Recently in Law Category

I think we've probably exhausted this topic for now, but I didn't want to let E.D. Kain's series of posts about the conflict between gay marriage and religious liberty, re: the situation the Catholic Archdiocese of Washington, DC, pass without note. E.D., please note, is a supporter of same-sex marriage, and believes the Catholic Church is very wrong to oppose it. But he's starting to see that gay marriage really is a threat to religious liberty. Read him here, here, and finally here. Excerpts from his series:

Religious organizations would not be forced to provide space or perform marriages for gay couples. They would still be required to do a number of other things, including provide benefits to gay couples, offer other charitable services to gay people, and so on and so forth. Again - I think they should do this, but what I think really isn't the issue here. The issue is whether they should be required to by law. If they are required to follow specific rules in order to receive federal funds, and they believe that those rules are in conflict with their beliefs, then they will have no choice but to refuse those funds.

You can't really have it both ways. These funds are used to provide for the poor. You can't complain that the Church is awful for receiving the funds on the one hand and awful for not providing these services on the other. The two are connected, and if the law makes it impossible for the Church to do both, then there really is little that can be done except change the law. Or change the Church. And so this comes back to a question of religious liberty.

And:

I believe the Church and other groups that oppose gay marriage are wrong and that someday they'll look back on all of this with the same shame opponents (and their ancestors) of racial equality look back on the days of segregation. But that doesn't mean we approach each battle in this war with the attitude that so long as marriage equality is reached, all other considerations are negligible. If you want a much harder path going forward, then by all means give your opponents reason to believe that their religious liberty actually will be infringed upon. Most of the time that argument is a straw man. But not always. Giving it credence is probably not a good long-term strategy.

I appreciate that E.D., unlike so many gay marriage proponents, recognizes that religious liberties are at risk from the march of gay marriage rights, and that this really does involve a conflict of rights claims. At some point, this really is a zero sum game. The usual cry that goes up from gay rights backers is that no pastor is going to be forced to marry a gay couple or be censored if he preaches against homosexuality, so there's no problem at all. That's simply untrue. I don't think, though, that E.D. fully understands (yet) how much of a rollback in religious liberty is at stake in this fight. It's one thing if the boundaries of gay rights are set by statute, as in the DC case. It's another if they are set by a court in a constitutional case. In the former, exemptions for religious organizations can be carved out -- but if the Supreme Court decides that gay marriage is a constitutional right, then religious organizations will be given much less room to move, and there's nothing they will be able to do about it.

I strongly encourage you to read Chai R. Feldblum's paper on the conflict between gay rights and religious liberty. Feldblum is a Georgetown Law professor, a lesbian and a gay rights activist. She was also raised in an Orthodox Jewish home, so she understands the issue from both sides. Here are relevant excerpts:

Nell Scovell, one of the few women ever to work as a writer on David Letterman's show, tells how it was. Excerpt:

Without naming names or digging up decades-old dirt, let's address the pertinent questions. Did Dave hit on me? No. Did he pay me enough extra attention that it was noted by another writer? Yes. Was I aware of rumors that Dave was having sexual relationships with female staffers? Yes. Was I aware that other high-level male employees were having sexual relationships with female staffers? Yes. Did these female staffers have access to information and wield power disproportionate to their job titles? Yes. Did that create a hostile work environment? Yes. Did I believe these female staffers were benefiting professionally from their personal relationships? Yes. Did that make me feel demeaned? Completely. Did I say anything at the time? Sadly, no.

Here's what I did: I walked away from my dream job. The show picked up my option after 13 weeks; then, about two months later, while looking for a nicer apartment, I realized I didn't want to commit to a yearlong lease. I'd seen enough to know that I was not going to thrive professionally in that workplace. And although there were various reasons for that, sexual politics did play a major part.

It's unfair to other women, obviously, and it can also be unfair to men working on the same professional level as the women. It corrupts the office culture. As much as I chafe against political correctness, I have to say that it's a very good thing, on balance, that this sort of thing is generally not tolerated in offices anymore, at least at responsible companies (that would not include Worldwide Pants, obviously).

The New Yorker's David Grann explains why the new statement by Cameron Todd Willingham's ex-wife Stacy Kuykendall, who claimed over the weekend that the death row inmate confessed to killing their children in her last jailhouse meeting with him before his execution, is not worth taking seriously. Along those lines, here's my Sunday newspaper column about the Willingham case. Excerpt:

[Texas Gov. Rick] Perry is plainly afraid that his own investigators will discover that the state likely put a blameless man to death. But what is he afraid of? Political fallout? What is mere politics when the credibility of a system that might have killed an innocent man - and might yet kill other innocents - is at issue? Our skittish governor has taken to calling Willingham a "monster." Even if he was, we put men to death for their deeds, not their dispositions. He needed killin' is no rationale for execution.

