Not even the Oklahoma Supreme Court knows all the law.
On the Oklahoma State Court Network web page http://www.oscn.net/applications/oscn/DeliverDocument.asp?CiteID=84204, it states that Title 43A-5-401 is “repealed”, i.e.:
Oklahoma Statutes Citationized Title 43A. Mental Health Chapter 1 - Mental Health Law of 1986 Section 5-401 - Repealed by Laws 1997, HB 2024, c. 387, § 11, eff. November 1, 1997
But on the Legislature’s web site, in the listing of Title 43A, it states instead:
§43A-5-401. Repealed by Laws 1997, c. 387, § 11, eff. Nov. 1, 1997. NOTE: Subsequent to repeal, § 5-401 was amended by Laws 1997, c. 195, § 3 to read as follows:
Where I come from “subsequent” means after. I even have a dictionary or three that agree with me. Isn’t it comforting to know that the Oklahoma Supreme Court can take it upon itself to repeal laws without first declaring them unconstitutional or notifying the Legislature? Especially regarding the due process for involuntary commitment to a mental institution.
But then, why should the Supreme Court bother to get it right? It's not like the Supreme Court is willing to supervise the District Courts to assure that people with mental illnesses get the same level of due process as all others. I know because I made a complaint to the Supreme Court Justice in charge of our local District Court, and never got a response.
Reading a lawyer’s brief demanding that a case be dismissed reveals the same integrity as Jane Fonda’s orgasm in “Klute”. Too often the lawyer cherry-picks alleged facts out of context and puts them together out of order to create a prejudice that looks plausible if one didn’t know any better. Regardless of the facts, the lawyer routinely and automatically denies evidence and argument presented to allege that “no case has been stated”, “no claim has been made”, “no grounds for relief has been shown”, “no law has been cited”, yada, yada, yada. Apparently the legal definitions for such ordinary English words as “case, stated, claim, made, grounds, cited and relief” are so elevated and abstruse as to be as invisible to ordinary eyes as the Emperor’s new clothes.
Nor is rank prejudice out of bounds. One recent brief chided the complainant for citing foreign medical journals. The term “foreign” is used as a pejorative, in the same character as a man refusing a suitor for his daughter because the suitor has a single drop of black blood. Conveniently failing to mention that most of the journals and articles cited in the case were American, and nearly all from pubmed.gov, the database of U.S. National Library of Medicine. I cannot vouch for and do not care if all the authors of those articles are white.
One can, for example, cite and apply over thirty legal precedents, many if not most from the U.S. Supreme Court, and they will be utterly invisible even to a U.S. District Attorney. As were medical x-rays and scans of dying bone in a previous case. Why if one didn’t know how honorable they all are, one might begin to think that lawyers lie, defame and slander for a living. And perhaps have their tongues surgically split in order to pass the bar.
Would they want to spend an eternity with you and your God?
In his science fiction novel, Hidden Empire, Orson Scott Card cites a historical work on Christianity, Rodney Stark’s The Rise of Christianity: How the Obscure, Marginal Jesus Movement Became the Dominant Religious Force in the Western World in a Few Centuries. Basically, early Christians proved their worth during the two major plagues that brought down the Roman Empire. The plagues killed about one third of the Empire’s population each time. The Roman Pagans largely isolated those who caught the diseases and left them to their fate. So many of the sick died not just of the plague, but of thirst and starvation in their own fecal matter even if they managed to survive.
The Christians, less afraid of death, nursed not only their own survivors back to health, but strangers as well, including Pagans. So a much lower percentage of Christians who caught the plague died, including those grateful Pagans they nursed back to health. The Christians thereby won respect for their good works and gained new members for their religion. Thus began modern health care.
But are Christians like that today, now that the need for public health care is widely accepted? We have all seen examples of Christians who preach love and forgiveness, but only for themselves. Unlike their Christ, who made friends of publicans and prostitutes, they consign to hell any who disagree with them, for any reason. They are the experts of the righteous jeer. They cut anyone might contaminate their perfection out of their lives. Their idea of “help” is more like a punitive stay in the local loony bin, where other Christians just like them can wield guilt like a horsewhip.
In the absence of any universal viral plague to test the mettle of today’s Christians, the question may well be, “Based upon the way that you treat them, would they want to spend an eternity with you and your God?”
Recent research has found that the bell curve has less to do with human performance and achievement than people thought. http://www.npr.org/2012/05/03/151860154/put-away-the-bell-curve-most-of-us-arent-average Instead of the bell curve normal distribution, a power distribution often applies, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1744-6570.2011.01239.x/full http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_distribution which puts just a few people making most of the progress, production, and awards, while the rest of us tail off into relative obscurity below the average. In an e-mail response to a query about the distribution of criminal acts by individuals, one of the authors cited by NPR, Professor Herman Aguinis at Indiana University's Kelley School of Business, noted that his research found that most of the errors are committed by just a few people as well.
In other words, a minority of repeat offenders account for the majority of crime and violence. This is nothing new; it has been known for decades. As previously noted here, research over more than 30 years has demonstrated that of the mentally ill people who commit crime and violence, a small minority of repeat offenders account for a majority of the attacks on others. http://www.amazon.com/Clinical-Prediction-Violent-Behavior-Master/dp/1568214898/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1336239285&sr=1-1 http://www.amazon.com/Violence-Mental-Disorder-Developments-Assessment/dp/0226534065/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1336239375&sr=1-2
Yet mental health law, like Oklahoma’s Title 43A, is mostly predicated on the popular but false assumption that people with mental illness are dangerous and unpredictable. Every time a drug-using person with mental illness commits some horribly violent and senseless crime, everyone with mental illness is tarred by it. Journalists, editors (even at the Tulsa World, oh my) and politicians rush demonstrate their alleged civic and humanitarian responsibility and declare that we just have to get more controls on those with psychiatric disabilities. They argue that it is worth it to deprive and destroy the civil rights and liberties of an entire minority if it can save just one life. That people with mental illnesses or psychiatric diagnoses should be confined and medicated upon even the mere perception of imagined threat. In other words, stop them before they kill again. One hears that even Black Americans have been familiar with this phenomenon.
Which the State is only too glad to support, as noted here before. Anyone dragooned into one of the State’s mental facilities can find that every statement he or she makes will be parsed, and even badgered, by the facility’s mental health professionals for the most negative interpretation that will justify a commitment to that facility. That no positive or exculpatory statement will be recognized or recorded. That all previous contacts with psychiatric counseling and management will be denied out of existence, even in court papers. It’s a rigged game.
