This post is something I began thinking about writing on the day two law enforcement officers were killed in Minkler and another was wounded by a deranged individual who planned their deaths, as well as his own.  This post is about my worship of law enforcement.

People who know me — and particularly the  many law enforcement officers who, I’m told, “don’t like” me and call me “the shackle guy” because of my motions to get shackles off children in juvenile court — will be surprised to hear that I’m writing about my worship of law enforcement.  They will, perhaps, be expecting a trick.  A play on words.

They will expect this because I frequently rail against law enforcement agencies and officers in my postings on this and my more generalized criminal defense blog, Probable Cause: The Legal Blog with the Really Low Standard of Review.

While there is no trick per se in what I’m writing here, those expecting a play on words are neither entirely wrong, nor entirely right, as you will soon see.

Scott Greenfield, as usual, provides an assist in my thinking on this issue.  Although I began thinking about this post, as I said, after hearing about the Minkler shooting, I have had a hard time trying to figure out how to put my thoughts into words.  I’ve ruminated on it a great deal — it seems to me almost constantly — from then until now.  How can I write what I think in a way that gets the message across, without upsetting those who have suffered a great loss, those who sympathize with those who have suffered a great loss, and without causing those whom I at least partly exist to serve to think that I do not, in fact, at least partly exist to serve them?

I worry about this because no small part of what I have said and have to say is, indeed, a complaint about law enforcement agencies and officers.  In fact, it extends beyond them to all others who claim to aim to uphold the law.

For as Scott notes,

There are two sides in our system, the prosecution and defense.  While those of us who practice criminal defense, and those Americans who appreciate that such a thing as the defense exists, extol the virtues of our side of the equation, this op-ed [the op-ed to which Scott referred is here] and the reactions to it serve as a painful reminder that the more “official” voices of the system barely tolerate our existence.  We are, at best, a necessary evil.

And it is hard to know how to reach out in sympathy — as I have wanted to do over the Minkler shootings — to those who consider you to be the embodiment of, at best, a necessary evil.  For I am necessary, but I am not evil.  To quote Scott again,

We do honest work.  We are as much a part of the system as any prosecutor.  Our contribution is vital, for without us there can be no system.  Contrary to the attacks of the ignorant and angry, we do not support crime or terror.

To those who worship law enforcement, we are as necessary as law enforcement agencies and officers. prosecutors and judges.  It is not a huge exaggeration to say that we are Guardians of the Justice System.  The job of the police — and by that I mean city police, county sheriffs, state police, or any of the others we typically think of as “law enforcement” — is to arrest those they believe have broken the law.  The job of prosecutors is to make some evaluation of this, hopefully with an eye towards seeking justice and dismissing those cases where there is signfiicant doubt, but to go on to seek the punishment of those who they believe have broken the law.  My job is to make sure the justice system works.

I stand up and say, “Okay, Officer.  Okay, Prosecutor.  You think this person has committed a crime.  Prove it.  Beyond any reasonable doubt, prove it.  Because the last thing we want to do is to take away someone’s life, liberty and pursuit of happiness erroneously.”

Contrary to the words of Police Chief Jerry Dyer in today’s Fresno Bee, defense attorneys do not “attack police and cloud the issue.”  There is no “smoke” that jurors must “see through.”  Law enforcement officers sometimes do things they should not do.  They sometimes lie.  They sometimes steal.  They sometimes make up stories.  They sometimes arrest the wrong people.  Defense attorneys do not “attack police and cloud the issue.”

Just like the police believe — at least many of them believe — that our clients are actually guilty and have been justly arrested and prosecuted, so, too, do we sometimes believe the police have made mistakes.

We might not always believe they have mistakenly arrested the wrong person; we might be challenging them for having trampled the Constitution and the Law in the process of investigating or arresting.  As I said above, though, we partly exist to serve our clients.  We also exist to protect our system of justice, to ensure the Constitution and the Law are not casualties even in the pursuit of the guilty.

This is the system that centuries — centuries! — of thought, experimentation, experience and more thought have gone into building.  It is the legacy our Founders left us.  It is the bedrock of the greatness of the United States.  We essentially invented the system we now have.  Nations that have grown up after us have modeled themselves on us and our system of justice.  Older nations have incorporated some of our inventions to build a better justice system than that they already had.  And the insertion of criminal defense attorneys into the mix was not a necessary evil; it was simply necessary.

