Monarchical Tyranny Redivivus

Rotting Sores

George Will is a seasoned, right-of-centre columnist in the United States.  He penned an open letter to Loretta Lynch, who is the nominee for US Attorney General.  She is soon to be examined by the Senate.

In Will’s letter, he raises a number of disturbing features of the US judicial system–features which appal advocates and commentators on both left and right. 

Senate confirmation hearings put nominees on notice that, as a Michigan state legislator reportedly once said, “I’m watching everything you do with a fine-toothed comb.” Loretta Lynch, a talented lawyer and seasoned U.S. attorney, should be confirmed as attorney general. Her hearing, however, should not be perfunctory.

Questions like the following would highlight some festering problems:

Next year is the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta, which began the slow, serpentine progress to our modern panoply of rights, including those of persons accused of serious crimes. Today, however, regarding sexual misconduct on campuses, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights uses the threat of withdrawing federal funding to coerce colleges and universities into jettisoning crucial defendants’ protections when adjudicating, in improvised tribunals, accusations of sexual assault. Presumption of innocence? The new presumption is that accusations are valid until disproved. The right to confront one’s accuser? No, it would be traumatizing to the “survivor” (note the prejudgment). Proof beyond a reasonable doubt? Now a mere “preponderance of the evidence” will suffice. Are you comfortable with this traducing of due process?

The presumption of innocence and the need to prove guilt beyond reasonable doubt are fundamental to our Anglo-Saxon systems of justice.
  A society departs from them at its peril.  Vigilance is ever required to watch for those threats which would undermine these bulwarks against state tyranny.  The United State’s perpetual incarceration of prisoners without trial–in places such as Guantánamo Bay–because of a declared War Against Terror–is just such a threat.  But another, more subtle threat comes from “fashionable” crimes which offend the cultural sensitivities of certain popular, yet peculiar ideologies.  Sexual stereotyping by militant feminism-cum-marxism has become such a bête noire such that the “crime” must be punished, even if it means judicially “fitting” someone up for it.  It is the attendant propaganda which matters, not justice–or so the militant feminists believe.

Much ink and indignation have been properly expended concerning the torture of some detainees by counterterrorism personnel. But what about the promiscuous use — currently impacting thousands of prisoners — of long-term solitary confinement in prisons? In 1890, the Supreme Court said of such punishment: “A considerable number of the prisoners fell, after even a short confinement, into a semi-fatuous condition, from which it was next to impossible to arouse them, and others became violently insane; others still committed suicide.” Given its deranging effects, does this practice constitute torture as defined by federal law — conduct “specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering”?

Prolonged solitary confinement represents cruel and unusual punishment.

Years pass, studies are written and vows are made, yet the scandal of prison rape persists. When will the government stop this crime against inmates in its custody?

This is a terrible blight upon any prison system.  Christian ethics proclaim that two wrongs do not a right make.  The only alternative is barbarous and represents great evil.

The U.S. incarceration rate is five times Wales and England’s, nine times Germany’s, 14 times Japan’s. In 2010, more than 200,000 inmates — approximately the nation’s total number of prisoners in 1970 — were over the age of 50. How can this be necessary?

When choosing between two evils, Mae West said, “I always pick the one I never tried before.” The number of drug offenders in federal prisons is 20 times the number in 1980, and accounts for more than half of our federal mass incarceration. The “war on drugs” is horrendously expensive (in money and shattered lives) and hardly effective (drug prices fall as quality rises). Is it time to consider decriminalizing some controlled substances?

In California, which spends almost as much on corrections and rehabilitation as on universities, approximately 2,000 persons who have committed no violent or otherwise serious crime are serving 25 years to life under the state’s “three strikes and you’re out” law. It mandates such sentences for any third felony. Do you think that mandatory — and often draconian — minimum sentences prevent judges from judging? And that the threat of such sentences, by extorting guilty pleas, can vitiate the right to a trial?

The California “three-strikes” law is a classic example of why plebiscites should not be allowed over the text or terms of specific legislation.  “Three strikes and you’re out” represents a wonderful, compelling campaign slogan.  But it has produced horrible, inequitable, iniquitous outcomes in law, and in penology.  As George Will argues, it has undermined the judiciary in California as well as the judicial system itself. Inmates in California have received life-long sentences without parole for repeated minor misdemeanours. 

New Zealand’s “three strikes” law is much, much better.  It is limited to a list of crimes of a serious, violent and criminal nature.  It retains some judicial discretion.  It puts offenders on clear warning well in advance.  The incarceration is not permanent, but to the maximum penalty prescribed by law for the third conviction, with no parole.  Whilst no-one has yet received a “third strike” sentence, and it has yet to be tested over time, we are confident that the inequities and iniquities of the Californian disaster will not be repeated here.
 

The Justice Department has been, to say no more, unhelpful regarding attempts to fully investigate and properly punish the politicization and corruption of the IRS. Given the department’s seeming complicity in the cover-up, would it not be appropriate to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the IRS practice of suppressing the political activity of conservative groups?

This is currently a hot political issue in the United States.  However, any citizen would rightly pale at the prospect of the Federal government, or any government, for that matter, being able to access the tax records of free citizens and use them to punish or threaten or intimidate political opponents–by leaking them to the press, for example.  Or to favour some taxpayers and disadvantage others on the grounds of their political views or religion or lawful activity in the public square.

Civil forfeiture — the seizure of property suspected of being produced by, or involved with, crime — has become a lucrative business for lawless law enforcement. Civil forfeiture treats citizens worse than criminals, seizing the property of persons neither convicted of nor even indicted for a crime. All or a portion of the proceeds from the sale of such property goes to those who seized it. You are familiar with this form of moral hazard: Between 2011 and 2013, your U.S. Attorney’s office reaped more than $113 million from such forfeitures. Do you agree that this practice often is indistinguishable from robbery?

Civil forfeiture has become a moral and legal monstrosity, where citizens are punished as if they were guilty and assets confiscated, without ever having been tried, let alone convicted.  By this measure, the US has returned to a kind of arbitrary, monarchical tyranny, against which its earliest citizens rebelled in the first place. 

Many progressives say that the 34 states that have passed laws requiring voters to have a government-issued photo ID are practicing “vote suppression.” Does requiring a photo ID at airports constitute “travel suppression”? Visitors to the Justice Department are required to present photo IDs. Will you — we will be watching with a fine-toothed comb — plan to end this “visit suppression”?

— George Will is a Pulitzer Prize–winning syndicated columnist. © 2015 The Washington Post

Letter From America (About Lies, Lies, and Intimidation)

When Truth Dies, Justice Is a Fast Follower

by Ben Shapiro  
28 Nov 2014
BreitbartNews

 

On Monday night, after the release of the grand jury verdict rejecting indictment of Officer Darren Wilson in the Ferguson, Missouri shooting of 18-year-old black man Michael Brown, President Obama took to the microphones. “We need to recognize that this is not just an issue for Ferguson, this is an issue for America,” he said. “[T]here are still problems and communities of color aren’t just making these problems up.”

Obama was wrong, at least in the case of Darren Wilson. In viewing thousands of pages of FBI interviews and grand jury testimony, it becomes eminently clear that many members of the local community did make up the story about Michael Brown being executed by Wilson – and pressured others to lie to police or keep silent.

According to the St. Louis County Police Investigative Report, the mob mentality took root almost immediately after the shooting. By the time detectives arrived at the scene of the incident, there was “a large crowd of bystanders and a large uniformed police presence at the scene when detectives arrived.” That crowd included both Brown’s mother and his stepfather, according to witness testimony. The police report states, “Many individuals were clearly upset and were expressing their frustration, by at times yelling obscenities and threats, and attempting to encroach on the crime scene itself.”

It got worse:

As the scene investigation continued, there were several large groups of hostile individuals around the perimeter of the crime scene. The investigation of the scene was interrupted several times by death threats directed toward police officers and gunshots being fired by an unknown persons around the crime scene.

According to the police report, a bevy of witnesses described intimidation from the local community, as well as falsification of testimony. One witness initially told police she didn’t want to “get involved for fear of retaliation.” She said, “I don’t know these people. I have to live here.”

Another female witness told police, “I don’t know nothin’.”

An adult male near the scene “commented to detectives as they walked by that he witnessed the incident and the officer was ‘in the right’ and ‘did what he had to do.’ He added the statements being made by bystanders in the complex were inaccurate. The detectives momentarily stopped to speak with the male who was clearly uncomfortable speaking with detectives. The male indicated he was not making any further comments or identifying himself.”

Two more witnesses, one male and one female, “said they were afraid to speak about what they witnessed. Both said they were worried about retaliation from people who live in the area.” One “began crying and said she could not talk about it.” The male said that he saw Brown inside the vehicle. He turned away, and when he turned back, “the male began moving quickly toward the officer and he heard several more gunshots.” Both witnesses refused to provide recorded statements.

One witness told police that “she had been speaking to her neighbors about the incident, and her neighbors were getting upset at what they believed happened. Their beliefs were inconsistent with what she witnessed.”

Yet the witness told police “that although present during the incident, and seeing the entirety of what happened, he would not be speaking to police for fear of retaliation from neighborhood residents. He also stated the information being broadcast by the news outlets was not accurate information and there were ‘blatant lies from those giving accounts of what they saw.’ He said there were multiple people present when the shooting occurred and even those people, when interviewed by the media, were giving false statements.”

Still another witness told police he had “already told investigators from Saint Louis County Police Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation that he was not willing to formally discussed the incident, but he was willing to discuss his fears.” He said “threats… had been made to the residents of Canfield Green Apartment Complex. He said notes had been posted on various apartment buildings threatening people not to talk to the police, and gunshots were still being fired every night.” He said “there were at least 10 other people who were outside and saw exactly what happened. He was not willing to provide names of any of those individuals.” He said Wilson told Brown “no less than 10 times to get down” while they were both on the street. He said Brown never had hands raised.

