both scenarios described above, since it is too blunt a
> > tool and potentially exonerates the guilty while pressuring the
> > innocentinto confession of guilt.
> >
> > Tell me if this makes sense.
> > M
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From:
> > Sent: Tuesday, November 15, 2005 7:18 PM
> > To: Mandy Hu
> > Subject: Re: hey
> >
> > Mandy,
> >
> > I'd be happy to talk with you more at another time. I wouldn't go
> > so far as to say that I am necessarily opposed to all plea
> > bargaining. However, I strongly feel that plea bargaining is usually cruel to
> > the victim. I believe that the cases shown were highly atypical.
> >
> > I believe a typical case goes something like this (sorry to be grizzly
> > here, but this is reality): A man breaks into your home, beats you
> > bloody (perhaps leaving permanent scars on your face), ties you up
> > and rapes you multiple times, threatens to come back and murder you if
> > you tell anyone, steals your belongings, and disappears. When people
> > discover you later, you are naked, bleeding, humiliated, horrified
> > and scared. Your faith in people is destroyed, your feeling of safety
> > in your home is gone, you can't sleep, you are terrified by men of
> > the attacher's race and at the same time feel guilty for feeling that
> > way, you are unable to concentrate, unable to date men, unable to be
> > alone -- and yet are afraid of being with others. The police and
> > hospital have to do rape tests on you, and they take photographs of your
> > genitals to show the bruises. You spend months taking anti-AIDS
> > drugs (just in case) which make you constantly nautious. Your injuries
> > are so bad that you can barely walk. You take anti-pregnancy drugs
> > but fear becoming pregnant anyway. You constantly fear the man will
> > return and attack you again.
> >
> > After months -- during which time you lose hope the man will ever
> > be caught -- the police finally catch the attacker. Perhaps you're
> > even lucky and they have a DNA match. At this point, the attacker is
> > assigned a lawyer (you are not), who tells the police that you
> > actually agreed to rough sex. Or maybe that you had consensual
> > sex with him before. Or maybe you're a prostitute who got beat up by
> > her john. Or maybe you're a drug user and you agreed to sex for drugs
> > and later things got violent. Or maybe he'll tell the press that you
> > had sex with three other men that day, despite no evidence of it. Or
> > maybe he'll try to get the judge to drop out the DNA evidence
> > because the police obtained it the wrong way. Maybe the police mishandled
> > it (used the wrong kind of bag to carry it or some other stupidly
> > legalistic technicality), and now the defense attorney is trying
> > to get the DNA evidence thrown out -- he is definitely not, mind you,
> > asking for the prosecutor to obtain a new DNA sample, he is asking
> > to get the DNA thrown out forever. This criminal destroyed your
> > life, and yet he now has a full-time lawyer fighting to take advantage
> > of every legal loophole in the world to get his client free. Oh, and
> > you learn that the attacker has been accused of raping 6 other women,
> > but none of that will be mentioned in court because it might
> > be "prejudicial" to the jury.
> >
> > This man destroyed your life, and yet he is assigned a lawyer --
> > paid for by the state -- who will attack you in the press and in the
> > courtroom, implying you are a slut, that you deserved it, that you
> > are a liar, or that you are a golddigger. Where's "innocent until
> > proven guilty" when it applies to rape victims? If we truly say that
> > accused rapists should be considered "innocent until proven guilty," that
> > means that the public at large should consider the rape victim "lying
> > whore until proven otherwise."
> >
> > You spoke to me after class about how impoverished defendants might
> > have an incompetent defense lawyer. But defendants at least have
> > the opportunity to hire their own lawyers; they get a lawyer free if
> > they can not hire one; they have opportunities to appeal with a new
> > lawyer if they wish; in extreme cases, they can have a conviction
> > overturned due to attorney incompetence; they can ask for clemency or parole;
> > in short, they have numerous never-ending options to get redress.
> > You, the victim, have no lawyer representing your rights. Furthermore,
> > the prosecutor and police and jury might also be incompetent, but in
> > your case there is no appeal, and you have no way to replace them with
> > somebody better. If the police mess up their evidence collection --
> > sorry, your case is done. Too bad. You just get to live with the
> > aftermath of the rape and nothing will ever be done about it. If
> > the prosecutor sucks -- sorry, but the defendant will be found not
> > guilty. Not guilty. He's back in your community, and you appear
> > to be a liar. Even your friends will wonder if you were "really"
> > raped. If the jury are idiots -- same thing. Double jeopardy is against
> > the law (no new trial under any circumstances -- even if he later
> > confesses, even if the police later find his DNA someplace they
> > didn't notice earlier, even if they later discover that he videotaped
> > himself raping and assaulting you while you were blindfolded -- too
> > late... Hell -- they might have found all of that only to have the judge
> > rule it inadmissable). In other words, there are remedies for a bad
> > defense lawyer. There are no remedies for a bad detective, bad
> > prosecutor or incompetent jury.
> >
> > Yes, occasionally innocent people end up punished. I am opposed to
> > that, just like anybody else. But the system is definitely not set up
> > against the defendant. The defendant has an endless series of
> > protections in place. The true victim of our court system is... the
> > crime victim.
> >
> > That's my thoughts.
> >
> > Sorry if it is rather rambling.
