High Court Orders Redo of Texas

My son-in-law, Adam, has been finding the news feeds to his i-Phone quite entertaining - specifically the 'truncated" headlines as they are trimmed to fit in the small window of his news app. So amusing an numerous are these that he has decided to publish them on a site he's named Bad Headlines:

http://badheadlines.tumblr.com/

In the mean time I am taking a couple of weeks off to flop under the tropical sun of our very own Hawaiian Islands. While there I'll been checking the validity of our President's birth certificate. So for now, until I return in mid-February, enjoy Bad Headlines.

~ Aloha, RtS

A Jury of his Peers

It was August 2007, I had been called to Jury Duty. Most people will agree that this never happens at a convenient time. This was particularly so for me but this was particularly so at this time - I was called to report on a Monday; the subject of my recently completed documentary, Jerry Andrus had just died of advanced Prostate cancer two days previously on Sunday. My mother-in-law, Wanda, had just been released by the hospital; she was at home under the care of Hospice.

The jury had been selected and I was included. The defendant had been charged with Unauthorized Use of a Motor Vehicle. The case laid out something like this:

Two guys were roommates sharing a rental in another city. “Skinny” had some decades old high-mileage muscle car, a GTO. His roommate,“Heavy Guy”, wanted to buy the car from his roommate. The arrangement between them was that Heavy could drive the car all he wanted until he could scrape enough money together to buy it from Skinny.

This arrangement went along fine until one weekend Heavy took the GTO on a long trip to our town. Heavy had borrowed the care for long trips before, however, during this trip the car broke down. Heavy managed to limp this clunker to his girl friend’s house where it sat in her driveway until the repair shop opened on Monday. Heavy managed to get the car to a shop but he didn’t have the money to pay for the repairs; Heavy would need to ask his mother to wire some money to him.

In the mean time Skinny notices that Heavy hasn’t returned the car following the weekend. Word gets to Skinny that his car is broken down in our town; pissed, he calls the police here. The police find the broken down car in the local girlfriend’s driveway. The situation is explained; everyone knows where the car is. The next day Heavy is arrested for essentially stealing the car.

So I’m sitting in the jury box listening to this testimony all the while wondering what the crime is? This seems more like a major misunderstanding has occurred, and a lack of courtesy... but a crime?!I am wondering why the prosecution even brought this trial to court; did a junior prosecutor need some practical court room experience? Remarkably during the entire trial, NO physical evidence is submitted, not one shred – the case is based entirely on whether Skinny gave Heavy permission to take this car. It's Skinny's word against Heavy's.

Skinny appears in court as a witness in a smart suit and tie; he’s young and good looking. His pretty girl friend is with him in court. Heavy, the defendant is overweight and not all that attractive; his shirt is untucked and clearly could use a hair cut.

The judge sends us into deliberation. This being my second time on a jury I decide I will set myself up to be the Foreman. I purposely sit myself at the head of the big conference table in the Jury room. I’m wanting to drive this process so I can wrap this up quickly and I can get back to my family and dying mother-in-law. I ask if anyone else wants to be the foreman; nope – so I am now foreman.

I summarize the case: Skinny has allowed Heavy borrow his car repeatedly over a period of months on the hope that Heavy will by this Junker from him. The junker breaks down out of town and they have a problem. I’m thinking most of the jury is thinking as I; what we have here is a failure to communicate resulting in an over-response by a pissed off car owner. I ask for a view of hands how many of the jurors think Heavy is NOT guilty.

Three people raise their hands. My jaw drops.

The standard for determining guilt in a criminal trial is that 10 or 12 jurors must believe that the defendant is guilty Beyond a Reasonable Doubt. Apparently what looks to me like a simple misunderstanding is going to result in a felony conviction for a guy who I don’t think deserves it. I’m surprised to find myself in the minority opinion.

The afternoon wears on, we deliberate. We note there is no evidence, no third-party witnesses or testimony other than the defendant and witness. We note that these guys are not total strangers, that the defendant made no attempt to hide the vehicle, sell it, etc. In fact, he was actually trying to have it repaired at his expense. He's had the car to the shop to get an estimate for repairs, he just needs the money to do the work.

