I’m just a plainspoken Colorado criminal defense lawyer, but the way I see it…
Lots of folks hate actors. They’re bigger than life, which means they’re bigger than us. No one likes to feel small.
That may in part be why a New Mexico prosecutor has taken aim at Alec Baldwin, who in October 2021 took aim of his own with what he’d been assured was an unloaded prop gun that when fired most assuredly was loaded and killed the film’s cinematographer.
Unlikeable as Baldwin sometimes seems, is it fair to characterize a tragic accident as a criminal act for which he should spend years in prison?
Under the law in New Mexico, where he would be tried, it is not fair.
To be convicted, the law there requires that Baldwin knew — despite being told by the people on set responsible for gun safety that it was empty of anything that could be fired through it and therefore, except when used as a club, safe — that the gun still might be loaded and fired it anyway.
Unless Baldwin is even more unlikeable than some people say, that just isn’t likely. Certainly not beyond a reasonable doubt likely.
I’m just a plainspoken Colorado criminal defense lawyer, but the way I see it…
Contrary to the opening scene of the musical phenomenon “Les Mis,” nobody on the prison chain gang actually sings.
I don’t think my friend Tom ever found reason to sing anywhere in prison. We were journalism colleagues a century ago. He was part of the reason I later studied law and chose criminal defense. We covered some of the same criminal courts for audiences of none of the same readers. Because we weren’t competing with each other, and because he had a wide streak of decency in his multi-streaked character, he taught me a few ropes, introduced me to a few judges, to a few lawyers for the prosecution and defense, and generally eased my entry to that particular news beat.
He warned me not to get too close to anyone, because I might be forced to burn any one of them in a news story. Especially don’t grow too fond of the defendants, he said. Most of them are going to jail.
But I learned later — long after I had left journalism — that Tom himself had gotten too close. In fact had always been too close. He was fascinated by the seedy lives of the people he met in the criminal subculture. Though a journalist doesn’t stop being a journalist at five o’clock, he spent more time than usual off the clock in that culture, wandering their streets, drinking in their dives. He loved them.
I’m told he eventually married one of them. It was a marriage doomed from the start, toxic and rife with jealousy, with counter-ambition, with obsession. Not soon enough, they separated. Their marriage ended not in divorce court, where it should have, but in Tom’s professional home, the criminal court.
In some sort of drunken fugue, he had murdered his wife. Through every police interrogation, throughout his testimony at trial, he professed his love for her, perhaps even when he was stabbing her over and over. Many, many times over.
He was convicted of second degree murder. Sentenced fifteen years to life.
He served not even two years. For Tom, it was a life sentence. He was released, but not from prison.
One of the ones that got away. Is it my imagination, or is it actually laughing at me?
I’m just a plainspoken Colorado criminal defense lawyer, but the way I see it…
I learned the other day I have been selected from among the five point eight million people of my state to represent them in the 2023 Trout Unlimited Survey.
I’ve already represented most of them, in criminal court (Colorado is the Wild West, you know). But this is, literally, a different kettle of fish.
Maybe the signal honor of my life.
Yet I somehow feel unworthy. Because in fact I am unworthy.
I have never caught a trout. I have never in fact caught any kind of fish, despite seventy-five years of trying — perhaps not every day, and like most people I was at one point, probably early on, a selfish infant unwilling to make the attempt.
I thought I caught a fish, once, but I caught a pier. Not the rare pier fish; a wooden pier.
Nevertheless I will accept this honor with pride, and to seal its authenticity will go out this very morning and bag my trout. Nobody has to know I bagged it at Whole Foods.
I’m just a plainspoken Colorado criminal defense lawyer, but the way I see it…
Nine score and seven years ago some of my fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new treaty, conceived in deceit, and dedicated to the proposition that all Native Americans should be driven from the lands the U.S. government claimed.
This new one was styled the “Treaty with the Cherokee, 1835.” Also called the Treaty of New Echota. New Echota was the capital of the Cherokee Nation; today it’s just a historic site in Gordon County, Georgia, to mark one of many treacheries by treaty against Indians.
My ancestors signed both sides of the treaty. Among the twenty men with Cherokee or near-Cherokee names were Tesa-ta-esky, Tah-yeske, Cae-te-hee, Te-gah-e-ske, and Jesse Half-breed. Signing in behalf of the United States was General William Carroll, who may have been related to my maternal grandfather, Ed Carroll. (As were in family lore the Carroll who signed the Declaration of Independence and the one who signed the United States Constitution. After U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren’s experience with grandparental recollections, I’m not sure I should rely on my own: by such carefree genealogy, I might also claim as distant cousin, Carol Burnett. Still, it’s my granddaddy’s story and I’m stickin’ to it.)