> >
> >
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: Mandy Hu
> > Date: Tuesday, November 15, 2005 5:24 pm
> > Subject: hey
> >
> > > R---,
> > >
> > > I just wanted to make sure we're on the same page. I was very
> > > interested in arguing about plea bargaining with you, and I think
> > > your comments helped me flesh out a little better how I feel about this
> > > practice. I absolutely see where you're coming from. I think from either
> > > perspective-from the victim's perspective or from the innocent
> > > defendant's perspective-plea bargaining is a seriously fucked up
> > > proposal. I'd venture to say even that the whole idea of plea
> > > bargainingis disgustingly actuarial and totally out of wack with
> > > ideas of justice. I mean, who makes these calculations? Suppose a guilty verdict
>>> for a rape is 20 years, and the trial would cost $25,000. Does
> > >offering a plea bargain of 10 years mean that the state calculates that the
> > >victim's pain isn't worth that $25,000? Or that the rapist has done only
> > > $12,500 in injury? This is ridiculous. An ideal system of justice
> > > would try every case upon the belief that the victim's adequate relief and the
> > > innocent defendant's right to a judgment on full facts cannot be
> > > boughtor sold. Do you agree? That's the point I'm ultimately
> > > driving at.
> > > Anyway, hope all's well. Thanks for talking,
> > > Mandy
> > >
> >
> >
> >
>
R---,
I don't disagree with most of what you say, specifically what you say about the abhorrence that is rape prosecution. All of this is fucked up and I agree that we ought to recognize the suffering of the victim. But I guess we will disagree and continue to disagree about what the
criminal justice system owes to those people who are not legitimately proven guilty, who might well be innocent.
My desire to make the criminal justice system accountable to these people goes back to Weber's description of the state as having a monopoly on the legitimate use of power. This is a terrifying power and it is an abused power. The victim has no resources, you say? Notwithstanding the fucked up notions of sexual stigma and permissability surrounding rape prosecutions, the victims in other crimes do have a tremendous resource: this forceful power of the state. Who brings the prosecution? Not the victim, you mentioned, but the state itself. The victim doesn't sue a criminal in tort, he or she invokes the state, which then moves its resources and attacks the alleged criminal as a moral monolith embodied with the legitimate power, in 34 states, to kill someone convicted of certain crimes.
You seem to have no sympathy for this, but I do, perhaps because our experiences may be different. I've been wrongfully arrested, kept in jail, and then exonerated. I've known many people who have been wrongfully arrested; I watched a five-foot tall woman get pushed and
twisted by a bunch of cops because she was pointing her videocamera at the site of these arrests and then get charged with felony assault on an officer. You know that statistic where 1/3 of all black men are, at any given point, being processed through the criminal justice system?
Well, I saw the effects of that on the high school where I taught, where you get fucked up kids who see fucked up things and then get their fucked up parents taken away from them and then they just become fucked up themselves. Amadou Diallo's nephew was a student at my high
school. I was friends with two women who were hitchhiking in Maine when a man who picked them up held them up at gunpoint and raped them; these women decided not to report the crime to the police not because, as in the cases you described, they would be repelled and shamed and doubted by the criminal justice system, but because they were radicals who did not believe that our retributive criminal justice system could do anything to prevent or remedy crimes.
So I think the power of the state is awesome, terrifying, and often misapplied. And I've seen it happen. So tell me, how do you know with any certainty that "most" plea bargaining cases don't involve innocent people? From where do you get this certainty in our million times over
fallible system? But nevermind that, I'll even cede to you that most, perhaps the majority, perhaps a large majority, of people facing plea bargains are guilty of whatever crime they were arrested for. Let's even pretend that all those people we saw in the video were completely
guilty. Let's just restrict this inquiry to the 121 people who have been exonerated after sitting on death row for decades. And then I'd like you to write letters to these 121 people telling them that they should have died for the state's mistake, that the state was too generous in reading them their Miranda rights, too generous in not making evidence up about them, too generous in not allowing police to barge in on any suspect's house without probable cause, too generous
in assigning them defense attorneys, and too generous in allowing appeals. How about that?
I write that because I see that as your proposal. Would you prefer a criminal justice system with no safeguards for the defendant? That's only a decent proposal if you're lucky enough to never to encounter the criminal justice system as a defendant, which is easy for us in
the highly educated, culturally conversant, low-crime, upper-middle class ivory tower to believe. If you're a defendant in the Kafkaesque system that you propose, however, too bad, so sad.
I think we're stuck trying to figure out an apparently unresolvable dilemma: advantage the prosecution and you risk locking up innocent people; advantage the defense and you risk not adequately punishing a criminal for a crime. I think you have too much prosecutorial zeal;
you think I'm a Willie Horton-loving liberal with my head dangerously in the clouds. Now I'm not sure where to go from here.
Still, thanks for having this conversation with me. At least on my part I'm finding this really a useful and necessary issue to write and think about, and I hope I'm not pissing you off too much. Let me know if we should stop before we never speak again.
Mandy
----- Original Message -----
From:
Date: Tuesday, November 15, 2005 9:35 pm
Subject: Re: RE: hey
I disagree with your portrayal.
You write: "And it's simply not true that the victim does not have resources. The victim has access to a city of police, all of whom do investigation on his or her behalf. (Who investigates/does discovery for the defendant? Himself? His drunk or sleeping lawyer?) The
victim has access to a prosecuting attorney who is versed in the system. The victim has the huge advantage of being able to detain the alleged criminal, to deprive someone of liberty without proving a damned thing."
Do you seriously believe that the "victim has access to a city of police, all of whom do investigation on his or her behalf"? Do you really think that the victim is telling police: "You, George, go knock door-to-door. Sam, you check the alley for clues..." In fact, the police do not work on behalf of the victim. Sometimes victims of rape are not even believed by the police. Most of the time the police have little time to spend investigating the case. Even when they want to investigate, they often have more pressing issues. Hell, DNA testing is backed up for months even for the most serious cases, and you think the police are seriously at the beck and call of a victim?
Further, the police are not "against" the defendant. The police investigate a crime and sometimes they are able to identify the person they think did it -- that is the defendant. But they don't begin investigations out to get a specific individual (unless you believe OJ, who got
off anyway -- and despite 911 calls from his ex-wife as he came to beat her -- ask that dead woman if she felt the police who asked OJ for his autograph as they sent him away were at her "beck and call").