Medical-legal literature cataloged by the U.S. National Library of Medicine, i.e., http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16061769 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22152446 has shown that people with mental illnesses are victims of crime and violence more than 11 times those in the general population.
So I went looking to see what I could find out about how Officers in the Tulsa Police Department are trained to deal with people who have mental illnesses. While the content of their training programs is not publicly transparent, one can learn things about their approach. Despite the excessive vulnerability of those with psychiatric disabilities, in Oklahoma and many other places, if a person in a dispute or complaint appears to a police officer, or states, that he or she has a mental illness, the only question is how to get this person confined and medicated without incurring a lawsuit for excessive force.
Law enforcement agencies from the Federal level https://www.bja.gov/ProgramDetails.aspx?Program_ID=66 to the State-Federal level, http://www.nationalreentryresourcecenter.org/announcements/law-enforcement-responses-to-people-with-mental-illnesses-customizing-responses-to-jurisdictions-needs-and-characteristics http://consensusproject.org/downloads/le-essentialelements.pdf http://www.consensusproject.org/downloads/le-trgstrategies.pdf to the State-Local level, http://www.ok.gov/cleet/CLEET_Training/index.html all treat people with mental illnesses as the perpetrators of crime, violence and disturbance, never the victim.
In fact, if you enter such terms as “mentally ill victim” into their search engines, you will get either “0 results”, or documents regarding victims of people with mental illness. A search on the Oklahoma Dept. of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services web site also depicts people with mental illnesses as perpetrators, with only one exception, “alleged victims” among the “consumers” already committed to its institutions. The only other possible victims it acknowledges are vulnerable adults being abused by their caregivers.
So, despite sound research to the contrary, as far as the law enforcement and mental health community in Oklahoma and elsewhere are concerned, a person with a mental illness can never have a valid complaint against any other person who does not appear or admit to being mentally ill. This short-circuits any investigation into the testimony of anyone with a mental illness in its tracks. Providing normal investigative services, such as merely interviewing neighbors, can and will be dispensed on account of a psychiatric disability. Due diligence is not officially required. If there’s a problem and one of the disputants has a mental illness, just round em up and head em out.
We’ve see this before – in the enforcement of Jim Crow by Sheriffs in the Old South. Dragging people with mental illness off to the local loony bin isn’t that far removed in moral and legal philosophy from returning runaway slaves to the plantation, for involuntary “treatment”. I’ve met good people from the Tulsa Police Department. But for every one of those, TPD has a cynical slacker who practices jeering at any complaint a civilian might bring. As it now stands, you can put any of them through the existing mandatory 4 to 4.5 hours of academy training and 2 whole hours per year in continuing education in dealing with mental health issues, and it looks like all you’ll get is a trained bigot with a badge.
I was doing some Internet research to see if Oklahoma newspapers had as much to say about psychiatric hospitals as the Houston Chronicle and the Baltimore Sun:
Instead, I ran across an article written by Tulsa World Editor Janet Pearson last year, “Is Tulsa's safety net in jeopardy?” As I recall the tenor of the article bewailed the State cuts in budgets and beds for psychiatric hospitals and services here, like involuntary commitment. But expressed relief that at least there was something to keep those mentally ill people from killing again. The first part reminds me of the society woman in “The Help” who got the law passed that required everyone to have a toilet for the help.
The second part reminds of those who used to say, “Why if we don’t keep them under control, they’ll rise up and kill us in our beds!” Of course, that was Southern plantation owners talking about their slaves before the War of Northern Aggression, as some of them still like to call it. But hey, if something is too chauvinistic, bigoted, racist, insensitive or patronizing to say about black people, you don’t have to throw a good line away. Just recycle it for people with mental illnesses. There won’t be a single yellow journalist or lawyer who will stand up for them.
Legal Notice to Mr. Kevin Bethune, LPC, OK license #2828 RE: Appeal of NDOK 11-CV-92-TCK-PJC to 10th Circuit Court, 12-5029
Sir,
You are being served with the Appellant/Petitioner’s Opening Brief at your last known address:
7353 E 50th Street South, Tulsa OK 74145
The previous service to this address returned “NOT DELIVERABLE AS ADDRESSED, UNABLE TO FORWARD”. This is the third address during this lawsuit that has returned this way, the first a work address and the second a home address. You know that you have been sued, but never disclose or leave a forwarding address. If you wish to know the contents of this brief, and for some legitimate reason cannot accept it at the 50th street address, you can obtain a copy from Holden & Carr Attorneys, First Place, 15 East 5th St, Suite 3900, Tulsa OK 74103, or from any other Defendant or Defendant’s lawyer, or by writing to me at my address, which you know from Court documents.
I was wondering – do you by any chance counsel people on personal responsibility?
Please be informed that I intend to write to the Oklahoma State Department of Health, Professional Counselor Licensing, about these matters. I have comments about the “Third Party Statement” you swore out to the Tulsa Police Department on August 3, 2010. They regard selective exclusion of my exculpatory statements to COPES about a dispute with my landlady (such as my determination to stay within the bounds of lease, as interpreted by HUD, and law), bogus “risk factors”, the lack of sworn statements from the accusers you quoted about statements falsely attributed to me, the lack of any questioning of other witnesses (such as my easily available neighbors) to establish the truthfulness of those making allegations against me and the tenor of my comments about them, the lack of any investigation of alternative solutions to the dispute (such as helping me finish moving out of a bad situation into my new apartment), the absence of references to my medical doctors of long-standing, and the misuse of your reports of hearsay as fact by the Mental Health Court and the District Attorney’s Office due to the apparent weight of your position with COPES. In other words, a complete lack of context which would support any other conclusion than involuntary commitment in the mental institution to which you effectively recommended candidates for confinement. An institution of the State with which your employer appears to have had a working arrangement that justified your employer's existence.
For the rest of us it would work the other way. But a lawyer can lay down with fleas and get up with dogs. Or as someone else said, go in a revolving door behind you and come out ahead.
Don't you wish that someone would put an end to those "Credit Card Services" scam phone calls. The scam behind the scam must be selling those robocalling machines. Since the scam has been going on for at least a decade, and not even the phone message has changed, the slackers who buy those robocallers, in the hope that they can hook another sucker into divulging credit card information, must not be very bright.
I got a text message on my TracFone cell, time stamped THU 5:10 pm 04/05/12, alleging to be from AT&T at 1-732-604-1359. It says:
AT&T MSG: As part of AT&T’s loyalty program You may register for a FREE Apple Ipad3 Go To AppleOffers.com To CLAIM yours today!
