Yet another well written article written by Lester Jackson, the same writer that wrote a fantastic essay about the current state of our Country's Justice system" entitled The Modern Elite Ruling Class Notion of Justice"
found in it's entirety in my June archives.
--And I must say - he nailed it . I wished that I'd written it.
It embodied so well everything that I believed part and parcel of the basic issues inhibiting our criminal justice system/.This includes the purposely crippled death penalty and the latent hypocrisy strewn throughout much of the Anti-Death Penalty arguments, particularly those made by abolitionist/ lawyers, who in effect. hijacked the death penalty system, rendering it near-unworkable in so many states, that the state winds up scrapping it, replacing it with life w/o parole, having disastrous effects on peoples safety from violent crime.
These subjects are rarely written about, other than superficially; If it' is mainstream media, we might be given the results of a state-wide poll concerning the death penalty,or the death penalty might be mentioned as an aside within a larger context, such as; how a certain high -profile case has brought the issue to the forefront of the state's conscience, as well in the state of Connecticut where our judiciary committee and legislature, have been chomping at the bit to abolish almost sadistic in its tireless obscenely timed efforts.
For example just this year the Connecticut Judiciary Committee decided, seemingly out of the blue,( for the second time in two years) to surreptitiously draw up and vote on yet another death penalty abolishment Bill - a pet project of theirs for year, their most recent prior efforts resulted in a close vote that was promptly vetoed by then Governor Jodi Rell.
From there the bill was to be sent to the General Assembly, the second step for any crime based legislation to become law, and if it passed muster there, the bill would then be voted upon by the traditionally much more intelligent and discerning Connecticut Senate. Partisan politics notwithstanding, our Senators are generally speaking, an intelligent lot, and a fair number will and do cross party lines for such serious matters..
Note; The reason I cited the Judiciary's decision as obscenely timed is because at that exact moment in time, a trial was about to begin; The long awaited trial for one Steven Hayes" one of the two men charged in the murders, rape and robbery of three members of The Petit family in July 2007,.Hayes and Joshua Komisarjevsky were caught fleeing the Petit Family home in the Petit family car, as eleven year old Michaela and 17 year old Hayley Petit were trapped inside their house, burning to death from a gasoline fueled fire that led straight to their bodies which were tied hands and feet to their beds.
Their mom 48 year old Jennifer Petit had already been strangled to death by Mr Hayes seconds after he raped her, and both men set fire to the house, being certain to douse the girls and Mrs Petit's body with accelerant, hoping to insure the destruction of both men's DNA and murder all witnesses.
Adding to the tragedy, Hayley managed to somehow break free of her bonds, but was no match for a fire that the fire department described as violent and snake like and poor Hayley covered in gasoline was directly in it's path. She collapsed on the stairs while Michaela died a terrible death, struggling desperately to get free from her binds..
Their father William Petit Jr, who was badly concussed, suffering TBI and severe blood loss, testified hearing strange thumps above him and a terrible moaning. yelled up from the basement something like Hey from where he lay tied beaten and bloodied. One of the men, identified by Petit as Komisarjevsky, the younger man who did all the talking,yelled down "don't worry it'll all be over soon"
"It will all be over soon"
Those words are Joshua Komisarjevsky's undoing.
Petit described the man's tone as sinister and ominous now, whereas before Komisarjevsky's tone had been placating and reassuring " we only want the money, just don't try anything and no one will get hurt'
It' is fittingly ironic that Joshua komisarjevsky, mastermind of the home invasion, scheduled to be tried next month, basically hung himself by behaving as the textbook cruel, arrogant ego-centric sociopath that he is..
In his evil mind, there was no longer a need for pretense, he'd gotten the money from Jennifer Petit , he'd raped 11 year old Michaela, as was his main motive for the break-in, and he'd intended for Dr Petit to die in the fire along with the two girls. However, his words to Bill Petit and the way that he had said them propelled Petit to draw the very last of his adrenaline break his hand binds and hop up the cellar steps to reach a neighbor to call 911. feet tied head bludgeoned by komisarjevsky's baseball bat beating upon entry to the house, he knew he was no match for two men, he needed to get the Police to his home fast.
