Presumed Innocent

That's there because it verbalizes what is on my mind at the moment.  "All suspects are considered innocent until proven guilty in a court of law."  The United States has given the accused the presumption of innocence almost since the nation's founding, and a U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1895 in Coffin v United States detailed the court's rationale for this presumption, which is not explicitly set forth in the Constitution. 

"The principle that there is a presumption of innocence in favor of the accused is the undoubted law, axiomatic and elementary, and its enforcement lies at the foundation of the administration of our criminal law. … Concluding, then, that the presumption of innocence is evidence in favor of the accused, introduced by the law in his behalf, let us consider what is 'reasonable doubt.' It is, of necessity, the condition of mind produced by the proof resulting from the evidence in the cause. It is the result of the proof, not the proof itself, whereas the presumption of innocence is one of the instruments of proof, going to bring about the proof from which reasonable doubt arises; thus one is a cause, the other an effect. To say that the one is the equivalent of the other is therefore to say that legal evidence can be excluded from the jury, and that such exclusion may be cured by instructing them correctly in regard to the method by which they are required to reach their conclusion upon the proof actually before them; in other words, that the exclusion of an important element of proof can be justified by correctly instructing as to the proof admitted. The evolution of the principle of the presumption of innocence, and its resultant, the doctrine of reasonable doubt, make more apparent the correctness of these views, and indicate the necessity of enforcing the one in order that the other may continue to exist."

That's the legal system.  When it isn't a court, employers seem to have flexibility when it comes to the presumption of innocence.  Take the case of Ryan Loskarn.  He's the Chief of Staff in the office of U.S. Senator Lamar Alexander from Tennessee.  As soon as Senator Alexander was informed that law enforcement personnel had searched Loskarn's personal residence as part of a probe into allegations of child pornography, he put Loskarn on administrative leave without pay.

Kelly Thomas was a homeless man who lived in the Fullerton area, and was allegedly beaten to death by at least two Fullerton police officers.  The two were placed on administrative leave, with pay, for the first two months following public outcry about a cover-up.  Then they were placed on leave without pay where they remained for seven months.  At that time, even though they had yet to be placed on trial, the acting police chief informed them that he planned to fire them.  They then resigned.

Nidal Hasan is a former U.S. Army psychiatrist who was convicted of 13 counts of murder and 32 counts of attempted murder.  The mass shooting took place in 2009.  Yet he remained an active duty Major, receiving nearly $300,000 in pay and benefits until he was finally convicted.  At that time he was dismissed from the service and placed on death row while his case winds its way through the appellate court process.

Is it fair to suspend someone without pay, without at least some due process?  Federal law protected Hasan.  It didn't protect Loskarn.  Police officers have some civil service protections.  A private employer can do whatever they want to, provided they have no written policies to the contrary.  Once a private employer creates a policy, they have to live by its terms with all employees.

You can restore someone's lost pay and benefits if they are suspended without them.  But can they survive during the time it takes to undertake due process?  Maybe, maybe not.  Wealthy people can.  Most of us could not.

* * *

Affluenza.  Until this week, it was a term coined by psychologists to explain how the growing inequity in wealth distribution is causing greater unhappiness throughout society.  But this week, when it became a free pass to keep a teenager from going to prison, it became much more.  It became a legal defense to absolve a spoiled brat of responsibility for his actions.

Ethan Couch is 16 years old.  In June of this year he stole two cases of beer from a Walmart with some friends and then after getting so drunk that his blood-alcohol level was .24, he got behind the wheel of a Ford pickup truck registered to his father's business and drove off.  The truck was doing approximately 70 mph when it slammed into an SUV that had broken down, killing the driver and some good Samaritans who had stopped to help.  The four were killed on impact, an impact so violent that the victims were thrown 60 yards from the crash.  Two of his friends in the truck were severely injured, one of them no longer able to talk or move due to a traumatic brain injury.