Well, TracFone is not part of AT&T, as of the time of this writing the web site doesn’t exist, and the number does not have any listing in the reverse phone lookup of YellowPages.com. Be warned. Calling the text message number would do two things: 1) Let the scammers know that they found a live cell number, and 2) Give them a chance at your financial information.
I’d call the TPD about it, but wouldn’t expect more than a 50% chance they would do anything about it.
Many people if not most are willing to approve or do some morally repugnant or evil thing to some innocent person who never hurt them, in the name of some favorite principle. For example, the Tuskegee Experiment, where poor black men with syphilis in Tuskegee, Alabama, were offered “free health care” but left untreated so the Doctor(s) involved could study the progression of the disease. Then there was the Eugenic Sterilization Law of North Carolina, where poor women, especially blacks, were sterilized after the second birth out of wedlock, as means to restrict the numbers of both welfare babies and black children.
There is our own military’s concept of “acceptable collateral damage” in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. During the war in Viet Nam, a woman where I lived stated that it was good to kill Vietnamese babies because they would just grow up to kill our soldiers. The U.S. Calvary did just that with Native American babies at Wounded Knee. The Irish Sisters of the Magdalene Order enslaved about 30,000 young girls who were raped, illegitimate, orphaned, pregnant out of wedlock, or just simple-minded, in chastisement for their “sins”. The girls’ families often agreed.
The last place I worked in Stillwater, a couple of coworkers would get together and mutter imprecations about homosexuals until the air turned black and blue. I don’t think they could tell the difference between homosexuals and child molesters. There are any number of liberals who want to throw in jail anyone who disagrees with their gun control politics. There are court decisions all the way up to the Supreme Court that left innocent people languishing in jails or on death row because of some technical objection to accepting new evidence and letting them go.
And the list goes on.
What if there was some way to tell if a woman was at a higher than normal risk of birthing a child with either Down’s Syndrome or a child likely to die of SIDS. Now suppose that Oklahoma passes a law stating that this woman can be denounced by her doctor and forced by court order to have her tubes tied until she agrees to abort any unborn child that could be shown to be likely to experience either Down’s or SIDS. In other words, until she proves that she is in no danger of having and raising that kind of child, and thus “inflicting” it on the rest of society. The old Spartans, after all, were said to kill any baby that wasn’t perfect. The White Power skinheads might like it, but I think that most decent people on both the right and the left would agree that such a law would be evil and morally repugnant.
I say that there’s not much moral difference between that kind of law and the Oklahoma Mental Health Code, by which anyone with a mental illness can be denounced, even by just hearsay, and sent off to the local loony bin, without any full and impartial investigation by local authorities. And kept there until that person can prove the negative, that he or she is not a danger, to mental health “professionals” who have nothing but their own prejudices and self-interest to decide who is and is not a danger.
The standard for committing people with mental illnesses into mental health jails in this State, and perhaps many others, is the confirming opinions of “two licensed professionals” that the person with a mental illness needs treatment. No trial or jury in most cases, just “experts” in deciding whether or not a person will be a danger to himself or others. Apparently in Tulsa County, the idea of a jury trial is kept from the prospective inmate, even by the Public Defender’s Office, just to avoid taking the time and trouble of a jury trial for this kind of person. After all, people with mental illnesses rarely have the energy or focus or resources to dispute the matter, and even vampires come off better in the movies.
Many people are perfectly happy with this arrangement, secure in the knowledge that they are not “that kind of person” and that this will never happen to them. They cannot imagine that they will ever have to face jail on the opinions of two licensed professionals. Or that applying this standard to an unpopular minority is any kind of slippery slope that will some day blow back on them.
But what about terrorism? Most people are more afraid of terrorists even than those with mental illnesses. What if everyone had to face the scrutiny of licensed experts to decide whether or not they could be terrorists, and, like the mentally ill, incarceration until they could prove to those same experts that they are not a danger to themselves (suicide bombers) or society. If you think that’s a good idea, as many in the Republican legislature might during the current silly season, you may not have thought it all the way through.
Oh, Grandma got strip searched at the airport. She fit the profile to a tee. She said something suspicious to the agent. Jus be glad that it weren’t you or me.
Because that’s just what “mental health evaluations” are, profiling. If in the last 200 years, for example, we had weeded out every leader who had a history of major depression, we would have lost Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill. We might be doing Nazi salutes and still have slavery.
No one can predict just what someone will do in the future, if anything. Even the recent research into the relationship between mental illness and violent behavior can only produce relative certainties for the extreme violent and non-violent tails of the bell curve. Everything in between is a gray area, where no prediction has any statistical validity. You can only say that people with certain factors, like being abused as children or major depression, are more likely that those that don’t to be violent. But not that they are destined to that fate, and unable to escape or overcome it. As FBI Special Agent John Douglas said near the end of his book, Mind Hunter: Inside the FBI’s Elite Serial Crime Unit, there is no psychological that can predict violence. Only past violence can predict future violence. See also http://www.physorg.com/news152819983.html
Locking people up for what an expert or bigot is afraid or says they might do in the future is not mental health or public safety. It looks, walks and quacks just like a jail for those who are deemed to be undesirable, but cannot be convicted of any crime in a regular court of law. And in the history of Psychiatry, this kind of profiling is less accurate than flipping a coin, condemning as many as two harmless and innocent people to incarceration out of every three who are profiled.
And if you think that this kind of profiling is such a good idea, tell me again why you don’t want to do it to Black Americans. What did you say? It’s immoral, bigoted and wrong? Oh. I’m so glad you cleared that up for me.
There's one fact missing from this article - Dr. Hendrickson's verifiable estimate of just what percentage of the world's oil reserves the U.S. does have. And what would be the "significantly higher" figure of U.S. oil production if President Obama's alleged obstruction had not taken place. Nor is the fact of government subsidy sufficient rationale for saying that a program is no good. We have computers largely because of the government's funding of the defense and space programs back when.
No politician has much actual control over gas prices and the economy. Enough of phony politics. Instead of these inflated, overwrought and illogical attacks, hit the President on things he does control. Like foreign policy, his legislative agenda and vetoes, his duplicity in "support" of the Second Amendment, and the actions of his administration in programs like the BATF "Fast and Furious" scam and scandal.
Just be glad that our medical institutions don’t work like our justice system. Otherwise, trying to get a broken bone set by a surgeon would be like getting justice for yourself in court. The surgeon would refuse to set it unless you could tell him where it was broken – precisely. If you couldn’t, he would dismiss your complaint of agonizing pain as frivolous. And if you had words to say about that, and those who broke your bone, who might be his friends or colleagues, he would dismiss your case as frivolous and malicious – with prejudice. A lot more of us would be walking around, if we could, with bent and missing limbs.