Jurors are not tasked with seeing through the “smoke” of defense attorneys who “attack police and cloud the issue.”  They are tasked with making a determination about the facts.  Did the State prove beyond a reasonable doubt that our clients did that which they are accused of doing.  Defense attorneys raise doubts.  When we do our jobs well, when we have raised every doubt for consideration, and those doubts have been carefully considered, then — and only then — can we be sure we are not convicting innocent people.

This job and ours — the job of the jurors and of defense attorneys — is complicated, however, by the worship of law enforcement officers which frequently supplants the worship of law enforcement.  The officers are on the front lines.  As the Minkler incident reminds us, they risk their lives to do their part to uphold most of our laws.  To some extent — to some very minor extent — I risk my life doing my part, too (after all, some of the people I represent are murderers, rapists, or otherwise nasty people).  But it pales in comparison to the risks they are exposed to daily.  And, more than that, some of what they do is an attempt to protect my sorry ass from even the minor risks I face while doing my job.  So it’s perhaps understandable that we honor them so much.  They deserve to be honored!

But honoring officers should not be confused with worshiping them.  They are not gods.  They are human beings.  Human beings who are often under a great deal of stress.  And human beings under a great deal of stress sometimes do things they should not do.  Sometimes they lose track of their goals, their jobs, their raison d’être. When they do, they should be as accountable — if not more so — as those they are tasked with investigating and arresting.  But we do not rein in those we worship.  How can a god sin?  This is why we must avoid worshiping them even while we properly honor them.

This is where some of my friends — and even my own wife — have been confused.  They mistakenly believe that I rail against police officers when, in fact, I rail only against the sins of police officers.  In fact, much of the time, I’m not even doing that: I’m simply doing my job of challenging them, making them prove that what they believe is true is actually true, and trying to make them prove it beyond a reasonable doubt, trying to break through the worship of these heroes — and they are heroes, just not gods! — to make sure their beliefs about my clients are proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

I do this because it is necessary.  I am necessary.  The police are necessary.  The prosecutors are necessary.  We all are necessary; almost none of us are evil.

I worship law enforcement, but while I value law enforcement officers who do their jobs and do them nobly, I do not worship law enforcement officers.  Law enforcement requires not just the investigation and arrest of people who commit crimes.  Law enforcement requires the enforcement of our laws regarding how people are investigated, how they are arrested, how they are “brought to Justice.”

As I have thought about how to write this post for more than a week now, I have mourned the loss of these officers who were killed doing their jobs.  I have thought about their families.  I have pondered how to express my thoughts so as to ensure that people who do not like what I do would not doubt the sincerity of my expression of sympathy.

Ultimately, I came to realize that the problem with what I want to say, what I want to do with my words here, is the same as the problem I confront in doing my job every time I defend people accused of crimes:  I worship law enforcement, which includes the enforcement of the laws that require someone like me to challenge law enforcement officers.

But that does not mean that I cannot also honor those officers.

I worship law enforcement.