He could have been sentenced to 20 years in prison, three in the juvenile system and 17 more in the adult system.  It wasn't his first time run-in with the law over his underage drinking either.  Four months earlier police cited him for being a minor in possession of alcohol and for consuming alcohol while a minor.

The judge instead sentenced him to ten years of probation.  He's going to a high-class "treatment facility" that will cost his father $500,000.  He'll be pampered while the facility attempts to repair his affluenza.  The families of his victims will have to go on in the face of this injustice.  No jail time for four deaths flies in the face of common sense.

If a teen claims they are the victims of the awful life they lived, because their parents weren't able to give them advantages, judges may not laugh, but neither do they cut them any slack.  So why is this boy getting the break they don't?   I think you can figure that one out without me writing another word.

* * *

Random Ponderings:

I wonder if Kim Jong-un told his uncle to say hello to Kim's father before giving the order to have the uncle executed.

There are 14 gamblers who placed wagers on Auburn to win the BCS title before the season began, at odds of 1000-1.  Now they're one win away from a nice payoff.  Bet they're wishing they'd wagered more than they did.

Pity the poor U.S. senators who had to work late into the night because of the change in the filibuster rules.  I have no sympathy for them.  More on that in tomorrow's blog entry.

I hope Fox News host Megyn Kelly washed her foot before sticking it squarely in her mouth with her strident statements about Santa Claus and Jesus being white.

Julie Chen's comments about The View hiring Jenny McCarthy is nothing more than a ratings ploy.

The writer who opined that the TV series "Murphy Brown" made Candice Bergen a "star" needs to be replaced with someone who does better research.

Reese McKee met who he thought was the woman of his dreams on a New Year's Eve night in Hong Kong.  He thought posting on Facebook was a good idea in trying to track her down.  It didn't go well.  Lesson learned.  Social media can't solve every mystery, nor should it try.

Gisele Bundchen may photograph well, even when breast-feeding, but she has no real qualifications that support her telling other women what to do. 

Is Nick Saban using the potential offer of a job with the University of Texas to try to hold Alabama up for more money, or is he just holding off on signing the extension he was offered for the sake of drama?  Money is the answer, I think.

It's time to close the detention facilities at Gitmo. 

Is the growing trend of companies rewarding employees with shopping sprees rather than direct cash bonuses a good one?  One woman got a two-minute shopping spree at a Costco and she managed to pile nearly $25,000 worth of stuff on her flatbed cart.

I did not know that attempting to leave North Korea without permission (for North Koreans of course) is punishable by life in a labor camp.  Not just for you, but your children and grandchildren.  Harsh!

The school that suspended a six year old boy for sexual harassment was wise to reverse that decision.  If only they hadn't been foolish enough to make it in the first place.

Making iPhone cookies to fool cops into pulling you over is a dumb idea.  It's a really dumb idea when you have a warrant out for unpaid parking tickets.

My advice is that if you're offered a chance to buy stock in AMC theaters when buying popcorn at the concession stand, pass.  Getting an IPO at the IPO price seems like a great deal, but the company's long-term prospects don't look good to me.

It was very nice of the Jiu-Jitsu teacher of Paul Walker to give the late actor an honorary black belt following his tragic death.

Bruce Jenner says his upcoming laryngeal shave is because he never liked his trachea, and not part of any planned gender change.  What do you think?  I was certain he wasn't headed in that direction.

George Zimmerman had three handguns, a shotgun and an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle when he was arrested, and now he can have them all back.