Similarly, the victim has no "power" to detain the alleged criminal. The victim absolutely does not have this power. The prosecution and the police do not work on the behest of the victim. The victim has no power to do anything, and in fact, does not even have the power to force the prosecution to bring charges, much less to detain people at will. So I strongly disagree with your characterization of the power of the victim.
Moving on -- you cite a case of a DA who might have made up evidence. (I don't know this case, but I'll take your word on it.) How common is that? Are we seriously comparing that to the situations that happen every day with victims of crime? I am talking the typical case, not some bizarre example used by a documentary as a propaganda tool to influence viewers to adopt a pro-defense towards the justice system. Rapes happen every few seconds -- the stuff I'm talking about is happening all the time.
To even get to a trial, a rape victim not only has to choose to go forward, the doctors, the sociologists, the rape counselors, the police investigators and the prosecutor must all be convinced of the truth of what happened to her. (This despite the fact that victims of
such trauma are often confused, sometimes block out portions of their memory, sometimes can't speak straight -- this is in court too, they often can not concentrate or answer questions clearly out of their ongoing terror.) Whatever the law may be, we should tend to believe
the woman who says in court that the man raped her. What's more, rapists tend to be repeat offenders; they enjoy the power of what they do. If they are not stopped, they will do it again.
So: Are there innocent people unfairly locked up in prison? Yes. Is this the typical plea bargaining situation? No. Was it presented that way? Yes. On the other hand, was the typical plea bargaining situation presented from the perspective of the victim? No.
Our documentary and our class lecturer and our role-playing exercise all pretended that innocent defendants were the norm. Are you kidding me? We role-play five cases of counseling clients, and every one of these clients is a supposedly innocent defendant? We watch a
movie about plea bargaining and we hear nothing from the perspective of the victims? All we've heard about in this school is from the perspective of defendants. When did any professor or anyone in an official capacity in Crim Law or in the Lawyering class or during the movie, at
any point, ever speak seriously on behalf of victims of crime? Do they even have rights?
You mention racist juries -- at NYU, I often hear about the plight of minority and impoverished defendants. Somehow the people in this school don't know or don't care about minority and impoverished victims. Last statistics I saw showed 42% of US homicide victims were black. Rape, kidnapping, molestation, stalking -- these are primarily perpetrated against women or children. Victims are minorities too, and in almost all cases they are more vulnerable minorities than the thugs committing the crimes.
We have endless safeguards in place for defendants; there are no safeguards to protect victims. Do you feel that the current system is correct in not allowing evidence that the defendant raped 24 other people after this alleged rape? Or that the system is correct in not allowing a retrial when evidence surfaces (such as videotapes, confessions and DNA) showing that a defendant who "got off" is actually guilty? Or that the system is correct in paying defense attorneys to badger rape victims and argue on behalf of rapists even when they know the client is actually guilty? Or that the system is correct in allowing courts to toss out evidence because the police
didn't follow meaningless technicalities in collecting it? (Actual example: Last month the Connecticut Supreme Court tossed out blood- soaked clothes that had been key evidence in a murder conviction. The killer was living with his parents, and police got the signed permission of the father before searching the home, where they discovered the bloody clothes in the killer's room and in the washing machine. But the court ruled that they should also have gotten
the killer's mother's permission to search the home, so the clothes can not be admitted in trial, and the killer will almost certainly go free. Fair? To the murdered woman? To her family? To society?)
So, no, I disagree with you completely about the system. And the culture at NYU is out of wack. We have a club in which people volunteer to teach law to prisoners, but we have no club for helping victims of crime. I didn't hear anyone speak up today about victims until I did. Correct me if I'm wrong.
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Mandy Hu
> Date: Tuesday, November 15, 2005 7:51 pm
> Subject: RE: hey
>
> > R---,
> >
> > Hm, I see your point. But I guess this goes back to what we were
> > talking about earlier. Society has made a calculation here. It says
> > that convicting an innocent person--depriving a single mother of
> > two of her liberty and condemning those children to a lifetime of physical and
> > sexual abuse and neglect in foster homes, executing an innocent person
> > because a racist jury was looking for any black man 5'9" to 6'2" to pin
> > their insecurities upon, allowing an innocent man to be repeatedly
> > raped and tortured by his cellmates because someone had a vendetta
> > against him and proffered false testimony that a hack DA (see
> > http://www.truthinjustice.org/peasley.htm) who wanted to look good and
> > was absolutely convinced of his own righteousness and concocted even
> > more evidence to nab this innocent person, etc., and I could go on
> > withstories as grisly and violent as yours--society has calculated
> > that the injury committed by convicting an innocent person is so great that it
> > requires those safeguards that you listed.
> >
> > And it's simply not true that the victim does not have resources. The
> > victim has access to a city of police, all of whom do investigation on
> > his or her behalf. (Who investigates/does discovery for the defendant?
> > Himself? His drunk or sleeping lawyer?) The victim has access to a
> > prosecuting attorney who is versed in the system. The victim has the
> > huge advantage of being able to detain the alleged criminal, to
> > deprive someone of liberty without proving a damned thing.
> >
> > So, yeah, I understand that it's a grotesque miscarriage of
> > justice when a criminal is not adequately punished for his crime or is punished
> > for a crime that does not properly capture the severity of what he did. But
> > you must understand, and this is the point the movie makes, is that
> > injustice is not a one-way street. You tell the mother, or child, or
> > wife, or even victim's family for that matter, of the person executed
>> for murder and then exonerated post mortem that this defendant got too
> > many safeguards. You tell the person who just spent 25 years in jail for
> > a crime they didn't commit and got news of their parents' death only
> > through a collect call and whose children got dumped into the public
> > system and then became criminals themselves--you tell that person that
> > they shouldn't get the right to appeal. You know that's utter
> > bullshit.Both sides are grisly--it's disgusting when a criminal is
> > not punished, it's disgusting when an innocent person is punished. I just don't see
> > how you can't accept that there are cases in which the latter is just as
> > unjust as the former, and that's our disagreement. Am I correct?