It’s getting dark, the court clerks takes our dinner orders. I call agian for a vote – half the people want to send this kid to prison. The deliberations become heated. One guy, one of these types who wears baggy shorts and his baseball cap on backwards, has clearly developed a grudge against me. Another woman is crocheting; this jury looks like it was put together by Central Casting. What has become abundantly clear to me is that the term “Beyond a Reasonable Doubt” is analogous to these people as “I believe truly truly in my heart of hearts”. We are deadlocked. It’s late Monday night; we go home to sleep and must reconvene tomorrow.

I go home despondent. I can’t talk about the trial to my wife, but I can tell her how upset I am. She has spent all day with her mother who is slipping in and out of a coma. Out of town family have arrived at her mother’s home; her end is very near. I feel I am the only person standing between people who would send a guy to prison over a stupid disagreement. I am convinced that if the defendant were a good looking, nicely dressed young man, he’s probably walk. My jury figures that if the guy has gone to trial, that alone must mean he's guilty. I have a poor night’s sleep.

The following morning I arrive early in the jury room before anyone else has arrived. I write on the white board with red markers:

"Preponderance of Evidence"
"Clear and Convincing Evidence"
"Beyond a Reasonable Doubt"

I don’t sit, but stand at the head of the room next to the white board as each juror comes into the room and takes their seat. After the final juror arrives, I begin to speak.

I explain that there are several different standards for making decisions in a court case. For example in a civil case, each party may be partially responsible for what happened. In order to come to a decision we jurors wold have to decide which party is more likely guilty than the other. But we cannot do that in this case. I draw a big X through Preponderance of Evidence.

I then say that again, mostly in civil cases, one side says the other is guilty, the other says they aren’t. In these situations a jury needs to decide which side’s position is more substantially true than not. But again, we are not allowed to send a man to jail because we are leaning more this way than that. I draw another big red X through Clear and Convincing Evidence.

That leaves us with Beyond a Reasonable doubt. It doesn’t mean you are pretty convinced Heavy is guilty; it doesn’t mean that you feel it in your gut that Heavy is guilt – it means that you have NO DOUBT whatsoever that Heavy is guilty.

I point out that it is Skinny’s word against Heavy’s. There is no evidence to weigh one mans word over the other. There are no witnesses to confirm what either of these men said to one another. I further say that Heavy may indeed be guilty, but is there a possibility that he is NOT and that this is a misunderstanding that has blown out of proportion? If we don't know FOR SURE we must acquit him.

I call for a vote – 2 guilty, 10 NOT guilty. In Oregon it only requires 10 out of 2 to decide a trial. I don’t even attempt to turn the two remaining jurors; backward hat boy voting against me, not his conscience. Crochet woman is an idiot. But I cut my losses, quickly informing the clerk we have a verdict before anyone changes their mind. Moments later everyone is walking out of the courthouse.

As I rush directly from court to my mother-in-law’s home I chisel two important facts into my brain: The name of Heavy’s defense lawyer so I NEVER hire him as my defense attorney, and secondly, that if I am EVER accused of a crime, I’ll NEVER ask for a jury trial but instead leave my fate to a judge.

Later that evening Wanda slips briefly out of her coma. She is surrounded by her family, children and grand children. She peacefully loses consciousness and is gone.

[Between composing this story and posting it; I received a summons in the mail to appear for jury duty]

The End of Suburbia

I was hungry, so I did what most Americans do, I grabbed my car keys and drove over to the local Burger King. Within three minutes of ordering, I strode out with a burger with onion rings and BBQ sauce for $1.99 which I paid for with a credit card.

In this country, we take this extreme level of convenience for granted; this is our “normal”. Yet outside the USA, this level of self-indulgence is rare – hell, in most of the world, its unheard of.

Consider that the burger came from beef raised on a “factory” ranch. The cattle feed is mostly feed corn; a crop that requires a significant volume of fossil fuels to produce. The onion for the rings may have come from Mexico; transported (using fossil fuels) to its ultimate production. The energy to cook this meal (out West here) was produced by hydro-electric power. But in most areas of the country, electrical energy is generated using coal or natural gas.

The car which I so conveniently used to retrieve my burger was produced at a huge energy cost; again fossil fuels were consumed in massive quantities to turn iron ore into steel, plastic and other raw materials; then fabricating these materials into the final product, delivering it to a dealer… and ultimately (yes, fossil fuels) to turn the key and drive the quarter mile to the Burger King.