This was the treaty that led to the infamous Trail of Tears. Despite specific promises to remove the Cherokees “comfortably, and so as not to endanger their health,” it was essentially a forced march of eight hundred miles to Oklahoma under horrific winter conditions that killed four thousand of them.
There was another “promise” the Cherokees are, even today, asking the United States to keep at long last.
Article 7 of the treaty deemed it “important that every proper and laudable inducement should be offered to their people to improve their condition as well as to guard and secure in the most effectual manner the rights guarantied to them in this treaty.” To that end the Indian nation “shall be entitled to a delegate in the House of Representatives of the United States whenever Congress shall make provision for the same.” Delegates don’t get a vote; they do get access — a huge advantage over people who don’t.
In the law, the word “shall” has a particular power: it means something is required to be done. Has to happen. Drafters of law and treaty intend it to happen. Courts intend it to be upheld.
Yet the drafters of this Treaty with the Cherokee were lawyers. Lawyers — the despicable ones anyway — like weasel words; they put one in that Article: “whenever.” Whenever Congress gets around to it. Could be now. Should be sometime soon. Could be never.
I specifically asked Joe Neguse, the Congressman from my own district in Colorado, if Congress should get around to seating a delegate from the people who paid for that delegate with four thousand lives. He specifically declined to answer but said he’d be sure keep my thoughts in mind. There aren’t many better than him in the House of Representatives.
And the Cherokee?
Nine score and seven years from now, I’m guessing they’ll still be asking for their promised seat at the table.
I’m just a plainspoken Colorado criminal defense lawyer, but the way I see it…
How many times do we have to step on this roach?
The only two-legged insect ever elected to the White House (though not by popular vote — most of us don’t like odious insects) said today he wants to do it again. Even if he has to serve from behind bars.
So, once more unto the breach with the greatest threat to criminal justice and human rights — not to mention democracy — that the United States, and an appalled rest of the world, has more or less (usually less, at least among invertebrate politicians at home) faced.
Some of the lowlights from his announcement, dully delivered in a monotone reading off teleprompters:
Even longer than Woodrow Wilson, he said, he kept us out of war. “I’ve gone decades — decades — without a war. I’m the first president to do it.” (To be fair, his four years did feel like decades. And he hasn’t wanted to go to war since his bone spur years.)
He referenced foreign nations, “many of whom find us detestable,” and “speaking of us with scorn and laughter and derision.” Apparently using the objective form of the royal “we.”
He fears invasion, and not just by the FBI.
“Our country,” he said, “is being invaded by millions and millions of unknown people, many of whom are entering for a very bad and sinister reason — and you know what that reason is.” (Every white nationalist does: they want our women.)
He really likes the death penalty as a response to both violent and nonviolent crime, a sort of final solution he says he learned from the Chinese despot Xi Jinping. He asked Xi if China had a drug problem. “He looked at me like I didn’t know what I was doing,” he said. (Everyone looks at him like that.) Xi told him why China didn’t have a drug problem. He loved it, so as soon as he’s president again “we’re going to be asking everyone who sells drugs…to receive the death penalty.” Same for human traffickers, though he didn’t mention whether that would include personal friends like his dead pal Jeffrey Epstein and his living dead pal Matt Gaetz.
He expressed fond admiration of Xi’s idea of a quick trial. “That is where,” he gushed, “you get caught dealing drugs, you have an immediate and quick trial, and by the end of the day you’re executed.”
His vision for American justice.
He wants more respect for police.
“The police are being treated so badly,” said the man responsible for one hundred fifty injuries and several deaths of police when he turned an armed mob upon them shortly before leaving office.
On the plus side, it looks like he’s been working out: he only needed one hand this time to lift his little water bottle to his lips.
Touting his famous ability to get along with everyone, he said, “We love both sides.” Reprising the love he showed for both Nazis and Jews in Charlottesville.
He implies he’s doing everyone a favor by running again. “I didn’t need this.” he said. “A lot of you people don’t need it either.” No kidding.
At one point he said he wanted to introduce a child. Turned out it was his little boy Eric Trump. Right.
Finally, he announced he has plans to go to Mars.
I hope he goes sometime soon. Before 2024 would be ideal.
