ANDREW McCARTHY ROUNDUP OF TUCSON COLUMNS AND RESPONSES
NRO — The Corner
Sheriff Dupnik’s Irresponsibility, Case in Point[1]
Notice this exchange from Sheriff Dupnik’s interview[2] by Katie Couric (the one K-Lo cited[3] earlier):
Couric: But some people would say you are overly-politicizing this situation. That it appears at this juncture, although it’s unclear, that this was a lone, deranged individual that might not have been inspired to do this at all for political reasons.
Dupnik: We’ll never know the answer to that because there’s no way to get into the heart and soul of a person to find out what their true motive is. And second of all, we’re dealing with a very troubled personality.
One needn’t be an experienced law enforcement type to know two obvious things at this point:
(1) It is common for the state to prove motive in a criminal case, particularly a homicide case that requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt of specific intent to kill. Evidence of motive is not required, but prosecutors almost always try to prove it because juries want to be confident, before convicting someone of a serious crime, that they know why the defendant acted. And
(2) Loughner’s counsel will almost certainly go with an insanity defense, since there seems to be no other possible defense. That is, the case will be all about the operation of his mind: motive, intent, and capacity.
Insanity defenses try to suggest to juries that the defendant was so delusional he could not form cogent thoughts. Motive evidence can be powerful rebuttal. If there was a logic to why Loughner chose Rep. Giffords as a target — e.g., political positions she took that offended him — it could be critical to the prosecution’s ability to prove that he acted with criminal intent, to prove that his acts, while horrific, were purposeful. A juror doesn’t have to agree with a murderer’s motive in order to conclude that the murderer did have a motive that was tied to reality and was acting out of evil intent rather than out of a disconnection from reason. This could be the difference between conviction and a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity.
While I’m sure we’re all very impressed with Sheriff Dupnik’s thoughtful views on gun policy and rightwingers, his day job is law enforcement. A large element of that job is to maximize the chances that the guilty will be convicted (to say nothing of the duty to avoid prejudicing the jury pool). How does it help matters for him to be telling the media that, in his vast experience as an investigator, he has learned that we can never really know what motivates people to act? That motive evidence is sheer speculation? That in his opinion, Loughner is “a very troubled personality” — a statement that will surely be used by the defense to argue that even those running the investigation concluded that the defendant was insane?
It Loughner was non compos mentis, it will be his counsel’s job to establish that, and she will be given every opportunity to do so under criminal due process rules — rules that are especially generous in capital cases. Sheriff’s Dupnik’s role at this point is to keep his mouth shut and collect evidence, not run off at the mouth for the benefit of the defense. We shouldn’t be hearing anything from him unless and until charges are filed, and even then his comments should be limited to what is in the public record. If he wants to be a pundit, he ought to resign from law-enforcement and go be a pundit.
[2] http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/01/10/eveningnews/main7232585.shtml
________________
Re: Thank you for not packing heat[1]
Cliff,[2] I am a Pete King fan, but I have to part company with him on this one. I am not insensitive to his concerns — I was a “public servant” for over 20 years, and my family and I had to have a protective detail for a chunk of that time. The detail was due to a specific, credible threat. When there is such a threat, or even a less concrete threat, public officials get protection, as they should.
But let’s bear in mind four things. First, in our system, gun possession is constitutionally protected activity. Second, the vast majority of gun-owners in our country are law-abiding American citizens, and there is abundant reason to think that they actually make things safer.
Third, what we commonly call public servants are actually public representatives. Although they should “serve,” many of them are in politics to aggrandize themselves at our expense. Regardless of that, though, their actual job is to be our voice in government. Rep. King’s proposal would put another barrier between law-abiding American citizens and the elected officials who represent those citizens. The suggestion is that law-abiding Americans should be put to a choice between their right to petition government and their right to bear arms. In any other context but the Second Amendment, I daresay that requiring Americans to forfeit one right in order to exercise another would be rejected out of hand as unconstitutional.
Fourth, and finally, the people who would be a threat to our political representatives, like the people who might be a threat to me, are not law-abiding Americans. They are enemy operatives, criminals, or the mentally disturbed. As to the former, once you have crossed the Rubicon of plotting murder, you are not going to be backed up by a law that criminalizes carrying a weapon within a certain distance of your target. For the latter, the laws don’t matter.