In FBI interviews, witnesses repeated such accusations. Witness 10, whose account backed Wilson’s story, said, “I just wanted to come forward and just tell it how I seen it. Because I feel like it’s very rare that somebody’s gonna come forward and tell actually what happened.” Witness 14, who initially said Brown was shot from behind before changing his story to accord with the facts, stated:

You have to understand the mentality of some of these young guys they have nothing to do. When they can latch on the something they embellish it because they want something to do. This is something they giving the okay now we got something we can get into… The majority of them do not work. They all they do is sit around and get high all day… two people never seen these people before in my life in the whole time I have been out there and I sit out there a lot. Came up threatenin’, hey y’all better not say nothing, ah, you’ll snitching and all.

Witness 14 added that within one minute of the shooting, there were 70 or 80 people “saying things that didn’t happen,” and they “started embellishing it when the stepfather showed up.” They lied, he said, when they said the officer “ran up behind him shot him in the back.” They lied, he said, when they said he had “his hands straight up in the air.” They lied, he said, when they stated that Brown was shot while down. “They had it in they mindset of what happened,” he continued. “They are set they are looking for a reason to explode, that’s what they, ‘cause they don’t have anything to do… They got nothing else to do they running all day they’re drinking and-and getting high all day we see this all the time.”

And indeed, witness testimony showed that witnesses routinely embellished their accounts, changed them to fit autopsy results as those results broke in the media, and even lied about seeing the events at all.

After Dorian Johnson, Brown’s alleged accomplice in robbing a local convenience store, went on television and told his false story about Brown having been shot from behind and raising his hands before being killed, witnesses began shifting their own testimony to match. Multiple witnesses said they knew Johnson, and one said she had spoken with him before talking to the FBI. Two witnesses brought handwritten notes to police matching in wording and other respects.

At least 12 witnesses claimed that Brown was shot from behind, which was factually false. At least 16 witnesses said Brown’s hands were up when he was shot, which was factually false. One witness said Wilson used a Taser, then a gun: false. Another said she witnessed the events, but admitted she was blocks away when the events occurred. Still another witness said there were two officers involved in the shooting, and admitted she couldn’t tell what she’d seen and what she’d read about the case. One witness admitted in testimony to changing his story to “coincide with what really happened.” Another witness said that he was friends with Brown, and that Brown was shot while on his knees. When informed that such a story contradicted all physical evidence, the man admitted that he had not seen the shooting and then asked if he could leave because he was “uncomfortable.”

The looting and rioting and protesting are all secondary to the astroturfed case against Officer Darren Wilson in the first place. At least in Ferguson, one “community of color” did make this problem up. The media went along with it, ignoring the intimidation and the witness’ lying. And an innocent man, by all available physical evidence and a vast majority of the reliable witness testimony, could have gone to prison or death row because of it.

Ben Shapiro is Senior Editor-At-Large of Breitbart News and author of the new book, The People vs. Barack Obama: The Criminal Case Against The Obama Administration (Threshold Editions, June 10, 2014). He is also Editor-in-Chief of TruthRevolt.org. Follow Ben Shapiro on Twitter @benshapiro.

Justice No Longer Blind, But Partial

Taking Care of One’s Own

In New Zealand we allow judges to suppress the names of convicted offenders and their victims.  Originally this was introduced to allow the court discretion to protect victim(s) and their families.  Within a short space of time it has morphed into something quite degraded, if not sinister.  Certain judges have taken it upon themselves to decide whether the penalty of the public knowing the name of a convicted criminal would be unduly severe because they were “important” people.

What sort of people would be so regarded, we hear you ask?  Well, celebrities for one.  They would suffer too much harm from having their names and guilt disclosed, so they have been granted name suppression.  You know, upstanding, important folk like Rolf Harris.  Once name suppression has been granted, to mention their names in public, whether on a blog, or in the media, or at a social gathering risks the ire of the court.  Then there are sports people who are professionals and therefore in the public eye.  They too deserve name suppression.  Then there are pollies, well-connected people, “pillars” of the community–all these  in the calculus of some justices apparently deserve name suppression and having their guilt and offending kept secret.

One gets the distinct impression that these perverse elitist justices think that all whom they regard as their peers ought to enjoy such protection.
  But as for common garden, everyday criminals that’s another story.  These brown-skinned, low-lifes don’t have any public standing or reputation to protect.  They are not like us.  They deserve everything they get.

We have just witnessed an additional perversity.  Some of these cosseted protected criminal aristocrats brazenly use their court ordered anonymity to advance their careers and to provide opportunity for further criminal offending.  Once again, think “Rolf Harris” and “Jimmy Saville”.  Rodney Hide details the case of one such.

I was wrong when I claimed that leading politicians knew the name of the “prominent” New Zealander hiding behind name suppression. David Cunliffe did not.  The Labour leader has met the sex predator. “If I had known of the suggestion [that the man was a sex predator hiding behind name suppression], no such meeting would have taken place.” I am sure that’s true.

The meeting highlights two key points. First, there’s no shaming without naming. The offender remains brazen and without remorse. He happily and openly met the Leader of the Opposition who had just loudly and boldly spoken out against sexual violence.

You think he would be too ashamed. But no. Name suppression thwarts justice because the offender has never had to own up. He can carry on like nothing happened. He can have a joke and a laugh with the leader of the Labour Party exactly as if he had never performed an indecent act on a woman in her own home. Oh that his victim could just share a joke, have a laugh, or meet the leader of the Labour Party.

Second, the meeting highlights the danger to which name suppression exposes women.

The sex predator’s prominence is such that Cunliffe was attracted to meet him. Knowing the sex pest’s background and history it’s easy to see why. We are all attracted to and flattered by the attention of “prominent” men.  And so, blithely unaware of the man’s offending, Cunliffe met him. The result was a slight political embarrassment.

But consider the danger the man poses to women. If Cunliffe with his campaign staff and parliamentary resources – and his ear to the ground – didn’t know of the man’s attack, what chance have the rest of us? And women can be just as easily attracted and flattered to meeting a “prominent” man as was Cunliffe. But they are at risk of far more than political embarrassment. We drop our guard with “prominent” people. We expect them to be better than that. We feel as if we know them and that we can trust them, just like we felt we knew and could trust Rolf Harris.

We have a sex offender in our midst. He has not been shamed. He has no remorse. His prominence makes him attractive for women to pass time with. Name suppression means they don’t know to be wary. His “prominence” means women drop their guard.

Does anyone other than the offender have a responsibility should he offend again? The judge who felt the poor man had suffered “a bit of a cross” by being prosecuted? Our MPs for their silence and name suppression laws?

What would we say to his victim if he attacks again? And, ask yourself, what’s the culture in New Zealand that your answers imply? [NZ Herald]

We would suggest one small amendment to the law allowing judges to order name suppression for convicted criminals: if the anonymous criminal were to re-offend, and the offence were deemed to have been enabled or facilitated by their court-awarded name suppression, then the judge concerned must be charged with aiding and abetting a criminal offence.  That would clean up a nasty little judicial mess that our politicians and elitist judges have created, very quickly no doubt. 

The Lust for Power

A Pox on Both Their Houses

We commented recently upon a bizarre proposal by the Labour Party that cases of rape must take away the burden of proof from the accuser, and place it upon the shoulders of the defendant.  Innocent until proven guilty is a fundamental principle of judicature which the Labour Party is willing to toss aside whimsically in order to win a few votes from the radical feminists.  The NZ Herald continues the debate over this antediluvian proposal. 

Labour’s justice spokesman Andrew Little did not think the party’s proposal would lead to more innocent people being convicted.  “I don’t see why. You’re assuming that there is a propensity to lay false complaints. There is no evidence pointing to that.”

There is no evidence of a propensity to lay false complaints. What planet is Little from?  This statement beggars belief and one wonders whether Little is just fundamentally ignorant of the real world, or whether he is being deliberately obtuse for political reasons.  OK, so let’s put this claim to the test: if Little were to be taken seriously and in good faith, he would be claiming that in the past fifty years there has been no evidence of any person laying false complaints of rape. 

In August 8, 2005, the NZ Herald ran the following story:

NZ Herald
August 8 2005

False rape complaints annoy police
by Nicola Boyes

Hamilton police will decide this week whether to charge two women who made separate false rape complaints at the weekend.  Detective Sergeant Nigel Keall said police spent time and resources investigating the women’s complaints.  “It’s just a waste of resources that could have been used elsewhere.”

Both complaints were lodged on Friday. One was made by an 18-year-old and the other by a 19-year-old

Then comes the kicker:

Senior investigators estimate that between 60 and 80 per cent of rape complaints made by women are false.  Mr Keall said false complaints tainted the community’s perception of sexual offending and the genuine victims who needed support.

He said there was also a difference between people making complaints of stranger rapes and making allegations against a specific person, which could sometimes be malicious.

According to Andrew Little this never happens.  There is no evidence for it.  Here is a file summarising repeated false complaints of rape.  Never happens, according to Little.  Just search under “NZ false rape complaints” to get a long list of instances of false rape complaints.

Understand this: under Little’s proposals, the majority of cases such as these would have likely resulted in an erroneous conviction of rape because the defendant could not prove his or her innocence. 

But, idiotic and extreme and dangerous as Labour’s proposals are, the current Government is only slightly better.  National proposes to weaken another foundation stone of our justice system–the right to silence–in cases of rape.

Fundamental pillars of the criminal justice system may be eroded whichever party wins the election this year, as both National’s and Labour’s proposals would look into changing the right to silence or the presumption of innocence in rape cases.  Both major parties claim the current system is not upholding justice for victims, and are looking at changes that would effectively make it easier for prosecutors to obtain convictions.

