Category Archives: justice

A Tale of Two Monsters

Ariel Castro spent his time in court today blaming his victims, his former wife and others, stating he was never abusive till he met his ex-wife. He claimed he was a sex addict, that most of the sex was consensual, and that the women he held captive for over a decade were never tortured and lived a happy life with him.

“We had a lot of harmony that went on in that home,” he said.

In Castro’s twisted mind, he never committed a violent crime. “These people are trying to paint me as a monster. I’m not a monster. I’m sick.”

“I’m sick,” is the only true statement Castro made all afternoon.

Which brings me to the other “monster” that was back in the news this week. Like Ariel Castro, O.J. Simpson has not taken responsibility for his crimes––and never will.

After five years behind bars, the Nevada Board of Parole Commissioners approved O.J. Simpson’s parole request on five concurrent sentences imposed in 2008 following his conviction for kidnapping and armed robbery of two sports memorabilia dealers at a Las Vegas hotel room.

Simpson should have been in prison for the rest of his life for brutally murdering his wife, Nicole, and her friend Ronald Goldman in 1994, long before he was arrested for armed robbery. Instead, he spent eight years playing golf and proclaiming his innocence.

Thankfully, Simpson faces the possibility of at least four more years — and three more parole hearings — unless Clark County District Judge Linda Marie Bell throws out his conviction and grants him a new trial.

Unfortunately, Simpson’s current sentence pales in comparison to the sentence of life in prison plus 1,000 years for Castro. But whether he spends the rest of his life in prison or out, O.J. Simpson will, like Ariel Castro, always be remembered as the monster he truly is.

Watchman or Vigilante

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A neighborhood watch, also called a crime watch or neighborhood crime watch, is defined on Wikipedia as an organized group of citizens devoted to crime and vandalism prevention within a neighborhood. Neighborhood watches are not vigilante organizations. When suspecting criminal activities, members are encouraged to contact authorities and NOT (my emphasis) to intervene.

As I listened to the opening testimony at the George Zimmerman murder trial, I believe this is a key piece of information. Zimmerman was a member of a neighborhood crime watch. As such, it was his responsibility to “report” suspected criminal activity to the police. It was not his responsibility to take any action.

So you have to ask yourself why was Zimmerman armed with a 9mm handgun? If he had no intention of confronting suspected vandals or burglars, then what’s the point of carrying a gun?

Let’s be honest. Had Zimmerman followed the directions of the 911 operator and remained in his vehicle as instructed, Trayvon Martin would be alive today, and Zimmerman would not be facing second-degree murder charges. His decision to carry a gun and then leave his vehicle to follow Martin gets at the heart of the matter, which is intent.

Vigilante is defined as an individual that has decided to take the law into his own hands. Once Zimmerman left his vehicle and pursued Martin he was no longer a watchman for the neighborhood, he was a vigilante looking to provoke a confrontation.

Zimmerman is quoted as saying to the 911 operator that Trayvon Martin was someone who was “up to no good,” even though Martin was doing nothing but walking through the neighborhood talking on his cellphone. Zimmerman described Martin as a “punk” and declared, “They always get away.”

It will be difficult to prove intent in this case. However, Zimmerman’s actions offer strong evidence of his intentions that fateful night. He had armed himself, and he ignored instructions to remain in his vehicle.

As prosecutor John Guy said in his opening statement, “George Zimmerman did not shoot Trayvon Martin because he had to. He shot him for the worst of all reasons: because he wanted to.”

The Myth of Lie Detectors

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As a mystery writer, it always astounds me when I read a book in which lie detectors are used, or when I hear police departments and federal agencies claiming that someone has either passed or failed a lie detector test, as if the “test” actually has any relationship to the truth.

Now, the McClatchy News Service has reported that a technical glitch in the LX4000, one of the most popular models, might have labeled truthful people as liars or the guilty as innocent.

According to the report, the technical glitch produced errors in the computerized measurements of sweat, supposedly one of the key indicators that someone is either lying or truthful. The problem was first noticed a decade ago but never shared prior to the McClatchy story.

Over the years, scientists have repeatedly questioned the validity of polygraphs and their reported ability to accurately identify liars. Most U.S. courts do not allow information obtained from lie detectors to be submitted as evidence, which should tell you something about the “accuracy” of the machines.

Still, fifteen federal agencies and many police departments across the country rely on polygraph testing to make hiring and firing decisions. Detectives and prosecutors often rule out criminal suspects who pass and focus on those who don’t. That an innocent person suspected of a crime today should be asked by police to take a “lie detector test” to determine if they are being truthful is akin to using phrenology to measure intelligence.