The United States of America represents a small fraction of the global population yet we account for over a quarter of the world’s energy resource consumption. Though few of us give a second thought to the huge energy cost of indulging what we here in America almost consider a right, they should. You see, the luxuries we take for granted is on a downward trajectory, it is coming to and end and it will be permanent.

I recommend everyone watch a little known documentary titled “The End of Suburbia”. The title is somewhat misleading, though the rise and fall of the suburbs is the central focus, the peak of our world oil production, in view of ever increasing demand, will become a global issue. The hard fact is that ALL economic growth is completely dependent on the availability of affordable energy - and the continued availability of that energy, in the opinion of MOST experts, has peaked.

By “peaking” I am referring to the top of a bell curve where all the easily accessible, and therefore low cost, petroleum and natural gas has passed. Domestic (within the US) energy production peaked in the 1970’s. The “fracking” issues recently in the news are the results of attempts to force the more difficultly obtainable petroleum to enable extraction. This bears repeating: Most experts believe that world production has already peaked; or will within the decade at best!

Though the focus on this startling documentary is on the eventual decline of our post WWII middle class way of life, this film produced in 2004 is almost prophetic in shining a glaring spotlight on the overall decline in living standard of the Western World and the United States in particular.

Most AMAZINGLY, many of the economic predictions described specifically in this film made in 2004 have already happened:

“Seven-trillion dollars lost out of the US Stock Market. Two-Million jobs lost in the United States. Federal budget surplus gone; state budget surplus' gone. The middle class disappearing.” This film accurately predicted the global recession we are currently experiencing as the cost of energy continues to rise as demand outstrips supply. New power generating facilities are not being built as investors know there are no additional sources of energy to fuel them. The situation is dire.

Alternative sources of energy are, and will be, insufficient to supplant the huge cheap, and formally abundant, fossil fuels. There is insufficient land mass on the planet to generate wind, solar, nuclear or bio-fuel source energy at the rate the world consumes fossil fuels. There is great concern that converting food production into fuel production will result in increased food costs, lingering recession and a lower standard of living, the likes of which Americans cannot even begin to imagine.

I have repeatedly expressed throughout this blog that I believe that our generation has lived in the best times man ever has, and ever will have, in the history of this planet.

False Heroes - Revisited

Back in October 2010 I did a post, False Heroes, about men who had faked their military service, mostly lying about being Vietnam War veterans. Most of these men had psychological problems, resulting in bad behavior, which they attempted to justify based upon their (supposedly) traumatic experiences during the war. The overriding tragedy is that this MYTH of the psychologically deranged or homeless Vietnam veteran has instead taken hold in the country as practically a cultural meme... even though there is little truth to the belief.

Recently I was listening to old Podcasts of American Public Radio's "This American Life" programs when I discovered they had done a story on this very subject which I blogged about in my False Heroes article. If you haven't already, I invite you to go back and read it. But in either case I recommend you listen to the 3-minute segment of the Podcast prolog below. If you have been following my blog for any length of time you will recognize the reoccurring theme in my blogging which is that things (and often people) are not always what they appear to be.

This American Life, Episode 138: "The Real Thing - Prolog" (Runtime: 3m:30s)

Christmas 1955

Christmas 1955 - I was seven years old and my little sister was age two when this photo was taken of our Christmas tree and all the loot underneath it. My Dad was a veteran of WWII, he had just gotten a good paying job as an engineer and we had moved out to the San Francisco suburbs only a few years earlier. My Mom was the stay-at-home kind.

The motivations for practicing Duck-and-Cover drills at grade school were beyond my comprehension; I was living in total middle-class heaven. Needs I didn't even know I had were met with excess. I could look through the Sears Catalog toy section and be reasonably assured that some of those treasures would end up under our tree. The only downer for the season was when I opened a gift that turned out to be a shirt or sweater - I felt gypped.

I must have gotten an new bicycle every-other Christmas. The toys were always cool - Erector sets, Tonka trucks, Lionel train, even an Atomic Canon once. These things made up for my Dad drinking too much on Christmas Eve and my Mother going to be crying. I took the toys in my room and played by myself with the door closed. These were times of excess - materialistic and alcoholic... and everything in between.

