A Winter's Tale

‘Tis the season.

Your Bloguero left work early today because it was snowing hard, the roads were already slick,it was getting dark, and soon the roads would be impassable.Two obstacles to the trek.First, your Bloguero in a moment of supreme distraction dropped his car keys in the deep, fresh snow. He searched his tracks but could not find them. Thoughts of hitching a ride home for the spare keys and returning for the car. Or maybe staying home and hitching a ride back in the morning. Who to call? Better to search more thoroughly. Better to continue searching. Hence, a painstaking search, with your Bloguero distracted by this: a few years ago he dropped a mailbox key in the snow in the driveway and lost it. He could not find it. He had to wait four months for the snow to melt before it reappeared. Was this the sequel? He sighed. Better to keep searching. At long last, your Bloguero discovered a small hole in the fresh snow, and at its bottom he found the car keys. Crisis averted. Time at last to drive the snow covered road.

Obstacle two. In Eastern New York the weather is beastly. It snows a lot. The temperatures get so cold that car seats make a distinctive “crunk” sound when you sit on them. And when you then turn the key, the engine makes a single metallic sound, “Sput.” It does not start. Then there is silence. The silence of deep snow and zero degrees and an anemic blue sun. You sit in the driver seat, your breath rapidly fogging the inside of the window with ice. Best to give up. Your Bloguero knows this is a common experience. Too cold to start. You’d think with such a harsh, unforgiving teacher everyone in Eastern New York would learn about winter. Wrong.

On today’s after work commute, usually 20 uneventful minutes on two lane blacktop Routes 9-H and 66 and County 9 and Route 203 filled with the hushed sound of NPR, your Bloguero drove at less than 18 miles per hour behind a minivan with tires too bald to go up or down the snowy hills safely. This cautious citizen created a long string of impatient cars and wallowing trucks that crept dangerously close to each other on every up and down for miles. As time elapsed, the string grew longer and longer, the bright lights coruscating, an impatient, floating, halogen and mercury constellation, aimed for the North Star. Your Bloguero eventually arrived at his destination.

Your Bloguero is not dismayed by inclemency. The shortest day of the year is coming. The Holidays. Some vacation time, if you are lucky. Your Bloguero has said it before and it bears repeating: days like today are demonstrations of the reasons why so many farmers left here as soon as they could and headed for more temperate climes. It’s this very kind of unremitting, beastly weather that forged America’s 18th century history and the drive West.

May your Winter be kind, and may you and your loved ones be warm.

The Shame Of State Killing.

This is George J. Stinney, Jr. This is his mug shot. He was born on October 21, 1929, and he was executed by the State of South Carolina on June 16, 1944. He was then fourteen years old. He was just 5'1" tall and weighed 95 pounds. He was the youngest person executed in the United States.

The Murders. Two white girls, Betty June Binnicker, age 11, and Mary Emma Thames, age 8, disappeared while out riding their bicycles. They were looking for flowers to put on their bicycles. As they passed where Stinney lived, they asked George Stinney and his sister, Katherine, if they knew where to find some "maypops", a kind of flower. When the girls did not return, hundreds of people joined search parties. The bodies of the girls were found the next morning in a ditch filled with muddy water. Both had suffered severe head wounds.
Stinney was arrested a few hours later and was interrogated alone by several officers in a locked room. Within an hour a deputy announced that Stinney had confessed to the crime.

The Confession. Stinney wanted to "have sex with" 11-year old Betty June Binnicker and could not do so unless her friend, Mary Emma Thames was removed from the scene. So he decided to kill Mary Emma. When he went to kill Mary Emma, both girls "fought back." So he decided to kill Betty June, too. He used a 15 inch railroad spike that was later found in the same ditch as the bodies. According to deputies, Stinney had somehow been successful in killing both at once. Somehow one of them did not escape. He inflicted major blunt trauma to their heads, shattering their skulls into at least 4-5 pieces. The confession was never recorded in any police files. There were even rumors that he was offered ice cream by the police if he cooperated by providing a confession.

The Town exploded. The next day, Stinney was charged with first degree murder. The town's grief grew rapidly into seething anger. People threatened to storm the local jail to lynch Stinney, but he had already been moved to Charleston. Stinney's father was fired from his job at the local lumber mill and the Stinney family fled during the night in fear for their lives.