> >
> > And my opposition to the plea bargain in general is predicated on the
> > desire to avoid both scenarios described above, since it is too blunt a
> > tool and potentially exonerates the guilty while pressuring the
> > innocentinto confession of guilt.
> >
> > Tell me if this makes sense.
> > M
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From:
> > Sent: Tuesday, November 15, 2005 7:18 PM
> > To: Mandy Hu
> > Subject: Re: hey
> >
> > Mandy,
> >
> > I'd be happy to talk with you more at another time. I wouldn't go
> > so far as to say that I am necessarily opposed to all plea
> > bargaining. However, I strongly feel that plea bargaining is usually cruel to
> > the victim. I believe that the cases shown were highly atypical.
> >
> > I believe a typical case goes something like this (sorry to be grizzly
> > here, but this is reality): A man breaks into your home, beats you
> > bloody (perhaps leaving permanent scars on your face), ties you up
> > and rapes you multiple times, threatens to come back and murder you if
> > you tell anyone, steals your belongings, and disappears. When people
> > discover you later, you are naked, bleeding, humiliated, horrified
> > and scared. Your faith in people is destroyed, your feeling of safety
> > in your home is gone, you can't sleep, you are terrified by men of
> > the attacher's race and at the same time feel guilty for feeling that
> > way, you are unable to concentrate, unable to date men, unable to be
> > alone -- and yet are afraid of being with others. The police and
> > hospital have to do rape tests on you, and they take photographs of your
> > genitals to show the bruises. You spend months taking anti-AIDS
> > drugs (just in case) which make you constantly nautious. Your injuries
> > are so bad that you can barely walk. You take anti-pregnancy drugs
> > but fear becoming pregnant anyway. You constantly fear the man will
> > return and attack you again.
> >
> > After months -- during which time you lose hope the man will ever
> > be caught -- the police finally catch the attacker. Perhaps you're
> > even lucky and they have a DNA match. At this point, the attacker is
> > assigned a lawyer (you are not), who tells the police that you
> > actually agreed to rough sex. Or maybe that you had consensual
> > sex with him before. Or maybe you're a prostitute who got beat up by
> > her john. Or maybe you're a drug user and you agreed to sex for drugs
> > and later things got violent. Or maybe he'll tell the press that you
> > had sex with three other men that day, despite no evidence of it. Or
> > maybe he'll try to get the judge to drop out the DNA evidence
> > because the police obtained it the wrong way. Maybe the police mishandled
> > it (used the wrong kind of bag to carry it or some other stupidly
> > legalistic technicality), and now the defense attorney is trying
> > to get the DNA evidence thrown out -- he is definitely not, mind you,
> > asking for the prosecutor to obtain a new DNA sample, he is asking
> > to get the DNA thrown out forever. This criminal destroyed your
> > life, and yet he now has a full-time lawyer fighting to take advantage
> > of every legal loophole in the world to get his client free. Oh, and
> > you learn that the attacker has been accused of raping 6 other women,
> > but none of that will be mentioned in court because it might
> > be "prejudicial" to the jury.
> >
> > This man destroyed your life, and yet he is assigned a lawyer --
> > paid for by the state -- who will attack you in the press and in the
> > courtroom, implying you are a slut, that you deserved it, that you
> > are a liar, or that you are a golddigger. Where's "innocent until
> > proven guilty" when it applies to rape victims? If we truly say that
> > accused rapists should be considered "innocent until proven guilty," that
> > means that the public at large should consider the rape victim "lying
> > whore until proven otherwise."
> >
> > You spoke to me after class about how impoverished defendants might
> > have an incompetent defense lawyer. But defendants at least have
> > the opportunity to hire their own lawyers; they get a lawyer free if
> > they can not hire one; they have opportunities to appeal with a new
> > lawyer if they wish; in extreme cases, they can have a conviction
> > overturned due to attorney incompetence; they can ask for clemency or parole;
> > in short, they have numerous never-ending options to get redress.
> > You, the victim, have no lawyer representing your rights. Furthermore,
> > the prosecutor and police and jury might also be incompetent, but in
> > your case there is no appeal, and you have no way to replace them with
> > somebody better. If the police mess up their evidence collection --
> > sorry, your case is done. Too bad. You just get to live with the
> > aftermath of the rape and nothing will ever be done about it. If
> > the prosecutor sucks -- sorry, but the defendant will be found not
> > guilty. Not guilty. He's back in your community, and you appear
> > to be a liar. Even your friends will wonder if you were "really"
> > raped. If the jury are idiots -- same thing. Double jeopardy is against
> > the law (no new trial under any circumstances -- even if he later
> > confesses, even if the police later find his DNA someplace they
> > didn't notice earlier, even if they later discover that he videotaped
> > himself raping and assaulting you while you were blindfolded -- too
> > late... Hell -- they might have found all of that only to have the judge
> > rule it inadmissable). In other words, there are remedies for a bad
> > defense lawyer. There are no remedies for a bad detective, bad
> > prosecutor or incompetent jury.
> >
> > Yes, occasionally innocent people end up punished. I am opposed to
> > that, just like anybody else. But the system is definitely not set up
> > against the defendant. The defendant has an endless series of
> > protections in place. The true victim of our court system is... the
> > crime victim.
> >
> > That's my thoughts.
> >
> > Sorry if it is rather rambling.