National wants to explore allowing a judge or jury to see an accused’s refusal to give evidence in a negative light, while Labour wants to shift the burden of proof of consent from the alleged victim to the accused.  Auckland University law professor Warren Brookbanks said both policies challenged two fundamental principles: the right to silence, and the presumption of innocence, which are both protected in the Bill of Rights Act.

The drive to get more convictions is motivating politicians to toss fundamental protections aside. 

Of National’s plan, he said: “It’s an intrusion into the right to silence.  In the trial process, offenders are in any event always at a serious disadvantage relative to the prosecution, and there are some important protections in the trial process, and the right to silence is a fundamental right. These are part of our democratic rights that apply to all citizens.”

The fundamental “right to silence” is to be tossed aside in the drive to get more convictions.  But why just rape?  If this new principle is fair and just, it must surely be applied to all criminal charges, not just rape.  Why put rape in a special category?   Are we to conclude that if the right to silence is tossed for allegations of rape, all other not-guilty verdicts are thereby implicitly unjust because the defendant was allowed to remain silent? 

This principle holds true: never, ever trust a politician with the responsibility faithfully to protect the liberties of citizens.  Populism will win out every time, such is the prevailing venality amongst them all. 

Liberty is a Fragile Treasure

The Politics of Guilt and Pity Trump Justice

People charged with a crime have to be proved guilty beyond reasonable doubt to be convicted.  This is not a tangential, but a fundamental, component of our system of justice.  The burden of proof is on the accuser, and his agents–the police and inquisitorial agencies of the State.

Judicature is structured this way–and has been for centuries–because the power, resources, and influence of the State are so much greater than a citizen’s.  There are other principles set in concrete to afford similar safeguards and protections.  The accused cannot be compelled to testify against himself.  Again the reason is the mismatch of power between the State and the accused.  The State has the power to “lean” on an accused, with threats, intimidation, even torture.  “Confessions” under even the hint of duress are thrown out immediately–which is why interviews are extensively videoed and audio-taped.  They provide evidence of no duress by the State.

It is disconcerting, however, when the politics of guilt and pity intrude.  These fundamental principles of justice set down to maintain the integrity of judicature can be tossed overboard in an emotive tsunami.  The NZ Labour Party, polling in the twenties percent range, desperate to strike some resonance amongst the few identity-orientated groups which still maintain lingering vestiges of support, has come forth proposing to dismantle “proof beyond reasonable doubt”.  This from the NZ Herald:

The Labour Party’s plan to reform the criminal justice system would mean that the accused in a rape case would have to prove consent to be found innocent — a change it acknowledges as a monumental shift.  But Labour’s justice spokesman Andrew Little said the current system is broken and in need of a major shake-up. The party favours an inquisitorial system, where a judge interviewed the alleged victim after conferring with prosecution and defence lawyers.  The policy would mean that in a rape case, if the Crown proved a sexual encounter and the identity of the defendant, it would be rape unless the defendant could prove it was consensual.

So, let’s boil this down.  In an allegation of rape, the Crown would have to prove that the accused had sexual intercourse with the alleged victim.  Easy peasie.  DNA will do it every time.  As soon as the DNA test comes back positive, the defendant would then have to prove that the rape was consensual.  How might he or she do that?  Sexual intercourse, by its very nature, tends to be a private matter.  Rapidly, the evidential basis to a case would boil down to a “he said, she said” imbroglio.  In that case, the defendant would be convicted, since he or she could not prove that the sex was consensual.

This change rests on the radical new principle that all sexual intercourse would be presumed to be rape unless proven otherwise.  Oh no, no, no said Labour’s Justice spokesman, Andrew Little.  That’s not what I meant at all.  That’s not it at all.

He said the issue of proof would only apply where allegations of rape had been raised.  “It is pretty radical thing to say that ‘all sex is rape’ unless you prove consent. The reality is that in 99.9 per cent of cases, no one is being asked to prove consent.”

How’s that for a compelling refutation of criticism.  Since in the vast majority of cases, no-one asks you to prove consent, it’s OK.  But if someone should ask, you have to prove it, and then the presumption is that it was rape.  But that’s not to say that the law would proceed on the idea all sex is in principle non-consensual.  Not at all.  It’s only when someone would say it was non-consensual, and then it would become non-consensual de jure and you would have to prove otherwise.  And, by the way, I come from Planet Mars.  

Why, we ask, would Little not argue that this should be applied to all criminal cases.  Take family violence, for example, which now includes verbal abuse.  In the vast majority of verbal communication there is no abuse.  Little, if consistent, would be arguing that in principle all communication between human beings would be regarded as non-abusive.  But if someone should say you have spoken abusively, you would have to prove that you did not.  Otherwise you would be held guilty.  Good luck with that. 

“I don’t accept that that is creating an offence under which the defendant is guilty until proven innocent.”  He acknowledged the change would be a “huge leap”.

You don’t say.  Oh, said Labour’s Justice spokesperson, we know that this is a radical change to the justice system, but it just has to be done.  Why.  Guilt and pity, dear chap. 

“But when you look at the volume of sexual violence cases and the 1 per cent of cases that result in a conviction, there is something wrong with the way we are handling sexual violation cases. The circumstances may well justify doing something radically different.

Andrew Little–and his party–feel guilty that so few sexual violence cases end up with a conviction. That’s because he and his fellow MP’s have doubtless engaged in sexual intercourse, all instances of which would now be implicitly non-consensual. Little and his colleagues feel they, along with everyone else, are guilty of rape.  Under Little’s “reform” they would have to prove that they didn’t. 

To try to create a good impression about their own sexual activity they have concocted a “guilty until proven innocent” approach–to help create the impression that they, of all people, would not be guilty of rape.  Otherwise why would they advance such a radical measure?  They are telling us all (and themselves) that they are the good guys.  They hate rape.  They would never have committed it.  Which is to say they have an abundance of proof in each and every occasion they have participated in sexual intercourse they have documentary or scientific evidence that it was completely consensual. 

This is a mere sop to the last few identity-groups that still support them.  But for politics sake they would merrily dismantle some of the core fundamental foundations of justice and judicature which have served us well for centuries.  Little is a revolutionary, and a stupid one at that. 

We are waiting for the questions in the House:

Has the Labour Justice Spokesman engaged in sexual intercourse? Yes.

Has the Labour Justice Spokesman ever engaged in non-consensual sex?  No.

What proof can the Labour Justice Spokesman table in this House that he has never engaged in non-consensual sex?  None.

Then, we submit, Mr Speaker that the Labour Justice Spokesman is a rapist, and is unfit to sit in this House.

No doubt some readers will take umbrage at the allegation that Andrew Little has been guilty of rape.  Umbrage away.  Little wants the burden of proof to be upon the accused.  We are merely taking him at his word.  Prove away, Andrew. 

The Webs We Weave

Conditioned to Rebellion

At present there is a brouhaha bubbling more strongly than a Rotorua mudpool over a Maori youth discharged without conviction.  The man in question just happens to be the younger son of the Maori king.  The fact that there is a Maori king will no doubt come as a surprise to many of our international readers.  It’s a long story.  Suffice it to say that the “king” is an honorary figure belonging essentially to one tribe–the Tainui.  Maori remain tribal to this day in a way that the Scots, the Welsh and the English are not, but in a way that the French and the Germans are.  Which is to say tribal divisions still matter.

In any event, the swirling controversy involves the allegation that the son of the current Tainui/Maori King was released without conviction for theft because of who he is and because it may hurt his future prospects of succeeding to the throne.  The tribal under current to the controversy was neatly summarised by one Dover Samuels, a former MP:

While his drink-driving was moderately serious, Judge Cunningham said, the direct and indirect   consequences of a conviction were “out of all proportion” to the offence.

Mr Samuels, a former Labour MP, criticised that logic as that of someone under “cultural hypnosis”.  “You tell that to the younger generation that are in Her Majesty’s Marae. The guy got off because one day he may become king.  Well, that may be relevant to a few people in Tainui, but it’s certainly not relevant at all to our young people in Ngapuhi.” [NZ Herald]

What caught our eye, however, was the following startling statement in the Herald.

But a source close to the family said Mr Paki [the youth in question] had always been a mischievous child and had never been expected to take over from his father.  The source said King Tuheitia’s eldest son, Whatumoana Paki, had been groomed from a very young age to one day rule.

“Whatu was brought up to be the successor to his father and was also raised by a lot of old people in Tainui. Whereas Korotangi was the spare — and he was never expected to do anything. I think Whatu would be an ideal successor because he is a . . .  nice kid.”

Being raised “as the spare”, never expected to do anything, and disregarded by the tribe seems to us to be an excellent, effective recipe for producing a sociopathic adolescent delinquent.  What about the father’s expectations of the son to be a decent, honest, respectful, hard-working, trustworthy man?  Nah, he’s just the spare. 

Who knows whether the “source close to the family” is telling the truth?  But if so, it’s a shocking indictment upon the parents, the whanau and community.  Give me a child for the first seven years of his life, said the Jesuit, and I will present you the man.  It appears that the adolescent in question might well have been conditioned to rebel.   

With Prejudice

Dastardly Malaysians

We have argued the groundless basis for ethics, morality, and truth that encompasses our established religion of secular humanism.  Others, changing the metaphor, have argued that the ethics and morality of Unbelief hang on skyhooks.  In the end, it is just the particular prejudices that happen to be in favour in a society at some particular time that carry the day.  One generation’s moral good is another generation’s evil.