Comments

• March 6, 2010, Miguel writes: Yes honor those officers! but why worship law enforcement when Jesus said at Mathew 4:10 to worship only Jehovah God!
• March 6, 2010, Ray writes: Well put, Rick. Seems people get carried away with the "adversarial" notion and simplistically take sides, imbalancing things from their good and designed order of complementary opposition. Kind of felt like you had been doing that, too, but I guess I misjudged you. It must be hard to appear fair when you're pushing hard on things to get them back on track. Reaching out to sympathize with and to honor your adversaries is a great way to enlist their help in bringing things back into balance. And a generally respectful thing to do. Caring and nuanced thinking like this makes me proud to be a friend.
• March 7, 2010, Abi Sutherland writes: If I were to suggest a possible thesis... I suspect that American society has become increasingly conflict-averse. It's true that there's a deep strain of anger in the public discourse, but it frightens even the people who are caught up in it. (And well it should, as the incident that kicked this post off illustrates.) The problem is that our society is founded, on a very deep level, on the principle of productive tension. The three arms of the federal government are supposed to produce good governance based on it. And yes, it is the essence of criminal trials. But that kind of tension requires both passion and dispassion. As you say, you have to strongly and energetically oppose the wrong actions, the incorrect arrests, the wrong conclusions, while still believing deeply in law enforcement and its value to society. But it's hard, in an emotional atmosphere, for people not to turn that into "do you like me? do you hate me?" Hard not to personalize it. I don't know what to do about this, not on a societal level. I do know that it frightens me that we aren't doing anything except digging deeper in. .-= Abi Sutherland´s last blog ..Semi-Occluded Light (Web) =-.
• March 7, 2010, capmotion writes: It is to be recalled that the concept of "necessary evil" was a term to describe government - it was deemed to be evil, sometimes a necessary one, sometimes an intolerable one, but always evil. Proactive policing was inimical to the scheme of the Framers, which is why they were evicted in complaint no. 10 of the Declaration, and they never sneaked back to these shores until after the War of Northern Aggression, when Lincoln proved that cries of "war" and "emergency" and "necessity," whether accurate or not, would invite eviscerations of constitutional and founding precepts. Proactive policing is the evil here, and there are unavenged/unpunished violations of people's rights daily, all across the fruited plain, by various levels and versions of the police, and that only occurs because a weak and uneducated public allows it. Jerry Dyer needs to note that "police" are not mentioned in the Constitution. Defense attorneys, judges, and juries are: they are the protectors of the public.
• March 7, 2010, Hank Delcore writes: Rick, I've wondered and worries about this same thing. I often feel hamstrung by the public discourse, which does seem to trap us into either going along with the worshipful attitude to policing or else be branded heartless and disloyal. It IS honorable to walk into dangerous situations every day, and some policemen lose their lives that way. But I'm grateful for the whole system, flaws and all, and the police are just one part. .-= Hank Delcore´s last blog ..Website Usability at Fresno State Library =-.

Related posts:

• Who is the King?: Sowing the Seeds of Disrespect for the Law
• Scaretistics
• You Will Respect Mah Authoritay!

The simple answer is that they’re numbers.

But you knew that.

In 2006 or 2007, like me, the public defenders of a juvenile justice court in Miami-Dade, Florida, got tired of seeing all their children brought to court in shackles.  They started running motions to have them unshackled.

Today, more than 95 percent of our child clients appear without chains and shackles before all four juvenile judges.  With more than 3,000 detained children having appeared in court since our first motion, we have had no incidents of a child injuring or attempting to injure anyone in court, and no detained child has escaped from the courtroom.  (Carlos Martinez, “Children in Chains: Why are Children in Florida Treated as Enemy Combatants?” (May-August 2007) National Legal Aid & Defender Association, vol. 29, no. 1, p. 10.)

Three-thousand unshackled children.  (Unshackled!  My G*d!  What is the world coming to?!)  Zero incidents of injury, attempted injury or escape.

California, according to the California Supreme Court and numerous judges who have read and accept their duty to uphold the law,

held that minors cannot be shackled in any juvenile court proceedings without an individualized showing of need, the same as in jury trials, even though no jurors are present in juvenile court.  (James R. Brandlin, “Safety First” (Date Unknown) The Daily Journal, p. 7.)

But Fresno loves nothing if it doesn’t love living in and endorsing a police state.  So in Fresno, California, shackles are de rigueur.

I’ve written one or more articles on this situation in the past, so I won’t go into all the arguments against shackles again here.

What I want to add, though, is this:  Fresno’s juvenile court claims that they are not violating the law against shackling because they are not shackling as a matter of policy.  Any Fresno juvenile court judge making that claim is intellectually dishonest.  Deputies have testified under oath that minors were shackled because it was policy.  Deputies have stated off-the-record that it is policy that drives the shackling.

No amount of going back after the fact to find out that the child told another child — or even an adult — to “fuck off,” or that he stuffed toilet paper into his toilet until it overflowed, or that he banged on the door of his cell because he was bored stiff, is going to change that.

By the way, I think the fact that I “win” about 50% or more — two out of three since yesterday — motions that I bring to have children I represent unshackled shows that they are being indiscriminately shackled.  Most of these “wins” occur without argument: I make a challenge, the completely irrational procedure allowing deputies to go look for a reason is implemented and upon the deputies’ return, they state “The Sheriff’s Department will not object to the minor being unshackled.”

Boom!  The shackles — which clearly should never have been placed on the child to begin with — come off.

