get me out of here

Jury selection for the Princess Diana inquest begins today. According to Reuters:

The long-delayed inquest will investigate how Diana and Dodi Fayed died, along with their driver Henri Paul, when their car crashed in a Paris tunnel.

The coroner, Lord Justice Scott Baker, will address potential jurors before they complete a questionnaire to gauge their eligibility.

The inquest is due to hear evidence relating to some of the most controversial aspects surrounding the couple, who died on August 31, 1997, including allegations the late Princess was pregnant.

Controversial elements? This means the inquest is likely to hear all kinds of crackpot fantasies and conspiracy theories cooked up in the minds of wackos and grieving fathers. This inquest is likely to drag on forever and come up with no more than a confirmation of the French inquiry.

I’m not eligible for jury service here, but if I were these are among the things I would do or say to exclude me from service on that jury.

• Fake idiocy
• Use Halloween makeup to create a seeping facial wound
• Say “I’m glad Diana’s dead and I’d like to hand a medal to the Royal Family for getting her.”
• Bring Cletus. He screams a lot anyway, but we might just leave off a feed just to ensure maximum crankiness and say “I will be able to breastfeed my baby in the jury box, won’t I?”
• Attend jury selection in my birthday suit
• Shoot myself in the foot

He takes up hardly any room.

You see in Britain, jurors are enjoined from ever speaking on matters juridical. If it were in America, I’d be all

“Princess Diana?, never heard of her. And as for me, I’m the most objective person you’ll meet.”

And then I’d try to find an agent for a book deal.

Dogs and DNA

England is a nation of dog lovers, a nation of bird lovers and it used to be a nation of freedom lovers, too.

I listen to the morning news on the radio every day. I often switch it on before I get out of bed. Just me and my husband and now baby Cletus lounging in bed- maybe dosing in and out a little. Some stories capturing my ear and my imagination more than others.

This morning there was a story about how walking your dog, even on a lead, could disrupt certain bird populations. I knew that would get the wellies-and-dog-on-a-country-walk crowd in a tither*.

The next story I caught was about a judge who thought that everyone in the whole of the UK should be on the government’s DNA database (and visitors to the UK, too which ought to do wonders for the tourist industry).

Currently, if you’re arrested (for anything) the police can take a DNA sample which can be kept forever. Even if charges are dropped or you’ve been acquitted or it was a horrible case of mistaken identity. But Lord Justice Sedley wants everyone - everyone to be in the DNA database. And why? Because otherwise it wouldn’t be fair.

Lord Justice Sedley said the current database, which holds DNA from crime suspects and scenes, was “indefensible” because it was unfair and inconsistent.

You see the problem with the database – as it currently stands – is that it seems to disproportionately hold the DNA of criminals.

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As soon as the dog-and-bird story finished, folks were emailing away defending the practice of dog walking. Sure, some people registered their concerns about having everyone’s DNA on file – chiefly that if – even by mistake – a copper comes to your door saying your DNA has been found at the scene – well, that’s the absolute end of the presumption of innocence.

Others said basically “if you haven’t done anything wrong then you don’t have anything to worry about.”

Yeah, right. I’ll never understand this attitude.

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* for the record, I don’t care if dogs on leads can interrupt birds. As a cat owner, I’ve already made my position on birds pretty clear.

Hate crimes

When I visiting friends in Austin years ago, George Bush was the Governor. We drove down past the state house and they told me about how pissed they were that he was about to veto a hate crimes bill.

Plus ca change

My friends were pretty pissed. They were, perhaps not coincidentally, lesbians. When asked for my opinion, I had to say that I don’t support hate crimes legislation either.

Do I find it somehow more deplorable that a person is attacked or killed because they’re different (black, gay, female, male, of a different religion) rather than because they were involved in a drug deal gone wrong? Yes. I guess I do. It offends my sensibilities. It seems somehow more meaningless.

But I do think they should be punished more for it? Not necessarily. Although I think we as a society should have discretion to punish more harshly for truly disgusting and particularly heinous crimes like the murder of James Byrd, Jr – which did happen to be racially motivated. But I don’t think we should necessarily slap more time on if the assailant and the victim come from two different religions, races, ethnicities or sexual orientations.

Basically, I believe that there ought to be equal protection under the law. And when that equal protection doesn’t manage to actually protect someone, then I believe that their life is worth the same as the the next person’s and that and the nature of the crime itself – as proven by discernable facts – should determine the punishment. I don’t think that speculation as to prejudice in an assailant’s mind should figure.

But we do have to acknowledge that there is inequality in sentencing. For example, people who commit crimes against black people in the US are punished less harshly (generally) than people who commit crimes against whites. Does this mean we need hate crimes legislation? Nope. Because this discrimination, this undervaluation of black life, limb and property applies whether the perpetrator is black or white.

In particular, victim characteristics are important determinants of sentencing among vehicular homicides, in which victims are basically random and in which the optimal punishment model predicts that victim characteristics should be ignored. Among vehicular homicides, drivers who kill women get 59 percent longer sentences. Drivers who kill blacks get 60 percent shorter sentences. (from an Abstract in The Journal of Legal Studies)

Normal vehicular homicide is not a hate crime, but yet killing a black person (or a man) leads to shorter sentences. Let’s deal with this before we start trying to look inside people’s heads and hearts.

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On the other hand, I don’t see why if we are going to pass hate crime legislation we should exclude sexual orientation. Though I’d prefer we stopped with the me-too-ism of victimhood and just dealt fairly with crime and punishment. Let’s have some research and peer review of sentencing judiciary rather than an inadequate legal patch.

and she’s still gagging for it

I picked on Jen a little bit in my previous post. I’m bad that way. But what I really wanted to do was draw your attention to her excellent piece on rape conviction rates in the UK. I’ve written about it before, but there’s been a new study showing the same old bad news. I didn’t really have the heart to do a post on it again.

rape is an appalling topic no matter what the circumstances, but rape in the u.k. is truly horrific because only 5% of reported rape cases end in a conviction. that’s a number which has, in fact, been falling since 1977. of the cases that go to trial, one of every two ends in acquittal. in other words, a victim who manages to make it to trial has only a 50/50 crapshoot of getting to see her attacker put behind bars

and reading the reports, it’s not hard to understand why. in news item after news item, there’s just no sense that anyone in the justice system takes rape seriously. there’s a lot of talk about the number of false accusations, the difficulties of determining consent if someone’s been binge drinking, and passing the buck blame-gaming. all we hear is how hard it is to determine what happened when the two parties know each other. attempts at judicial reforms have been dismissed by judges, police incorrectly record allegations as “no crimes”, and more than a third of dropped cases have should have been pursued. but perhaps the most telling indicator of how rape is viewed and prosecuted in the u.k. is that women are still often questioned about their sexual history as part of the trial.

And there’s more…