Try getting a card-carrying secular humanist, who believes that everything is only matter and subject to evolutionist randomness, to develop an authoritative and cogent case for scrapping the death penalty, for example, and you end up with repeated ad nauseum emphatic emotive assertions about brutality, savagery, cruelty, primitiveness, and so on, along with trite slogans such as “two wrongs do not make a right” without any foundations or over-arching principles beyond gratuitous groundless assertions.  In the end, the argument relies upon vituperative emotive repetition as its highest and final authority.  Say it loudly enough, often enough, and passionately enough and people will believe you.

Take the common appeal to “human rights” for instance.
  Human rights have become a bulbous wax nose to be twisted into whatever shape our current prejudices lust after.   Women have a universal human right to practice abortion we are told.  On what foundation or higher authority does this human right rest, we ask?  Well, it just is–you ignorant, stupid, misogynistic, sexist pig.  Yeah, right.  We get the picture.

Or again, all people have a human right to a living wage.  On what grounds, we inquire?  Because “justice” requires equality.  Really?  On what does that assertion rest, we wonder?  It is self-evident.  Everyone believes it.  Once again, we get the picture.

In passing, we observe that all of these bald assertions come from the mouths of folk who believe in “progress” being achieved by the survival of the fittest, on the one hand, and the ultimacy of sub-atomic particles swirling in a ceaseless sea of brute chance, on the other.  These two ultimate realities are supposed to provide a basis for a human right to a living wage.  Go figure. 

Whenever our established religion is confronted with “other ideas” in nations elsewhere in the world the point is illustrated handsomely.  The emotive fulminations shoot out faster than rounds from the barrel of an M-60 machine gun.  An instance presents itself in a case presently occupying the attention of the Commentariat–the case of a Malaysian diplomat who allegedly raped a woman whilst posted to Wellington, New Zealand.  The diplomat in question claimed (and was initially granted) diplomatic immunity.  He returned to his home country, where the authorities publicly committed to an investigation and trial.

We await developments, but in the meantime a right royal brouhaha has exploded over the New Zealand government’s (allegedly) supine compliance with Malaysia’s insistence upon the accused’s diplomatic immunity.  This, from the NZ Herald:

Documents released by NZ officials show the Malaysian Government asked New Zealand to drop all charges and seal the court record of the official.  The man at the centre of the allegations was identified yesterday as Muhammed Rizalman Bin Ismail, a 38-year-old junior military official with three children, who had worked at the Malaysian High Commission in Wellington since October.  . . .

In a diplomatic notice on May 10, Mfat wrote: “The New Zealand police believes it is in the public interest to prosecute these offences due to the serious nature of the offending.”

Ismail was facing charges of burglary and assault with intent to rape after following a 21-year-old woman home in Brooklyn the previous day. Mfat asked Malaysian authorities to waive the personal immunity granted to diplomats under the Vienna Convention.  In its response on May 21, the high commission said it would not waive immunity and had “decided that [Ismail] should be repatriated to Malaysia as soon as possible”.

Now, the assumption lying behind much of the “outrage” over Malaysian diplomatic official is that he will return home, only to be given a slap on the wrist with a wet bus ticket, and let off.  New Zealand justice would have been denied.  But that’s the point.  Who is to say that New Zealand’s justice is any better or worse than Malaysia’s?  By what standard could such an assertion ever be made and carried, apart from the crudest nationalistic prejudice? 

But there was a sting in the tail–which has been hinted at.

The Malaysian Ministry of Defence had established a Board of Inquiry for the investigation, Ms Zappei said.  “We don’t have futher details as to how long this investigation will take, what penalties he can face, what crimes he can be charged with.  “The board was investigating Ismail under the Armed Forces Act.”

It was unclear if Ismail had been stood down from his post, she said.  [Malaysian Foreign Minister] Mr Aman said Ismail could face jail, “or worse”.  The board would rely on evidence provided by New Zealand authorities, Ms Zappei said.

Mmmm.  What could be worse than a jail sentence?  The death sentence.  Malaysia utilises such as the ultimate penalty.   We wonder how that would have changed the narrative and conversation in this country, if it turned out to be the case.  Why, those primitive Malaysians!  Poor Ismail!  How dastardly of the NZ Government to hand him over to those wretchedly backward, bloodthirsty Islamist Malaysians.

We are so full of such high prejudice–without absolute principles or foundations upon which to ground any moral judgment.  Materialism and evolutionism do not provide foundations or warrant for morals and ethics.  Rather, whatever is, is “right”.  Matter is blind, unthinking, dead.  Nevertheless, we continue to insist that rape is wrong and a criminal offence, that abortion is morally neutral and none of our business, and imply that Malaysian justice is suspect, despite having no warrant or ground for any such principles or beliefs.

In conclusion, if any reader finds this piece to be frustrating and annoying, we will have made the point successfully.  May your disquiet grow to the point where you commence re-evaluating your blind adherence to a world-view that can never rise higher than random meaninglessness and brute chance–no matter how much you would desperately like it to do so.

Postscript: the Malaysian government has waived diplomatic immunity and sent the accused diplomat back to New Zealand to stand trial.  From the solid ground of the Christian Gospel, we are pleased with this outcome.  Rape is not just a gross sin.  It is also a crime.  God, the Judge of all the earth, has declared it so.  He has appointed the civil magistrate as His minister to wield the sword of justice to avenge such atrocities.  The Christian position on such things is not meaningless, but grounded upon the glory and majesty of the infinite, eternal God. 

But for the evolutionist, rape in the final analysis must remain an amoral act.  It cannot be rejected in principle–and all evolutionist Unbelievers who do so, are confused or inconsistent.  The doctrine of the survival of the fittest makes one agnostic on the “morality” of rape–as it does on eugenics, murder, abortion, and euthanasia, all of which involve terminating the unfit. 
  

Madness Replacing Reason

Indictments From the Common Lawyers

What does a Christian society look like?  What might be some of the key features of the Second Christendom when it emerges in redemptive history?  There are many.  One central feature will be the grounding of civil and criminal law upon the higher law of God.  This, of course, is not novel.  It is the way it used to be in the First Christendom.

F E Dowrick describes how biblical law (both written and inscribed in the creation itself) was deeply embedded in the English legal tradition.  He writes:

The basic assumptions in this doctrine [of natural justice] are that God exists and that immanent in all creation is God’s eternal law.  St. Germain’s Doctor defines [in the early sixteenth century] the eternal law as:

the reason of the wisdom of God, moving all things by wisdom made to a good end.

The eternal law is not wholly known to men.  It is known in part through revelation, as recorded in the New and Old Testaments, that part being called the law of God or positive divine law; and it is known further through reason, that part being called the law of nature or the law of reason.  So, natural law is unequivocally established on a divine basis.  Since it is part of God’s will or plan for mankind natural law is neither parochial or temporary.  According to the Doctor of Divinity

This law ought to be kept as well among Jews and Gentils, as among Christian men . . . it is never changeable by no diversity of place, ne time (sic).

F.E. Dowrick [Justice According to the English Common Lawyers (London: Butterworths, 1960), p.49]

The divine law provided the primary or fundamental precepts.  Reason assisted in applying those precepts (by means of subordinate premises and the rules and laws of logic) to situations and circumstances.  The fundamental principles laid down in the law of God included:

1. Good is to be loved and evil is to be fled.
2. Do to another that thou wouldst another should do to thee.
3. Do nothing against truth.
4. A man must live peacefully with others.
5. Men should live in society.
6. Actions by which a human life is to be preserved are to be pursued.
7. Male and female should join together and children be educated.  (Ibid., p. 50)

By the nineteenth century, the First Christendom was in terminal decline.  The hearts of the people and their rulers and teachers decided they had a better idea.  The law of God as the foundation of all human law and justice was gradually, yet ineluctably, replaced by the mind of man as the ultimate lawgiver.  We see the fruits on every hand today.  “Reason” now dictates that an unborn child can be killed at will.  It has “discovered” eternal and irrevocable rights to homosexuality, homosexual “marriage”, and no-fault divorce.  It has declared, on the grounds of its own recognizance, that the state must impose “equality” upon its citizens, thereby sanctifying and glorifying envy and covetousness.

All these, and many other perversions, the common lawyers of Christendom would have called madness, not reason.  They would have been right.  They testify against us and the resulting indictment leaves us without excuse.  

Nevertheless, the “reason” and “laws” of autonomous man will inevitably run their course, to produce their fruit, and to bring their self-immolating sentence of death and destruction, before a generation will arise, by God’s grace, to toss this ghastly human idolatry into the lake of fire, and to repent, and to replace it with the principles and doctrines of the First Christendom, thereby building the Second Christendom. 

The Christian Heritage of Justice

 Being Treated Fairly Before the Court

It is a great boon to live in a just society–and, no, we are not thinking of the faux “justice” of egalitarianism, now so very popular amongst the ignorant and those riddled with the canker of envy.  Rather, we have in view the system of justice which enables citizens to seek redress or get their actions judged properly and fairly.

Justice is often difficult to define. The traditions of English common law, however, have developed over many centuries the concept of a fair trial and the principles which undergird it.  F.E. Dowrick [Justice According to the English Common Lawyers (London: Butterworths, 1960)], courtesy of a series of lectures by Lord Denning, has provided a summary of the essential principles which make up a fair trial.

1. The judges should be absolutely independent of the Government.

It is of the essence of fair trial that the judge should be dependent on no man who can by any possibility become a party to a proceeding before him, so that he can adjudicate evenly between the parties–whether these are private citizens or whether a private citizen is opposed to a government official or to the government itself.  And in jury trials the absolute independence of the jury is no less important than the independence of the judge.

2. The judge must have no interest himself in any matter that he has to try.  He must be impartial.  No person can be a judge in his own cause. 

3. The judge, before he comes to a decision against a party, must hear and consider all that he has to say.  No-one ought to be condemned unheard . . . . (T)he only fair way of reaching a correct decision on any dispute is for the judge to hear all that is to be said on each side and then come to his conclusion. 

