Where I Stand -- Mike O'Callaghan: Politics and court decisions that send wrong messages

LET'S GET READY FOR A FLOOD of recommendations to cure all of our social ills. Yeah, it's a major election year, and the television and radio stations will be pumping out dozens of simple solutions for complex problems. Already, we are being told how to run prisons and how to keep kids from shooting other kids in our schools. So far, all we have been fed is a low-grade baloney, and things will only get worse as desperate candidates grasp for issues that will help them close the gap on their opponents.

Strange as it may seem, very few of these gimmicks being offered come from incumbents who know the power their offices have or don't have. Newly elected public officials should first learn the powers they don't have and then learn about the powers the office has according to law. The same should hold true for those elected officials now striving to gain a new public office. There's nothing more sickening than listening to a candidate for a legislative office explaining how he or she will take actions that only the executive branch has power to perform.

Generally speaking, the people seeking retention in law enforcement or judicial positions have enough knowledge not to make claims they can't carry out. There are several training facilities available for them, such as the National Judicial College and law enforcement courses, that help them become better judges and law enforcement people. The same can't be said for legislators who become instantly wise the moment they are elected. It's only later they learn, often the hard way, that they can't carry out many of their wild campaign promises.

There is a new book that I believe every person in a judicial position should take time to read. Susan Estrich has written "Getting Away With Murder: How Politics Is Destroying the Criminal Justice System." The first chapter is "Politics and the Reasonable Man" and sets the tone for the entire book. Yes, politics do slip into the conduct of both juries and some decisions by judges. However, the chapter "Send Them a Message" reminded me of something I wrote about four years ago. Estrich used the O.J. Simpson travesty as one example. "Send them a message" were the words defense attorney Johnnie Cochran used successfully before Simpson's jury. The message he wanted sent was their protest against racism, as they, as minorities, see it.

Estrich goes on to tell her readers:

"The criminal trials that have defined not only Los Angeles in the 1990s but the nation as a whole are easier for many of us to understand as political statements than as applications of law to facts. The Simi Valley jury's acquittal of the four police officers charged with beating Rodney King and the verdicts that acquitted Damian Williams of the most serious charges arising out of his near-murder of Reginald Denny, the white trucker beaten on the eve of the Los Angeles riots, make more sense as political judgments than as factual or evidentiary ones. The most generous thing that can be said of these juries is not that they think it's reasonable to beat up people of a different race -- not that they think smashing a man's head with a brick, which is what Damian Williams did, is not a deadly threat to him -- but that they were addressing altogether different issues. The Simi Valley verdict can be seen as a message of support to the police department, in much the same way the Simpson jury can be read as a vote of no-confidence. The Damian Williams verdict is understandable as a call for a truce, not a judgment about the lethal potential of bricks or the acceptability of nearly killing innocent white people. In each case, acquittal can be seen as a political decision to flout the law."

The author points out that this kind of bad politics also happens in some lesser cases, such as the acquittal of Washington, D.C., Mayor Marion Barry, who was cleared of 13 out of 14 counts despite strong evidence including video tapes of him smoking crack cocaine.

Federal Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson later said he believed four of the jurors were biased and had lied when being examined by lawyers. "They had their own agendas," he told some law students, and "would not convict under any circumstances." The judge, with years of legal experience, said he had "never seen a stronger government case." So much for justice.

As you can see, the combination of political game playing and jurors trying to send their "message" can become a deadly concoction for the lady holding the scales of justice. In the long run, the results can only hurt all of us who do our best to be law-observing citizens.

Tomorrow, we will see how some of these problems also show up in other courts, including those in Nevada.

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