Perhaps the Babylonian King Hammurabi, said to be the inventor of written law, should have included in his Code an oath for judges, as Hippocrates’ did for physicians – “First, do no harm.”
Question for Woodward and Bernstein, please to: mona-chamberlin@utulsa.edu
Ma'am,
I've been ill and don't think I can drive this evening, but I have a question for Mr. Woodward and Mr. Bernstein.
Recently, information has been coming out about the Obama Administration's "Fast and Furious" gun-running operation, strongly suggesting that a U.S. District Attorney and gun control advocate in Arizona set it up to create the impression that American guns fuel the Mexican drug wars. Gun dealers in border states were apparently pressured by the BATF to let suspicious purchases happen, and gun-runners to Mexico may even have been funded by the U.S. Government. Neither Mexican nor American law enforcement authorities stationed there were informed of the operation. As a result, untold numbers of Mexicans have died, and one U.S. Border Patrol Agent was murdered with one of the "Fast and Furious" guns. We don't know yet just how far up in the Obama Administration culpability goes, but the Justice Department under Eric Holder has been stonewalling Congressional inquiry and requests for records, to the point that AG Holder may face a charge of contempt of Congress.
Considering that no one died in the Watergate scandal, or in the Monica Lewinsky scandal, how do you think the Obama administration's "Fast and Furious" gun-running scheme will stack up against them? Will we see as much critical press coverage for it as we did for the Nixon and Clinton scandals? Or does the mainstream news media consider President Obama "too liberal to fail"?
Trayvon Martin’s death was tragic and unnecessary.
Florida State Legislator Dennis Baxley, Representative of the 24th District, a prime author of Florida’s “stand your ground law”, perhaps said it best in an open statement published by Fox News March 21, 2012, and carried on this anti-bullying site: http://bullybuzz.org/2012/03/21/trayvon-martins-attacker-covered-stand-ground-law/ Neither “Stand your ground” nor the Castle Doctrine were meant to cover people who aggressively pursue and confront others. It was meant for those who suddenly face criminal threats and need to defend themselves, without having to second-guess whether or not they will be persecuted or prosecuted for doing so. It’s not the fault of the law, as some would have it, but as the Representaive said, the interpretation of the law. It can be summed up in one sentence:
Stand your ground doesn’t mean chase ‘em down.
The only possible exception to that I can see is in a case of abduction, especially of a child. Martin’s killer, George Zimmerman, was instructed by Police not to follow Martin, and ignored the advice. It should be a warning to anyone who wants to be El Zorro. Even if Zimmerman is prosecuted and gets acquitted, he still faces civil suits brought by the Federal government as well as Martin’s family. He can be charged or sued under hate crime laws listed on the FBI’s civil web page on Federal statues covering civil rights: http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/investigate/civilrights/federal-statutes
Martin’s family can bring a civil suit against him under 42 U.S.C. 1983. See http://www.constitution.org/brief/forsythe_42-1983.htm http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/1983 http://uscode.house.gov/download/pls/42C21.txt
“Every person who, under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, … subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress, …”
One might argue that under the color of the stand your ground law, Zimmerman deprived Martin of the civil right to walk a public street peaceably, unarmed and unmolested. Anyone who feels they are being stalked has the right to turn around and ask why someone is following them. If Zimmerman had not been so suspicious and aggressive, he could simply have approached Martin peacefully, told him that he was a neighborhood watch captain, and politely asked if he could do anything to help Martin, perhaps even walk him home. If Martin had actually been a criminal and attacked Zimmerman, then the stand your ground law would likely have applied. But as a practical matter, Zimmerman would still have been under a cloud, unless he took the trouble to record the confrontation on audio or video tape.
At the very least, if Zimmerman was determined to follow and observe Martin, he should have done so from a distance and never approached him. He would then have seen Martin enter a home through the front door, and would have had no further cause of action, other than to report his observations to the police, if that.
These are my own opinions, not professional legal advice. Anyone who would carry a gun for self defense would be well-advised to read an authoritative book on it, like Massad F. Ayoob’s “In Gravest Extreme: The Role of the Firearm in Personal Protection”. It seems unlikely that Zimmerman bothered to do so.
At 3 PM today, April 1, 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court released its 8-1 decision in the Oklahoma v. Mario Brothers case. Citing its 1979 Addington v. Texas case, it extended its conviction standard of “clear and convincing evidence” to anyone with an Italian surname suspected of being a Mob hit man. Since no one can tell whether or not someone with an Italian surname is or is not a Mob hit man, if anyone feels “a reasonable threat” when a person with an Italian surname says, “Badda-bing badda-boom”, then the person with an Italian surname suspected of being a Mob hit man can be civilly incarcerated until the person with an Italian surname can prove that he or she is no longer a danger to society.
NPR legal correspondent, Ninny Totalbarge, explained it this way. “It’s just like gun control. It’s worth it if it can save just one life!” The lone dissenter on the High Court, Justice David Sutler, voted against the decision to protest the alleged threatening language. According to Justice Sutler, “Saying badda-bing-badda is sufficient to constitute a reasonable threat. There is no need to utter the redundant ‘boom’.”
Since the standard of reasonable threat is based Oklahoma mental health law, the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health will take custody of any person with an Italian surname suspected of being a Mob hit man. Ms. Lee Rachett, the Director of a facility in Tulsa, Oklahoma said, “We’re ready for them. We’re opening a new facility out in the stockyards for housing mental patients, or as we like to call them, consumers. This will open up our more secure facilities in town for suspected Mob hit men.”
The local District Attorney, Harvey Bent, swore, “We’ll keep them there, too. Enough of this namby-pamby “clear and convincing evidence” tripe. All we need is a preponderance of the evidence. If anyone even heard anyone else say a person with an Italian surname said even a little badda, that’s good enough for us! I’ve got a two-headed quarter that proves it.”
I don't believe that corporations are people, either. But issue-oriented organizations, of whatever stripe or wing, supported by millions of small contributors, give those contributors a bigger voice in the political process than they would otherwise have. It allows them to compete on a level playing field with much larger entities. These entities, like corporations, labor unions and national news and entertainment media interests, already exist and operate on the money of those smaller contributors, through profits or compulsory dues or advertising dollars from profits.
The left wing shot itself in the foot. Just because it didn't like the politics of some of the small contributor organizations, it lumped politics by free speech and contribution in with politics by leverage of unaccountable profits, This justifiably outraged those smaller contributors who wanted a voice as well. Contributors who wrote to their Congressional representatives about it.