4. The judge must act only on the evidence and arguments properly before him and not on any information which he receives from the outside. 

5. The judge must give his reasons for his decision.

6.  A judge should in his own character be beyond reproach, or at any rate should have so disciplined himself that he is not himself a breaker of the law. 

7.  Each side should state its case as strongly as it can . . . (since) truth is best discovered by powerful statements on both sides of the question. 

The search for the truth of the matter before the court is of the essence of a fair trial but counsel must contain themselves within bounds: accordingly they “must never distort or suppress the truth”, and in criminal cases counsel for the prosecution should act “not as an advocate to to condemn the accused, but as a minister of justice to see that he is fairly treated. 

This list is not exhaustive, but it captures the essentials, such that if any of the seven be lacking, the centre of justice through a fair trial will not long hold.   

Going Surety Needs to be Re-Instituted

Reforming The Parole System

Most Western judicial systems have problems with the parole system.  Criminals, let out early, often re-offend.  An Australian correspondent, for instance, recently complained about the state of the parole system in that country:

Unbelievably, across Australia there have been more than 20 people who’ve been killed by criminals on parole in the last five years.  That is disgusting.  More broadly, the Bureau of Crime Statistics has ­reported, 64 per cent of crooks on parole reoffend within two years of release. [Jason Morrison, The Daily Telegraph.]

We have two suggestions.

The first is that the evidential basis for granting parole needs to be strengthened.  Criminal conviction is on the basis of a standard of proof demonstrating guilt beyond reasonable doubt.  We suggest that the same standard ought to be applied to Parole Board deliberations.  Convicted criminals can be paroled only if the Board believes that it is beyond reasonable doubt the subject will remain crime free for the remainder of the sentence term.

Secondly, a close family member of the convict, or, failing that, a Parole Board member need to be held surety for the decision of the Board.  If a parolee re-offends in the time period before the completion of his or her sentence, the close family member or, failing that, a Parole Board member (selected by random ballot) must be delivered to prison to serve out the remainder of the sentence, until the parolee is returned to prison to serve out the sentence.

Early release parole should be an exception, not a right.  Either that, or the original sentence was unjust in principle from the beginning.

The ContraCelsum S-Files

Removing Guilt

We are not big on national pride, believing it to be the cause of much evil in the world.  National pride is nothing other than personal pride writ large.  And the proverb tells us that the Lord hates and abominates haughty eyes (Proverbs 6:16-17).

But sometimes things are done in this small country which make us thankful, wanting to acknowledge special achievements.  This time, the accolades go to Environmental Science and Research (“ESR”) and, in particular, scientist Catherine McGovern and her team.  Now we are aware that ESR operates at times under severe budget constraints, and that its dedicated staff are called out all hours to crime scenes–usually the most horrific–to investigate and gather evidence.

It turns out that McGovern and the ESR has helped secure a conviction in a very cold case in Australia.  The NZ Herald has the account:

DNA evidence provided by Catherine McGovern from Environmental Science and Research helped convict serial sex offender Brett Peter Cowan, 44, this week for the murder 10 years ago of Queensland schoolboy Daniel Morcombe.

Daniel Morcombe

McGovern’s team matched DNA from the murdered 13-year-old’s toothbrush to a fragment of bone found during the search for his remains.  Cowan abducted Daniel from a Sunshine Coast bus stop.

Police long suspected the sex offender but it took a confession during a four-month undercover operation to get an arrest. Cowan believed he was about to be part of a successful crime gang and confessed to the murder, believing his associates would clean the crime scene. His associates were all undercover police officers.  Police used information Cowan provided to locate 17 bone fragments, Daniel’s Globe skate shoes, and a pair of Bonds underpants.  Cowan’s defence argued he made up the confession to be part of the crime gang and suggested the bone fragment wasn’t Daniel’s.

But McGovern told the court via video link from Auckland her testing found the bone sample was 540 times more likely to have come from Daniel than any other person in Queensland.  McGovern explained Daniel’s toothbrush established a full DNA profile. That was then compared to a humerus or arm bone search crews found.  Other items were sent to New Zealand for testing, including the shoes found at the site.

ESR spokesman Stephen Corbett said New Zealand scientists were called about six times each year to help with Australian cases.  “There are a couple of DNA technologies we have that they don’t. Our experience is world class and we are taking it to the world at the moment.”  Corbett said the case was terribly tragic but the scientists involved remained impartial dealing only with the facts of science.  “In a case like this there is some satisfaction in an outcome being reached.”

On Thursday, after Cowan was found guilty, Queensland Assistant Police Commissioner Michael Condon thanked the New Zealand scientists for their part in securing the guilty verdicts.

The Scriptures declare that innocent blood shed cries out to God for vengeance from the very ground itself (Genesis 4:10).   When murderers are apprehended, tried, convicted, and punished, their guilt, which otherwise lies upon the entire community, is assuaged.  In this case, NZ’s ESR made a significant contribution. 

The ContraCelsum S-Award is given to Catherine McGovern and her ESR team for professional achievements which have proved:

Supportive to a dedicated team of undercover Queensland police
Significant in proving guilt beyond reasonable doubt.
Satisfying to the demands for justice.

Well done.

Extenuation by Race

Wretched Argument for Racial Inferiority

If we were Maori, with just the slightest smidgeon of self-respect, honour and decency, we would right now be hanging our head in shame and boiling with righteous anger, both at the same time.  On what provocation, we hear you ask? On this:

Christchurch defence lawyer James Rapley said Maori should receive shorter prison sentences because they come from an environment of social deprivation and inequality.  “Fifty-one per cent of the prison population is Maori,” he told the Court of Appeal. “Everyone says everyone should be treated alike and equally, but not everyone is equal.”[NZ Herald]

Rapley was arguing before the Court of Appeal to get the sentence of one Fabian Mika reduced by ten percent on the grounds that he was Maori.  Not, notice, on the grounds of Mika’s remorse over his crime, his early guilty plea, his efforts at restitution of his victims, or extenuating circumstances, but because of his race.
 

The three Court of Appeal judges said they struggled with the concept of reducing a sentence based on race. . . . “You’re asking us to take a pretty radical step and we just won’t do it on a wing and a prayer,” Justice Rhys Harrison said. “Because he has some Maori blood – and we’re not sure how much – he’s somehow less blameworthy or culpable. That’s an extraordinary proposition.”

We should think so.  What Rapley was arguing must be deeply offensive to all honourable Maori.  He is asserting a principle of Maori being morally deficient and defective.  He is asserting that Maori are morally inferior–as a race! 

But Rapley went on to explain that Maori criminality was plainly evident in the prison statistics:  Maori make up 15 percent of the general population, but 51 percent of the prison population.  Why might that be?  Well Rapley is certain that the fundamental causes are not to be found within the hearts and minds of Maori people, but in external circumstances. 

“Everyone recognises there has been a history of colonialism, displacement, high unemployment, lower educational attainment and high level of incarceration for Maori,” Rapley said.

Colonialism made me do it, your honour.  Displacement has suborned me to a life of crime. High unemployment of Maori people has led me into criminal paths.  Lower educational attainment of my people has made me set my sights on theft and rapine.  In sum, I have been conditioned to evil by my socio-economic-ethnic matrix.  At that point, Rapley is implying that Fabian Mika is more like a dog, not a grown, mature human being.  At this juncture, Rapley may evoke feelings of pity towards Mika, or guilt because we have all treated Mika like an animal, but–and here is the rub–such appeals to pity can only be traded upon if we all accept (including the accused himself) that Fabian Mika is sub-human.  That is the problem.  That is why the argument is so offensive.  But worse, it requires that all Maori be so regarded–as an inferior race.

Now, to be sure, Charles Darwin would readily have accepted such a notion. He believed that primitive humans were less human, less evolved than more educated and sophisticated races.  But we utterly deny the proposition.  We join with all Maori who rightly are outraged by Rapley’s arguments.  We refuse to entertain, even for a moment, the idea that Maori should be regarded as animalistic or sub-human.  

None of this is to say that Mika’s circumstances and matters which may extenuate or magnify his guilt ought not be taken into account by the courts.  But to argue extenuation on the grounds of race is an entirely different proposition which can only proceed on the basis of some form of Maori inferiority and reduced moral culpability–something we do for children, the insane and animals. 

If Fabian Mika is a human being, and he is, then he is properly and rightly to be held responsible for every thought, word, and deed.  That is what is means to be in God’s image.   To argue otherwise is ethically bent and an egregious insult to Mika himself and his race. 

Heads Must Roll

Pam Corkery’s  Calls For a Committee of Public Safety

Pamela Corkery, opinionated provocateur, has chosen an unfortunate turn of phrase writing about a hot public controversy presently incandescing the pages of our newspapers.  Some under-age girls have been allegedly date-raped by young men.  The police have not yet charged anyone.  Pamela has called for “heads to roll”, apparently oblivious of the historical reference to the horrendous Reign of Terror. 

Maybe Pamela  forgot the connection.  Or maybe she does not care.  Or maybe she is ignorant.  Or maybe like a true people’s demagogue she finds nothing offensive, unjust, or distasteful in seeing innocent heads roll from the guillotine blades into the tumbrels? 

Whatever the case, it does seem that Pamela has chosen to overlook the minor matter of evidence, witnesses, and proof beyond reasonable doubt in matters criminal and judicial.
  We know these are relatively trifling matters in the world of demagoguery.  But more balanced people might have a different view.

But Pamela persists.  Asking girls to come forward to testify as witnesses in a court case apparently amounts to placing the responsibility for crime-solving on  the victims.  This responsibility, shrills Pamela, is not the girl’s at all.  It belongs to the authorities. 

This still leaves the onus for crime-solving with a still unknown number of teenage girls in Auckland.  Fail. Girls don’t attack themselves. Bringing their attackers to task is the responsibility of official grown-ups.