And something else that needs to be understood is this: the courts do not have to earn respect like most other entities or people do; the court has armed officers to enforce their power to lock people up for “dissing” them, for one thing.  But beyond that, they are duly-constituted courts of law under our system of government.

One thing courts can do, however, is to lose respect, when they forget that they are duly-constituted courts of law under our system of government.  Just because the Sheriff’s Department wants to do something does not make it legal.

And I know one way they the courts can lose respect.  Or, rather, I’ve heard the California Supreme Court say one of the ways it can be done.  The California Supreme Court — so please don’t shoot the messenger here –notes one difficulty for courts is:

the disrespect for the entire judicial system…incident to the unjustifiable use of physical restraints….  (People v. Duran (1976) 16 Cal.3d 282, 291 [127 Cal.Rptr. 618].)

Moreover, the Fresno juvenile justice court judges who approve shackling for some children on the basis of the Sheriff’s deputies coming back — after being unable to find any better reason for shackling children – to run through the list of sins of those children while in custody in their pods is — well, I already said it: an exhibition of intellectual dishonesty.

[N]o child should be brought into the courtroom in shackles except under extraordinary circumstances backed by evidence.  (Brian D. Gallagher and John C. Lore III, “Shackling Children in Juvenile Court: The Growing Debate, Recent Trends and the Way to Protect Everyone’s Interest” (2008) 12 U.C. Davis J. Juv. L. & Pol’y 453, 455.)

“But that’s not the law!”  I can hear these intellectually-dishonest judges shouting already.  “That’s just some namby-pamby touchy-feeling liberal writing some silly law review article!”

Well, how’s this for some law?

[T]he use of this technique is itself something of an affront to the very dignity and decorum of judicial proceedings that the judge is seeking to uphold.  (Tiffany A. v. Superior Court (2007) 150 Cal.App.4th 1344, 1355-1356 [59 Cal.Rptr.3d 363], quoting the United States Supreme Court in Illinois v. Allen (1970) 397 U.S. 337, 344 [90 S.Ct. 1057, 25 L.Ed.2d 353].)

Or maybe this?

[N]o California State court has endorsed the use of physical restraints based solely on the defendants’ status in custody, the lack of courtroom security personnel, or the inadequacy of the court facilities.  (Tiffany A., supra, 150 Cal.App.4th at 1358.)

What about this?

While we are sympathetic to the obligations and responsibility our conclusion may impose upon the juvenile delinquency court, the Sheriff’s Department and the People, those pale in comparison to the values we uphold.  (Tiffany A., supra, 150 Cal.App.4th at 1362, emphasis added.)

One last one, for now,

Although the Duran opinion was written in the context of a jury trial it has application to other proceedings as well.  Respect for the dignity of the individual and the court are values to be preserved whether or not a jury is present.  (Solomon v. Superior Court of Los Angeles County (1981) 122 Cal.App.3d 532, 536 [ 177 Cal.Rptr. 1].)

In the Duran case, by the way, the two defendants were in a courtroom where there was only one bailiff.  It was an adult court, so there was access to the outside.  The defendants had been charged with armed robbery.

The Tiffany A. case involved minors who had access to the outside and, if they could just get loose from restraints and away from a deputy, they could escape.  Nevertheless, Tiffany A. found that shackling is “anti-therapeutic for juveniles [and] antithetical to the rehabilitative aims of the juvenile justice system.”  (Tiffany A., supra, 150 Cal.App.4th at 1354, fn.7.)

Fresno’s judges seem to be unconcerned with the use of shackles in juvenile court.  The deputies want them.  There’s no one there to see inside the locked courtroom (except the attorneys, court personnel, families of the kids and possibly “victims” accompanied by their court-appointed hand-holders).  But,

[w]hile a primary concern regarding the use of physical restraints is the resultant prejudice if they are viewed by the jury, that is not the only reason for the limitation of their use. Also of concern is the potential unsettling effect on the defendant and therefore on his ability to present a defense, and ” ‘the affront to human dignity, the disrespect for the entire judicial system which is incident to unjustifiable use of physical restraints, as well as the effect such restraints have upon a defendant’s decision to take the stand.’ ” … As we have noted, the…rule of ‘evident necessity’ serves not merely to insulate the jury from prejudice, but to maintain the composure and dignity of the individual accused, and to preserve respect for the judicial system as a whole; these are paramount values to be preserved irrespective of whether a jury is present during the proceeding.  (In re Deshaun M. (2007) 148 Cal.App.4th 1384, 1387 [56 Cal.Rptr.3d 627], at times quoting People v. Fierro (1991) 1 Cal.4th 173 [3 Cal.Rptr.2d 426].], emphasis added.)

