As a student of the visual, I could not help but be startled by this photograph on the front page of Sunday's Boston Globe. It reminds me of so many other incarnations of two-dimensional larger-than-life Leaders. Engrave his head in stone and he could be from the Soviet era rather than the 21st century digital revolution. Put his voice over a megaphone and blast him through the public squares, he could be from, well, just about any other fundamentalist or totalitarian regime that aches to get inside the head of the people, to control thought and action. That the caption of this photo is "Bush Brings Faith to Foreign Aid" only furthers the parallel. This is not an image of a leader who seeks to persuade through rational discourse or democratic dialogue. It is an image of a leader who lords over the crowd and says "follow me, because I say so." Like the discourse of religious fundamentalism, there is nothing about this image of the "leader of the free world" that implies "freedom."
We welcome Susan Burgess, a political scientist and legal scholar who teaches at Ohio University, as the newest contributor to our blog. Susan and I met years ago at a wonderful short course on law and popular culture hosted by the American Political Science Association. She gave a talk called "Who's Your Daddy? Legitimacy, Parody and Soap Operas in Contemporary Constitutional Discourse," which is forthcoming in the Law, Culture and Humanities journal. Her humor and insight into all things law and culture precede her. We are very glad to have her aboard.
Boulder County Colorado district attorney Mary T. Lacey yesterday asked that the arrest warrant against John M. Karr in the Jon Benet Ramsey case be dismissed. “No evidence has developed, other than his own repeated admissions, to place Mr. Carr at the scene of the crime,” Lacey stated. “Mr. Karr was not the source of the DNA found on the underwear of JonBenet Ramsey.”
What may be most remarkable about this latest twist in the long-festering case is the district attorney’s forthrightness and honesty in dismissing Karr’s multiple confessions to the crime. Too often, confession is considered the “queen of proofs,” evidence that closes the case. It’s impossible to estimate how many of those convicted and incarcerated on the basis of confession alone may be innocent—but surely some are, such as the Washington pig farmer Paul Ingram accused by his daughters of the most bizarre crimes—none of which was ever supported by a shred of material evidence—whose case was detailed in Lawrence Wright’s Remembering Satan. Psychologist Richard Ofshe, who has done much probative work on false confessions, quickly established that one could inculcate nearly any false memory one chose in this particularly suggestible suspect. And there are many others who bizarrely convince themselves that they were implicated in crimes they had nothing to do with.
It’s enough to give credence to Sigmund Freud’s apparently bizarre note on criminology called “Criminals From a Sense of Guilt,” where he argues that the reason people commit crimes is that they feel guilty, and want to ensure that they will be punished. This effectively turns the whole criminal justice system on its head.
The Boulder district attorney has taken much flak in this case, but I'd point out that she had the good sense to understand that confessions need some kind of confirmation (in German procedure, a court is not supposed to accept a suspect’s confession unless corroborated by other evidence). Alas, that’s not the standard operating procedure in the U.S.. In most instances, once the police interrogators have got a confession, the suspect is doomed. Not only does this lead to false convictions, it lets the truly guilty escape. Getting confessions comes to appear the easy way to do police work, and that can lead to less than probative results. Confessions should be used to open cases, not to close them.
Peter Brooks
As if things around Boston aren't hot enough, state legislatures are actually considering taxing non-Bostonians who tie up traffic by causing accidents during rush hour. The Boston Globe reported today that elected officials are actually considering assessing a surcharge "of several hundred dollars" on any out-of-town automobile commuter whose at-fault accident frustrates what should be a well-oiled commute into downtown Boston. The article reports that with "Boston property taxes up 58 percent since 2002 and the city's cost of doing business rising, the proposal is finding support from people who say money should be raised from those who use city services [tow trucks, ambulances, etc.] but don't pay for them."
With our out-of-town Governor unclear on the concept of avoiding racist speech when talking about one of the costliest (and now fatal) public works projects this nation has ever seen (see coverage yesterday on Mitt Romney's use of the term "tar baby" to describe the Big Dig), Massachusetts doesn't need any more controversy to stir up and divide its citizens. How would a proposal like this work anyway? A Boston-based ambulance arrives at the scene of an accident in one of our newly-built but leaky and collapsing tunnels, and the Boston ambulance driver says to the out-of-towner with a sprained ankle and whiplash: "for the price of driving on our roads and because you have caused a traffic snarl and are not from around here, your ride will cost $300 more than a native Bostonian." How could the out-of-towner respond? "Well, I used be from around here. In fact, I lived in Boston for 12 years while you were building this mess. I suffered through the detours and closed roads and only moved away a couple of years ago, and I did that because the schools were only getting worse and my kid was about to start kindergarten."
It seems to me there are a lot of good reasons (finances aside) not to enact a law like this one. The common demoninator in our public life (and public laws) may seem like money, but it is really community. This proposal may raise money, but it will divide and alienate people. It raises the NIMBY syndrome to new levels. It is a bad idea.
I posted on this issue at the new Georgetown Law Faculty Blog, which is here.