That is, Rep. King’s proposal penalizes only the law-abiding, in a way that affects their fundamental rights, without having any effect on the people he is actually worried about — assassins and the deranged. I don’t think Americans should have to tolerate a situation in which their rights are circumscribed, through no fault of their own, by society’s lowest common denominator.
If one is really a public servant, threats come with the territory — which is why real service is so admirable. Fortunately, we have had very, very few instances in which public officials have been attacked. And I strongly suspect you will not see political officials resigning, or aspiring public officials choosing not to seek office, because they sense that our current protections are inadequate. I know the U.S. attorney’s offices have not had trouble finding prosecutors willing to do terrorism cases.
As Christina Green’s courageous grieving father observed, we are blessed to live in a free society, and the risk of terrible acts by bad or disturbed people is the price we pay. Of course if there are sensible ways to reduce risk, we should consider them. But if proposals don’t materially reduce the risk, we should not adopt them, even if the proponent’s heart is in the right place.
[1] http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/256883/re-thank-you-not-packing-heat-andrew-c-mccarthy
[2] http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/256870/thank-you-not-packing-heat-cliff-may
__________________
Thank You for Not Packing Heat[1]
Sane and reasonable people agree that political battles should be fought with ideas, principles, and words — not guns, bullets, and bombs. But in a nation of more than 300 million, it must be expected that at least a small minority will be neither sane nor reasonable.
With that in mind, Peter King, the new chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, and NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg this morning proposed federal legislation that would prevent people from knowingly bringing guns within 1,000 feet of an event at which members of Congress and federal judges are appearing. (This law also would apply to the president, the vice president, and members of the Cabinet but — unlike congressmen and judges — they have security details to protect them.)
This seems pretty commonsensical. It does not, in my view, compromise the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens. Even in the old West, cowboys hung up their guns when they entered a saloon.
Such a law will not be a panacea. Anyone carrying a gun openly at a political rally already draws attention. “Concealed carry” is unlawful without a permit in most states and, it goes without saying, lunatics and extremists don’t care what laws are on the books.
But if this can provide even a small measure of additional protection for public servants who are too often too vulnerable, it’s worth considering.
[1] http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/256870/thank-you-not-packing-heat-cliff-may
_______________________
K-Lo,[1] you’re right: law enforcement people are not supposed to do politics. There is some unavoidable policy-making that has to be done by sheriffs, police chiefs, district attorneys, etc. They have to decide, for example, how to allocate their finite resources, which means some kinds of crime are made high enforcement priorities, while others mightn’t be prosecuted at all. That’s a political choice, but it is very different from getting into the middle of — or, in Sheriff Dupnik’s case, stoking — a political debate over an offense that is the subject of an ongoing investigation.
The investigator’s job is to be as rigorously unaffected as possible by the public debate. You’re not expected to be completely objective — who could be objective about murder? But you have to tune out the noise and do your job, which is to figure out what happened and how to prove it convincingly. We don’t want law-enforcement people weighing in with their opinions about the case for the same reason that jurors get told to keep their thoughts to themselves until deliberations. Once you express an opinion, you have a natural interest in not being proved wrong.
That interest can affect and taint your fact-finding — and even if it doesn’t actually affect your fact-finding, there will be a public perception that it might have affected your fact-finding, which undermines the integrity of the investigation and eventual trial. That’s why the legal standard for recusal of a lawyer or judge from a case is “the appearance of impropriety.” As a society, we accept the legitimacy of rulings by our legal system because we believe they are fact-based, not the result of bias. If a law-enforcement officer’s biases appear to be affecting the process, the process is not legitimate — regardless of whether it happens to produce accurate results.
[1] http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/256869/sheriff-dupnik-andrew-c-mccarthy
_____________________
‘Maybe they could pass a law that would require that every child have an Uzi in their crib.’[1]
This is an honest question for law-enforcement types: Is it the job of a sheriff to be going on Katie Couric’s show[2] talking policy when there is a major investigation going on in his city? Never mind saying some of the most ridiculous and insulting things….
