A Paean to My Bravery and Other Songs of Myself

My job is not one that I would describe as requiring much in the way of physical courage, other than braving the odd paper cut.  (Well I once challenged a loud-mouthed guy in a union meeting to step outside -- of course he was 25 years older than me and I knew he was totally and permanently disabled in one shoulder -- but still. . . .)  However, I actually managed to be in the same court house as Zacarias Moussaoui on a couple of occasions without pissing my pants, which I guess makes me a death-defying man of steel.  I was trying a case in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia in Alexandria when aspects of the death penalty case against Moussaoui were being heard by Judge Leonie Brinkema in the court room across the hall from where my case was being heard.  You knew when Moussaoui was going to be in the court house because they would set up a second metal detector just outside of Brinkema's court room.

I have to say it never occurred to me to be afraid or even give it a second thought that he would be in the court.  Anyone who litigates for a living is occasionally in the court house when dangerous criminals are there.  I recall doing a routine status conference before a federal judge in DC just before he was about to commence a criminal trial against the "Newton Street Crew" a notorious crack trafficking group that had murdered several people in the late eighties and early nineties.  The court room had large bullet proof glass partitions set up between the public seating area and the area where the lawyers, judge and jury were seated.  More daunting to me was looking at the big blown up street photo exhibits and seeing my own apartment building within the zone of the group's operations.  Again, though, I never gave a second thought about my safety as the United States Marshals are pretty damned good at dealing with court room security.   

I thus find the right wing hissy fit over Eric Holder's announcement that the 9/11 conspirators will be tried in federal court in NYC to be amazing.  The U.S. has demonstrated an ability to safely try and convict numerous terrorists over the years -- including Ramzi Yousef, Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, Timothy McVeigh, Eric Rudolph, and Richard Reid among others --  as have many other democracies.  We have an extremely competent judiciary and top notch court house security.  We don't have a history of terrorists escaping from our clutches because they are being tried in civilian court houses.

The quaking fear that grips the manly men of the right is a sight to behold.  They seem to think that people like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed possess some kind of supernatural powers that make him a threat if he simply enters the United States.  (It looks to me like he is a short, chunky middle aged man with a prodigious gift for growing body hair -- I can't really imagine him striking fear in my heart.) Physical and moral cowardice really seem to be the defining characteristics of right wing politicians and pundits.   

Comments

[litbrit]

It looks to me like he is a short, chunky middle aged man with a prodigious gift for growing body hair -- I can't really imagine him striking fear in my heart.

I know, right? I keep thinking Cheeseborger, cheeseborger, cheeseborger; COKE, no Pepsi!

The trouble with the manly menz of the right is that they're all really a bunch of pussies. I mean, look at the blog names they pick for themselves--Tigerhawk, Purple Avenger, Giant Thrusting Red-State Projectiles (okay, we did make up the last one). Silly little creatures, all. Of course they're afraid of KSM. The sight of him calls to mind some imagined tentacled monster implanted in their collective amygdala long ago by the well-remunerated authors of books like "Help! There's a Liberal Under My Bed!"

[Sir Charles]

I avoided using the "p" word -- but I really wanted to.

My biggest nightmare involving KSM would be a game of "shirts and skins" basketball and KSM is a skin and I have to cover him. Gives me the heebie-jeebies.

[litbrit]

Sir C, as a proud owner of a p-word myself, I think it's probably okay if I use the word in the pejorative sense, wouldn't you agree?

But then, I don't own a dick--not one that's attached to me, anyway--yet I have no problem calling other people dicks. Not when they have it coming. ;-)

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

I was asked to pass along the following message:

"We object to the ignorant use of the term 'pussies' to refer to cowards. While we do not use the term for ourselves, we know our fellow felines do, and we know that none of our species deserves the implications."

(signed)
Kittenz, Captain Pudles, Tiki (Mystique), and Quint the Quintessential Cat

May I add that, given the other use of the term, as referring to either the female pudenda or female humans in general, I try to avoid it under any circumstances where it has a negative connotation, and I am particularly shocked at litbrit being the one to first use it.