The Trial. Because his family had fled, the fourteen year old faced the death penalty jury trial by himself. Jury selection took just two hours. It began at 10 am and ended just after noon, when a lunch recess was taken. The evidence began at 2:30 pm. Stinney's court appointed lawyer was 30-year-old Charles Plowden, a tax commissioner. Plowden was no Atticus Finch. He did not cross-examine a single witness. His defense apparently was that Stinney was too young to be held criminally responsible for the crimes. No such luck. South Carolina law was that anyone over the age of 14 as an adult. Summations ended at 4:30 pm, and after jury instructions, the jury retired just before 5 pm. The jury deliberated for all of 10 minutes. Stinney was found guilty with no recommendation for mercy and was sentenced to death in the electric chair.

There was no appeal. When asked about appeals, Plowden replied that there would be no appeal, as the Stinney family had no money to pay for a continuation.

The Execution. George Stinney was electrocuted at the South Carolina State Penitentiary on June 16, 1944. At 7:30 p.m., Stinney walked to the execution chamber with a Bible under his arm. Standing 5'1" and weighing just over 90 pounds, he was small for his age, which presented difficulties in securing him to the frame holding the electrodes. The state's adult-sized face-mask didn’t fit him. His convulsing exposed his tear streaked face to witnesses as the mask slipped free. Stinney was declared dead within four minutes of the initial electrocution.

From the time of the murders until Stinney's execution a total of eighty one days elapsed.

I doubt that this shameful case received much public attention. In June, 1944, the newspapers were filled with the events of D-Day and news from Europe. And it's hard to re-construct what happened in the trial now. There are apparently no transcripts of the testimony. What remains is just the horror and revulsion of this repellant execution.

The Supreme Court finally ruled in 2005 (Roper v. Simmons) that juveniles who had committed crimes under the age of 18 could not be executed for them. Even before the Court's ruling 19 states did not allow the execution of juveniles. But 22 juveniles were executed in the modern era for crimes committed before they were 18, including Stinney. That is the part of the shameful, disgraceful legacy of state killing.

What will it take before the horror of executing juveniles, of executing the developmentally disabled, of executing those who did not commit murder, generally applies to all state killing? How long will it take?

A Piece Of Internet History

The following screenshot marks the end of a period of Internet history, and I think the end of the influence of dailyKos on the left-blogosfero. I think that enormous group blog will now be divided up in a way that the previous vital cacophony will die down, groups will be isolated, and ultimately, it will feel and look a lot like Left Coast Facebook^TM:

I, as I said before, will not follow the masses to the new format/platform, because I am not providing big sites with any more free content.

Less Than One Week To Go: Yes We Can!!!

Don't Mourn, Organize! Part 3

cross posted at dailyKos

Clarence Darrow (1857-1938)

This is Clarence Darrow, an important American lawyer, a leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union, an agnostic, and the lawyer who defended John Scopes in the Tennessee Monkey Trial in 1925, in which he was opposed William Jennings Bryan.

Why am I telling you these century old stories of American radicals? Why now? It's simple. There is something in this story, as there was in my previous diary about Big Bill Haywood and Joe Hill and yesterday's diary about Eugene V. Debs, to inspire us to move beyond our present despair and frustration, something to give us courage. This history, the history of the American left from a century ago, is worth remembering, especially now. I should add that though I might continue the series at a later date, this will be the last diary for now.

I take particular pride in the fact that like me Darrow attended the University of Michigan Law School, and like me, he was unalterably opposed to the death penalty. In fact, throughout his career, Darrow devoted himself to opposing the death penalty, which he felt to be in conflict with humanitarian progress. In more than 100 cases, Darrow only lost one murder case in Chicago. He became renowned for moving juries and even judges to tears with his eloquence. He had a keen intellect often hidden by his rumpled, unassuming appearance. But I want to focus not on death penalty abolition but on his 1925 confrontation with the fundamentalism of the day.

In 1925, Darrow defended John Scopes in the famous "Monkey Trial." You will notice in the trial many of the themes presently repeated by the Christian, fundamentalist right. What you won't notice is that Dayton, Tennessee, in far northeastern Tennessee is about as far now in 2007 from the bastions of metropolitan, secular humanism as one can travel, but that in 1925, it must have seemed to Darrow to be the absolute end of the world, the 1925 equivalent of the reddest of red states.

The Scopes Trial of 1925 pitted against each other William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow in a case that tested a law passed on March 13, 1925, which forbade the teaching, in any state-funded educational establishment in Tennessee "any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals." This has often been interpreted as meaning that the law forbade the teaching of any aspect of the theory of evolution; however, the Butler Act forbade public school teachers in Tennessee from denying the literal, biblical account of man’s origin and forbade teaching in its place the evolution of man from lower animals. For what it was worth, t statute did not prohibit the teaching of evolution of any other species of plant or animal.