So my advice to aspiring mystery writers is to avoid any reference to these machines, except if you intend to disparage them.

Jodi Arias Is Guilty

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The trial of Jodi Arias, the 32 year-old manipulative sociopath charged in the 2008 stabbing and shooting death of Travis Alexander, her 30 year-old boyfriend, is mercifully drawing to a close. The prosecution has presented a strong case that she planned the attack on Alexander in a jealous rage after he wanted to end their relationship and prepared for a trip to Mexico with another woman.

The prosecution alleges that Arias stole the .25 -caliber gun used in the attack from her grandparents’ home where she was staying in Yreka, Calif., two days after a heated text-message exchange between Arias and Alexander. In that exchange, Alexander described her as a “sociopath” and “evil.” Arias denies taking her grandparents’ gun, which disappeared a week before the killing. It has never been found.

She then rented a car at an airport in Northern California. The rental car agent offered her a red car, but she refused because she thought that color might attract tickets. Arias then obtained three gas cans in California that she filled up in Pasadena, and also turned off her cellphone before she reached Arizona, thereby illuminating any proof that she had been in Arizona at the time of Alexander’s murder. If you’re driving to another state, do you by cans and fill them with gasoline or do you stop at gas stations along the way?

Arias initially denied any involvement in the killing then later blamed it on masked intruders. Two years after her arrest, she said she killed Alexander in self-defense.

She claims that he was physically abusive in the months before she killed him, once choking her into unconsciousness, but she kept seeing him because she was in love. No evidence or testimony was presented during the trial to corroborate her stories that Alexander was violent or owned a gun — the same gun she says she used to shoot him.

Alexander suffered nearly 30 knife wounds, was shot in the forehead, and had his throat slit. Clearly, this was a crime of anger and revenge.

Arias’ palm print was found in blood at the scene, along with nude photos of her and the victim from the day of the killing.

She claims Alexander attacked her after a day of sex, and that she ran into his closet to retrieve a gun he kept on a shelf and fired in self-defense––but she has no memory of stabbing him.

Arias admitted that she tried to clean the scene of the killing, dumped the gun in the desert, and worked on an alibi.

Her lawyers will present their closing arguments Friday. Hopefully, the jury will quickly return with a verdict of first-degree murder.

Time To Break Up The Big Banks

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The six largest banks in the country, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, are fighting Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown’s SAFE legislation that would finally place limits on the amount of debt that a single financial institution could have relative to GDP.

The long overdue legislation comes on the heels of the financial meltdown and numerous continuing bank scandals, including LIBOR manipulation, money laundering, robo-signing, and the “London Whale.” It’s clear that the megabanks are continuing to gamble recklessly with investor’s money and lying to Congress about it. To compound the problem, the big six have little reason to fear prosecution after Attorney General Eric Holder admitted last week that they were too big to prosecute.

Under Senator Brown’s proposed legislation, no bank could have non-deposit liabilities valued greater than two percent of U.S. GDP, and no investment bank could have non-deposit liabilities exceeding three percent of GDP. Only the six largest megabanks would be affected, and they would be given three years to comply by drawing up their own proposals to meet the goal.

The six megabanks would be reduced from their current size of about 64 percent of U.S. GDP to about 34 percent of GDP, as they were in 2001. Finally, their funding would come from more stable sources, with about $3 of deposits for every $1 in volatile non-deposit funding.

The megabanks are giving millions of lobbying dollars to Congress to defeat the legislation, as they did in trying to defeat President Obama and Senators Elizabeth Warren and Sherrod Brown. That didn’t work out so well. And now, Brown has some Republican allies, including Senator David Vitter of Louisiana. Given their dysfunction and campaign contributions from Wall Street bankers, it’s hard to believe that Brown can get his legislation past a filibuster, let alone enough votes for senate passage. Good luck getting Boehner to bring it up for a vote in the House.

But if the megabanks are allowed to continue with their reckless, unsupervised gambling and Ponzi schemes, the next inevitable banking crash could take down the world economy and plunge this nation into a depression that would take years––if not decades––to recover from. A crash of that magnitude would most certainly end Boehner’s political career and send him weeping to the exits.

I know it’s a lot to ask, but let’s hope for once that common sense prevails in Congress, and that Sherrod Brown’s sensible legislation soon becomes law.

The Invisible War

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In 2011, the Pentagon’s Military Leadership Diversity Commission recommended eliminating combat exclusion policies for women.