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

The above was posted before litbrit posted her second comment, but no, I personally don't think it was okay.

[anonymous one]

oh, give me a break. writing anonymously because i do not write publicly about my work -- which is representing people facing the death penalty. that's all i've done for 20 years. it was an important part of what i did for 5 years before that.

i'm 5'3" at most, and a decidedly non-athletic woman. the vast majority of the time, i have "contact" visits with clients -- i meet them in locked cages enclosed by plexiglass and bars, having passed through a metal detector set high enough that underwire bras are forbidden. every so often, a client is considered an extra risk, or has broken rules, and we meet behind glass. let me say it again: my clients are on death row, convicted of murder. i feel safe seeing them.

it is actually an act of trust for the clients to see me. they are body-searched before and after each visit. this can be very traumatizing for clients who have been abused, and i suspect it is not fun for any of them.

in court, there is always a ton of security -- especially for high-profile defendants. these particular defendants will be top of the list for security measures. i seriously don't understand why anyone is getting bent out of shape about trying people charged with awful crimes in our own courts. if they act up, there will be measures taken. there are plans; it is covered.

those holding a hissy fit need to get a grip.

[Glenn Fayard]

If we shouldn't use the p-word, should we use the c-word? Speaking as a d-word, I'd be all for this.

[kathy a.]

would you people get your minds out of the gutter? i think we can all agree on the term "wimps."

[litbrit]

Oh, give me a break, too (not referring to anonymous one's comment, but rather, Prup's): this is not a blog that's especially given to language-policing. Never has been, and as long as I write here, never will be. Political correctness may be found--and indeed, may dominate the discourse--in thousands of other places, but at the Cogblog, most if not all of us are perfectly capable of discriminating between an insult meant for a single person or a specific ideological group (i.e. wingnut bloggers are pussies), and an egregious and unwarranted insult to an entire class of people (i.e. those of us who are in possession of pussies, furry and otherwise).

The latter, which I've yet to see happen here, would be grounds for reproof, yes.

Now, if I am moved to insult someone personally, it will be very, very obvious (and rare). Herein, though, I was accurately describing the large swath of rightwing bloggers and blowhards (as alluded to by Sir C) who are trembling in their Topsiders because The Big Bad Terrorists are going to be tried on American soil. Which, I suspect, is the real problem here: it's not so much the nearness of the criminals they fear--it's the fact that said criminals are getting due process under the law, which represents President Obama's long-awaited smackdown of a significant cornerstone underpinning King George's Imperial and Indefinite Torture and Detention Regime, as well as the beginning of the end of same in toto.

Besides, if pussy is verboten, what next? We can't call silly people boobs? Do we get rid of dicks (oh dear, let's not...), stop applauding Alan Grayson for his balls, disallow any Python videos wherein people use gendered insults (i.e. "Shut your festering gob, you tit--your type really makes me puke!") and on and on, ad absurdum, until everyone feels as though he or she is walking on eggshells and we have to start putting Trigger Warnings on any post that has the potential to upset someone.

I, for one, am not going there.

[oddjob]

I knew Teh Right had this particular problem some years ago, when on some blog or other I unfortunately watched a clip of Elisabeth Hasselbeck holding forth on The View. They were discussing something involving the "them" of our day - Islamic fundamentalist terrorists. Every time she reasserted "they're terrorists!" it was painfully obvious to me that she had come to the unconscious conclusion that they possessed superpowers of evil.

Giuliani made his presidential run out of exploiting nothing but that particular inarticulate fear of theirs.

I swear listening to them reminds me of nothing so much as listening to Little Orphan Annie (the original one, from the 19th Century American poem) muttering darkly about how ya ha' to be keerful or the gobbeluns'll git ya!

[oddjob]

And while I'm at it, I'm going to link back to this comment I made a day or two ago. It's definitely relevant, in its way.