[2] http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/01/10/eveningnews/main7232585.shtml
Sheriff Dupnik’s Irresponsibility, Case in Point[1]
Notice this exchange from Sheriff Dupnik’s interview[2] by Katie Couric (the one K-Lo cited[3] earlier):
Couric: But some people would say you are overly-politicizing this situation. That it appears at this juncture, although it’s unclear, that this was a lone, deranged individual that might not have been inspired to do this at all for political reasons.
Dupnik: We’ll never know the answer to that because there’s no way to get into the heart and soul of a person to find out what their true motive is. And second of all, we’re dealing with a very troubled personality.
One needn’t be an experienced law enforcement type to know two obvious things at this point:
(1) It is common for the state to prove motive in a criminal case, particularly a homicide case that requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt of specific intent to kill. Evidence of motive is not required, but prosecutors almost always try to prove it because juries want to be confident, before convicting someone of a serious crime, that they know why the defendant acted. And
(2) Loughner’s counsel will almost certainly go with an insanity defense, since there seems to be no other possible defense. That is, the case will be all about the operation of his mind: motive, intent, and capacity.
Insanity defenses try to suggest to juries that the defendant was so delusional he could not form cogent thoughts. Motive evidence can be powerful rebuttal. If there was a logic to why Loughner chose Rep. Giffords as a target — e.g., political positions she took that offended him — it could be critical to the prosecution’s ability to prove that he acted with criminal intent, to prove that his acts, while horrific, were purposeful. A juror doesn’t have to agree with a murderer’s motive in order to conclude that the murderer did have a motive that was tied to reality and was acting out of evil intent rather than out of a disconnection from reason. This could be the difference between conviction and a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity.
While I’m sure we’re all very impressed with Sheriff Dupnik’s thoughtful views on gun policy and rightwingers, his day job is law enforcement. A large element of that job is to maximize the chances that the guilty will be convicted (to say nothing of the duty to avoid prejudicing the jury pool). How does it help matters for him to be telling the media that, in his vast experience as an investigator, he has learned that we can never really know what motivates people to act? That motive evidence is sheer speculation? That in his opinion, Loughner is “a very troubled personality” — a statement that will surely be used by the defense to argue that even those running the investigation concluded that the defendant was insane?
It Loughner was non compos mentis, it will be his counsel’s job to establish that, and she will be given every opportunity to do so under criminal due process rules — rules that are especially generous in capital cases. Sheriff’s Dupnik’s role at this point is to keep his mouth shut and collect evidence, not run off at the mouth for the benefit of the defense. We shouldn’t be hearing anything from him unless and until charges are filed, and even then his comments should be limited to what is in the public record. If he wants to be a pundit, he ought to resign from law-enforcement and go be a pundit.
[2] http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/01/10/eveningnews/main7232585.shtml
Re: Thank you for not packing heat[1]
Cliff,[2] I am a Pete King fan, but I have to part company with him on this one. I am not insensitive to his concerns — I was a “public servant” for over 20 years, and my family and I had to have a protective detail for a chunk of that time. The detail was due to a specific, credible threat. When there is such a threat, or even a less concrete threat, public officials get protection, as they should.
But let’s bear in mind four things. First, in our system, gun possession is constitutionally protected activity. Second, the vast majority of gun-owners in our country are law-abiding American citizens, and there is abundant reason to think that they actually make things safer.
Third, what we commonly call public servants are actually public representatives. Although they should “serve,” many of them are in politics to aggrandize themselves at our expense. Regardless of that, though, their actual job is to be our voice in government. Rep. King’s proposal would put another barrier between law-abiding American citizens and the elected officials who represent those citizens. The suggestion is that law-abiding Americans should be put to a choice between their right to petition government and their right to bear arms. In any other context but the Second Amendment, I daresay that requiring Americans to forfeit one right in order to exercise another would be rejected out of hand as unconstitutional.
Fourth, and finally, the people who would be a threat to our political representatives, like the people who might be a threat to me, are not law-abiding Americans. They are enemy operatives, criminals, or the mentally disturbed. As to the former, once you have crossed the Rubicon of plotting murder, you are not going to be backed up by a law that criminalizes carrying a weapon within a certain distance of your target. For the latter, the laws don’t matter.