* * *

December 12th in History:

627 – Battle of Nineveh: A Byzantine army under Emperor Heraclius defeats Emperor Khosrau II's Persian forces, commanded by General Rhahzadh.
1098 – First Crusade: Siege of Ma'arrat al-Numan – Crusaders breach the town's walls and massacre about 20,000 inhabitants. After finding themselves with insufficient food, they reportedly resort to cannibalism.
1388 – Maria of Enghien sells the lordship of Argos and Nauplia to the Republic of Venice.
1408 – The Order of the Dragon a monarchical chivalric order is created by Sigismund of Luxembourg, then King of Hungary.
1781 – American Revolutionary War: Second Battle of Ushant – A British fleet led by HMS Victory defeats a French fleet.
1787 – Pennsylvania becomes the second state to ratify the United States Constitution, five days after Delaware became the first.
1862 – USS Cairo sinks on the Yazoo River, becoming the first armored ship to be sunk by an electrically detonated mine.
1870 – Joseph H. Rainey of South Carolina becomes the second black U.S. congressman, the first being Hiram Revels.
1897 – Belo Horizonte, the first planned city in Brazil, is founded.
1901 – Guglielmo Marconi receives the first transatlantic radio signal (the letter "S" [***] in Morse Code), at Signal Hill in St John's, Newfoundland.
1911 – Delhi replaces Calcutta as the capital of India.
1911 – King George V and Mary of Teck are enthroned as Emperor and Empress of India.
1915 – President of the Republic of China, Yuan Shikai, announces his intention to reinstate the monarchy and proclaim himself Emperor of China.
1917 – In Nebraska, Father Edward J. Flanagan founds Boys Town as a farm village for wayward boys.
1918 – The Flag of Estonia is raised atop the Pikk Hermann for the first time.
1925 – The Majlis of Iran votes to crown Reza Khan as the new Shah of Persia.
1935 – Lebensborn Project, a Nazi reproduction program, is founded by Heinrich Himmler.
1936 – Xi'an Incident: The Generalissimo of the Republic of China, Chiang Kai-shek, is kidnapped by Zhang Xueliang.
1937 – Second Sino-Japanese War: USS Panay incident – Japanese aircraft bomb and sink U.S. gunboat USS Panay on the Yangtze River in China.
1939 – Winter War: Battle of Tolvajärvi – Finnish forces defeat those of the Soviet Union in their first major victory of the conflict.
1939 – HMS Duchess sinks after a collision with HMS Barham off the coast of Scotland with the loss of 124 men.
1940 – World War II: Approximately 70 people are killed in the Marples Hotel, Fitzalan Square, Sheffield, as a result of a German air raid.
1941 – World War II: Fifty-four Japanese A6M Zero fighters raid Batangas Field, Philippines. Jesús Villamor and four Filipino fighter pilots fend them off; César Basa is killed.
1941 – World War II: USMC F4F "Wildcats" sink the first 4 major Japanese ships off Wake Island.
1941 – World War II: The United Kingdom declares war on Bulgaria. Hungary and Romania declare war on the United States. India declares war on Japan.
1941 – Adolf Hitler declares the imminent extermination of the Jews at a meeting in the Reich Chancellery
1942 – World War II: German troops begin Operation Winter Storm, an attempt to relieve encircled Axis forces during the Battle of Stalingrad.
1942 – A fire in a hostel in St. John's, Newfoundland, kills 100 people.
1946 – A fire at a New York City ice plant spreads to a nearby tenement, killing 37 people.
1948 – Malayan Emergency: Batang Kali Massacre – 14 members of the Scots Guards stationed in Malaysia allegedly massacre 24 unarmed civilians and set fire to the village.
1950 – Paula Ackerman, the first woman appointed to perform rabbinical functions in the United States, leads the congregation in her first services.
1956 – Beginning of the Irish Republican Army's "Border Campaign".
1958 – Guinea joins the United Nations.
1963 – Kenya gains its independence from the United Kingdom.
1964 – Prime Minister Jomo Kenyatta becomes the first President of the Republic of Kenya.
1969 – Years of Lead: Piazza Fontana bombing – The offices of Banca Nazionale dell'Agricoltura in Piazza Fontana, Milan, are bombed.
1979 – Coup d'état of December Twelfth: South Korean Army Major General Chun Doo-hwan orders the arrest of Army Chief of Staff General Jeong Seung-hwa without authorization from President Choi Kyu-ha, alleging involvement in the assassination of ex-President Park Chung Hee.
1979 – President of Pakistan Zia-ul-Haq confers Nishan-e-Imtiaz on Nobel laureate Dr Abdus Salam.
1979 – The unrecognised state of Zimbabwe Rhodesia returns to British control and resumes using the name Southern Rhodesia.
1983 – The Australian Labor government led by Prime Minister Bob Hawke and Treasurer Paul Keating floats the Australian dollar.
1984 – Maaouiya Ould Sid'Ahmed Taya becomes the third president of Mauritania after a coup d'état against Mohamed Khouna Ould Haidalla while the latter is attending a summit.
1985 – Arrow Air Flight 1285 crashes after takeoff in Gander, Newfoundland, killing 256, including 236 members of the United States Army's 101st Airborne Division.
1988 – The Clapham Junction rail crash kills thirty-five and injures hundreds after two collisions of three commuter trains—one of the worst train crashes in the United Kingdom.
1991 – The Russian Federation gains independence from the USSR.
2000 – The United States Supreme Court releases its decision in Bush v. Gore.