[kathy a.]

oh, for dog's sake. oddjob, everyone who had any connection to the bush administration's policies must have first been subjected to training, which consisted of writing 500 times on the blackboard: "national security risk!" the next assigment was 300 repetitions of: "we really mean it this time!"

[oddjob]

To the point that the replacement Attorney General (who was supposed to remove the stigma of illegality) is still advocating the de facto elimination of habeus corpus?

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

To defend myself, I was referring to one specific word, and stated, accurately, that I try not to use it in a negative context -- and I was surprised that you had. (My bad in forgetting that it is more common and less offensive in Britain, where the most common usage, afaik, is 'old pussies' for old ladies.)

While I was writing my piece, you yourself posted a short note that seemed to express your own doubt about using it. I responded by saying I didn't think it was okay.

Again, i was not generalizing -- as a very wise and sometimes crazy man once said, "What I say, I say; what I don't say, I do not say." I was speaking about one word that has always struk me as silly or stupid more than offensive. (I'm certainly not consistent. I don't use 'pussy' or 'cunt,' but I will use 'bitch.' And if I were the 'language police' I'd object to 'cocksucker' as an insult -- and I AM one of those -- but I don't and even use it myself. And to quote another 'wise but occasionally crazy' man, 'fuck you' should NEVER be an insult -- he (Dr. Albert Ellis) tried to get people to say 'unfuck you' but nobody, not even his patients, agreed with him.)

Anyway, my opinion, take it for what it's worth.

[kathy a.]

ahem. this is not a post about blog language.

oddjob, i'd count mukasey among those who were trained to sit up and bark, if that's what you're asking. bringing people to trial in the US goes well beyond whether habeas corpus was/is valid, as debated in the previous administration.

now -- at least in these cases -- we're starting to live by the idea that if you have proof someone has done a crime, you charge them and go to trial, with all the constitutional protections in place.

if you don't have proof -- well, that is the next set of problems, what to do with people in guantanamo who really can't be tried because there isn't proof. normally [that is to say, on US soil aside from guantanamo] it cannot ever take years to get to teh "whoopsie, now what?" stage when guys are in custody and you don't have a case. i consider this a bigger problem than trying the charged ones in federal court.

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

Agreed, kathy, both on your initial comment and your important point.

On that, the one question I have about 'giving them their constitutional rights' is that this includes the right to a 'speedy trial.' Any citizen who had been kept in jail without a trial would walk out the door, regardless of the evidence. Even KSM.

And that is something I haven't seen anyone bring up.

[Sir Charles]

Let's be clear -- this blog post is about the fact that I have balls the size of muskmelons. I stood in the very same building as a gen-you-whine Ay-rab terrorist and I did not leave an embarrassing yellow trail behind me. All else is piffle.

Prup,

I do not believe that there is a court in all the land in which a judge would order KSM released due to a failure to provide a speedy trial. (I think Padilla would be a case in point against your contention.)

[kathy a.]

yeah, i agree on the speedy trial point. nobody walks on speedy trial, unless maybe they were accused of stealing a loaf of bread and nobody noticed they were in jail for a long time.

[Gene O'Grady]

For what it's worth, when my father first became a judge (1971, I think) his bailiff was an old retired military guy. A couple of years later it was a former Dallas cowboy who showed signs of regular workouts. The latter once told him, "Judge, I can't guarantee that if a guy wants to kill you he won't get one shot off. But I can assure you that he'll be dead before he takes the second one."

I also remember my dad had one of the Pelican Bay people in his court who was later killed trying to make a break in another court room. Said that the guy was scary, was obviously looking for a chance to get away, which of course made it easier to keep on guard against him.

Danger is a long time reality in US courts and they deal with it. Letting anything untoward happen almost always involves major incompetence.

[kathy a.]

good observations, o'grady. the instances of courtroom violence that come to mind for me were essentially domestic [not homicide; not high profile] cases, where the guard of courthouse security was not really on alert.

pelican bay is *the* highest security prison in CA. it is hard to imagine how a person housed there could even think of making a break in a courtroom.