A real leader - a brave and honorable one - would want to know the truth, so that if evidence requires it, he and others responsible for Willingham's death could make restitution and repent for shedding the blood of a blameless man railroaded to his execution. If hard-hearted Perry is so certain of Willingham's guilt, why object to an investigation?

More importantly, if Willingham was wrongly put to death, all decent capital punishment supporters should want strict measures taken to ensure that this catastrophe never happens again. If we are going to have the death penalty, we have the solemn duty to use it responsibly. Right? Surely we Texans aren't the kind of people so enamored of retribution that the actual guilt or innocence of those executed in our names is of no real concern.

This is not only a problem for Rick Perry. We live in a democracy. It's on all of us. If Texas really did kill an innocent man, that's a terrible tragedy. But if Texas and its governor lack the courage to face the truth and deal squarely with it, the tragic act will be magnified by deep and lasting disgrace, and we will all stand condemned by our collective moral cowardice.

It's much harder to live with painful truths than with comforting lies.

My Dallas Morning News column today (which for some reason is not available online) blasts Texas Gov. Rick Perry for effectively shutting down the investigation into the execution of Cameron Todd Willingham, just as the state's forensic science panel was about to hear an expert report blasting the science used to condemn Willingham to death for the alleged arson deaths of his children. In the column, I don't assume that Willingham was innocent, only that there is reason to believe that he might have been railroaded to his death. My point in the piece is that both the governor and the polity he leads should want to get to the bottom of the Willingham story, because if he really was executed on a faulty interpretation of the evidence, we should want to know that so we can close loopholes in the application of the death penalty. I find it cowardly that the governor flat-out doesn't want to know the truth -- even though a further investigation might well vindicate his actions in executing Willingham. What really makes me angry is the decision he's making not to know -- and that it involves a matter of life and death. It's also true that the only people in Texas who seem to think this is a big deal are people who are already against the death penalty, and journalists. My gut feeling is that Perry understands the electorate well. People want the death penalty more than they want to be sure we execute the truly guilty.

Because I don't assume Willingham's innocence, I stand by that column even though The Dallas Morning News reported today that the case is more complicated than death penalty opponents have acknowledged. For one thing, Craig Beyler, the arson investigator whose recent report was so critical of the methods used to condemn Willingham, only says arson wasn't proved; he doesn't say that the evidence rules out arson. For another, David Grann's famous New Yorker story about Willingham, which has made this case one of national interest, made a pretty egregious omission of fact that makes Willingham out to be more noble than he actually was in his last moments. From today's DMN story:

Stacy soon had her final encounter with her ex. This time he was strapped to a gurney in the death chamber. She was watching as he spoke.

"The only statement I want to make is that I am an innocent man - convicted of a crime I did not commit," Willingham began. "I have been persecuted for 12 years for something I did not do. From God's dust I came and to dust I will return - so the earth shall become my throne."

The New Yorker ended its Willingham story there.

In fact, though, Willingham kept talking, first bidding farewell to people he identified only as "road dog" and "Gabby."

Then he raised one middle finger to the mother of his dead children and said, "I hope you rot in hell, bitch." The cursing became more vile from there.

At 6:13 p.m., the lethal injection began flowing, and by 6:20 p.m. he was dead. His last words were obscenities.

I appreciate very much this story in today's paper, bringing more light to the Willingham saga. Texans need to know the truth here, no matter where it leads. As I said in my column, if he really did kill his daughters, Willingham deserved to die. Obviously Willingham's being a nasty man doesn't make him guilty of murder, but it does tell us not to be so quick to make a hero out of this guy. Gov. Perry's been saying that Willingham was a "monster," and for all I know, Perry is correct. But being a monster is not the same thing as being a murderer -- though his ex-wife said today that he was both, and (for the first time) that he confessed to her that he killed their daughters to keep her from leaving him. Excerpt from Stacy Kuykendall's essay from today's Fort Worth Star-Telegram:

He asked me if I remembered the last time we had gotten into a fight and he hit me. I told him yes when I was holding Amber. He asked if I remembered what I had told him that I was going to do after the first of the year. I said that I was going to divorce you. He said the night before the fire we got in to an argument and you had said it again that you were going to divorce me. I told him yes I did say that. He told me that he believed I was going to but he couldn't let that happen. Todd told me that it was stupid but it was like an obsession. He said if I didn't have my girls I couldn't leave him and that I could never have Amber or the twins with anyone else but him. He told me he was sorry and that he hoped that I could forgive him one day. He said once again I have no right to ask you for a life sentence but Stacy no one wants to die. He said he had a lot of people fighting for him and that he would die saying that he was innocent. I looked at Todd and I told him that you are right no one wants to die and neither did my three daughters. I stood up walked out and I never looked back.