Wow, good point.  So, let’s get this straight.  It turns out there are unsolved murders in New Zealand.  The cases are still open, never having been closed.  By Pam’s demagogic reckoning, select police, politicians, and bureaucrats should have their heads in the tumbrels for irresponsibility and failure.  No doubt she will soon be calling for a Committee of Public Safety to ensure that officials and “grown-ups” are appropriately decapitated.

Imagine justice in Pam’s demagogic world:  

Judge: I will now call upon the Crown to put its case.

Prosecutor (addressing the jury): We are convinced that the defendant is guilty.  He is a loathesome creature.  Just look at him. 

Judge: Do you wish to call any witnesses?

Prosecutor: We would like to, your Honour, but we will not be calling any witnesses today.

Judge: Why might that be?

Prosecutor: We don’t have any.

Judge: Why not? 

Prosecutor: Well, sadly, the grown-ups did not provide us with any witnesses, your honour. 

Judge: Well, get those lazy, incompetent, defalcating grown-ups in here, so I can sentence them appropriately.

[Enter senior police officers, detectives, the NZ Police Commissioner, and the Minister of Police]

Judge (addressing the police officers): The court understands that you have failed to provide any witnesses to prove the defendant guilty beyond reasonable doubt.  The Corkery Committee for Public Safety is calling for heads to roll in such cases, and it shall have them.  You are hereby sentenced to death by decapitation at dawn tomorrow.[Cheers from the public gallery]

Judge (to the accused): You are acquitted.

Alice’s tribulations in Wonderland had nothing to top Pamela’s view of justice. 

A Sad Passing

In Memoriam: Greg King

The Christian world-view has a deep respect for defence lawyers.  To some this may come as a surprise, since often Christians are critical of governments and societies which no longer believe in retributive justice. How can these two positions be held in the same world-view?  Substantially both views are downstream currents flowing from a deeper truth: the universal depravity of the human race.

Usually, when Christians mention such a belief folks left, right, and centre become profusely vituperative.  They splenetically disgorge nonsensical accusations about Christians being “haters of the human race” (an ancient charge, being first recorded by Tacitus to justify Nero’s persecution of Christians). But a moment’s honest reflection usually suffices to set the record straight.  Who amongst us has never lost his temper?  Who has never told a lie?  The fact that such evils are so ordinary and commonplace as to be regarded as trivial and minor matters amongst us is proof of the universal extent and depth of our common depravity. 

Thus, Christians take crime and its right punishment very seriously.  But at the same time, the Christian world-view values highly competent, highly skilled defence lawyers.  How can these be reconciled?  Very easily.
  Depravity extends not just to individuals, but to everything in which human beings touch and do.  This includes the offices of state and the government.  These, too, are subject to the ravages of human depravity.  Because the state wields the sword, the damage it can inflict by acting wickedly or wrongly is enormous.  We cite Nero as proof.  Professional and expert defence barristers are a goldmine.

Consequently it was with sadness that we heard of the passing of one of our more diligent, assiduous and conscientious defence barristers.  Greg King died a year ago–by his own hand, as the recently released coroner’s report makes clear.  Stuff reports:

Top lawyer Greg King took his life, depressed, burnt-out, and haunted by the dead from the cases he had known.  Coroner Garry Evans has released his findings into the death of King, 43, whose body was found on November 3, last year, in Dungarvan Rd, Newlands, Wellington, not far from his Mercedes car.

In the car was a typewritten note that began:  “To everyone: How can I explain the unexplainable?”  It said that after nearly 20 years as a defence lawyer he was burnt out, disillusioned and depressed.  “He says he is haunted by the dead from his numerous homicide cases and hates himself for what he has done,” Evans said.  “He says he has been genuinely torn between doing his job and his conscience, which keeps asking him ‘Is this really what you want to be doing?'”

In his finding, Evans mostly paraphrases the note in which King spoke of the experiences with criminals that had dulled his human senses and the victims of serious crime who affected him profoundly.

King cared deeply about the victims of crime.  It is not often seen that the Sensible Sentencing Trust deeply regrets the passing of a defence barrister:

Sensible Sentencing Trust’s Garth McVicar said New Zealand had lost one of the greatest men he had the good fortune to meet.  “Greg gave his time willingly and freely to assist many of the families and victims within the wider Sensible Sentencing Trust family,” Mr McVicar said.  “Greg’s knowledge of the law, his passion for people from all walks of life and his drive to leave society better than he found it was unique and irreplaceable.”

Is it possible for a defence barrister to be instrumentally responsible for the guilty escaping conviction, one the one hand, and yet be committed to helping the victims of crime, on the other?  Only with great difficulty, we would imagine. Surely one would be torn in two–which is apparently what happened with King–unless one also believed that justice in this world is not final and that everyone, in that Day, will face full and final justice in one way or another. 

In memory of Greg King who passed from the sight of mortal men, November 3, 2012.

Frogs in a Boiling Pot of Criminality, Part III

Our Most Dynamic Growth Industry

There is one proposition the criminal justice system in New Zealand is pretty much agreed upon: prisons are bad.  For some they represent cruel and unusual punishment.  For others they are bad because they socialise inmates into becoming career criminals.   Still others reject prisons because they put the full responsibility for criminal acts upon the criminal and ignore the social causes of crime.  They are society’s way of deflecting blame upon itself on to others.  Yet others regard prisons as dehumanizing institutions, akin to the evil of slavery.  Others–more pragmatically inclined–point to the high recidivism rates which provide compelling evidence that prisons fail to deter criminals, on the one hand, and fail to rehabilitate, on the other.  Yet others complain about the costs of building and running prisons. 

Consequently, the criminal justice system in New Zealand represent not so much a “war on crime” but a “war on prisons”.  This is the argument David Fraser makes in his book, Badlands. NZ: A Land Fit For Criminals (Kaukapakapa, Auckland: Howling At The Moon Publishing, Ltd, 2011.) What is the evidence?
Here are some indicators.  In 1999 a nationwide referendum was held that attracted over 85 percent support.  It called for minimum sentencing and hard labour for criminals.  The incoming Labour Government not only ignored the petition–it moved drastically in the other direction.

The freshly elected Labour-led Government subsequently made violent criminals eligible for parole after serving just a third of their sentence and ordered judges to impose “the least-restrictive sentence that is appropriate in the circumstances”.

These were radical moves against incarceration.  Eligibility for parole after serving only one third of a sentence has had far reaching consequences, including those released going on to commit more crimes.  And directions to the courts to impose the least restrictive sentence has institutionalised the anti-prison bias into the court system itself. 

A second evidence is the introduction of a wide range of sentences as alternatives to prison. 

If the court cannot avoid a conviction then legislation enables the courts to sentence the offender to a variety of community sentences.  The argument which Correction officials and others have put forward that they are an effective way of reforming criminals, is based on pseudo-science.  Similarly, their case that supervision programmes are necessary to meet offenders so-called ‘needs’, is entirely bogus . . . . I am of the firm opinion that their true single purpose was, and is, to prevent offenders going to jail.  (Fraser, Badlands, op cit., p. 49.)

A third evidence of an anti-prison prejudice amongst academics and Corrections bureaucrats and politicians is the misuse of  fines.  The concept of sentencing by the imposition of monetary fines is sound, provided the payment of the fine is used to restitute the victim (not fund the State).  Non payment of fines should arguably result in an automatic prison sentence (with the fine probably being paid to the victim by the State–after all, why should the victim suffer further because the perpetrator fails to pay a fine?)   But these days the State bends over backwards not to incarcerate those who fail to pay fines.  The Courts can now reduce the penalty if the perpetrator is in financial hardship.  If the criminal still refuses or fails to pay, other fallback alternative penalties can be resorted to, such as community detention and home detention.

Community based sentences are a joke.  The sanctions for failing to show up are pretty much non-existent.
The 2002 legislation had made certain that up to twenty per cent of the so called work hours could be spent in training in basic work and living skills.  In many cases, this means no more than group work discussions organised by the probation service, which the offenders will frequently fail to attend.  There is also a clause in the Sentencing Act 2002 which allows for a work order to be cancelled if the offender “is unable to comply with the terms of the sentence.”  (Fraser, ibid., p. 50). 

But it got worse.

. . . within only a few short years, community based sentences were being imposed on over 50 per cent of property offenders and as many as 45 per cent  of violent offenders.  Furthermore, by 2008, a Ministry of Justice report revealed that thousands of cases of violence resulted in work-related community sentences. (Ibid.)

The Commentariat and the elites of our society are well out of step with the general public.  There has been a slight backlash, resulting in a new Parole Act requiring a minimum of two thirds of a sentence be served before parole became a possibility.  The hue and cry from the anti-prison cabal was deafening.  According to their reckoning, Armageddon threatened.  Then there has been the Three Strikes sentencing bill, which has passed into law.  This will have more and more of an impact over time (provided it survives another left-wing government). 

The increasing criminality of New Zealand society is not a product of the complexities of modern society.  Nor is it due to the “poor getting poorer”.  The responsibility can be largely laid at the feet of the criminal justice system itself which has shown itself reflexively prejudiced against prisons. 

We do not argue that prisons are the “be all and end all” of criminal justice.  Far from it.  But neglect them at our peril.  We have.  And crime has flourished.  It is one of the most dynamic growth industries in the country. 

New Zealand’s Crime Victim Survey in 2006 revealed that there are almost 3 million crimes committed every year and of these only approximately 1% ever results in a jail sentence.  In 2007 only 9% of all sentences passed in New Zealand were custodial.  The rest consisted of community sentences of various kinds, monetary penalties, and discharges, leaving the criminals concerned free to carry on their life of crime.  (Ibid., p. 36).

