Recently in Law Category

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 justice is essentially sorcery, and there will be people who say that we can perfect it, that we can close the loop-holes. They're wrong. The problem isn't with loopholes -- it's with us. We are fallible. Conservatives, more than anyone, should know that--it undergirds their entire philosophy. They don't think government can perfect much of anything. What makes them think we can perfect murder?

I don't believe the anti-capital punishment argument based on the inherent dignity of human beings. I share that belief in human dignity, but believe that more often than not it can be upheld by executing those who have murdered. I don't lose any sleep worrying about killers being killed by the state. If Willingham, who was a bad man and a completely unsympathetic character, really did murder his children, he deserves to die.

But we don't execute people for being wicked. We execute them for first-degree murder. What I do worry about is our ability to administer the ultimate penalty justly. There's a joke that says Texas is a place where "He needed killin'" is taken as a valid reason for shooting somebody. There's a lot of truth in that jest, though. I find it hard to trust a system of justice run by men like prosecutor John Jackson, who were key in sending Willingham to his death. Watch these clips from Nightline. The first one sets up the case; the second one includes Jackson's damning commentary, including his statement that Willingham was "very likely" a devil worshiper because he liked heavy metal music, and that that's evidence that he killed his children. John Jackson is now a senior judge. How would you feel if you or one of your children had to stand in that man's court, falsely accused of murder, or of anything else?:

Last week, two days before the state forensic fire panel was set to hear expert testimony undermining the Willingham verdict, Gov. Rick Perry dismissed members of the panel (as is his right), postponing the investigation indefinitely.

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...

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