During the trial, Darrow requested that Bryan be called to the stand as an expert witness on the Bible. This was quite an unorthodox maneuver. Over the other prosecutor's objection, Bryan agreed. Bryan took the stand and began fanning himself; there was no air conditioning in Dayton, Tennessee in 1925. Many believe that the following exchange caused the trial to turn against Bryan and for Darrow. Personally, I find it an inspiring, remarkably courageous, and very pointed confrontation of fundamentalist beliefs:

"You have given considerable study to the Bible, haven't you, Mr. Bryan?"

"Yes, sir; I have tried to ... But, of course, I have studied it more as I have become older than when I was a boy."

"Do you claim then that everything in the Bible should be literally interpreted?"

"I believe that everything in the Bible should be accepted as it is given there; some of the Bible is given illustratively. For instance: "Ye are the salt of the earth." I would not insist that man was actually salt, or that he had flesh of salt, but it is used in the sense of salt as saving God's people."

Darrow's questions were designed to savage a literal interpretation of the Bible. Bryan was asked about a whale swallowing Jonah, Joshua making the sun stand still, Noah and the great flood, the temptation of Adam in the garden of Eden, and the creation according to Genesis. After initially contending that "Everything in the Bible should be accepted as it is given there," Bryan finally conceded that the words of the Bible should not always be taken literally.

In response to Darrow's relentless questions about whether the six days of creation, as described in Genesis, were twenty-four hour days, Bryan testified, "My impression is that they were periods." Bryan, who began his testimony calmly, stumbled badly under Darrow's persistent prodding. At one point the exasperated Bryan stated, "I do not think about things I don't think about." Darrow responded, "Do you think about the things you do think about?" Bryan responded, to the derisive laughter of spectators, "Well, sometimes."

Both lawyers became sharper and more angry as the examination continued. Bryan accused Darrow of attempting to "slur at the Bible." But he asserted he would continue to answer Darrow's impertinent questions anyway because "I want the world to know that this man, who does not believe in God, is trying to use a court in Tennessee--." Darrow interrupted, "I object to your statement" and to "your fool ideas that no intelligent Christian on earth believes."

Eventually, Judge Raulston cut the questioning short, and on the following morning ordered that the whole session (which in any case the jury had not witnessed) be expunged from the record, ruling that the testimony had no bearing on whether Scopes was guilty of teaching evolution. Scopes was found guilty and ordered to pay the minimum fine of $100.

The confrontation between Bryan and Darrow was reported by the press as a defeat for Bryan. His performance was described as that of "a pitiable, punch drunk warrior." The press in 1925 was not exactly the media of today.

Six days after the trial, William Jennings Bryan remained in Dayton. After eating an enormous dinner, he died in his sleep. Clarence Darrow was hiking in the Smoky Mountains when word of Bryan's death reached him. When reporters suggested to him that Bryan died of a broken heart, Darrow responded, "Broken heart nothing; he died of a busted belly."

A year later, the Tennessee Supreme Court reversed the decision of the Dayton court on a technicality. According to the court, the fine should have been set by the jury, not the judge. Rather than send the case back for further action, however, the Tennessee Supreme Court dismissed the case. The court commented, "Nothing is to be gained by prolonging the life of this bizarre case."

I have tried cases in hostile courthouses in Tennessee and Mississippi, and I am aware of the stress these venues carry, how they are capable of disrupting and undermining even the most carefully planned defense. Because of that, I marvel at the Monkey Trial. Darrow's confrontation of Bryan, even though it was stricken from the record, was so relentless, direct, so grounded, so strong that it turned the tables and made the argument forbidding the teaching of human evolution utterly untenable.

I am filled with admiration and awe for the personal courage it must have taken to bring this off questioning in Dayton. And I'm inspired by Darrow's courage and the skill.

I can imagine that there might be objections to the wider applicability of this story I am telling. You'd be entirely correct to argue that Clarence Darrow was a radical and that he was unique. The world, you might argue, is different now. And the courts and juries are different now, too. Darrow was an declared agnostic, a strong civil libertarian. He defended numerous well known murder cases. He was an outspoken death penalty abolitionist. He was on the left flank of American politics at the turn of the century. And he was one who inspired radical changes in America at the turn of the last century. The objections are that surely, after a century, the same tactics, holding a strong position no matter what, standing up strongly for what is right, just cannot work. To the contrary, my argument is simple: it can. And, in fact, not holding a strong position leads to dilution, disillusionment, despair, and ultimately oppression.

I find enormous inspiration in Darrow. For inspiration in 2007, now, when we so sorely need it, I suggest we continue to look at those on the far, left flank a century ago. That's where the fire is. That's where the inspiration is. And that's where the good changes to our society have always, always come from, from the radical left.