Positive Changes

Making Bail Laws More Reasonable

We have commented in recent weeks on small changes the New Zealand government is making for the better.  Most of these have focused on welfare beneficiaries, with authorities being more comprehensively demanding of beneficiaries that they find a job, lest their benefits get reduced.  Authorities are working in a more co-ordinated fashion to the same end.  It is making an impact upon beneficiary culture: the message, “you have to get a job” is sinking in.

Another incremental change has just been made–this time to bail laws.  It is going to be much harder for serious offenders to get bail. 

Bail has always been a bad idea made necessary because of overcrowding in remand prisons and because the justice system moves at a glacial pace.  The prospect of having an accused sit in jail for over two years waiting for a trial, at which he or she is subsequently found non-guilty is a manifest injustice.  Hence the device of letting accused folk out on bail to await trial.  “Innocent until proven guilty” is a fundamental principle of justice, after all.  But that application of that principle to criminals awaiting trial has been applied in such a way as to increase crime in New Zealand.
  The standing presumption of the old law was that the accused had a right to bail; not to be granted bail required special circumstances and thus a high standard of proof on the part of the Crown.

Now the law has been amended to make a distinction between people accused of murder or those who are repeat offenders, on the one hand, and those who are before the courts for lesser crimes or have limited criminal records.  Not only that, the burden of proof to be granted bail moves from the Crown to the accused.  The latter must convince a judge that he or she will not re-offend if they are allowed out on bail, pending a trial. The NZ Herald reports:

The bill would require that a person on a murder charge or repeat violence, drugs or sex charges would have to persuade a judge that the community would be safe if they were released.  Under present law, the Crown must show why defendants should be locked up.

The Bill passed by a large margin (102-19)–with the National and Labour parties combining in a rare display of cross party support.  Full marks to the opposition Labour Party.

There is a caveat to be made, however.  Whilst the new law changes the presumption from bail to no-bail, with the burden of proof put upon the accused to justify bail, rather than the Crown proving that it should not be granted, liberal judges are likely to continue their bias on behalf of the accused.  We will have judges granting bail because they found the accused’s promise they would comb their hair neatly every morning sufficiently compelling evidence that they would not re-offend whilst at large.   

Judges need to be named and shamed in this matter.  Since the law now presumes bail will not be granted for serious offenders, when it is so granted and the offender commits more crimes, the bail decisions of judges–together with their subsequent outcomes–need to be published, or at least made subject to on-going judicial review by a panel of higher judges after the effect.  Judges with a patterned history of granting bail should be required to pay restitution to any victims of crimes committed whilst the bailee was out.  Watch the liberal principles wither faster than new shoots in a hoar frost. 

Finally, we note that the Bill was opposed by the Greens, the Maori Party, and Mana.  The Maori Party and Mana are flat out racist in their approach to such issues.  They argue to their perpetual shame that since Maori are very much over-repesented in the criminal sector, any measure to make the consequences of offending greater must be opposed because it is anti-Maori.  In so doing they unintentionally support the argument that race is determinative of behaviour.  They add their support to the Darwinians who believed in the mid-nineteenth and for most of the twentieth centuries (and to this day) that some races are naturally less evolved and more primitive.  The Mana and Maori parties, thus, ironically concede to racist constructs.  Shame on them.  In acting so stupidly they actually give evidential warrant to Darwinian idiocy.

As for the Greens they ground their opposition to the new anti-bail law in abstract principles of perceived justice. 

Opponents argued that people would be locked up for longer on the presumption that they would offend again in future – a breach of the Bill of Rights Act.

The presumption of guilt in a judicial system is a dangerous thing.  But the Greens have taken this important principle and stripped it away from the concrete particulars, turning it into an abstraction–which is even more dangerous.  Let’s take their logic seriously for a moment.  The Greens argue that we should never lock people up on the presumption that they will offend again in the future.  On that ground, no-one should ever be in prison.  To incarcerate a criminal assumes in part that he or she will like offend again in the future.  Under the Greens idiocy, a convicted murderer must–by some strange reading of the Bill of Rights–be presumed to be a non-repeat offender, so why keep them in prison at all.  The convicted murderer or rapist is no more likely to offend again than any citizen, right?

The Greens have no understanding of the human condition, no understanding of morality, of human sin, of deadened human consciences, or of depravity.  These things simply do not exist in the Greenist world view.  Their view of humanity is entirely mechanical and deterministic: change the circumstances of lives from the outside and all evil acts will evaporate and cease to exist.  This abstract mechanistic view of human life and society is not just childishly simplistic, it is self-defeating and contradictory  It  would mean that Greenist views and opinions and actions are likewise determined by circumstances.  Give each Green a million dollars and they would start to think and act very differently.  Their principles are like their policies: up for sale. The Greens can be bought off. Simony becomes them.

The New Jacobins

Banish One Demon, Inherit Ten More Malevolent

Why should New Zealanders treat the law, the courts, and the justice system with any respect from this time onwards?  It appears they are about to become a sick joke.  The government has announced it will change the fundamental concepts of justice so radically that if a person is suspected of a crime the courts can restrict their lives so as to place them in a virtual prison.  Even if the person went to court, was exonerated and freed, they will be able to be punished by the courts, nonetheless. This from the NZ Herald:

Wide-ranging restraining orders will soon be in use to keep suspected child abusers away from children for up to 10 years.  Some will be prevented from going to parks or public swimming pools. . . . High Court and District Court judges will be able to impose the new civil orders on people who are tried for serious offences against children such as incest, sexual grooming or sexual violation – even if they are not convicted of the offence.
Ms Bennett said the scope of such orders would depend on the circumstances, and could prevent the person from living or working with children, up to blocking any association with children whatsoever, such as sitting next to a child on the bus.

What happened to “innocent until proven guilty”?  Oh, that’s so outdated, dearie.  We are going to get really serious about crime.  Now the judges can place restraining orders on individuals based on suspicion.

Spare us.  How myopically stupid and unjust can government become?  What this wonderfully progressive lurch does is establish a new principle of gross injustice: whatever crime society finds particularly odious or egregious can be put in a special category of  imposing state restraint on the grounds of mere suspicion.  How Stalinesque.  Koba the Dread would have loved this. 

Prime Minister John Key said the changes were the result of a two-year process and would be “significant and bold”.  

And stupid.

Yes, we all know that child abuse is a terrible crime.  But unjust preventions that ride roughshod over fundamental principles of justice are equally terrible crimes.  If the justice system has delivered unsafe convictions in the past, even after a trial–as a result of abuse of the system, or incompetence, or prejudice, or whatever other inadequacy–do we think for a moment that this new “reform” with lesser checks and balances, lower standards of proof, and proceeding on the basis of mere suspicion (in some cases after a non-guilty verdict) will be free from perpetrated abuse and gross injustice?  It will be ten times worse.

This is the inevitable outcome when fallen revolutionaries assume the prerogatives of deity and by command attempt to remove evil from society.  One demon is thwarted, only to be replaced by ten demons far more evil and malevolent.

Douglas Wilson’s Letter From America

On Spiraling into Chaos

Posted on Tuesday, July 16, 2013  

by Douglas Wilson

The trial of George Zimmerman is now over, and there are perhaps a few things we can learn from the whole sorry mess. Perhaps.

In the aftermath of this trial, we clearly have a highly polarized society. On the one hand, we have those who believe that a young and unarmed black man was targeted and killed simply because of his race, and who believe the “not guilty” verdict is therefore a travesty. On the other hand, we have those who believe that he was a young black man up to no good, and that he was the aggressor in his fatal encounter with Zimmerman. They were relieved at the verdict.

The reason we even have trials is so that we have a ordered substitute for what such polarized societies would do in the absence of trials. What they would do is fight, riot and kill. In advanced cases of this pathology, they go to war over such things. The function of trials is to dampen the ardor of factions, crowds, and lynch mobs, not to inflame them.
The irony is that Trayvon is now being compared to genuine lynch mob victims, and the comparison is being made by crowds outside the courthouse, away from the evidence presented in a rule-guided setting, but nevertheless demanding the conviction of an individual for political reasons.

That is what a lynch mob is — a large group of people who have not thoughtfully weighed the evidence in a dispassionate setting, but who are consumed with the righteousness of their cause, and who demand a conviction that will consequently satisfy them. Lynch mobs get away with what they do because they are popular. It takes courage to stand up to a lynch mentality, and it takes courage because the current of opinion runs heavily against the accused. When whites were doing this to blacks a few generations ago, it took courage for a white man to stand up to them. Why did it take courage? The same reason it would take courage now. The color of the jerseys can change, but people are always people, and the game is the same one.

Whenever someone is tried and acquitted, as Zimmerman has been, it is beyond offensive to continue to orchestrate political pressure in order to keep trying him until we find a venue that will give us the “right answer.” Our double jeopardy protections are there for a good reason, and the right of a convicted man to appeal, while restricting the right of a defeated prosecutor to do so, is grounded in biblical law. It is of the highest order of importance that political passions be kept out of the courtroom.

From the beginning, this sad and unhappy episode was force-fit into a preexisting narrative, and the longer those efforts went, the more lame they became. But because people on both sides don’t always think carefully, some sympathetic to Zimmerman don’t realize that there is a grounded reason for the pent-up frustration. It doesn’t come from nowhere. The fact that this particular incident did not fit the preexisting narrative does not mean that such a narrative is itself mythical. I am confident that many of my black brothers can tell me of numerous times when they were pulled over for “driving while black.” How to handle that kind of thing is the conversation that Al Mohler has never had to have with his son.