> >
> >
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: Mandy Hu
> > Date: Tuesday, November 15, 2005 5:24 pm
> > Subject: hey
> >
> > > R---,
> > >
> > > I just wanted to make sure we're on the same page. I was very
> > > interested in arguing about plea bargaining with you, and I think
> > > your comments helped me flesh out a little better how I feel about this
> > > practice. I absolutely see where you're coming from. I think from either
> > > perspective-from the victim's perspective or from the innocent
> > > defendant's perspective-plea bargaining is a seriously fucked up
> > > proposal. I'd venture to say even that the whole idea of plea
> > > bargainingis disgustingly actuarial and totally out of wack with
> > > ideas of justice. I mean, who makes these calculations? Suppose a guilty verdict
>>> for a rape is 20 years, and the trial would cost $25,000. Does
> > >offering a plea bargain of 10 years mean that the state calculates that the
> > >victim's pain isn't worth that $25,000? Or that the rapist has done only
> > > $12,500 in injury? This is ridiculous. An ideal system of justice
> > > would try every case upon the belief that the victim's adequate relief and the
> > > innocent defendant's right to a judgment on full facts cannot be
> > > boughtor sold. Do you agree? That's the point I'm ultimately
> > > driving at.
> > > Anyway, hope all's well. Thanks for talking,
> > > Mandy
> > >
> >
> >
> >
>
You know when you're being circumscribed because you're convinced that someone is going to spy on your words and incriminate you for something awful?
That's how I'm feeling.
Spy v. Spy, etc.
Spy v. Spy, etc.
Distraction
Need a driver to drive me somewhere other than to distraction. Got watermelon on the mind. School and other vitals are suffering. I'm regressing, fucking up, making enemies. It's all so inappropriate. I flubbed an interview this morning probably worse than even the great Root Tilden flubbing: What interest have you in Kibondo? "None." In Bangkok? "A passing student's interest." In human rights? "Qu'est-ce que c'est 'human rights'?" I wish I were exaggerating, but I think I've forgotten how to do even that. (<-- an exaggeration! The gods of self reference look down in disapproval.)
Saturday, November 12, 2005
Greetings from Oakland (FUCKERS)!
Well, apparently I have more than one fan! Who is Poo Head? Who is Poo Face? Who is Poo Vulva? EEEEEWWW
Just quick notes from the conference:
1) Got so badly drunk last night, stumbly. Went to lezzie club. Had wonderful time. Danced. Came back to find that car had been broken into, friend's laptop gone, my backpack, digital cam, MP3 player, coat gone. Fuckers! Didn't this exact same shit happen to me in San Francisco in 1998? FUCKERS! Scoured dumpsters looking for a coat. Who would take my fucking coat? Now I have no coat. Everything else sucks but is replaceable. The coat was the only thing I had that didn't make my body look like a dinner roll. Sigh, vanity of vanities. Drove back to hotel stacked up with five other folks in the back of someone's pick up truck. In drunken lapse in judgment, tore off clothes and dove into hotel pool and then leapt out screaming of frozen nipples and racing naked back to my room; passed out and woke with extreme light sensitivity and inability to speak above a whisper.
2) Gave talk on Social Security. Went swimmingly. I managed to ape a phrase from Emerson that my brilliant professor snuck into a class last week: "Foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of a little mind" turned into "public benefits programs are the hobgoblins of the conservative mind." I think I did okay. I said that one idea floated was the "biggest, steamiest pile of shit I've ever heard." Ooops. The rest of the panel was dazzling. Fun, fun, fun. I'm so narcissistic I love speaking in front of crowds. Ah, me.
3) I kept my water cup empty on the table during the panel on Social Security just because everytime I spoke I felt as if my head was going to pop and I wanted to make sure I had a place to puke into.
4) The conference has been FUUUUNNN. I have not slept over four hours a night since getting here. I'm staying with high super femme J. Stern and we play flashlight games instead of sleeping. I've touched a bunch of chest hair. I've waded through interminable hours of queer API touchy-feeliness, suppressing the urge to beat the crowd of UC students who totally inappropriately call people racists and whine ALL DAY LONG. Tell me why I had to attend three hours of meetings with them yesterday?
More later. Off to dinner!
(Poo fans, please identify yourselves!)
Just quick notes from the conference:
1) Got so badly drunk last night, stumbly. Went to lezzie club. Had wonderful time. Danced. Came back to find that car had been broken into, friend's laptop gone, my backpack, digital cam, MP3 player, coat gone. Fuckers! Didn't this exact same shit happen to me in San Francisco in 1998? FUCKERS! Scoured dumpsters looking for a coat. Who would take my fucking coat? Now I have no coat. Everything else sucks but is replaceable. The coat was the only thing I had that didn't make my body look like a dinner roll. Sigh, vanity of vanities. Drove back to hotel stacked up with five other folks in the back of someone's pick up truck. In drunken lapse in judgment, tore off clothes and dove into hotel pool and then leapt out screaming of frozen nipples and racing naked back to my room; passed out and woke with extreme light sensitivity and inability to speak above a whisper.
2) Gave talk on Social Security. Went swimmingly. I managed to ape a phrase from Emerson that my brilliant professor snuck into a class last week: "Foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of a little mind" turned into "public benefits programs are the hobgoblins of the conservative mind." I think I did okay. I said that one idea floated was the "biggest, steamiest pile of shit I've ever heard." Ooops. The rest of the panel was dazzling. Fun, fun, fun. I'm so narcissistic I love speaking in front of crowds. Ah, me.
3) I kept my water cup empty on the table during the panel on Social Security just because everytime I spoke I felt as if my head was going to pop and I wanted to make sure I had a place to puke into.
4) The conference has been FUUUUNNN. I have not slept over four hours a night since getting here. I'm staying with high super femme J. Stern and we play flashlight games instead of sleeping. I've touched a bunch of chest hair. I've waded through interminable hours of queer API touchy-feeliness, suppressing the urge to beat the crowd of UC students who totally inappropriately call people racists and whine ALL DAY LONG. Tell me why I had to attend three hours of meetings with them yesterday?