My parents struggled. My mother went to a psychiatrist and took Milltown. My Dad drank. There were no marriage counselors (other than the Catholic priest) and no self-help empowerment books. My parents foundered in guilt, self-pity, anxiety and cruel words between them.

A Christmas of "stuff" never really seemed to make up for it, though it did provide escape. I wasn't able to truly escape until I went away to college. And even then, I had to return home during Christmas break. Nothing had changed.

Today my wife and I spend practically nothing on Christmas; we don't buy gifts and we don't even attempt to compete with the other grandparents showering our grand kids with toys. We put up lights on the house and a lovely Christmas tree... it even has an angel on the top. We Atheists celebrate the holiday like most everyone does, with family and friends and good food, wishing for peace on earth and good will toward us all.

Media Generated Empathy

The following type of stories appear repeatedly in the news: A person or family, down on their luck due to unforeseen circumstances, perhaps due to illness or economic downturn. The story airs on national news... and suddenly they become the recipients of a huge outpouring of contributions of money, job offers and scholarships.

For example recently the CBS news show “60 Minutes” ran a story about homeless children in Florida; parents laid off work, living in their car, using a gas station restroom to clean up for school. The story had a huge impact on viewers; so much so that a follow-up story was broadcast about viewers sending in nearly one million dollars in contributions. One of the little girls in the story was wearing a sweatshirt emblazoned with the name of a university – that particular university offered the girl a full scholarship. ^[1]

I see these stories and think: "Great… but what about the hundreds of thousands of other families who weren't lucky enough to appear on '60 Minutes'. What do they get?"

The answer is, they get nothing! People see these stories in the context of an isolated incident. They know that there is widespread poverty and deprivation in the world, in their community. But until it becomes personalized, most people are blind to issue.

Yet oddly we recognize that most humans are generally obsessed with a sense of morality. Granted how we each of us personally defines morality varies widely from individual to individual. But a sense of morality infuses a large percentage of how we interact with others. A number of scientific studies have actually been conducted in an attempt to find a biological basis for our sense of morality. At the biological level, we know that when levels of oxytocin are raised in the blood stream, we feel more magnanimous and interested in moral abstracts.

Interestingly the mere acting or invoking of empathy actually causes the oxytocin; some have begun to call it it the “moral molecule”. But oxytocin has a very short half-life and our ability as humans to summon empathy is equally short lived. Empathy rapidly attenuates as the demand for it becomes more widely spread. A story about four specific homeless children in Florida strongly evokes empathy in a large population of television viewers. But a story instead about the hundreds of nameless, faceless homeless children, often entirely misses the empathy bulls-eye. In fact often the opposite happens; the sense of morality instead generating indignation and the feeling that empathy is undeserved.

I often find myself dealing with negative emotions when, confronted at some check-out counter at a store or restaurant, there is the seemingly ubiquitous slotted can next to the cash register: "Help little Timmy get that liver transplant, his parents have no insurance." I’ve even dropped spare change in such cans myself. But I wonder what would that store would look like if there was a slotted contribution can for every needy Timmy, Johnny, Sally… all the thousands of needy people just in my area alone? Slotted cans would be stacked on every surface up to the ceiling, all over the floor and rolling out the door!

I find outrage in the realization that most people are unable to generate even the remotest sense of empathy, and remote sense of morality, to those they have no way of individually connecting to? Who decides who has earned a donation jar or nightly news story in their name and who will continue to suffer silently in anonymity?

---------
References:
1. Homeless teens on "60 Minutes" get free college, December 3, 2011

Fear of Flying

In the course of five minutes, Air France flight 447 dropped from cruise altitude down into the Atlantic Ocean; none of the 228 passengers and crew on board survived. There was nothing mechanically wrong with the aircraft until it hit the the surface, sinking two miles to the ocean floor.

The opposite was true of US Airways Flight 1549 whose twin engines flamed dead out after climbing through a flock of birds during takeoff. The captain and first officer ditched the plane in the Hudson river; all 115 passengers on the flight survived.

The reasons for the diametrically opposite outcomes between these two airplane crashes reside entirely within the differences in the brains of their pilots. It involves the response of the human mind to situations of stress, fear and cognition.

