Not A Real Criminal: An Elegy For Aaron Persky’s Judicial Career

This week, the voters of Santa Clara County, California, recalled Judge Aaron Persky by a large margin.  Good riddance.

In 2016, Persky presided over  the trial of Brock Turner, a Stanford freshman convicted of rape assault with the intent to commit rape and “penetration of an intoxicated woman”. The case generated a tornado of media coverage, and featured a shattering victim impact statement, an  obnoxious dad and  sanctimonious victim-blaming.  Persky sentenced Turner to six months in jail (he ultimately only served three) and three years’ probation.  The sentence was widely condemned as shockingly lenient, considering the circumstances of the crime, and ultimately cost Persky his judgeship.

During the nasty, messy recall campaign Persky’s defenders have been both vocal and eloquent in their opposition. The argument of the anti-recall campaign boils down to the idea that Persky merely followed California’s sentencing guidelines, which enumerate factors relevant to considering leniency.* Another, frankly paradoxical, justification for Persky’s sentence is that the guidelines simultaneously give judges a lot of discretion in sentencing AND somehow tie judges’ hands.  If you care about this case, I urge you to read not only the victim’s impact statement, but also  Brock Turner’s statement and Judge Persky’s  sentencing decision.  Having read all those, here is where I believe Persky and his defenders went wrong:

Uber Hate

My family came to the United States during the early 1990’s recession.  My father had been a railroad engineer back in Russia, mostly working the geriatric section of the network, the track between Moscow and (then) Leningrad.  In the States, he discovered to his chagrin that the railroads and the train industry were in the crapper, and so the only job he could find that matched his education and skills was for a custom air-conditioning company, which offered him $8.25 an hour with no benefits — provided he first worked for them for six months without pay, “as a volunteer”.  And so, like many youngish Soviet immigrants at that time, my father became a livery driver.

Myths and Illusions: The Myth of Warrior Wisdom

I’ve been taking a hiatus from blogging to a large extent because I’m going through one of those times when I’m Disgusted With Everything. You know; it’s an election year.  And so, it is perhaps from that feeling of general disgust that I am going to kiss the third rail of modern American culture, the adulation of the military to the point of assigning its members superior experience in matters that have nothing to do with warfare.

Steven Avery’s Prosecutor Fights Back, Proving He Was Portrayed Fairly

Not Ken Kratz

If you haven’t seen Netflix’s ten-part documentary, Making a Murderer, about a man who spent eighteen years behind bars for a crime he didn’t commit, and was later very likely framed for another crime, go see it now.  Have plenty of liquor and cute bunny pictures on hand; you are going to need both.  It is one of the most affecting documentaries of all time and a wholly infuriating look at the American criminal justice system.

If you have seen it, then you probably won’t be surprised to learn that the prosecutor in Steven Avery’s and Brendan Dassey’s trials for the murder of Teresa Halbach, Ken Kratz, has come to know the wrath of the Internet (the usual: furious Yelp reviews, harassing e-mails, death threats, and so forth).  And so, The Kratz is fighting back.  

Letters From Russia: The Story Of (Nearly) Forgotten Murders

May you live in interesting times.

~ old Chinese curse

On an unknown date in 1988, the Soviet Union executed Tamara Ivanyutina (maiden name Maslenko), a former school dishwasher, pig farmer, wife, daughter, sister and serial poisoner. She became the last woman executed by the USSR and one of only three executed in the post-war period.* As per standard Soviet practices, her execution was not announced beforehand, and it is not known how her body was disposed. The notification of her death was sent to her unincarcerated next-of-kin — who happened to be one of her victims, and the child of two additional victims. Not surprisingly, he did not bother to hold a memorial for her. The lack of ceremony or mourning surrounding her death was particularly ironic in light of her personality and motivations. Unwept, unhonored and unsung** — such was the ignominious end of a woman who was propelled on her life path by a powerful conviction that the world did not treat her with due respect.

Justice? What Justice?

There is more bad news out of Ferguson, because everything is horrible. Prosecutor Robert McCulloch, of Darren Wilson grand jury fame, unable to restrain himself from telling those who don’t believe cops should be killing people in the street willy-nilly what to do to their own orifices, gave an interview during which he nonchalantly admitted to suborning perjury during the aforementioned grand jury proceedings. Naturally, this led to some excitement in the normal-people world, as in: is it possible something could be salvaged out of the whole Ferguson mess in the name of justice? As a pessimist with a lot of experience in the legal field, I have to answer that question as “no, probably not.” McCulloch wouldn’t be gloating about all the false testimony he deliberately introduced if he was in any danger of incurring penalties.

Do Not Talk To Cops

Via. I have a public service announcement:

The Cruel And The Dumb Inherit The Earth, Apparently.

To begin with an aside, I confess I don’t care whose feefees I’m hurting when I say this: fratboys are the worst. THE. WORST. This is not a compliment. If any member of the “culture” reading this DOES regard it is a compliment, that would only be proving my point. To any predictable objections to the effect whether I shouldn’t be ranking the Nazis or Islamic terrorists as the worst, I reply with an immortal quote from The Big Lebowski: “Say what you want about National Socialism, at least it’s an ethos.” Frat “ethos”, such as it is, revolves getting shitfaced, destruction of property, humiliation, sex crimes, inflicting suffering, and occasionally killing people and animals for the hell of it — for the lulz. So yes, the label “the worst” is entirely apt here. I cannot believe universities and taxpayers shell out money to subsidize this nonsense.

This story from last week is sad and horrible — all the more so because this is precisely the kind of stuff that fratboys find funny, nay, heroic. If you are too lazy to click on the link, here is the summary: some pledges from a Mississippi university broke into a zoo at night supposedly to take a picture of a flamingo for a scavenger hunt. (That’s the frat’s official story, anyway, and it’s TOTES believable — I mean, you would have to break into a zoo at night to take a picture of one of the animals, right?) Moving right along, instead of just taking a picture, these freaks went ahead and kidnapped a flamingo. The bird was found in the morning several miles away with massive internal injuries and a broken leg. Its mate back at the zoo was also found to have severe internal injuries, including ruptured organs. Both birds had to be euthanized. The apparent leader of this worthy exploit, Devin Nottis, was arrested on felony charges after bragging about it on Twitter.

Trayvon Martin Was A Floozie

I haven’t commented on the George Zimmerman verdict, because there isn’t much to say that hasn’t already been said by others more eloquently than I ever could. So not to beat a dead horse, I just want to briefly point out a detail that I haven’t seen discussed, but that I find very curious: the standard justifications that “impartial” people offer for killing Trayvon Martin are eerily similar to the arguments the same kind of people usually offer in defense of rape. Nay, they aren’t similar, they are exactly the same.

“Restorative Justice” Is Potentially Destructive, Too

The New York Times magazine has published an article about the application of the “restorative justice” model to a Florida murder case. To get this out of the way immediately (I’ll get to the details later), the case centers on a 19-year-old who shot his girlfriend in the face. The families of the perpetrator and the victim were quite close. The girl’s parents and siblings, who described themselves as devout Catholics, elected to forgive the murderer, and to work that forgiveness into getting him a reduced sentence and sparing him the anguish of a trial. They did it because Jesus, and also because they didn’t want to become “trapped in anger” over the boy they loved blowing their daughter’s and sister’s head off while she was on her knees and pleading for her life. The article bears a pithy title, “Can Forgiveness Play a Role in Criminal Justice?” — to let you know right away on which side of the issue the author comes down and also to prepare you for the warm and fuzzy feeling this article is apparently supposed to give you. Alas, it has mostly left me cold.