When the court does not know why a child has been brought to court shackled, then, at least for that period of time, these paramount values are being ignored, the court sacrifices its dignity and the only respect it gets is that which it can force at the barrel of a deputy’s gun or threat of incarceration.

I’m just sayin’.

Comments

• March 4, 2010, Legislating Morality | Probable Cause writes: [...] doing anything illegal by not fighting back against “minor” wrongs like the routine shackling of juveniles. Despite inflation, if I only had a nickel for every time another attorney told me, in [...]

Related posts:

• Who is the King?: Sowing the Seeds of Disrespect for the Law

Friday’s court session made me realize I had no choice.

To get into a juvenile courtroom in Fresno County through the front door of that courtroom is impossible unless the door is opened from the inside.  For anyone.  It’s physically impossible.

To get out of that courtroom is impossible without a keycard.  Defense attorneys — except public defenders and employees of the firm that handles conflict cases the public defender cannot take — do not have keycards.  Obviously, family members of minors brought before the court, as well as the minors themselves, are also not given such cards.

Since it is nearly impossible to exit the courtroom, why are numerous minors brought before the juvenile court shackled?

In a word, it happens because of an illegal policy, and local judges who have chosen to thumb their noses at the California Supreme Court.  Fresno County, it seems, is not a part of the State of California.  We are not subject to the jurisdiction of the California Supreme Court.  Their opinions are advisory only.

About the middle of this past year, I attempted to challenge the policy because the California Supreme Court has clearly held that the reliance on “policy” is illegal.  The essential circumstances are outlined in this linked brief.

The immediate upshot of my objection was that the court allowed the Sheriff’s Department a couple of hours to come up with an excuse for investigate why the minor was shackled and ordered requested they have someone present in the afternoon to state the excuse provide the reason for the shackling.  During that time, the minor was apparently kept in a cell adjacent to the courtroom, because when I attempted to visit him at the Juvenile Justice Campus, I was told he was not there, that he was in the cell adjacent to the courtroom and that there was no way that the Juvenile Justice Campus could contact anyone to inform them I wanted to visit the client.  The Juvenile Court, it should be noted, is located on the Juvenile Justice Campus.

During the afternoon session, the sole witness was a deputy who had researched the issue.  The prosecutor led him through a series of questions about the minor’s behavior during six months of custody.  The minor had been a bad boy.  He sometimes yelled at other minors.  He occasionally broke the rules by, for example, banging on his door or not standing up properly in line.  Over a six-month period, there were — as I recall — a couple dozen incidents.  (A later attempt by me to argue that this was a fairly typical record for juveniles in the pod met a retort from the court that there was no such evidence before the court and that the court believed “most” juveniles in the pods followed the rules.  Any juvenile defense lawyer can tell you otherwise.  Next time, I will put “a few” witnesses on the stand who can testify about such things under oath.)

On cross-examination, the deputy stated that he had never seen, nor was he informed of, any incidents involving the minor being disruptive in court, or on the way to court.  I periodically noted, for the record, that my client had sat quietly next to me throughout the proceedings — at least once pointing out that he had responded to questions from the court by appending the honorific following his response.  The deputy further testified, under oath, that the policy of the Sheriff’s Department was to shackle all juveniles wearing purple shirts.  The purple shirts apparently signified that they came from a particular pod.  The criteria for being placed in the pod was either unclear or unknown.  (My own experience shows that it does not seem to be necessarily related to behavior.)  The deputy was not sure why “purple shirts” were shackled, merely stating that was the policy.

Notwithstanding the testimony of the deputy making it clear the minor was shackled because “that was the policy,” the court held that he was shackled — as the law allowed — for particularized reasons.  Although I had argued that the particularized reasons should relate to behavior within the courtroom, the court rejected this, going on to state specifically that he was shackled because of his “disruptive” behavior while in his cell, or in the pod.