At his confirmation hearing, Chuck Hagel, President Obama’s nominee for defense secretary, stated that he would work with the service chiefs to open combat positions to women, even though women are already fighting and dying in combat. But before the ban is officially lifted in 2016, the military has a far more important task, as illustrated by Director Kirby Dick in his horrific documentary on rape in the military entitled “The Invisible War.”

According to the Department of Defense, a female soldier is more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire. In 2010 there were an estimated 19,000 violent sex crimes in the military and only 244 of those resulted in convictions. Since 2006, the government estimates there have been 100,000 rapes. Of all active-duty female soldiers, 20 percent are sexually assaulted, with women between the ages of 18 and 21 making up more than half the victims. Twenty thousand men were also victims of sexual assault in 2009.

It is estimated that 80 percent of victims do not report the crimes against them, not surprising since fewer than 10 percent of assault cases are prosecuted. Even more telling is the fact that 25 percent of women in the military don’t report rape because the person to notify in their chain of command is the rapist.

In the film, six women describe their rapes and the gross indifference and victim blaming displayed by their superiors after they reported the crimes.

So what needs to be done? Director Kirby Dick believes that over 250,000 men and women have seen the film. That helps spread the word.

After watching it, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta directed commanders to hand over all sexual assault investigations to a higher-ranked colonel. Panetta also announced the establishment of a Special Victims Unit for all military branches. That’s a start, though there is a long way to go. Investigations and prosecutions should always take place outside the chain of command using independent prosecutors.

This film is a savage indictment of a broken military system. Instead of worrying so much about women in combat, the military needs to deal with a sick culture of “leadership” that blames the victims while covering up the crimes. Until that change occurs, women face far more dangers from their own comrades and superiors than from an enemy in combat.

Securing the Border?

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As I listen to the rhetoric regarding immigration reform for the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants living in the country, one of the most commonly uttered phrases is, “secure the border.” However, no one from either party has specifically defined what that means. Yet, it appears that no bill will move forward in Congress until the question is answered.

Is the border not secure if one immigrant enters the U.S. illegally, 10, 100, 1,000, 10,000? Do we need to militarize the border, fence the nearly 2,000 miles, send in more drones?

Perhaps Congress needs some perspective.

According to a report from the Pew Hispanic Center, more Mexicans are now leaving the U. S. for Mexico than are entering the U.S. from Mexico.

For the fourth year in a row, the Obama administration set a record for the number of people it deported. In 2012, the total reached 409,849. The number of people deported under Obama has risen in each of his four years in office and totals more than 1.5 million.

During President George W. Bush’s last year in office, 33% of the people deported by the U.S. were convicted criminals. The Obama administration has increased that percentage each year, reaching 55% in 2012. In all, 96% of the people deported fall into Homeland Security’s priority categories, including recent border-crossers, repeat immigration violators and fugitives from immigration court.

The migrants crossing the border are increasingly non-Mexican. Overall, arrests along the border are down since the mid-2000s, suggesting that fewer people are attempting to cross. The exception is the Rio Grande Valley sector in South Texas bordering Mexico’s Tamaulipas state, where there was a 60-70 percent increase in apprehensions in 2011. Maybe that’s where the government needs to concentrate its “secure the border” efforts?

Virtually all of this growth consists of what local authorities call “OTMS” — other than Mexican. These migrants are mostly from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador. For the first time, non-Mexicans now account for the majority of migrants apprehended in South Texas.

I have to wonder if the “first we need to secure the border” crowd is the same group of politicians who oppose amnesty and are attempting to delay or completely stop the whole process by insisting that the government meet an ill-defined or impossible goal.

Hopefully, we’ll soon have the answer.

The Latest Conspiracy Theory

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Americans love their conspiracy theories. From Big Foot inhabiting the forests to alien spacecraft crashing in Roswell, New Mexico, hardly a week passes before the next conspiracy is launched on the Internet or on one of the cable networks desperate for new and controversial programming.

Politics is certainly not immune to conspiracy theories; the most famous being that Lyndon Johnson and other high-ranking government officials plotted to kill President John Kennedy, and that Lee Harvey Oswald was just a patsy. Despite compelling forensic evidence to the contrary, and numerous recreations that support the Warren Commission’s conclusions, the theory persists that there were at least two shooters that tragic day in Dallas, and that three and not two shots were fired.

Conspiracy theories that suggest our own government blew up the Twin Towers on 9/11 may sell books and movies, but most are just that, theories.