More later. Off to dinner!
(Poo fans, please identify yourselves!)
Tuesday, November 08, 2005
Google: The Hobgoblin of Little Minds
Sitting here with Contrachktschs spread around me, but instead of reading, I'm Googling nerds who are obsessed with their own sexual/gender identities uber alles. They're stupid, it's stupid, I'm stupid. I'm building up resentment for people who I haven't met yet, but will meet...tomorrow! I'm going to the Creating Change conference in Oakland, tomorrow through Sunday!
Hooray! Hooray for visiting parents in Palto! Hooray for gay by the bay! Hooray for California! Three cheers for me! Hip hip!
[I am trying to mask my internal disquiet through effusive external displays of enthusiasm. Does it work?]
Hooray! Hooray for visiting parents in Palto! Hooray for gay by the bay! Hooray for California! Three cheers for me! Hip hip!
[I am trying to mask my internal disquiet through effusive external displays of enthusiasm. Does it work?]
Monday, November 07, 2005
Meet Brian
Brian is the name of my brain. I only call him by name when I need to exhort him to produce. As in, "C'mon, Brian, you can do it! Work!"
Brian is performing very badly tonight. Brian is spouting bitchiness at random. Tonight, he observed thusly: just because you are from a different continent doesn't mean you can't be shallow!
Brian is reacting to a certain houseguest situation in his host body's apartment. Brian's host body is spending as much time as possible at the NYU law school library in order to avoid "conversation" with his aforementioned houseguests. Brian reviles criminal law reading, but he reviles interminable inanities even more. Brian chooses law.
Brian is also the entity that directs me to sit in one particular place in the library. I have to stake out the spot when the private prime study rooms in Furman Hall are taken. The library is entirely subterranean, as if to emphasize that law students are sallow, gaunt, underground moles with poor vision and a tendency to scurry. There are about twenty tables aboveground, on the first floor, but this floor also happens to be one of the social hotspots of my overly cramped school, and here people like to steal candy from the Lexis-Nexis table and then blather at TOP VOLUME into their cell phones. So the only option for me--she who desires natural light but little noise, who already wears earplugs for 12-15 hours of the day (seriously--for sleep and study), whose eyes are rotting in their sockets from the fluorescent lighting and the poorly prescribed contact lenses--is to find the spot under the skylight, turn off all the lights around me, take out my 100 pounds of books, take my laptop from its protective neoprene condom, plug in my laptop, remove my 4-color pen, highlighter, and pencil from my backpack, locate my earplug cannister, put in my earplugs, take out the foldable reading stand that Lo bought me for my 25th birthday, put one of my textbooks onto the reading stand, check my schedule for my night's homework, and then, after this is done, start reading.
This is award-winning nerd procedure, but I have clearly embraced my nerd-dom. The nerdiest part is that I profoundly prefer reading my books [UPDATE: the first edition of this sentence explained that I "profoundly prefer eating my books," which you and I know is a lie. I eat only magazines, not books, please. I'm on a glossy diet.] to chitter-chatting with my classmates, and am grateful for Schulhofer's Criminal Law for protecting me from the most awkward manifestations of my social retardation. ("I think he's trying to say that I don't have breasts!" I blurted, attempting a joke, very professional-like, during a conference call last week. Silence ensued.) (Then: S: "I'm ordering the avocado-hijiki roll." Me: "That's great. [beat] [very genuinely interested] What are you planning to order?" Silence ensued.)
That having been written, I have now successfully blogged for half an hour in lieu of studying. Way to go, Brian!
Brian is performing very badly tonight. Brian is spouting bitchiness at random. Tonight, he observed thusly: just because you are from a different continent doesn't mean you can't be shallow!
Brian is reacting to a certain houseguest situation in his host body's apartment. Brian's host body is spending as much time as possible at the NYU law school library in order to avoid "conversation" with his aforementioned houseguests. Brian reviles criminal law reading, but he reviles interminable inanities even more. Brian chooses law.
Brian is also the entity that directs me to sit in one particular place in the library. I have to stake out the spot when the private prime study rooms in Furman Hall are taken. The library is entirely subterranean, as if to emphasize that law students are sallow, gaunt, underground moles with poor vision and a tendency to scurry. There are about twenty tables aboveground, on the first floor, but this floor also happens to be one of the social hotspots of my overly cramped school, and here people like to steal candy from the Lexis-Nexis table and then blather at TOP VOLUME into their cell phones. So the only option for me--she who desires natural light but little noise, who already wears earplugs for 12-15 hours of the day (seriously--for sleep and study), whose eyes are rotting in their sockets from the fluorescent lighting and the poorly prescribed contact lenses--is to find the spot under the skylight, turn off all the lights around me, take out my 100 pounds of books, take my laptop from its protective neoprene condom, plug in my laptop, remove my 4-color pen, highlighter, and pencil from my backpack, locate my earplug cannister, put in my earplugs, take out the foldable reading stand that Lo bought me for my 25th birthday, put one of my textbooks onto the reading stand, check my schedule for my night's homework, and then, after this is done, start reading.
This is award-winning nerd procedure, but I have clearly embraced my nerd-dom. The nerdiest part is that I profoundly prefer reading my books [UPDATE: the first edition of this sentence explained that I "profoundly prefer eating my books," which you and I know is a lie. I eat only magazines, not books, please. I'm on a glossy diet.] to chitter-chatting with my classmates, and am grateful for Schulhofer's Criminal Law for protecting me from the most awkward manifestations of my social retardation. ("I think he's trying to say that I don't have breasts!" I blurted, attempting a joke, very professional-like, during a conference call last week. Silence ensued.) (Then: S: "I'm ordering the avocado-hijiki roll." Me: "That's great. [beat] [very genuinely interested] What are you planning to order?" Silence ensued.)