The court then made the rather astounding statement, on the record, after having found that there were particularized reasons why the minor needed to be shackled during the proceedings, that:

It’s just an arraignment where a plea or a denial is entered.  We do not have a trial.  We do not have a disposition and the Court finds that there are safety concerns; there are disruptive concerns based upon the nonconforming behavior that the minor has demonstrated while he has been in Juvenile Hall.

Now that having been said, the minor has behaved and done extraordinarily well in court.  There is no reason for me to believe that he wouldn’t.

Let me repeat that.  The judge stated that the minor had behaved “extraordinarily well” during the hours spent in court that day.  He went on to state “There is no reason for me to believe that he wouldn’t.”  No reason!

So why were the restraints necessary again?

Before I could get the copy of the transcript and complete a writ on the issue, the misdemeanor case — did I forget to mention that it was a misdemeanor case? — was dismissed “in the interests of justice.”  This is often a euphemism for “we don’t have enough evidence to move forward, but we don’t want to say that on the record.”  I cannot prove that my making it clear I was not going to drop the matter is the reason for the dismissal.

Immediately after the hearing, I revised a form I utilize for keeping progress notes on my cases in court.   At the top, I added “OOC/IC” for “out of custody/in custody.”  Next to that, I have: “Shackles? Y N CO NA” — “Yes  No Cuffs-Only Not-Applicable.”  Whenever I go into court now, I circle the appropriate acronyms.  Suffice it to say that I intend someday that this will be useful.  (If only I could convince other defense attorneys to keep track.)

I was pleasantly surprised to note for quite some time that my clients were not coming to court in shackles.

Okay.  So now we get to what I mentioned at the beginning of this post: Friday’s hearing in another juvenile case.   My client is brought into court and he’s in shackles.  I noted that he’s been present numerous times in the past without shackles.  I asked the reason he was shackled this day and, of course, nobody knew.  The court asked the bailiff to find out.  The bailiff invoked the presiding judge’s “one-hour-to-find-an-excuse-reason” rule.   She had, meanwhile, called for backup the minute I started complaining about the shackles.

Her supervisor having arrived in response to the call, the court suggested that the minor be unshackled and the extra deputy remain in the courtroom; there being two of them, it would be that much harder for my client to escape the locked private enclave where the public cannot see what is happening.  It would also be harder for him to jump up, get around the (fairly massive) table and sprint the 30 feet or so to the hyper-elevated bench before the two deputies accidentally shot the judge to death or mistakenly tasered his clerk.

Still, that seems reasonable, doesn’t it?  Remove handcuffs for a kid — a kid! — who was there to be told he was going to a group home before being reunited with his parents, and allow two armed deputies to stand nearby instead.

“No! That’s not how it’s done!,” exclaimed the bailiff.  And, I kid you not, she used her “stop right there” voice.  The judge (quite briefly) looked startled.

Now if I had used that tone, or spoken those words, to a judge?  I probably would escape tasering, but not a tongue-lashing.  (I know, because I once made the mistake of muttering to my client in a near whisper, “Or as the Constitution does” when a judge told me I would get as much time to cross-examine someone as he allowed.  But that’s another story.)

The judge, however, did not respond to the bailiff as he would to me.  Perhaps it’s because she’s armed.  Instead, he said, “Oh…okay.”  I looked at him and said, “The law says the judge is in control of his own courtroom,” but was told in no uncertain terms that “we aren’t going to get into that.”

After consultation with my client, he decided that he wanted no further delay and was willing to proceed with the hearing, ignoring the shackling issue.

But here’s the kicker:  As I was being escorted from the courtroom — remember, it is impossible to get out unless the bailiff unlocks the door — I asked the bailiff why my client was shackled today, when he has never been shackled before.

Her response?  “Our policy hasn’t changed, Mr. Horowitz.”