Statistically half of all airline crashes can be attributed to “pilot error”.^[1] However, these statistics are not entirely unequivocal. For example there are cases of what is termed: “controlled flight into terrain” where pilots, completely unaware of a dangerous situation, believing that they were fully in control and on course, still crashed their aircraft. Then there are fatal incidents directly resulting from the pilot’s incorrect responses to emergency conditions; disregarding warnings or not following accepted procedures.

The latter was the case of Air France 447. While at cruise altitude and on automatic pilot, ice caused the plane’s airspeed indicator to read incorrectly. Unable to reason through the situation, the co-pilot did the unthinkable – failing to consult the checklist for this situation, he disengaged the autopilot. Attempting to fly the aircraft manually at that altitude, he pulled back on the controls, placing the aircraft in a stall condition.

Student pilots learn from their earliest training that pulling back on the control is exactly the WRONG response to a stall; a condition where the nose is lifted up to the point where the plane loses all lift. Even through every pilot knows that placing ANY aircraft in a nose-down attitude is the proper recovery procedure for a stall, the Air France co-pilot continued to attempt to pull back on the controls until the plane hit the ocean. Why?

Analysis of the cockpit voice recorder revealed that the co-pilot in command at that moment (the pilot was away from the flight deck) was apparently overcome with fear, unable to stop and reason through the predicament. Psychologists who study people’s reactions during periods of extreme fear sometimes refer to this inability to think a situation through as a “brain lock”. Deep within our brains the Amygdale processes our fear responses. If these responses override the Frontal Cortex, the “reasoning” portion of the brain, the person mostly likely will respond using instinctive behavior.

The crew of Air France 447 had almost five minutes to attempt to diagnose and recover control of their aircraft. Conversely, Capt. "Sully" Sullenberger in command of US Airways Flight 1549, had mere seconds. But Sully did possess the benefit of both years of experience and specific training which had been programmed into his cognition. When the engines flamed out on his Airbus, his rational frontal cortex overrode the fear. By thinking and responding rationally Sully and his First Officer saved 115 lives. Reacting to fear without thinking cost the lives of 228 Air France passengers.

Fear can cause us to believe things that are not true, to draw to incorrect conclusions and take inappropriate actions; fear often is a response out of ignorance. The antidote to fear is knowledge – education, training, experience and critical thinking.

In 1993, Chinese pilots flying a U.S.-made MD-80 were attempting to land in northwest China when the aircraft crashed on approach killing all on board. The pilots were baffled by an audio voice alarm from the plane's ground proximity warning system. Recovered from the wreckage, the plane's cockpit voice recorder picked up the Chinese pilot's last words: "What does 'pull up' mean?"

References:

1. PlaneCrashInfo.com accident database and represents 1,300 fatal accidents involving commercial aircraft, world-wide, from 1950 thru 2009 for which a specific cause is known.

Over the River and Through the Woods...

Recently some friends were visiting us from out of town. The evening wore on and it was getting late; they had about a two hour drive ahead of them if they were to make it home by midnight. A couple of days later they called to thank us for the lovely evening and relate how their late evening drive home ended up being a 4-hour ordeal.

When my wife and I head north to Portland, we generally make the 12 mile jaunt over to the Interstate then cruise the remainder of the trip North at freeway speeds. But this is not the most direct route to Portland: Highway 99 is the old highway.

From our house, our friends had programmed their GPS to home and simply followed the device’s directions. Calculating the most “direct” route, it took them off the old highway, routing them along rural county roads until they reached the banks of the Willamette River. However, there was no bridge across the Willamette at this point on the route!

The GPS program didn’t know that the point where that little yellow line transverses the Willamette is actually the Buena Vista ferry; a small car ferry that stops operating at 7:00 PM. Our friends had to back-track on windy rural country roads to make their way to secondary roads which would eventually lead them home.

This isn’t the first time people have been led astray by errant GPS systems. In 2009 an Oregon couple on their way to Reno was directed up a remote Forest Service road by their GPS; it looked like the shortest route. They spent three days stranded in the snow before being rescued. These are not isolated incidents; there are countless stories of drivers being led astray by blindly depending on their onboard navigation systems. They may calculate the most “direct” route, but that may not necessarily be the quickest or most efficient route.

If I use Google Maps, for example, to direct me to the beach about an hour west of our location, the directions have me taking a circuitous route of twisty rural back roads before connecting into main route to the coast. But I know that if I drive three miles out of my way to the main highway, I can make it to my destination more quickly and comfortably.