Of course, the only person who could contradict her story, which to my knowledge she has for some reason never told in this detail until now, is dead. Why did she only reveal this after the case became a big problem for the Texas governor? I'm not accusing her of anything, but I don't understand why she didn't reveal this information until now, and I don't understand the logic behind the idea that Stacy couldn't leave if she didn't have her children. I understand a vengeful husband trying to punish his wife by killing their children. Anyway, this is a bad case. I think we'd all be better off if Willingham, murderer or falsely accused innocent, were in prison without possibility of parole.

A Texas reader writes:

I poked around your Beliefnet writings to see if you'd written about this issue. It came to a head for my family Monday night, when our second daughter was born. One of the first things the nurses at [the hospital] proposed to do was put antibiotics in her eyes. I'm familiar with the practice -- it used to be silver nitrate, to prevent blindness from syphilis. Now it's erythromicin, and the target is chlamydia. Having declined all the other interventions -- Vitamin K injection, heel sticks for glucose and PKU, etc. -- on the crunchy idea that healthy kids' bodies shouldn't be burdened, I said no. They told me it's a Class B misdemeanor to refuse the treatment. I politely said no again, and thanked them for the information. Is it really a crime to treat a healthy baby ... like a healthy baby? I'm scanning the statutes, and so far haven't located what the Legislature did this year. Our previous two births presented no such issue. So far, there's been no knock at our house. Yet I'm wondering what I'll do if a summons shows up, with no spare funds for fines or legal representation. Are there any good attorneys who'd like to make an issue of this on my behalf?

Do any of you have advice for this reader? Please post it.

Ta-Nehisi Coates, writing about the Cameron Todd Willingham case, in which there is reason to believe the State of Texas railroaded an innocent man to his death, makes an observation that sums up why I oppose the death penalty: Texas...

Alex Massie, in dispensing wise advice to Roman Polanski defenders to just shut their mouths because they're not covering themselves with glory, unearths this foul remark from Polanski, made in an interview a year after he fled his guilty plea...

This is absolutely infuriating: Gov. Rick Perry has replaced the head of a state commission that is investigating a questionable finding of arson in the case that led to the 2004 execution of Cameron Todd Willingham, just as the commission...

Well, the cultural elite in Hollywood and in Europe is going to the barricades to defend Roman Polanski. The phrasing here is very telling: Meanwhile, the international outcry for Polanski's release radiated from its epicenter in Zurich, where red "Free...

I, for one, am very pleased that lecherous filmmaker Roman Polanski has learned this weekend that you can't outrun the long arm of the law. He was arrested in Zurich on an outstanding US warrant from 31 years ago. In...

Last time you heard from the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals was probably when Presiding Judge Sharon Keller refused to hear a last-minute appeal from an inmate set to be executed that night, because the office closed at five. Tough...

Steve Chapman asks a reasonable question: Opponents of same-sex marriage reject it on religious and moral grounds but also on practical ones. If we let homosexuals marry, they believe, a parade of horribles will follow--the weakening of marriage as an...

In the Dallas suburb of Irving, a federal judge has ordered the locals to change their political system to implement single-member districts -- this, to remedy the alleged injustice of having no Hispanic members on the city council, despite having...

Again, I don't believe in the concept of hate crimes. I believe in crimes. But if you are a believer in hate crimes as a legitimate concept, then let's hear you call for the hate-crimes hammer to come down hard...

From Camille's latest Salon column, in which she answers letters from readers: I am conservative politically, yet I see the profound weaknesses in the movement. One thing from the liberal side of thinking that I struggle with is the concept...

George F. Will, on the Ricci decision: Scalia, concurring separately, said Monday's ruling "merely postpones the evil day" on which the court must decide "whether, or to what extent," existing disparate-impact law conflicts with the 14th Amendment guarantee of equal...

SCOTUS has ruled that the city of New Haven was wrong to discriminate against white firefighters. Excerpt: The Supreme Court ruled Monday that white firefighters in New Haven, Conn., were unfairly denied promotions because of their race, reversing a decision...

The phrase "unelected judges" has been used for a while as a pejorative on the right; it's supposed to imply powerful people with little accountability who reshape law according to their own shadowy agendas, and while it has some basis...

I've set a task for myself, here, this week. Some say it can't be done, but I believe it can: I want to post at least one thing that the left and the right can agree on, and come together...

This morning, I heard Andrew Sullivan say something wise and true on the Diane Rehm Show. The discussion was about empathy, courts and Sotomayor. A caller who identified himself as a white male Obama voter said he was troubled by...

Again, I am not a fan of Sonia Sotomayor, given what little we know about her, but she seems like a run-of-the-mill liberal. Not my cup of Supreme Court tea, certainly, but elections have consequences, and we shouldn't be surprised,...