Anyone who wants campaign reform should try it while supporting free political expression by ordinary people who would band and raise their voices together under the First Amendment. No matter what their cause.
If I read this correctly, that bill leaves something out - fingerprints for the employees of non-nursing government-supported senior and disabled housing. If you look at the HUD requirements, for example, all of the residents have to have at least background checks. But not, when I last looked, the management or staff or contractors.
Many people in that kind of housing are every bit as vulnerable to abuse as those in nursing homes. Not a few have used such housing for hospice. It is not that hard to cause an elder on oxygen or with a heart condition to die from stress if abused. Partly as a result of lax oversight of that housing, drug theft is rampant, especially of prescription narcotics.
If employees and contractors of semi-private and public housing had to be fingerprinted and checked out, maybe even the Tulsa Police Department, which has claimed to be uninterested in senior deaths unless beaten and bloody, would start to take notice.
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Posted by: Don B
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Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
On the Oklahoma State Court Network web page http://www.oscn.net/applications/oscn/DeliverDocument.asp?CiteID=84204,
it states that Title 43A-5-401 is “repealed”, i.e.:
Oklahoma Statutes Citationized
Title 43A. Mental Health
Chapter 1 - Mental Health Law of 1986
Section 5-401 - Repealed by Laws 1997, HB 2024, c. 387, § 11, eff. November 1, 1997
But on the Legislature’s web site, in the listing of Title 43A, it states instead:
§43A-5-401. Repealed by Laws 1997, c. 387, § 11, eff. Nov.
1, 1997.
NOTE: Subsequent to repeal, § 5-401 was amended by Laws
1997, c. 195, § 3 to read as follows:
Where I come from “subsequent” means after. I even have a dictionary or three that agree with me. Isn’t it comforting to know that the Oklahoma Supreme Court can take it upon itself to repeal laws without first declaring them unconstitutional or notifying the Legislature? Especially regarding the due process for involuntary commitment to a mental institution.
But then, why should the Supreme Court bother to get it right? It's not like the Supreme Court is willing to supervise the District Courts to assure that people with mental illnesses get the same level of due process as all others. I know because I made a complaint to the Supreme Court Justice in charge of our local District Court, and never got a response.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
Reading a lawyer’s brief demanding that a case be dismissed reveals the same integrity as Jane Fonda’s orgasm in “Klute”. Too often the lawyer cherry-picks alleged facts out of context and puts them together out of order to create a prejudice that looks plausible if one didn’t know any better. Regardless of the facts, the lawyer routinely and automatically denies evidence and argument presented to allege that “no case has been stated”, “no claim has been made”, “no grounds for relief has been shown”, “no law has been cited”, yada, yada, yada. Apparently the legal definitions for such ordinary English words as “case, stated, claim, made, grounds, cited and relief” are so elevated and abstruse as to be as invisible to ordinary eyes as the Emperor’s new clothes.
Nor is rank prejudice out of bounds. One recent brief chided the complainant for citing foreign medical journals. The term “foreign” is used as a pejorative, in the same character as a man refusing a suitor for his daughter because the suitor has a single drop of black blood. Conveniently failing to mention that most of the journals and articles cited in the case were American, and nearly all from pubmed.gov, the database of U.S. National Library of Medicine. I cannot vouch for and do not care if all the authors of those articles are white.
One can, for example, cite and apply over thirty legal precedents, many if not most from the U.S. Supreme Court, and they will be utterly invisible even to a U.S. District Attorney. As were medical x-rays and scans of dying bone in a previous case. Why if one didn’t know how honorable they all are, one might begin to think that lawyers lie, defame and slander for a living. And perhaps have their tongues surgically split in order to pass the bar.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
In his science fiction novel, Hidden Empire, Orson Scott Card cites a historical work on Christianity, Rodney Stark’s The Rise of Christianity: How the Obscure, Marginal Jesus Movement Became the Dominant Religious Force in the Western World in a Few Centuries. Basically, early Christians proved their worth during the two major plagues that brought down the Roman Empire. The plagues killed about one third of the Empire’s population each time. The Roman Pagans largely isolated those who caught the diseases and left them to their fate. So many of the sick died not just of the plague, but of thirst and starvation in their own fecal matter even if they managed to survive.
The Christians, less afraid of death, nursed not only their own survivors back to health, but strangers as well, including Pagans. So a much lower percentage of Christians who caught the plague died, including those grateful Pagans they nursed back to health. The Christians thereby won respect for their good works and gained new members for their religion. Thus began modern health care.
But are Christians like that today, now that the need for public health care is widely accepted? We have all seen examples of Christians who preach love and forgiveness, but only for themselves. Unlike their Christ, who made friends of publicans and prostitutes, they consign to hell any who disagree with them, for any reason. They are the experts of the righteous jeer. They cut anyone might contaminate their perfection out of their lives. Their idea of “help” is more like a punitive stay in the local loony bin, where other Christians just like them can wield guilt like a horsewhip.
In the absence of any universal viral plague to test the mettle of today’s Christians, the question may well be, “Based upon the way that you treat them, would they want to spend an eternity with you and your God?”
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
Recent research has found that the bell curve has less to do with human performance and achievement than people thought.
http://www.npr.org/2012/05/03/151860154/put-away-the-bell-curve-most-of-us-arent-average
Instead of the bell curve normal distribution, a power distribution often applies,
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1744-6570.2011.01239.x/full
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_distribution
which puts just a few people making most of the progress, production, and awards, while the rest of us tail off into relative obscurity below the average. In an e-mail response to a query about the distribution of criminal acts by individuals, one of the authors cited by NPR, Professor Herman Aguinis at Indiana University's Kelley School of Business, noted that his research found that most of the errors are committed by just a few people as well.
In other words, a minority of repeat offenders account for the majority of crime and violence. This is nothing new; it has been known for decades. As previously noted here, research over more than 30 years has demonstrated that of the mentally ill people who commit crime and violence, a small minority of repeat offenders account for a majority of the attacks on others.
http://www.amazon.com/Clinical-Prediction-Violent-Behavior-Master/dp/1568214898/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1336239285&sr=1-1
http://www.amazon.com/Violence-Mental-Disorder-Developments-Assessment/dp/0226534065/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1336239375&sr=1-2
Yet mental health law, like Oklahoma’s Title 43A, is mostly predicated on the popular but false assumption that people with mental illness are dangerous and unpredictable. Every time a drug-using person with mental illness commits some horribly violent and senseless crime, everyone with mental illness is tarred by it. Journalists, editors (even at the Tulsa World, oh my) and politicians rush demonstrate their alleged civic and humanitarian responsibility and declare that we just have to get more controls on those with psychiatric disabilities. They argue that it is worth it to deprive and destroy the civil rights and liberties of an entire minority if it can save just one life. That people with mental illnesses or psychiatric diagnoses should be confined and medicated upon even the mere perception of imagined threat. In other words, stop them before they kill again. One hears that even Black Americans have been familiar with this phenomenon.