For myself, I believe the Zimmerman was kind of hyper, and showed very poor judgment in going out of the house to check on Martin with a loaded gun. But being hyper is not first degree murder, and showing poor judgment is not racism. I am grateful he was acquitted, not because I want him to be the guy to organize and run the Neighborhood Watch where I live, but because I care deeply for the rule of law. Trials matter, and juries should be honored — particularly this jury. I am also grateful that Martin’s parents called for the protests to be peaceful, and I am grateful for that for the same reasons — respect for the rule of law, and a desire to avoid the kind of behavior that will cause us all to spiral into chaos.

Polarized societies want to push toward a simple binary world, where the variables are open and shut, black and white, this or that, our team or their team. But the real world is far more complicated than that. Some have argued that Trayvon would not have aroused Zimmerman’s suspicions in the first place if he had been white. That is quite possible. But I would also argue that he would not have aroused Zimmerman’s suspicions if he had been black, and was walking through that neighborhood in a jacket and tie. And it is equally true that a young white male is fully capable of decking himself out in a way that would arouse the suspicions of every sane person. Skin color is not the only thing going on. You have factors of age, sex, the music pumped out of his car as he pulled up, dress, gang tattoos, behavior . . . and yes, race.

Because of the nature of the question, I am not going to ask for a show of hands here, but I am going to ask you to be brutally honest with yourself. You don’t have to tell anybody how you answered this thought experiment. You are the owner of a jewelry shop in a city, the kind of shop that has bars on the windows, and a buzzer lock to let people in on a case-by-case basis. It is five minutes until closing and a solitary individual shows up at the door. Do you buzz them in? You might say, it depends. Great. On what? Be honest, and whatever your answer is, be sure that you stop condemning others for doing in public what you would do in private.

One of the most insightful tweets I read on this was to the effect that we had a situation where a Hispanic killed a black man, and was acquitted by a jury of all women, and the whole thing is somehow the fault of white men. That is what a cultural breakdown looks like, and that is a threat to all of us.

Restitution Works Good Fruit

Restorative Justice

Restitution and forgiveness can work reconciliation and healing in a way that nothing else can.  Such things, however, do not go down well in the Gentile world which is often riven with enmity, anger, bitterness, and a relentless drive for vengeance.  But God has told us that He has reserved vengeance and retribution to Himself.  He has not  delegated that right to man.  “Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.'” (Romans 12: 19)

When the judicial system and society generally get this right, when it conforms more closely to biblical truth, the outcomes can be uplifting and genuinely restorative.  An example of such appeared lately in New Zealand newspapers. 

A man was towing an overloaded trailer.  It jackknifed and killed a motorcyclist.  The online newspaper, Stuff reports:

A grieving nurse moved a courtroom to tears as she delivered a powerful statement of the power of forgiveness to transform hate into healing.  Hera Edwards’ partner of 10 years and the father of her three girls, Ricki Cobb, died when he was hit by a jackknifing trailer towed by Donald Stewart Wills, 64, near Greytown, on November 5, 2011.

Yesterday’s sentencing hearing in the Masterton District Court followed a restorative justice process.  The victim impact statement that Ms Edwards read out in court yesterday was hailed by Judge Bill Hastings for “rising above the aura of hatred” to produce instead the “healing power of forgiveness”.

Donald Wills had been through a restorative justice process (see below) and had determined to do what he could to Hera Edwards and her three children, left fatherless by the death of their loved one.

Judge Hastings read out a paragraph of a letter Wills wrote offering reparation for emotional harm totalling $25,000. Of that, $10,000 was to be paid into a trust fund set up for the education and welfare of Mr Cobb’s children, with the rest in cash. Police prosecutor Gary Wilson said outside court that this was “far in excess” of what would normally be ordered by the court in such a case.  Wills, an engineer, of Morrisons Bush, also promised to supply frozen meat and produce to Ms Edwards, 35, and the family on an ongoing basis.

A salutary thing in this case–which the judge highlighted–was the willingness of Hera Edwards to forgive the man who had brought so much pain and damage into her family.  She made a conscious decision that she would not allow the hurt to degenerate into self-destructive bitterness.  She consciously rejected the easy descent into victimhood–for the sake of her children and in honour their dead father.

In her statement yesterday, Ms Edwards thanked Wills and said she would accept his offer “because of the children” – daughters Lexus, 9, Rhion, 6, and Huntah, 4. “We didn’t ask for anything,” she said. “But I accept [the offer] particularly for our youngest child, who has no memories of her daddy.”

She told Wills: “We come from different worlds, you and I,” but she had seen the good in him, and forgave him in the name of her partner: “Ricki was a good man, who had the capacity to forgive.” Outside court, Ms Edwards said the children were too young to understand entirely what had happened, but she hoped they would grow up seeing the outcome as a lesson in not giving in to pain. “It’s not about forgetting any of it, the hurt and pain and what happened. But you can hurt without it turning into hate.”

No doubt the restorative justice system (where the guilty and the victims of crime meet together, often in the context of families, to seek appropriate remedies for hurt, damage, and harm) sees lots of failures.  But when it bears fruit, the results are way beyond what vengeance and retribution can ever achieve. 

Judge Hastings convicted Wills of careless driving causing death, disqualified him from driving for six months and ordered emotional harm and ongoing support reparation according to the terms offered.  Wills and his wife, Jeanette, who have five adult children, said the experience of restorative justice, which in their case was facilitated by Presbyterian Support Service, had been positive.

“The mechanism is there, it’s independent, and it allows people to say what they think and to share. It’s a vehicle to allow the emotions to work their way through the different steps.  “The restorative justice people are there to facilitate and be a neutral vehicle in a safe environment for both parties.”

However, he and his wife said they wished the encounter with Ms Edwards had occurred sooner. “I wanted to do the best for her and her family, earlier rather than later, and somehow it wasn’t easy to do.” He hoped the process could become more flexible. “Every situation is different, and it needs to be flexible and fluid enough so that anyone can figure out [a solution] for themselves.”

"Three Strikes" Punishment Is an Inherently Just Concept

Dishonest Brokers

In general we are pretty happy with New Zealand’s Three Strikes law.  It has been carefully crafted to avoid some of the inequities usually associated with such laws, such as being locked up (in some cases for life) when three relatively minor offences are committed.  The New Zealand law restricts the offences falling under the aegis of Three Strikes to those involving serious criminal acts. 

We believe the underlying principle of Three Strikes is just: serial criminal offences multiply guilt and  subsequent offences by a recidivist should be regarded as more aggravated crimes than earlier ones.  Subsequent offending is against greater knowledge on the part of the criminal, who, as a result of previous convictions and sentences, cannot claim ignorance, carelessness, or a general lack of awareness of how evil his actions were and are.
  From the perspective of the Bible, the judge is the minister and servant of God Himself.  When the court convicts and the judge sentences they are doing so as God’s official representatives.  Disregarding the previous judgements and sentences received, and going forth to commit further crimes magnifies guilt because rebelliousness and contumely is now added to the crime.  Subsequent crimes necessarily have aspects of civil insurrection included in the criminal acts.  Greater guilt requires more severe punishments.  Properly constructed Three Strikes laws are inherently just. 

Stuff provides a run down on the law:

The Sentencing and Parole Reform Act 2010, or the “three strikes act”, came into force on June 1, 2010. It meant any offender aged 18 or over who committed one of 40 offences, including all major and sexual offences, would receive a strike on their first conviction. A second strike would see the offender serving their full sentence without parole. On a third strike, a judge must impose the maximum penalty. It must be served without parole unless the court believes that would be manifestly unjust. The bill was strongly opposed by Labour, the Greens and the Maori Party. By the end of last month there were 2684 offenders on their first strike and 17 on their second strike.

 So far, so good.  Now, however, a case has arisen which critics are claiming demonstrates the injustice of the Law.  One Elijah Akeem Whaanga, 21 has had his second “strike”, meaning that if he commits a further strike offence he will be sentenced to the maximum penalty without parole.  The problem is that this fellow was engaged in petty thefts.  At least that’s what the critics are alleging.

Professor Warren Bucklands of Auckland University’s Faculty of Law said Whaanga’s case made a mockery of its promoters’ claim that it would target only “the worst of the worst”. “Whaanga’s case is an inevitable consequence of the way in which the legislation was drafted and, what’s more, was known to Parliament when it was passed,” he said.Rethinking Crime and Punishment spokesman Kim Workman said the public needed to think about the cost of locking someone up for 14 years for robbing a boy of a cap and a cellphone.

We believe these criticisms to be deliberately disingenuous. Whaanga is on his second strike not because of petty theft, but because his thefts involved aggravated assaults against his victims.  It is the violence against his victims that has brought him under the aegis of the Three Strikes Law.  Both Professor Bucklands and Mr Workman elide over these facts, which, to our mind, makes them dishonest brokers. 

Whaanga’s offending stretches back to 2006, including burglary, theft, resisting arrest and indecent assault. He served a short prison sentence in early 2010. In July that year, he and an accomplice committed aggravated robbery. Whaanga punched the victim in the head multiple times before taking $68. For that he earned his first strike in December 2010 and was sentenced to jail for two years and one month.

He was freed on parole in April last year. The Parole Board said he had behaved well in prison, where he had resided in the Maori Focus Unit. He had completed a drug programme and a Maori therapeutic programme and was released on a number of conditions for six months. Four months later he committed two aggravated robberies with two separate accomplices. The first involved taking a skateboard, hat and cigarette lighter from the victim after trying unsuccessfully to remove the victim’s jacket. The second involved Whaanga kicking the victim in the back of his leg and taking his hat and cellphone.

The cynical counsel that our dishonest brokers should be giving Whaanga is this: “when you get out, mate, from your second strike sentence (two and a half years without parole) we suggest you restrain your offending to picking pockets and other petty larceny.  Keep your fists and your boots to yourself.”

Three Strikes in an inherently just concept; the NZ law appears well crafted.  Those who oppose it, dishonestly or otherwise, need to explain why they favour the injustice of ignoring the greater guilt implicit in repeated criminal acts.