[Sir Charles]

The state courts seemed to lag behind the federal courts in security for many years. I don't get there very often, but my impression is that this is no longer the case.

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

Glad to know that. Thought it was unlikely, but had seen no one -- here or elsewhere -- mention it.

And, btw, Sir C., I once knew a guy with balls that were, if not muskmelon size, at least grapefruit sized. Even had a threesome with him and the lady I was with. You don't want that, believe me. They don't worj that well, they get in the way, and they have other unpleasant side effects. Tennis balls, okay, but no more.

[oddjob]

grapefruit sized

To me that "sounds" PAINFUL!

[Crissa]

I don't even think that the police have a year from the time of an infraction to file their half of the ticket is fair.

[litbrit]

Prup, my apologies for going off on the whole language police thing. I was tired and cranky, and the topic of political correctness is a sore spot, for me at least.

As for the potential for violence in courtrooms, well, yes, it happens. It has happened here in Florida, though overall, it's a pretty rare event, when you consider the number of cases that move through any given court--even capital and/or violent crime cases.

And as kathy a. points out, it is more likely when the guards and overall security task are caught unawares. Which you can be certain they won't be in NY--the security will probably be at unprecedented levels. (I truly hope we don't resort to what those Italian courts did, some time ago, when they were trying some pretty notorious Mafia figures: put the defendants in steel-barred cages within the courtroom. *That* would make for some pretty hideous optics in the world press, though it would not be all that different from the way these men were held at Guantanamo.)

[minstrel hussain boy]

i have long been disturbed by the way a "terrorist" label is applied to people who are, and should be treated as, common criminals.

the response to their crimes should, and often effectively comes from law enforcement.

the military is a blunt tool. unwieldy and most often clumsy (how can one expect grace from the folks who brought us "collateral damage?")

the very first time i heard the term "politically correct" was from the mouth of my dear friend, and employer of that evening, holly near. it was sometime in the early eighties and we were playing the old time cafe in leucadia. holly was doing her intro to the song rap, i was minding my own business, sitting with my little lap harp waiting for the song to begin.

she spouted the words "politically correct" and i blurted,

holly darlin', in my eyes, to be political is correct.

she glared, i shut up, we remain friends.

[oddjob]

I guess Giuliani believes they have superpowers of evil, too.

[kathy a.]

all giuliani has been able to say for 8 years is "9/11!!!111!!!" it was a terrible crime, beyond belief, but i'm so tired of people yelling "9/11!" and expecting everyone to line up like good little sheep for some additional insult to our values and freedoms. it simply doesn't advance our safety or our moral decency to continually play on fears while withholding information, to remove any class of criminal accusation from public scrutiny.

giuliani objects to the defendants getting due process, is the bottom line. and that objection is wrong. i wonder at why people like guiliani are so afraid of using the rule of law and our constitution?

the venue of criminal trial proceedings is generally where the crime happened. sometimes there are several possible venues; DC is therefore another possibility, but there is nothing unusual at all about NYC being the prosecution's choice since the most damage was done there.

sometimes venues are changed upon a defense request, when the crime is high-profile and lots of potential jurors have already made up their minds. my guess is that it will be challenging to find an impartial jury anywhere in the country, because everyone remembers 9/11. there may be fewer potential jurors with direct losses of friends and family in another location, though.

[Sir Charles]

mhb,

You're absolutely right. As you well know, the military is designed to be a blunt instrument. It's mission is typically to kill and to do so with overwhelming firepower.

It's not well situated to deal with things like suicide bombers and other forms of terrorism. This seems to have escaped the notice of right-wingers.