That having been written, I have now successfully blogged for half an hour in lieu of studying. Way to go, Brian!
From the Fucked-Up Files of Mrs. Law E. Lawyer
Here's another fucked-up legal question to scratch your head to:
States cannot execute an inmate if he is found to be insane. Can states force an inmate to take anti-psychotic medication so that he is no longer considered insane, and then execute him? (The answer is no. See State v. Perry, 610 So. 2d 746 (La. 1992). But it's pretty fucked up that this case got to the Louisiana Supreme Court, isn't it? I mean, had they already tried to forcibly administer the meds before the suit was brought?)
Blogging substitutes for studying. All in good fun.
States cannot execute an inmate if he is found to be insane. Can states force an inmate to take anti-psychotic medication so that he is no longer considered insane, and then execute him? (The answer is no. See State v. Perry, 610 So. 2d 746 (La. 1992). But it's pretty fucked up that this case got to the Louisiana Supreme Court, isn't it? I mean, had they already tried to forcibly administer the meds before the suit was brought?)
Blogging substitutes for studying. All in good fun.
Saturday, November 05, 2005
Ryan Larkin
Saw Chris Landreth's Ryan for the second time last night. I would pay a lot of money to have a coffee table book that reproduces each frame of this 14-minute animation. Too bad the screen at the American Museum of Natural History was too small for the audience to see its sublime detail. Oh well.
Thursday, November 03, 2005
Creation Myths
I wrote a bunch of creation myths this summer. In the absence of better things to post, here's one of them:
Creation Myths
I.
In the beginning, a heavy point spontaneously emerged in the middle of an infinite nothingness. All the steel in the world was not as heavy as the point. If you wet even an industrial strength paper towel and put the point in the middle of it, the point would plunge through without a moment’s pause. Even the man who won all the world’s world’s strongest man competitions three years running, and all his fellow competitors, could not budge the point with their otherworldly quadriceps muscles.
Then, just as spontaneously as it had come into existence, the point exploded, erupting outward in a widening spiral of matter, speeding toward the edge of the infinite nothingness whenceforth it came. It was so noisy. The spiral slowed at the outermost edges until it moved so imperceptibly that only several billion years of evolutionary ingenuity could produce instruments to measure it. The point became a disintegrated constellation of rocky outcroppings, dangerous gases, and hot fourth states of matter. The infinity of space was being filled with the diffusion of the heavy point, to the point where eventually a fine, weightless mist would cover every bit of space imaginable.
In some places, chemicals converged coincidentally and cells would wriggle and then, after a while, stop wriggling. In some of these places, cell wriggling was abortive. In other places, cells would continue to wriggle in increasingly complicated configurations. In one particular place, maybe in many, chemicals roiled in a thick stew, things crawled out of the stew, gave birth to some things that died and some things that survived outside the stew, and these things gave birth to things that gave birth to things that gave birth ad infinitum to paws, feet, wings, claws. Eventually, one of these things invented synthetic press-on nails that became incorporated into the convoluted mating system of a cluster of bipedal mammals.
Gunpowder was invented. Scientists conclusively determined the speed at which light moves in a vacuum. Constantine drew crosses on the shields of his soldiers and convinced the entire Roman Empire to stop their fanciful imaginations about one set of special fictional non-beings and to develop their fanciful imaginations about another special fictional non-being with a long beard and a beatific confidence in its voice.
The arms of the spiral swung wider and wider, and slower and slower, until it slowed to a stop. With nowhere else to go, the spiral began tucking into itself, like a figure skater accelerating into a spin, pulling in her arms until she is cutting tiny circles into the ice. Meteors smashed rocky outcroppings; hot fourth states of matter extinguished like wet wood campfires. The world’s strongest man drowned in a freshwater wave. Press-on nails burst into powder. Wriggling cells stopped wriggling. The universe spun like a top, then spun itself shut. It condensed into a hard heart, and then a congested nut, and finally, again, into a single heavy point. Everything became quiet. Again, there was an infinite nothingness and a heavy point.
Inside the point was Constantine, crushed into the shields of his soldiers, into the stone of the Milvian Bridge, into the plasma that lit his eyes with a vision of the Lord, into the darkened eyeglass lenses of a history student who had read Roman histories on an undergraduate campus poorly shaded by desiccated elms. Inside the heavy point, inside a half-drunk glass of communion wine, inside the cells of the pointer star, parts of Constantine killed time with everything else, waiting to rupture.
Creation Myths
I.
In the beginning, a heavy point spontaneously emerged in the middle of an infinite nothingness. All the steel in the world was not as heavy as the point. If you wet even an industrial strength paper towel and put the point in the middle of it, the point would plunge through without a moment’s pause. Even the man who won all the world’s world’s strongest man competitions three years running, and all his fellow competitors, could not budge the point with their otherworldly quadriceps muscles.
Then, just as spontaneously as it had come into existence, the point exploded, erupting outward in a widening spiral of matter, speeding toward the edge of the infinite nothingness whenceforth it came. It was so noisy. The spiral slowed at the outermost edges until it moved so imperceptibly that only several billion years of evolutionary ingenuity could produce instruments to measure it. The point became a disintegrated constellation of rocky outcroppings, dangerous gases, and hot fourth states of matter. The infinity of space was being filled with the diffusion of the heavy point, to the point where eventually a fine, weightless mist would cover every bit of space imaginable.
In some places, chemicals converged coincidentally and cells would wriggle and then, after a while, stop wriggling. In some of these places, cell wriggling was abortive. In other places, cells would continue to wriggle in increasingly complicated configurations. In one particular place, maybe in many, chemicals roiled in a thick stew, things crawled out of the stew, gave birth to some things that died and some things that survived outside the stew, and these things gave birth to things that gave birth to things that gave birth ad infinitum to paws, feet, wings, claws. Eventually, one of these things invented synthetic press-on nails that became incorporated into the convoluted mating system of a cluster of bipedal mammals.