Look, I know that every accused criminal is entitled to a good defense. I get that. Still, how would you like to be Bennie House, a defense lawyer for a middle-aged suburban Dallas sleazeball convicted of infecting six women with...

Everybody knows that the Catholic League's Bill Donohue is a pugnacious defender of Catholics, and usually Catholic orthodoxy, in the public square. Which is what makes what he said to Steve Waldman about Sonia Sotomayor so interesting....

The NYT has a link to the entire speech in which she made the comment about the "wise Latina" reaching a "better" verdict than "a white male who hasn't lived that life." I'm still a bit troubled by the remark,...

"I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life." So said Judge Sotomayor at UC Berkeley in...

The Times reports from the announcement of Sotomayor's nomination this morning. Note that the nominee grew up in a Bronx public housing project: Judge Sotomayor's face tightened with emotion as the president introduced her. In the front row of the...

Whatever you think of Prop 8, I don't see how you can disagree with the decision of the California Supreme Court to uphold it. For a court to have nullified a constitutional amendment ratified by a popular vote, and to...

Dan Gilgoff says she might surprise both conservatives and liberals. Excerpt: On the crucial issue of abortion, however, Sotomayor--a U.S. appeals court judge who previously served as a federal district judge--is largely a blank slate. "Sotomayor has never directly decided...

This just in: President Obama will nominate Judge Sonia Sotomayor of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit as his first appointment to the court, officials said Tuesday, and has scheduled an announcement for 10:15 a.m. at...

Full disclosure: Eric Nelson is a friend and a colleague. But what happened to him shouldn't happen to my worst enemy. Last year, he was leaving a marathon here in Dallas, when an unlicensed, uninsured driver plowed into him and...

Got an e-mail from my friend David Rieff, who has given me permission to reproduce it here: Your post echoing the McGurn piece in the WSJ seemed spot on to me. I particularly enjoyed your story of the Cajun 'heretic!'...

I completely agree with Andrew Sullivan that hate crimes are a left-wing, thought-policing scam. Here's Andrew: The real reason for hate crime laws is not the defense of human beings from crime. There are already laws against that - and...

I hate to bring this up again, given how the combox chatter will go, but the next time somebody asks, rhetorically, how Adam and Steve's marriage is going to hurt anybody else, refer them to this National Public Radio story....

Ezra Levant, who was put through the legal wringer after his criticism of Islamic radicals offended Canada's "human rights" thugocracy, tells how he beat the p.c. censors -- censorious fanatics who forbade a Christian pastor from preaching or even e-mailing...

Lots and lots of buzz today about Sonia Sotomayor as a leading candidate to replace tha Soot. She's rocketing to the top of the pop charts. Here's what National Journal has to say about her. Excerpt: U.S. Court of Appeals...

Nothing personal, but from a political point of view, David Souter's imminent retirement does not change the philosophical balance of the Supreme Court. He was a consistent liberal, even though he was placed on the court by Bush 41. We...

Today the Supreme Court hears arguments in a reverse discrimination case brought by white New Haven firefighters. They scored well on a required test, but had their scores thrown out when, in the end, what supervisors deemed an insufficient number...

This is a shocker: A proposed bill that would take power from Catholic priests and bishops and turn it over to parishioners has sparked outrage among church leaders, criticism from opposition lawmakers and questions about its legality. "You cannot tell...

I've no doubt that the notorious Boston "street priest" Paul Shanley (now defrocked) was a bad man. He's sitting in prison for having sexually abused victims. But did he get a fair trial? Was his guilty verdict based in part...

Via Conor, this story is utterly insane. Excerpt: Tamera Jo Freeman was on a Frontier Airlines flight to Denver in 2007 when her two children began to quarrel over the window shade and then spilled a Bloody Mary into her...

I was pleased to see that President Bush commuted the sentences today of Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean, the two former Border Patrol agents who are in prison for shooting a Mexican drug dealer who was fleeing back across the...

A little later today, the Supreme Court will issue a ruling dealing with gun control laws and the Second Amendment, which should be interesting to read. Yesterday, of course, they issued a ruling on the death penalty, ruling that the...

The Supreme Court ruled this week overwhelmingly in favor of older workers in possible cases of age discrimination. From the New York Times: In the case on Thursday, Meacham v. Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory, No. 06-1505, the employer was faced...

The Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, recognized that terror detainees have the right to have their case reviewed in court. in: In other words, SCOTUS recognized that the right of habeas corpus extends to them. Here's the first reax...

I've been following today's news out of Maryland, where frustrated parents in Prince George's County are upset with the latest ultimatum over school vaccine requirements: vaccinate your children, or go to jail. The two shots most of the Maryland children...