Which the State is only too glad to support, as noted here before. Anyone dragooned into one of the State’s mental facilities can find that every statement he or she makes will be parsed, and even badgered, by the facility’s mental health professionals for the most negative interpretation that will justify a commitment to that facility. That no positive or exculpatory statement will be recognized or recorded. That all previous contacts with psychiatric counseling and management will be denied out of existence, even in court papers. It’s a rigged game.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
Medical-legal literature cataloged by the U.S. National Library of Medicine, i.e.,
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16061769
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22152446
has shown that people with mental illnesses are victims of crime and violence more than 11 times those in the general population.
So I went looking to see what I could find out about how Officers in the Tulsa Police Department are trained to deal with people who have mental illnesses. While the content of their training programs is not publicly transparent, one can learn things about their approach. Despite the excessive vulnerability of those with psychiatric disabilities, in Oklahoma and many other places, if a person in a dispute or complaint appears to a police officer, or states, that he or she has a mental illness, the only question is how to get this person confined and medicated without incurring a lawsuit for excessive force.
Law enforcement agencies from the Federal level
https://www.bja.gov/ProgramDetails.aspx?Program_ID=66
to the State-Federal level,
http://www.nationalreentryresourcecenter.org/announcements/law-enforcement-responses-to-people-with-mental-illnesses-customizing-responses-to-jurisdictions-needs-and-characteristics
http://consensusproject.org/downloads/le-essentialelements.pdf
http://www.consensusproject.org/downloads/le-trgstrategies.pdf
to the State-Local level,
http://www.ok.gov/cleet/CLEET_Training/index.html
all treat people with mental illnesses as the perpetrators of crime, violence and disturbance, never the victim.
In fact, if you enter such terms as “mentally ill victim” into their search engines, you will get either “0 results”, or documents regarding victims of people with mental illness. A search on the Oklahoma Dept. of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services web site also depicts people with mental illnesses as perpetrators, with only one exception, “alleged victims” among the “consumers” already committed to its institutions. The only other possible victims it acknowledges are vulnerable adults being abused by their caregivers.
So, despite sound research to the contrary, as far as the law enforcement and mental health community in Oklahoma and elsewhere are concerned, a person with a mental illness can never have a valid complaint against any other person who does not appear or admit to being mentally ill. This short-circuits any investigation into the testimony of anyone with a mental illness in its tracks. Providing normal investigative services, such as merely interviewing neighbors, can and will be dispensed on account of a psychiatric disability. Due diligence is not officially required. If there’s a problem and one of the disputants has a mental illness, just round em up and head em out.
We’ve see this before – in the enforcement of Jim Crow by Sheriffs in the Old South. Dragging people with mental illness off to the local loony bin isn’t that far removed in moral and legal philosophy from returning runaway slaves to the plantation, for involuntary “treatment”. I’ve met good people from the Tulsa Police Department. But for every one of those, TPD has a cynical slacker who practices jeering at any complaint a civilian might bring. As it now stands, you can put any of them through the existing mandatory 4 to 4.5 hours of academy training and 2 whole hours per year in continuing education in dealing with mental health issues, and it looks like all you’ll get is a trained bigot with a badge.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
Only bigots have the right to feel threatened.
The rest of us are paranoid.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
I was doing some Internet research to see if Oklahoma newspapers had as much to say about psychiatric hospitals as the Houston Chronicle and the Baltimore Sun:
http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/archive.mpl/1991_808229/profitable-addictions-law-targets-psychiatric-care.html
http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/archive.mpl/1991_808783/profitable-addictions-they-are-totally-ruthless-do.html
http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/archive.mpl/1991_810311/profitable-addictions-no-quick-fix-solutions.html
http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/archive.mpl/1991_811418/profitable-addictions-state-s-legal-battle-against.html
http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/archive.mpl/1991_812417/profitable-addictions-patients-from-canada-dumped.html
http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/archive.mpl/1991_814690/profitable-addictions-state-to-expand-probe-of-hos.html
http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/archive.mpl/1991_819833/profitable-addictions-ex-workers-say-hospitals-fak.html
http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/archive.mpl/1992_1052024/profitable-addictions-abuses-in-mental-health-prog.html
http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1992-04-29/news/1992120043_1_psychiatric-hospitals-mental-health-military-hospitals
Instead, I ran across an article written by Tulsa World Editor Janet Pearson last year, “Is Tulsa's safety net in jeopardy?” As I recall the tenor of the article bewailed the State cuts in budgets and beds for psychiatric hospitals and services here, like involuntary commitment. But expressed relief that at least there was something to keep those mentally ill people from killing again. The first part reminds me of the society woman in “The Help” who got the law passed that required everyone to have a toilet for the help.
The second part reminds of those who used to say, “Why if we don’t keep them under control, they’ll rise up and kill us in our beds!” Of course, that was Southern plantation owners talking about their slaves before the War of Northern Aggression, as some of them still like to call it. But hey, if something is too chauvinistic, bigoted, racist, insensitive or patronizing to say about black people, you don’t have to throw a good line away. Just recycle it for people with mental illnesses. There won’t be a single yellow journalist or lawyer who will stand up for them.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
RE: Appeal of NDOK 11-CV-92-TCK-PJC to 10th Circuit Court, 12-5029
Sir,
You are being served with the Appellant/Petitioner’s Opening Brief at your last known address:
7353 E 50th Street South, Tulsa OK 74145
The previous service to this address returned “NOT DELIVERABLE AS ADDRESSED, UNABLE TO FORWARD”. This is the third address during this lawsuit that has returned this way, the first a work address and the second a home address. You know that you have been sued, but never disclose or leave a forwarding address. If you wish to know the contents of this brief, and for some legitimate reason cannot accept it at the 50th street address, you can obtain a copy from Holden & Carr Attorneys, First Place, 15 East 5th St, Suite 3900, Tulsa OK 74103, or from any other Defendant or Defendant’s lawyer, or by writing to me at my address, which you know from Court documents.
I was wondering – do you by any chance counsel people on personal responsibility?