The latest in this never-ending quest to create something out of nothing is the idea that the FBI and White House conspired to fire CIA director David Patraeus before Congress could hear his testimony regarding the incident in Benghazi, Libya. Putting aside the fact that Patraeus will be called to testify whether he is the acting director or not, it is clear that this is nothing more than a sexual scandal dressed up to look like another conspiracy in the hope of creating a political advantage.

Under current statute, the FBI is required to report to Congress and to the White House any security breaches or crimes. They found neither when investigating Patraeus’ affair with his biographer Paula Broadwell. Thus, the larger question in all of this––and one in which Congress should be focusing its attention––is why didn’t the FBI drop their probe once it was determined that it had found nothing more than an affair?

Ever since its inception, the FBI has had an ugly history of prying into the private lives of citizens. Congress needs to tread very carefully as it investigates this incident. If they would like the agency to return to the good old days of J. Edgar Hoover, when it kept files on the sordid details of the sex lives of politicians, then they should say it in statute.

But my guess is that Congress would prefer that the FBI limit its investigative scope to what is in current law. Imagine what agents might uncover if they began investigating the private lives of the current members of Congress. I can only imagine the headlines and the next conspiracy theory.

God Must Be A Democrat

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Remember what numerous political and religious leaders suggested in 2005 after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and killed, 1,836 people? Well, in case you’ve forgotten here is a sampling.

Pat Robertson said on a broadcast of The 700 Club that the hurricane was God’s punishment in response to America’s abortion policy. American evangelist John Hagee blamed the hurricane on a gay pride event known as Southern Decadence Day. He said, “I believe that New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God, and they are — were — recipients of the judgment of God for that.”

So if God is in the habit of punishing individuals for their beliefs and stances on political, religious or social issues, then what can we make of Hurricane Sandy, which has caused an estimated $30 to $50 billion in damages along the east coast and has killed at least 85 people? Could God be trying to influence the outcome of next week’s presidential election by delivering a major storm a week before we vote?

Let’s look at it from His perspective. Which of the two candidates supports FEMA, and which one supports Paul Ryan’s budget, which would slash $1.3 billion from FEMA, including cutting $425 million from grants to states and local communities to help them prepare for and respond to disasters such as Hurricane Sandy.

Which candidate believes in climate change and which one has said, “My view is that we don’t know what’s causing climate change on this planet, and the idea of spending trillions and trillions of dollars to try to reduce CO2 emissions is not the right course for us?”

Which candidate benefits most from the news coverage of the devastation and from the accolades of New Jersey’s Republican Governor Chris Christy?

If one is to look at all of this objectively it’s clear that God wants Barrack Obama reelected President of the United States.

The Consequences of Wealth Redistribution

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We hear a great deal of talk today about the “redistribution of wealth,” particularly in the presidential campaign, but little about its consequences. Now, economists who have studied inequality have begun to draw some startling conclusions.

First, we need some context. According to a study by economists Emmanuel Saez of the University of California, Berkeley, and Thomas Piketty of the Paris School of Economics, income inequality is now at its highest levels since the Great Depression. The top one percent today earns about one-sixth of all income and the top ten percent about half. From 1983 to 2010, the top five percent accrued nearly three-quarters of the total growth in household wealth. A new study by the Economic Policy Institute concluded that the top one percent now hold a larger share of overall wealth than the bottom ninety percent.

Recent studies have found that the end result of this concentration of wealth at the top of the income scale may mean not only a more unequal society, but also a less stable economic expansion and much slower growth. Inequality in both rich and poor countries strongly correlates with shorter periods of economic expansion leading to less growth over time. This may be exactly what we are currently experiencing in the U.S. as the economy struggles to regain its footing after the recession.

As a former college professor, my students studied the work of the great futurist, Alvin Toffler. Famous for his many writings including Future Shock and The Third Wave, Toffler wrote that there are three sources of power in the world.

Violence is the most basic source, one that has led to physical domination by armies, dictators and terrorists, and to the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

Wealth, the second source of power, is more flexible than violence as it can be used to purchase goods and services. If you accumulate enough of it, you can buy just about anything you want, including politicians.

The third source of power, knowledge, is the ultimate form of power according to Toffler, since it can be used to acquire both wealth and violence. Most of us are familiar with the phrase, “Knowledge is power.”

But Toffler also warns that those unable to acquire knowledge or wealth would use the only source of power at their disposal, violence, to acquire what they wanted. Through the ages we’ve seen the results of those without access to knowledge or wealth, and we continue to see it today in the Middle East and in the growing unrest in Europe.

It would be wise for the U.S. electorate to consider the possible results of continuing this massive wealth redistribution––and Toffler’s warning––as voters cast their ballots on November 6th.