[big bad wolf]

O Sir, my Sir. that is, i like the title of the post.

back from traveling hundreds of miles to see springsteen, this is what i think. i think that it was a very worthwhile trip and that insofar as i have a soul bruce has helped me maintain it. i think that as much as we won't to hate the MSM, we all benefit from the new york timnes being as good as it is. i think that venue motions are rarely granted, but that KSM has an excellent chance of having one granted, if only within new york. the branch davidians got a change of venue within a large district to a different division. that won't work in SDNY, but i can see the trial ending up in albany, syracuse, or rochester; he might even get as far as harrisburg. i think that's not likely to help him much, even if granting it is appropriate and fair. that's because the death penalty makes it very tricky for him; any change of venue probably increases his chance of getting sentenced to death. i think that the speculation about KSM using the trial to propagandize and pontificate is just silly. have these reporters ever been to federal court? federal judges don't allow sotto voce, let alone speeches. see joe bruno. i think showing by body language, that you are not afraid of your client, even if you are, is about the most important thing a defense counsel can do. i think i remember holly near herself getting in trouble in the early 90s for not being politically correct. it's a tough term, one that, like denial and all harsh epithets tends to come back on one. i think i'll have another drink

[Sir Charles]

bbw,

Hope you enjoyed Springsteen I figured you couldn't resist weighing in on this one.

I am not sure if a change of venue will be given here, although there are compelling arguments for it. I just don't know that you are going to catch a more favorable jury pool anywhere else within the U.S. Everyone feels like they knew a 9/11 victim even if they didn't. I also think the judges in S.D.N.Y. may have a proprietary feeling toward the case after all of this nonsense.

[big bad wolf]

resistance never has been my strong point.

my life, back in the 70s, was saved by rock n' roll, and most particularly by bruce.

i think that if KSM asks, he should get a change of venue. obviously no one is pro-911, but 8 or 9 years on things are likely less raw somewhere other than nyc. i think a fair judge who is asked for a venue change should grant it. but, with the death penalty in play, i think the odds are against KSM filing a venue motion.

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

Am I the confused one here? (Wouldn't be the first, or the thousandth one THAT was true.) If he is being tried in the Federal System, how does a venue change affect the death penalty? (Is there some rule that, even in FC, death cannot be given to someone who is tried in a state which does not permit it?)

Furthermore, if KSM is conducting his own defense, as has been stated, he is unlikely to grasp the subtleties of Federal vs State, or even have a grasp of the geography. (He lived briefly in the US as a student -- starting, ironically, at a 'small Baptist College' in NC -- but that was his only time in the country, afaik.)

On the other hand, it may be the prosecutors who move for a change of venue because of the inability to find people who were not either victims or close to victims.

We usually refer to those who died or were injured and their loved ones as the 'victims' but that just the top layer of at least six dinstinct groups, all of whom were direct victims.

1:the dead and wounded

2:everyone in that building at the time, even if unscratched, who went through that direct trauma, and particuloarly if they were in the evacuation

3:most of the people working or even being in the direct area. (And that I can speak to directly, because my brother-in-law's wife and our closest friend were working there, and they may finally be back to where they were, but who still have some traumatic scars.)

4:owners of businesses in the area who were forced out of business in the direct aftermath.

5:because of the 'loss of paper' and records, many people must have directly suffered financially because of the attack and you have to include them

6:and, of course the Muslims and 'Muslim-looking' Sikhs, Hindus, Christain Middle Easterners, and Grrek Orthodox priests who were discriminated against, had their lives disrupted, or who were physically attacked because of a bigotry that barely existed before.

I could go on, and admittedly, I am looking at this as a New Yorker, but I wonder, Sir C., was there any equivalent in Washington?

It would be hard to find many people who were not so close to members of one of those groups.

[Sir Charles]

Prup,

I think the impact of the strike on the Pentagon was somewhat less profound for a variety of reasons. First, it wasn't nearly as dramatic visually -- the Pentagon being a sprawling but squat building that is surrounded by enormous parking lots and is just over the river in Virginia. I drove past the charred gash in the building pretty regularly for a couple of months and that was rather chilling, but unless your commute or travels took you that way, it wasn't likely to be a constant visual reminder in the way that the absence of the Twin Towers is in the lower Manhattan skyline. Second, far fewer people were victims. third, no video of the attack. I don't think that can be understated in terms of its cultural impact. Fourth, it did not have any functional impact on the area in the way that the destruction of the transportation plaza under the WTC did. Finally, it was repaired really quickly.