Please be informed that I intend to write to the Oklahoma State Department of Health, Professional Counselor Licensing, about these matters. I have comments about the “Third Party Statement” you swore out to the Tulsa Police Department on August 3, 2010. They regard selective exclusion of my exculpatory statements to COPES about a dispute with my landlady (such as my determination to stay within the bounds of lease, as interpreted by HUD, and law), bogus “risk factors”, the lack of sworn statements from the accusers you quoted about statements falsely attributed to me, the lack of any questioning of other witnesses (such as my easily available neighbors) to establish the truthfulness of those making allegations against me and the tenor of my comments about them, the lack of any investigation of alternative solutions to the dispute (such as helping me finish moving out of a bad situation into my new apartment), the absence of references to my medical doctors of long-standing, and the misuse of your reports of hearsay as fact by the Mental Health Court and the District Attorney’s Office due to the apparent weight of your position with COPES. In other words, a complete lack of context which would support any other conclusion than involuntary commitment in the mental institution to which you effectively recommended candidates for confinement. An institution of the State with which your employer appears to have had a working arrangement that justified your employer's existence.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
I got a text message on my TracFone cell, time stamped THU 5:10 pm 04/05/12, alleging to be from AT&T at 1-732-604-1359. It says:
AT&T MSG:
As part of AT&T’s loyalty program
You may register for a FREE Apple Ipad3
Go To AppleOffers.com
To CLAIM yours today!
Well, TracFone is not part of AT&T, as of the time of this writing the web site doesn’t exist, and the number does not have any listing in the reverse phone lookup of YellowPages.com. Be warned. Calling the text message number would do two things: 1) Let the scammers know that they found a live cell number, and 2) Give them a chance at your financial information.
I’d call the TPD about it, but wouldn’t expect more than a 50% chance they would do anything about it.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
There is our own military’s concept of “acceptable collateral damage” in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. During the war in Viet Nam, a woman where I lived stated that it was good to kill Vietnamese babies because they would just grow up to kill our soldiers. The U.S. Calvary did just that with Native American babies at Wounded Knee. The Irish Sisters of the Magdalene Order enslaved about 30,000 young girls who were raped, illegitimate, orphaned, pregnant out of wedlock, or just simple-minded, in chastisement for their “sins”. The girls’ families often agreed.
The last place I worked in Stillwater, a couple of coworkers would get together and mutter imprecations about homosexuals until the air turned black and blue. I don’t think they could tell the difference between homosexuals and child molesters. There are any number of liberals who want to throw in jail anyone who disagrees with their gun control politics. There are court decisions all the way up to the Supreme Court that left innocent people languishing in jails or on death row because of some technical objection to accepting new evidence and letting them go.
And the list goes on.
What if there was some way to tell if a woman was at a higher than normal risk of birthing a child with either Down’s Syndrome or a child likely to die of SIDS. Now suppose that Oklahoma passes a law stating that this woman can be denounced by her doctor and forced by court order to have her tubes tied until she agrees to abort any unborn child that could be shown to be likely to experience either Down’s or SIDS. In other words, until she proves that she is in no danger of having and raising that kind of child, and thus “inflicting” it on the rest of society. The old Spartans, after all, were said to kill any baby that wasn’t perfect. The White Power skinheads might like it, but I think that most decent people on both the right and the left would agree that such a law would be evil and morally repugnant.
I say that there’s not much moral difference between that kind of law and the Oklahoma Mental Health Code, by which anyone with a mental illness can be denounced, even by just hearsay, and sent off to the local loony bin, without any full and impartial investigation by local authorities. And kept there until that person can prove the negative, that he or she is not a danger, to mental health “professionals” who have nothing but their own prejudices and self-interest to decide who is and is not a danger.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
Many people are perfectly happy with this arrangement, secure in the knowledge that they are not “that kind of person” and that this will never happen to them. They cannot imagine that they will ever have to face jail on the opinions of two licensed professionals. Or that applying this standard to an unpopular minority is any kind of slippery slope that will some day blow back on them.
But what about terrorism? Most people are more afraid of terrorists even than those with mental illnesses. What if everyone had to face the scrutiny of licensed experts to decide whether or not they could be terrorists, and, like the mentally ill, incarceration until they could prove to those same experts that they are not a danger to themselves (suicide bombers) or society. If you think that’s a good idea, as many in the Republican legislature might during the current silly season, you may not have thought it all the way through.
Oh, Grandma got strip searched at the airport.
She fit the profile to a tee.
She said something suspicious to the agent.
Jus be glad that it weren’t you or me.
Because that’s just what “mental health evaluations” are, profiling. If in the last 200 years, for example, we had weeded out every leader who had a history of major depression, we would have lost Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill. We might be doing Nazi salutes and still have slavery.
No one can predict just what someone will do in the future, if anything. Even the recent research into the relationship between mental illness and violent behavior can only produce relative certainties for the extreme violent and non-violent tails of the bell curve. Everything in between is a gray area, where no prediction has any statistical validity. You can only say that people with certain factors, like being abused as children or major depression, are more likely that those that don’t to be violent. But not that they are destined to that fate, and unable to escape or overcome it. As FBI Special Agent John Douglas said near the end of his book, Mind Hunter: Inside the FBI’s Elite Serial Crime Unit, there is no psychological that can predict violence. Only past violence can predict future violence. See also http://www.physorg.com/news152819983.html
Locking people up for what an expert or bigot is afraid or says they might do in the future is not mental health or public safety. It looks, walks and quacks just like a jail for those who are deemed to be undesirable, but cannot be convicted of any crime in a regular court of law. And in the history of Psychiatry, this kind of profiling is less accurate than flipping a coin, condemning as many as two harmless and innocent people to incarceration out of every three who are profiled.
And if you think that this kind of profiling is such a good idea, tell me again why you don’t want to do it to Black Americans. What did you say? It’s immoral, bigoted and wrong? Oh. I’m so glad you cleared that up for me.
Oh, Grandma got strip searched at the airport …
Re: The Election-Year Politics of Energy
No politician has much actual control over gas prices and the economy. Enough of phony politics. Instead of these inflated, overwrought and illogical attacks, hit the President on things he does control. Like foreign policy, his legislative agenda and vetoes, his duplicity in "support" of the Second Amendment, and the actions of his administration in programs like the BATF "Fast and Furious" scam and scandal.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
Perhaps the Babylonian King Hammurabi, said to be the inventor of written law, should have included in his Code an oath for judges, as Hippocrates’ did for physicians – “First, do no harm.”