The police Confession from Hayes and other evidence show that the men were aware when Bill Petit escaped from the cellar just a few minutes later, feet still tied literally rolling unable to crawl, to his neighbors house, the men were upstairs near a window when they saw and heard Petit, and according to Hayes Komisarjevsky began yelling at Hayes" the guy got out dammit!"he got out!" hurry up the cops are coming!
And yet the men still chose to murder the two young girls anyway by setting them on fire. The jig was up, they were most certainly going to be identified by Petiit, who had seen their physiques, heard their voices, they both had heavy criminal records, would be able to identify them.
Only moments earlier Dr Petit tied up in his cellar had heard his wife being raped and strangled, unbenownstto him at that time, and Joshua Komisarjevsky, so non plussed by the rape and murder that he'd just witnessed, couldn't resist taunting the man of the house, husband to the woman he'd just seen violently raped and strangled. He just had to relish what he imagined were his last moments of power over the soon to be dead Dr Petit. Although as a perfectly predictable sociopath, he later claimed to police and within letters and journals confiscated by prison guards that Hayes was responsible for escalating the crimes to murder, this when it was so obvious that he was the one calling the shots, he was the one who targeted the women in the first place.
In the historically largely Democratic Connecticut, for the first time in twenty years like it or not woke up to find ourselves being Governed by a Democrats this as the result of a precariously close vote whereupon a very unusual situation involving a substantial number of "missing, empty voting ballots in a city north of Fair field ,called Bridgeport. The city, it should be mentioned, had been rife with dirty politics and corruption -corruption which has had the trickle down effect, burrowing it's way into the Bridgeport Criminal Court system, a veritable revolving door for violent criminals.
When people say "but what can we do about all of this after all we're just one or two, or three - people?
One answer first of all , you can vote , not only in the larger election such as State Governor et al but just as for your lawmakers ; local assemblymen and women, as well as your State Senators
The people who comprise the Connecticut Legislature.
These men and women have a ridiculous amount of power, especially when you consider that the majority of house members are Lawyers, whether in active practice or not. Lawyers, with Lawyer friends.
Find out their voting records in the past if they've served before on the state legislature. If they are a newbie running for office in you're city or township, find out their stance on important criminal justice issues such as The Death Penalty, a subject that within the past four years, has been at the center of huge divisiveness between the residents of Connecticut and its mostly democratic legislators who do not seem to care what the people want but rather they continuously vote to abolish the DP from some unrealistic armchair philosophy that includes the notion that it costs too much because the very same democratic party has crippled its actual implementation with a ludicrous and endless appeals process. This is Irony at its worst.
Specifically how have they voted on any and all crime bills? Have they taken a proactive and tough stance against crime for the people of Connecticut, or have they just gone along with their parties majority?
The majority that is mostly responsible for lackadaisical approach to crime would be the seemingly ever-reigning Democrats n the Connecticut legislature.
Watch them operate during the now televised coverage of all Legislative sessions, which are now televised by law' One can garner a very good view into who the players are, who has control within the house, and the Senate All of This despite some obvious posturing for the camera's
And how do we decide such a formidable decision? I have discovered via my Blog and my lobbying efforts, that many people care very much about issues that affect crime, sentencing and public safety - they are often simply unsure of the process and how they can induce change.
There is nothing wrong with being uncertain of how local and State legislation works, but the shame is in not finding out and getting more involved, because these "lawmakers" may invariably decide the fate of you or someone you love by being either soft or tough on issues involving crime and sentencing.
Watch listen learn. Ask questions of a friend or acquaintance who is in the know regarding the machinations of local politics as well as the Connecticut court systems.
And now that I have managed to once again pontificate ad nauseum. in bold print below is the article by Lester Jackson that incited this post in the first place.
In making the case for judicial review, Chief Justice John Marshall pointed out that judges take a sworn oath to uphold the laws of the United States. Until last month, it would have been unnecessary to stress that he was obviously referring to actual laws, not the unfulfilled fantasies of a lone member of Congress. Nevertheless, on July 7, in a case largely ignored by the media, dissenting Justices Breyer, Ginsburg, Soto mayor and Kagan carried judicial activism to new heights by advocating a stay of execution on the basis of an imaginary law. They thereby revealed themselves to be so desperate to save barbaric murderers that they unashamedly and brazenly sought to apply un-enacted legislation introduced on June 14 by one senator, Patrick Leahy, with not a single cosponsor and by no representative at all. They had to know that this was not going to pass, because it had never been seriously considered in over seven years -- even when those least unlikely to vote for it controlled both houses of Congress and the presidency.