Comments

• November 15, 2009, Joni writes: Well, even if there's no way in or out without a card, a prisoner is a prisoner for a reason. And I would prefer him to be secured (okay, shackled) rather than running loose in the room free to grab hostages if he so desires. There was a case in Houston just yesterday in fact, where this idiot went on a 10-day crime spree culminating in the death of a woman crushed between two cars, one of which this idiot was driving. He hit her deliberately. Such a person, with nothing to lose, presumably, is not someone I want "loose" in a courtroom. At least not until and unless he's proven not guilty.
• November 16, 2009, RickH writes: A prisoner, in the cases I'm talking about, anyway, is a person who has been accused of a crime and is innocent unless proven otherwise. Additionally, we're talking about children here. But your comment touches on another point which I've been meaning to blog about for a long time: the idea that because there's a one in a million shot of something happening, we have to take steps to prevent it, even if it means mistreating hundreds of thousands or even millions of people who would never do the things you want to prevent. I also love the idea that you twisted the time-worn American tradition -- the one that made our nation great -- on its head. People are not guilty from the day they are born until the day they are proven guilty of some crime. We don't take people into court to prove them not guilty. It's the other way around: the State believes they have committed a crime and it is the responsibility, the burden, of the State to prove that what the State believes is true beyond a reasonable doubt. Thank you for being brave enough to be the living demonstration of what's gone wrong with our "justice" system. Like you, most people today assume guilt and wait to have someone show them that they are wrong. This is what leads to shackling children. This is what leads us to mistrust everyone and to assume the worst of each fellow citizen. This is what has lead to the downfall of the United States of America. The only thing left now is for us to find a way to make it official.
• November 16, 2009, Joni writes: Well my knee-jerk reaction is a product of the rampant violence in our society, Rick. Violence which law enforcement seems powerless to do anything about. Just this weekend, in the Houston Metropolitan area alone, a woman was killed by a killer on a 10-day crime spree with a stolen SUV, a 79-year old woman was killed feet from her front door by a mindicant who has a long history of violence; a mother and her two young children are dead at the hands of the mother's boyfriend who suffered from bipolar disorder and spend the day in terror as she repeatedly begged and pleaded with Montgomery County police to help her cope. And on and on and on.
• November 16, 2009, Joni writes: I've ALWAYS been pretty much FOR the death penalty, even with the recent DNA findings. And I firmly believe that death is the absolute cure for recidivism. And especially lately, with these heinous crimes being committed by everyone, youngsters too, this is not the time for mollycoddling. I don't think cops are hauling in innocent people and drawing and quartering them. I believe in the legal system (note, I refrained from calling it a justice system, because it is far from that). Read the opinion out of Indiana about Ian Clark, who killed, in cold blood, little 2 year old Samantha, his girlfriend's daughter left in his care. People like this are vermin, they are beyond redemption and as far as I'm concerned, should be exterminated. I know this is a far reach from your post. But I also think it is disengenuous for you to argue that shackles aren't warranted in most cases. Even if one is innocent, one abides by the rules of the court. And those rules are there to protect the majority. Once the defendant is adjudicated, if he's found innocent, shackles come off. Works for me.
• November 16, 2009, RickH writes: Yeah, I guess I don't feel enough like God, nor do I have enough faith in the other flesh-and-blood gods walking through life with me, to believe that we get it right. I can imagine nothing less horrible than being innocent, knowing you're innocent and being up against folks who think you should be killed unless you can prove that you're not guilty. But, more importantly, this post is about shackling children. More to the point, neither case involved anyone -- even a child -- who had committed a felony or shown his or herself to be violent. Re-read what the judge said about the child who was sitting next to me who was there accused but not convicted (never was, by the way, at least not in that case -- I don't know about any other cases with that child) of a misdemeanor.
• November 19, 2009, Second Guessing Your Attorney | Probable Cause writes: [...] the law doesn’t apply to the case to avoid a result you don’t want.  When I see things like this, it’s the only conclusion that makes sense.  You aren’t impartial: you’re afraid [...]
• December 31, 2009, Starfish: The Obligatory End-of-Year Post | Probable Cause writes: [...] And after yesterday, where the primary evidence my client might misbehave involved such things as arguing with other kids during a handball game, I can assure you it’s true: the policy has not changed. [...]
• February 19, 2010, The Shame of the Juvenile Court | Probable Cause writes: [...] which, right now in Fresno means me — who challenges this decision will find that although everyone knows the reason is “policy,” the court will then give the deputies at least an hour after a challenge to come up with an excuse [...]
• February 26, 2010, Three-Thousand and Zero | Fresno Criminal Defense writes: [...] written one or more articles on this situation in the past, so I won’t go into all the arguments against [...]

Related posts:

• Letter from Mike T.
• Three-Thousand and Zero
• Under New Management