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
to: mona-chamberlin@utulsa.edu
Ma'am,
I've been ill and don't think I can drive this evening, but I have a question for Mr. Woodward and Mr. Bernstein.
Recently, information has been coming out about the Obama Administration's "Fast and Furious" gun-running operation, strongly suggesting that a U.S. District Attorney and gun control advocate in Arizona set it up to create the impression that American guns fuel the Mexican drug wars. Gun dealers in border states were apparently pressured by the BATF to let suspicious purchases happen, and gun-runners to Mexico may even have been funded by the U.S. Government. Neither Mexican nor American law enforcement authorities stationed there were informed of the operation. As a result, untold numbers of Mexicans have died, and one U.S. Border Patrol Agent was murdered with one of the "Fast and Furious" guns. We don't know yet just how far up in the Obama Administration culpability goes, but the Justice Department under Eric Holder has been stonewalling Congressional inquiry and requests for records, to the point that AG Holder may face a charge of contempt of Congress.
Considering that no one died in the Watergate scandal, or in the Monica Lewinsky scandal, how do you think the Obama administration's "Fast and Furious" gun-running scheme will stack up against them? Will we see as much critical press coverage for it as we did for the Nixon and Clinton scandals? Or does the mainstream news media consider President Obama "too liberal to fail"?
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
Florida State Legislator Dennis Baxley, Representative of the 24th District, a prime author of Florida’s “stand your ground law”, perhaps said it best in an open statement published by Fox News March 21, 2012, and carried on this anti-bullying site: http://bullybuzz.org/2012/03/21/trayvon-martins-attacker-covered-stand-ground-law/
Neither “Stand your ground” nor the Castle Doctrine were meant to cover people who aggressively pursue and confront others. It was meant for those who suddenly face criminal threats and need to defend themselves, without having to second-guess whether or not they will be persecuted or prosecuted for doing so. It’s not the fault of the law, as some would have it, but as the Representaive said, the interpretation of the law. It can be summed up in one sentence:
Stand your ground doesn’t mean chase ‘em down.
The only possible exception to that I can see is in a case of abduction, especially of a child. Martin’s killer, George Zimmerman, was instructed by Police not to follow Martin, and ignored the advice. It should be a warning to anyone who wants to be El Zorro. Even if Zimmerman is prosecuted and gets acquitted, he still faces civil suits brought by the Federal government as well as Martin’s family. He can be charged or sued under hate crime laws listed on the FBI’s civil web page on Federal statues covering civil rights:
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/investigate/civilrights/federal-statutes
Martin’s family can bring a civil suit against him under 42 U.S.C. 1983. See
http://www.constitution.org/brief/forsythe_42-1983.htm
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/1983
http://uscode.house.gov/download/pls/42C21.txt
“Every person who, under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, … subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress, …”
One might argue that under the color of the stand your ground law, Zimmerman deprived Martin of the civil right to walk a public street peaceably, unarmed and unmolested. Anyone who feels they are being stalked has the right to turn around and ask why someone is following them. If Zimmerman had not been so suspicious and aggressive, he could simply have approached Martin peacefully, told him that he was a neighborhood watch captain, and politely asked if he could do anything to help Martin, perhaps even walk him home. If Martin had actually been a criminal and attacked Zimmerman, then the stand your ground law would likely have applied. But as a practical matter, Zimmerman would still have been under a cloud, unless he took the trouble to record the confrontation on audio or video tape.
At the very least, if Zimmerman was determined to follow and observe Martin, he should have done so from a distance and never approached him. He would then have seen Martin enter a home through the front door, and would have had no further cause of action, other than to report his observations to the police, if that.
These are my own opinions, not professional legal advice. Anyone who would carry a gun for self defense would be well-advised to read an authoritative book on it, like Massad F. Ayoob’s “In Gravest Extreme: The Role of the Firearm in Personal Protection”. It seems unlikely that Zimmerman bothered to do so.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
At 3 PM today, April 1, 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court released its 8-1 decision in the Oklahoma v. Mario Brothers case. Citing its 1979 Addington v. Texas case, it extended its conviction standard of “clear and convincing evidence” to anyone with an Italian surname suspected of being a Mob hit man. Since no one can tell whether or not someone with an Italian surname is or is not a Mob hit man, if anyone feels “a reasonable threat” when a person with an Italian surname says, “Badda-bing badda-boom”, then the person with an Italian surname suspected of being a Mob hit man can be civilly incarcerated until the person with an Italian surname can prove that he or she is no longer a danger to society.
NPR legal correspondent, Ninny Totalbarge, explained it this way. “It’s just like gun control. It’s worth it if it can save just one life!” The lone dissenter on the High Court, Justice David Sutler, voted against the decision to protest the alleged threatening language. According to Justice Sutler, “Saying badda-bing-badda is sufficient to constitute a reasonable threat. There is no need to utter the redundant ‘boom’.”
Since the standard of reasonable threat is based Oklahoma mental health law, the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health will take custody of any person with an Italian surname suspected of being a Mob hit man. Ms. Lee Rachett, the Director of a facility in Tulsa, Oklahoma said, “We’re ready for them. We’re opening a new facility out in the stockyards for housing mental patients, or as we like to call them, consumers. This will open up our more secure facilities in town for suspected Mob hit men.”
The local District Attorney, Harvey Bent, swore, “We’ll keep them there, too. Enough of this namby-pamby “clear and convincing evidence” tripe. All we need is a preponderance of the evidence. If anyone even heard anyone else say a person with an Italian surname said even a little badda, that’s good enough for us! I’ve got a two-headed quarter that proves it.”
Re: Taking Sides
The left wing shot itself in the foot. Just because it didn't like the politics of some of the small contributor organizations, it lumped politics by free speech and contribution in with politics by leverage of unaccountable profits, This justifiably outraged those smaller contributors who wanted a voice as well. Contributors who wrote to their Congressional representatives about it.
Anyone who wants campaign reform should try it while supporting free political expression by ordinary people who would band and raise their voices together under the First Amendment. No matter what their cause.
Re: Laugh? Or Cry?
Many people in that kind of housing are every bit as vulnerable to abuse as those in nursing homes. Not a few have used such housing for hospice. It is not that hard to cause an elder on oxygen or with a heart condition to die from stress if abused. Partly as a result of lax oversight of that housing, drug theft is rampant, especially of prescription narcotics.
If employees and contractors of semi-private and public housing had to be fingerprinted and checked out, maybe even the Tulsa Police Department, which has claimed to be uninterested in senior deaths unless beaten and bloody, would start to take notice.