Collecting facts is a privilege reserved for the presumptuous bourgeoisie. The common man can thus shed his self-consciousness and just admit he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to know. For example, if you are the president of the United States and someone asks you if, in eight years of trying, your administration had ever come close to capturing the world’s most fearsome terrorist, “I don’t know… I really don’t know,” is an acceptable answer. It’s a humanizing response and such forthrightness will surely endear you to generations. Coming close to sharing a spot in the footnotes of the annals of history with this response are some insanely stupid court decisions this week — from the Supreme Court, the California Supreme Court and an appeals court notable only because it is in Texas.
Fourth Amendment, schmourth amendment
It is perfectly understandable if one is not familiar with the Fourth Amendment, coming as it does, an inconvenient three amendments from the top. And so when the Supreme Court of the United States tragically and woefully marches right past “the right of the people,” takes a detour around “against unreasonable searches,” and misses the exit for “shall not be violated,” we should be more understanding.
In a 5 — 4 decision, the Court ruled on Wednesday that “when police mistakes are the result of negligence” — in this case, insisting they had a search warrant when they in fact did not — it’s okay if they proceed with their illegal search because the evidence will be admissible anyway. If it looks like the right against illegal searches was just annihilated, trampled upon and rendered meaningless by the Court, that’s because it was.
After all, the police know best, as they have ably demonstrated for decades. In an emergency, whom do you call? Why, the police of course. See, you trust them to know what to do; why shouldn’t the Supreme Court?
Since the dawn of American jurisprudence, our legal tradition has been beset with a fundamental flaw, protecting as it does the people from the police. But in fact, it is our overworked, underpaid, trigger-happy police force that should merit the more forgiving consideration. A negligent mistake by the police could be the reason for a guilty man being set free — oh, the injustice!
It’s our own fault the police are overloaded and bitter and jaded — we give them so many opportunities to see the worst in humanity, leaving them with no choice but to work in the shadows of the law to catch every one of our criminals. So let’s make a pact to help each other out, yeah? To be Good Samaritans, one might say.
Court bans California love (Good Samaritan love, that is)
The state Supreme Court of California would like for you to stop doing nice, unsolicited things for others in emergencies. They are so adamantly against the principle of being a Good Samaritan that they’ve gone ahead and made it the law.
At the end of December, the court ruled that if you try to provide medical help in an emergency -– think administering CPR or pulling a victim out of a crushed car –- but don’t get it quite to that victim’s liking, they could sue you. To wit, step in to save a life and you could end up in court, paying fines.
If this judgment had come in a jurisdiction whose citizens generally aren’t expected to help others out — such as Texas, Florida, or New York City — the ruling would have caused little consternation. But this is California, land of the hippies, and they do crap like help others. Plus, the state is cursed by its location above a fault line and susceptible to bouts of earthquakes which often leave many hundreds of people in need of emergency medical help. Oops.
In a society where no one is capable of taking responsibility anymore, it is commendable that our government has not shied away from holding us accountable.
We deserve to be treated like rational adults by our courts. As rational adults who on occasion will take their eye out, and eat it.
In Texas, the one-eyed man isn’t king… or even crazy
Insanity, as a medical condition, is notoriously hard enough to define by a medical professional, much less by a lay judge in a competency hearing. Its symptoms are nuanced and their measurement imprecise. So when a trial court judge rules that a man is fit to stand trial after the defendant — using as his only instruments whatever crude tools he could make in his cell — plucks out one of his eyes, a non-expert may be out of line in commenting.
As an aside, pointing out that this case occurred in Texas may have probative value, but it’s probably only prejudicial against the good people of the Lone Star State who are already largely defined by their penchant for state-sanctioned murder.
After stabbing his wife and two young children, Andre Thomas cut out their hearts then unceremoniously stuck them in his pocket until he got home and threw them away in the trash. He then proceeded to the police station, where he confessed to his crimes.
While in jail awaiting trial, Thomas took out one of his eyes. The judge ruled him fit to stand trial.
He was then convicted and began uneventfully biding his time away on death row. That is, until he found it prudent to complete the task he’d originally set out on and took out his second eye, this time reportedly digesting it.
As all good Texas inmate stories must come to an end, Thomas is currently being held in a prison psychiatric facility, finally getting the help for his mental illnesses he’d so ably demonstrated he needed the first time he took out his own eye.