Having said that, it was obviously a terrifying event for people in the region. I had just arrived at a meeting in Maryland almost directly across from the Pentagon and had been listening to the story of the New York attacks on NPR, when I saw the plumes of smoke billowing from the Pentagon. The meeting was canceled immediately and we all took off to wherever we felt drawn. I headed for home like it was the only place to go and frantically tried to call my wife on the cell phone -- she worked about two blocks from the White House and spent a fair amount of time at the Capitol in those days. Cell phones were totally useless as you might imagine. I flew around a nearly deserted part of the Beltway at about 80 MPH (who knows why?) and passed Andrews Air Force Base and saw a caravan of black Suburbans driving there at an even greater clip than I was going. Rumors flew about an atack at the State Department and that the Metro had shut down. Chaos reigned it seemed. My then eight year old kid was at his first day of school out in the MD suburbs and I was also trying to get a hold of the guy who was driving him home to see where he was and I naturally couldn't get through. It was many hours before both he and my wife got home and I sat alone and watched CNN and futilely dialed the phone.

In its aftermath though I think people here like in NYC have a certain fatalism about it all. Most of us understand and accept that the city is high on the list of likely targets if such an event were to occur again, but we just live our lives because there really isn't anything else to do.

I find people in the hinterlands pissing their pants over this stuff to be laughable.

[oddjob]

I just don't know that you are going to catch a more favorable jury pool anywhere else within the U.S.

Agreed. I think the only thing going to upstate NY or Harrisburg would do would be to increase the number of potential jurors in the pool who are quite comfortable with having the defendant executed.

[oddjob]

Everyone feels like they knew a 9/11 victim even if they didn't.

The reason being an event like that psychologically victimizes every citizen.

[oddjob]

Even my sister was victimized in a way. She edits the morning news broadcast at a local television station in one of our metro areas (one not directly connected to MA, NYC, PA or DC in any way).

That means she got to figure out what footage was broadcast on her station, and what to edit out. She got to watch the video of people jumping to their deaths and had to decide what of that not to show, even though she had to watch it.

[big bad wolf]

prup, you are correct that the law setting the maximum penalty as death is national and would apply wherever the case was tried. the penalty is not mandatory, however; the jury would decide whether life or death was the appropriate penalty. that the jury decides that could affect whether a change of venue motion is filed. potential jurors in nyc are probably less disposed toward the death penalty than potential jurors in most others likely venues. that can be very important. jurors in a capital case have to be death-qualified, that is, be willing to vote for death if convinced by the government that the penalty is apt. that means there are no soft-on-crime :) folks on the jury. with that sort of jury it might be better to take one's chances in nyc, on the grounds that even death-qualifed nyc jurors are less likely to vote for death than the jurors you are going to get in a different venue.

that's what i meant when i said the possiblity of a change of venue motion being filed was affected by the death penatly being in play. in a usual very-high profile case, a venue motion might be expected to be filed. in this one, maybe not, even if KSM is probably as likely to be convicted in nyc as anywhere else.

if KSM represents himself, it will be quite a scene.

here's a real interesting point, i think. most circuits have left open the question whether due process permits an indictment to be dismissed on grounds of outrageous government conduct. for the most part they have ruled on the specific challenged practice and never found anything to be outrageous. KSM's case may answer that question. wanna bet we find out there is no such right?

[Sir Charles]

And will no doubt fall under the "bad facts make bad law" heading.

[big bad wolf]

or is it bad people make bad law :)

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

Were that defense to work (million to one odds, I'd guess) he could still be tried by the states -- which does not violate double jeopardy -- and then extradited to any of the 90+ countries who lost citizens. Sumpin' tells me if I could buy a million dollar life insurance policy on KSM even at a cost of $100,000 a year, I'd be a big winner.