240. Round up

For those of my readers needing to take care of business in school tomorrow, or planning a visit to your local Stop-'n'-Rob store, you'll be glad to know that the NRA has some stylish new gear for you.  Yes, now you, too, can wear concealed-carry jeans with the belt loops thoughtfully positioned "so they don't interfere with holster wear. Pants feature two internal magazine pockets and a concealment pocket in the front and back."  Today's NRA.  You provide the homicidal impulse - we'll take care of the rest!

Meanwhile, in John Wayne County, California, an accused criminal was acquitted.  Not because he didn't do it:

No one disputes that an on-duty Irvine police officer got an erection and ejaculated on a motorist during an early-morning traffic stop in Laguna Beach. The female driver reported it, DNA testing confirmed it and officer David Alex Park finally admitted it.

How'd he get  off - I mean, how'd he get acquitted?  Easy: he spent a lot of time stalking his prey, eventually choosing a stripper on her way home from her workplace.  His lawyer simply made sure the 11 male jurors knew she was a low status woman:

In his closing argument, [defense attorney Al] Stokke pounced. He called Lucy one of those “girls who have learned the art of the tease, getting what they want . . . they’ve learned to separate men from their money.”

[Prosecutor Shaddi] Kamiabipour wasn’t amused. “Dancer or not, sexually promiscuous nor not, she had the right not to consent,” she told jurors. “[Park] doesn’t get a freebie just because of who she is . . . He used her like an object.”

But Kamiabipour was wrong.  The cop did get a freebie.  He had the jurors' permission to use her like an object.  After all, “She’s an overtly sexual person.”  The jurors employed the same decision-making matrix favored by the United States Supreme Court.  (See post 102 and post 228.)  (At least the cop was fired.)

Meanwhile, another lesson in the relationship of status to the law was administered in poor Burma, where, according to an understandably anonymous blogger,

A Toyota SUV  being driven by the son of Dr. Tin Aung Aye (Supreme Court Justice of lower Burma), managed to seriously crunch a Suzuki Wagon car on Pyay Road, Yangon.

Witnesses say that he looked drunk or on drugs at the time of accident. Apparently he was doing a U turn on a major road in Yangon when he hit the Suzuki. The elderly diver of the Suzuki subsequently died in the infamous Yangon Hospital’s emergency department.

No charges were preferred, although a directive came down from on high that henceforth judges weren't to permit their family members to drive the official vehicles "without the presence of Supreme Justice himself on the car."  My favorite bit: each judge gets both an SUV and a van from the store of vehicles impounded (all in accordance with approved judicial procedures, of course) by the government.  I wonder if judges get to place orders for specific makes, colors and option packages?

And in Boston, a Judicial Conduct Commission investigation concluded that two state judges did nothing wrong when they delayed entering judgment against a sitting state Senator - the political mentor of one of them - until after her tough primary campaign.  The Commission's findings are almost parodic: "The commission's investigation revealed that, while there was inadvertent delay in the processing of this case, there was no misconduct on the part of any judge."   There was "no misconduct" in the sense that there isn't actually a rule against judges using their power of office to influence elections.  And what other sense is there?

Comments

[Leslie]

I didn't realize being an "overtly sexual person" means surrendering one's right to refuse to give a handjob to a police officer. Dang. I've got my work cut out for me.