I prefer to depend on maps. But even maps can lead one astray. I’ve seen bright yellow printed lines on a map that, in reality, don’t go where they indicate they do. Still maps give an overall perspective of starting point and destination. This allows you to strategize your trip rather than rely on simple “turn here” directions. Frankly, I like to see the the big picture, and I like to know roughly where I am at any point during a trip.

I appreciate that some people like not having to have to pull over and consult a map; and perhaps having that reassuring voice confidently directing them on their journey is comforting. But I probably won’t get a GPS anytime soon. Besides, I'm sure it would just keep asking: “Are we there yet?”

I love this Allstate Insurance ad:

Robert Reich: "The REAL Public Nuisance"

I recently came across this video by Robert Reich. I believe his is as significant a warning about the hijacking of our Democracy as the George Carlin video I have posted previously.

Please invest 2 minutes and watch this video, then pass it on.

Three Principles of Self-Defense

Earlier this summer, a pair of very violent criminals, 31 year old David Joseph Pedersen and his 24-year-old girlfriend, Holly Grigsby , went on a criminal rampage through our area. They allegedly killed a young man who had attended a concert in Newport, his body was found in the coastal hills a few miles from where we live. The pair continued their killing spree until they were apprehended in California. ^[1]

In 2004, college student Brooke Wilberger was abducted from a nearby apartment complex. Her body was found in 2009, again, in the nearby coastal hills; her murderer was convicted and is serving a life sentence. ^[2]

These dangerous criminal surely had driven on the same road that passes just blocks from our house. Yet we don’t live in a crime ridden urban inner city; we live in a small university town known for it’s academics, science and engineering. Still, these crimes, and others just as horrid have happened here in the past, as they do everywhere in the country.

We tend to hold mythological ideas about our probability of being victims of violent crime. We may wrongly think that we are safe at home while or while on vacation, or that we are in danger of harm when we may be perfectly safe. We may also believe that we are safer by having a loaded gun in our home – though statistically, the overwhelming majority of gun violence victims were family members rather than the extremely rare (0.5%) unknown intruder.^[3]

So I recently read with great interest a blog posting by Sam Harris titled “The Truth about Violence”. I believe this is very important information about the reality regarding our personal safety; so much so that I sent the link to my wife and children to read. I am now passing this on to my readers as well as I think it provides some very CRUCIAL and PRACTICAL information about how to survive personal attacks of violence. I urge you to read it and to pass it along to others.

Among the most important points of the article are:

Avoid conflict:
This is a tough one for adult males whose ego is often difficult to disengage from their self image and whose provoking words can quickly escalate into physical combat. In truth, there is nothing anyone can say to you that would justify instigating physical violence. Unless you are clearly defending yourself from physical attack, you could be charged with criminal assault and potentially civil lawsuit.

Do not defend your property:
Your stuff is only stuff. When I worked in bank operations we repeatedly advised tellers to hand over the money quickly and politely to bank robbers. There is nothing in your wallet or purse or in your home that is worth your life or injury or the life or injury of another person. Let it go.

ESCAPE at all costs:
This is a difficult one, if you are approached in a parking lot, for example, and someone tries to force you into a car, RESIST AND FIGHT WITH ALL YOUR MIGHT. Yes, you may be injured trying to escape, but if someone exerts their control and gets you to a remote location, you are probably going to die anyway and likely in a more horrible way if you don't do everything in your power to prevent being taken to an isolated location.

Lastly, and this is a very tough decision; but if someone takes a family member hostage and demands your compliance – ESCAPE, even if you leave the family member behind. If the criminal takes control of both of you, it will not end well. By one of you escaping, the criminal has lost control and knows now that help may be soon on the way.

Here is the link to the article. Read it, pass it on, and be safe!

The Truth about Violence - 3 Principles of Self-Defense
by Sam Harris.
http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/the-truth-about-violence/

~~~

References:
1. Pair can face trial in Washington in three-state killing rampage, Los Angeles Times.

2. Brooke Wilberger Found: Killer Gives Location of Remains to Avoid Death Penalty, ABCNew.com

3. Gun Ownership as a Risk Factor for Homicide in the Home, New England Journal of Medicine.