Gunpowder was invented. Scientists conclusively determined the speed at which light moves in a vacuum. Constantine drew crosses on the shields of his soldiers and convinced the entire Roman Empire to stop their fanciful imaginations about one set of special fictional non-beings and to develop their fanciful imaginations about another special fictional non-being with a long beard and a beatific confidence in its voice.
The arms of the spiral swung wider and wider, and slower and slower, until it slowed to a stop. With nowhere else to go, the spiral began tucking into itself, like a figure skater accelerating into a spin, pulling in her arms until she is cutting tiny circles into the ice. Meteors smashed rocky outcroppings; hot fourth states of matter extinguished like wet wood campfires. The world’s strongest man drowned in a freshwater wave. Press-on nails burst into powder. Wriggling cells stopped wriggling. The universe spun like a top, then spun itself shut. It condensed into a hard heart, and then a congested nut, and finally, again, into a single heavy point. Everything became quiet. Again, there was an infinite nothingness and a heavy point.
Inside the point was Constantine, crushed into the shields of his soldiers, into the stone of the Milvian Bridge, into the plasma that lit his eyes with a vision of the Lord, into the darkened eyeglass lenses of a history student who had read Roman histories on an undergraduate campus poorly shaded by desiccated elms. Inside the heavy point, inside a half-drunk glass of communion wine, inside the cells of the pointer star, parts of Constantine killed time with everything else, waiting to rupture.
Wednesday, November 02, 2005
Tuesday, November 01, 2005
Observations
1) "The law of natural immutable justice and equity." How can a judge write that without giggling a little bit into the baggy sleeves of her robe? I guess it must be hard to giggle when you know that you dole out the law of natural immutable justice and equity, a very weighty responsibility.
2) But then the human rights activist in me says, yes, this immutably natural and naturally immutable law does exist.
3) You are attractive when you are young and hideous when you are old.
4) My email address is actually monometer, not trimeter. Is that so? Scansion friend, where are you?
5) I am fucking tired. I need to pee. My lips are chapped. And I left my chapstick on the dresser. If these aren't good reasons to freak out, I don't know what are.
2) But then the human rights activist in me says, yes, this immutably natural and naturally immutable law does exist.
3) You are attractive when you are young and hideous when you are old.
4) My email address is actually monometer, not trimeter. Is that so? Scansion friend, where are you?
5) I am fucking tired. I need to pee. My lips are chapped. And I left my chapstick on the dresser. If these aren't good reasons to freak out, I don't know what are.
Sunday, October 30, 2005
Dork
I take great pleasure in knowing that my school email is a rhyming anapestic trimeter tercet:
Mn Dee HU
@
N Y U
.
E D U
Tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the open-throated "oo."
Mn Dee HU
@
N Y U
.
E D U
Tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the open-throated "oo."
Humbling Moments From the Weekend, Pt. 1
1) Moderating this panel on lesbian feminism and the body last Friday, I sort of made a wallflower of myself by letting my panelists monologue without really answering any questions. Finally, at the end of half-hour panel, I jumped in and said, "Sorry to keep bringing up vaginal self-examinations, but it's like the gift that keeps on giving!" and then was promptly cut off by the conference organizer for exceeding the time limit. L-O-kwent!
2) Thursday, in the law library, raptly attending to my Contracts reading and chewing on the end of my four-color pen (black for facts and procedural history, blue for legal issues, green for analysis, red for holdings and dicta),
I accidentally bit down on the release spring for the blue color and somehow got my lower lip trapped under the springs of the pen. It took a good long minute--and a lot of tugging--to extract the spring from my lip, after which I was bleeding and nearly crying.
3) Attempting to purchase a "suit" for use in the future, since all law-talking guys seem to need a black suit and precipitating an existential crisis instead. Why am I shaped like an inverted triangle? I looked like either a trussed-up ham leaking GLH or a tiny boy in a huge woman's suit. Which one am I?
4) Making a new awesome friend, offering new friend a space in a conference hotel I wasn't at liberty to offer, making everyone feel uncomfortable, then having to call and rescind my overeager generosity to aforementioned new awesome friend. Text messaged contrition ensues.
5) Offering, again in overeager generosity, a book to someone for keeps and then having to be reminded by Lo that I was not at liberty to offer the book and she actually wants it back because she worked on the book and is thanked in the acknowledgments. Oop.
6) Accidentally eating my bff, Susan. OMG how embarassing!
2) Thursday, in the law library, raptly attending to my Contracts reading and chewing on the end of my four-color pen (black for facts and procedural history, blue for legal issues, green for analysis, red for holdings and dicta),
I accidentally bit down on the release spring for the blue color and somehow got my lower lip trapped under the springs of the pen. It took a good long minute--and a lot of tugging--to extract the spring from my lip, after which I was bleeding and nearly crying.
3) Attempting to purchase a "suit" for use in the future, since all law-talking guys seem to need a black suit and precipitating an existential crisis instead. Why am I shaped like an inverted triangle? I looked like either a trussed-up ham leaking GLH or a tiny boy in a huge woman's suit. Which one am I?
4) Making a new awesome friend, offering new friend a space in a conference hotel I wasn't at liberty to offer, making everyone feel uncomfortable, then having to call and rescind my overeager generosity to aforementioned new awesome friend. Text messaged contrition ensues.
5) Offering, again in overeager generosity, a book to someone for keeps and then having to be reminded by Lo that I was not at liberty to offer the book and she actually wants it back because she worked on the book and is thanked in the acknowledgments. Oop.
6) Accidentally eating my bff, Susan. OMG how embarassing!
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