That is, Rep. King’s proposal penalizes only the law-abiding, in a way that affects their fundamental rights, without having any effect on the people he is actually worried about — assassins and the deranged. I don’t think Americans should have to tolerate a situation in which their rights are circumscribed, through no fault of their own, by society’s lowest common denominator.
If one is really a public servant, threats come with the territory — which is why real service is so admirable. Fortunately, we have had very, very few instances in which public officials have been attacked. And I strongly suspect you will not see political officials resigning, or aspiring public officials choosing not to seek office, because they sense that our current protections are inadequate. I know the U.S. attorney’s offices have not had trouble finding prosecutors willing to do terrorism cases.
As Christina Green’s courageous grieving father observed, we are blessed to live in a free society, and the risk of terrible acts by bad or disturbed people is the price we pay. Of course if there are sensible ways to reduce risk, we should consider them. But if proposals don’t materially reduce the risk, we should not adopt them, even if the proponent’s heart is in the right place.
[1] http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/256883/re-thank-you-not-packing-heat-andrew-c-mccarthy
[2] http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/256870/thank-you-not-packing-heat-cliff-may
__________________
Thank You for Not Packing Heat[1]
Sane and reasonable people agree that political battles should be fought with ideas, principles, and words — not guns, bullets, and bombs. But in a nation of more than 300 million, it must be expected that at least a small minority will be neither sane nor reasonable.
With that in mind, Peter King, the new chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, and NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg this morning proposed federal legislation that would prevent people from knowingly bringing guns within 1,000 feet of an event at which members of Congress and federal judges are appearing. (This law also would apply to the president, the vice president, and members of the Cabinet but — unlike congressmen and judges — they have security details to protect them.)
This seems pretty commonsensical. It does not, in my view, compromise the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens. Even in the old West, cowboys hung up their guns when they entered a saloon.
Such a law will not be a panacea. Anyone carrying a gun openly at a political rally already draws attention. “Concealed carry” is unlawful without a permit in most states and, it goes without saying, lunatics and extremists don’t care what laws are on the books.
But if this can provide even a small measure of additional protection for public servants who are too often too vulnerable, it’s worth considering.
[1] http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/256870/thank-you-not-packing-heat-cliff-may
_______________________
K-Lo,[1] you’re right: law enforcement people are not supposed to do politics. There is some unavoidable policy-making that has to be done by sheriffs, police chiefs, district attorneys, etc. They have to decide, for example, how to allocate their finite resources, which means some kinds of crime are made high enforcement priorities, while others mightn’t be prosecuted at all. That’s a political choice, but it is very different from getting into the middle of — or, in Sheriff Dupnik’s case, stoking — a political debate over an offense that is the subject of an ongoing investigation.
The investigator’s job is to be as rigorously unaffected as possible by the public debate. You’re not expected to be completely objective — who could be objective about murder? But you have to tune out the noise and do your job, which is to figure out what happened and how to prove it convincingly. We don’t want law-enforcement people weighing in with their opinions about the case for the same reason that jurors get told to keep their thoughts to themselves until deliberations. Once you express an opinion, you have a natural interest in not being proved wrong.
That interest can affect and taint your fact-finding — and even if it doesn’t actually affect your fact-finding, there will be a public perception that it might have affected your fact-finding, which undermines the integrity of the investigation and eventual trial. That’s why the legal standard for recusal of a lawyer or judge from a case is “the appearance of impropriety.” As a society, we accept the legitimacy of rulings by our legal system because we believe they are fact-based, not the result of bias. If a law-enforcement officer’s biases appear to be affecting the process, the process is not legitimate — regardless of whether it happens to produce accurate results.
[1] http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/256869/sheriff-dupnik-andrew-c-mccarthy
_____________________
‘Maybe they could pass a law that would require that every child have an Uzi in their crib.’[1]
This is an honest question for law-enforcement types: Is it the job of a sheriff to be going on Katie Couric’s show[2] talking policy when there is a major investigation going on in his city? Never mind saying some of the most ridiculous and insulting things….
[2] http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/01/10/eveningnews/main7232585.shtml
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