On May 20, 1994, Humberto Leal Garcia raped and murdered 16-year-old Adria Sauceda, whose skull he crushed and whom he left with a long stick protruding from her insides. Although he had lived in the United States since before he was two years old, Leal sought to avoid execution by taking advantage of the fact that he was a Mexican national who, he contended, should have been informed of a treaty right to Mexican consular assistance. No claim was made that he had in any way been prejudiced by lack of such assistance or that he was anything but clearly guilty as charged. (Indeed, he confessed when he was finally executed.)
A mere three years earlier, the Supreme Court had rejected an identical claim. Jose Ernesto Medellín, a Mexican national who had been in this country since preschool (4), had bragged about brutally robbing, raping, and murdering two girls, 14 and 16. The Court cited congressional refusal to pass a law required to enforce a consular consultation right. As stated by the Leal dissenters, the Court had "held that, because Congress had not embodied our international legal obligations in a statute, the Court lacked the power to enforce those obligations as a matter of domestic law." But they went on to assert that Leal's applications "do not suffer from this... legal defect" thanks to Leahy's bill.
It is noteworthy how easily the Leal dissenters slithered from lack of a statute to pending legislation, inviting the gullible to believe that the latter is a substitute for a duly enacted law. Their claim that it had a good chance of passing was obviously disingenuous, refuted by the lack of even one cosponsor and the failure to pass it since the need for it first became apparent seven years earlier.
The real aim of this artful exercise is transparent. Justices opposed to capital punishment (which has overwhelming public support) seek to sabotage it at every chance. Opponents routinely resort to absolutely anything to delay executions. There is no argument or ruse too preposterous (47) for them to try.
Here, the dissenting justices sought to grant "alien" murderers a right not possessed by citizen murderers: to call their "native" country's consulate even if, like citizens, they were raised and educated in the United States. This would be one more weapon to employ in the death penalty opponents' long term strategy of endless delay. If granted, would it surprise anyone if the same justices pivoted to seek a bar to executions of American citizen murderers on the equal protection ground that they lacked a right enjoyed by aliens?
In the end, the Leal case was shockingly significant, not because of its particular extremely gruesome facts barely touched upon here, but because of what it revealed about those at the apex of the legal system. Four justices proclaimed themselves disposed to implement, as if actual law, any pending legislation that suits their fancy -- even if proposed by but one legislator, one percent of the Senate or 0.19% of the entire membership of Congress.
It is, of course, nothing new for critics, including justices themselves, to accuse the court of rewriting law, twisting and torturing it beyond recognition. But, until now, there was at least a pretense of making decisions based on actual law. Resort to such pretense is bad enough!
Now, however, the United States is but one justice away from a majority so arrogant and incapable of embarrassment as to see no need even to resort to this pretense in usurping the democratic process. We are perilously close to five imperial justices so hell bent on ramming their unpopular personal values down the throats of an unwilling public that they will enforce laws that they themselves acknowledge do not exist -- in this case, for the benefit an unspeakably barbaric murderer.
Really! Do such justices have anything but contempt for the rule of law, contempt for the legislative process, contempt for the Constitution that clearly specifies that process, contempt for self-government and, ultimately, contempt for the American people?
And is the time coming for the people to reciprocate that contempt? Repeatedly, justices have expressed concern for the Supreme Court's legitimacy and public confidence, lest they be perceived as merely imposing their own subjective views rather than impartially and objectively applying the law. What will happen to that legitimacy and confidence if more Leal type dissenters are appointed?
The Leal dissent has exposed, in very raw form, just how critical the 2012 election will be. The nation is one justice away from a majority that sees no need even to pretend adherence to actual law in seeking to impose their own subjective values.
From time to time, there are calls for making Supreme Court nominations a major issue in presidential elections. These calls have never been really met.
This time, the presidential candidates should wake up. They should be talking seriously and often about justices who have contempt for the law, so that the American people will also wake up to the danger.
If they don't wake up in 2012, they surely will wake up in 2013 to a Supreme Court that a majority of Americans do not respect because the majority of the Court lacks respect for them. In turn, that will call into question the very legitimacy of judicial review for which Chief Justice Marshall so eloquently laid the ground
Lester Jackson
C/o The American Thinker