Famous Folk Born On December 12th:

Gennaro Manna
John Jay
Henry Wells (yeah, the Wells in Wells Fargo)
Gustave Flaubert
Edvard Munch
Harry Warner
Sammy Davis, Sr.
Frank Sinatra (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIiUqfxFttM)
Bob Barker
Ed Koch
Bob Pettit
Buford Pusser
Dionne Warwick
Dickey Betts
Emerson Fittipaldi
Wings Hauser
Bill Nighy
Cathy Rigby
Sheila E.
Sheree J. Wilson
Tracy Austin
Sabu
Sophie Kinsella
Madchen Amick
Jennifer Connelly
Regina Hall
Wilson Kipketer
Hank Williams III
Mayim Bialik

Movie quotes today come from the 1953 film "From Here to Eternity" in honor of Frank Sinatra's birthday:

Angelo Maggio: Only my friends can call me a little wop!

#2

Karen Holmes: Come back here, Sergeant. I'll tell you the story; you can take it back to the barracks with you. I'd only been married to Dana two years when I found out he was cheating. And by that time I was pregnant. I thought I had something to hope for. I was almost happy the night the pains began. I remember Dana was going to an officers' conference. I told him to get home early, to bring the doctor with him. And maybe he would have... if his "conference" hadn't been with a hat-check girl! He was drunk when he came in at 5 AM. I was lying on the floor. I begged him to go for the doctor, but he fell on the couch and passed out. The baby was born about an hour later. Of course it was dead. It was a boy. But they worked over me at the hospital, they fixed me up fine, they even took my appendix out - they threw that in free.

#3

Sgt. James R. 'Fatso' Judson: Tough monkey. Guys like you end up in the stockade sooner or later. Some day you'll walk in; I'll be waiting. I'll show you a couple of things.

#4

Sgt. James R. 'Fatso' Judson: Are you sore about something?
Robert E. Lee "Prew' Prewitt: I don't like the way you play the piano.
[Fatso laughs]
Robert E. Lee "Prew' Prewitt: Remember Maggio?
Sgt. James R. 'Fatso' Judson: Oh, the wop? Yeah, real tough monkey.
Robert E. Lee "Prew' Prewitt: You killed him.
Sgt. James R. 'Fatso' Judson: Did I? Well if I did, he asked for it.
Robert E. Lee "Prew' Prewitt: The Army's gonna get you sooner or later, Fatso. But before they do, I want a piece of you myself.
[Fatso pulls out a switch blade]
Robert E. Lee "Prew' Prewitt: I figured that.
[pulls out a switch blade]
Robert E. Lee "Prew' Prewitt: See this knife? This is the one you pulled on Maggio.