I was a prosecutor for a good many years, and to some extent accepted the prosecutorial-law enforcement judgment that public defenders were just trying to get their clients “off” and, by implication, were “dirty.”  After I reached a certain level of maturity as a prosecutor, I began to lose sleep over the way we treated some folks.  I got to the point where prosecution was not a viable option for me, so long as I was expected to put partisanship ahead of justice.  I would prosecute again if I was permitted to exercise ordinary human judgment and not expected to bend my will to conform to a party line.  I don’t do well with party lines and I don’t much cotton to party people.  I always wonder what’s missing from them.

Today I had the opportunity to talk to a few of my public defense friends, and in particular observed one young woman talking to clients, and I realized, as I watched her work, that she could see something in her client and his relatives that the partisan types would miss — mostly because partisanship of any kind is a form of pride: “my team (church, town, political persuasion) is better than yours.”  What kind of human skips the labeling and see the person?

One who dares to be free.

The ABA Rules of Professional Conduct posits this ideal for lawyers:

A lawyer’s representation of a client, including representation by appointment, does not constitute an endorsement of the client’s political, economic, social or moral views or activities.

This is as good a summation as I’ve ever read of what public defenders do: they protect the system from the zealous and the cruel.  Believe it or not there are police officers, lawyers, and judges in the system who put pride and ego before all other considerations.  It’s a problem wherever you find bureaucracy, whether religious or political or private.

In truth, the history of lawyers is a history of public defense, and prosecution.  In ancient Rome you hired a lawyer to prosecute or defend criminal cases.  There was no police force, no criminal justice system.  When Abe Lincoln was a young man, hungry lawyers stood around the courthouse and waited for someone who was hard up for representation to hire them — perhaps for a meal, and a place to sleep.  That was pretty much the state of things in America until World War II, in many rural parts of the country.  Even when I was a young lawyer, many counties in Washington simply went down the list of local bar members and assigned counsel a case.  Some sap who went to law school to write wills for folks might find himself sitting next to a murderer at an arraignment table.  The truth is, in many respects those defendants received good representation because the lawyer felt obligated to the court and bar to do a good job, which usually meant he talked the case over with all his criminal defense friends, until he got the hang of things — and the fact is, up until 1985 or so, local lawyers had more depth because the criminal justice system forced people out of their comfort zones.  I knew lawyers who went to law school on the GI Bill out of World War II and Korea who were fantastic lawyers.  They cut their teeth on criminal cases.

The level of organization we have now started right around World War II and has improved with every decade.  The system we have is very sophisticated and consistently delivers admirable legal services, from both the prosecution and defense sides.  That is largely because the folks who get paid to do those jobs do them EVERY DAY.  I’ve known public defenders who I would readily prefer to the highest priced lawyers out there, because the guys who are trying cases in the trenches every day get very, very nimble.

Not long ago, I was told that I had pressured a client into taking an offer — which was news to me, since the prosecution hadn’t made an offer.  This is how people talk about public defenders, because public defenders are a very convenient whipping boy, and the folks doing the talking have no idea how the system works so they, in effect, fill in the blanks with statements that are perhaps less than accurate.  It’s a part of what beleaguered public defense types have to put up with.  You get used to it, and you do your job not because of money or glamor, but because you actually care about the people you represent and because you want to do a good job.  It’s really great when people can see that and acknowledge it.  Quite a few do, thankfully.

I couldn’t help but recall, as I watched this young woman dealing with clients today, that nearly all my public defense friends are quite human, very engaging, and interested in life, whereas — dare I say it? — the persons who defend the Castle from those marauding criminals and their scumbag lawyers .… I don’t know.  Don’t have much imagination?  Just seems like Franz Kafka was writing about those doggone rule enforcers more than anyone or anything else.

I suspect.

Clallam County Age Discrimination Case Settled for $1.6 Million

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED BRUCE HANIFY 2012

There are as many kinds of lawyers in America as there are flavors of ice cream. Many lawyers labor away at drone jobs in great dungeons of the law; many are involved in investigative work from behind a desktop; any number of them whittle anonymously away at contracts for corporate America. But for millions of Americans, the world ‘lawyer’ can only mean one thing:

Jack McCoy of Law & Order.

He’s cagey. He’s ethical. He’s handsome, in a frumpy sort of way — which millions of women find attractive. Did I mention that he’s cagey? We love Jack McCoy, and whenever the Law & Order scriptwriters throw moral ambiguity at us, we ask, “What Would Jack Do?” Because we are, after all, morally unambiguous creatures. And lawyers bring that out in us, because, well .… they’re ambiguous. In fact, deep down we know they’re snakes.

But as the distance from Hollywood to reality is a march few Friends of Jack will ever make, this is as good a time as any to set aside a few misconceptions about what it takes to be a great trial lawyer. Having been a trial lawyer for as long as I have, I’ve had the privilege of knowing some really great trial attor­neys. Herein is my attempt at condensing the elements of a truly fine trial lawyer —

1. They are geniuses at convincing folks that their client is an “us.” When it comes to winning jury trials, the secret is turning your client into an “us”, because if the jury sees your client as a “them”, you’re in trouble. And, as all good trial lawyers know, there are some clients who cannot be made into an “us” no matter what you do. So you waive jury and let the judge sort it out. Judges deal with “thems” all day.

2. Good lawyers know that people WANT to be manipulated. That may sound cynical, but there’s nothing people love more than a good story with a magic trick thrown in. One of the best trial lawyers I ever met learned that lesson the hard way, early in his career. He grew impatient as the defense attorney continued his detailed cross-examination about how the police officers removed the backseat of a car before searching the car. The jury was transfixed by this drama. The defense attorney had them convinced this was the heart of the entire case. It wasn’t, but it didn’t matter. The jurors were getting the show they wanted, and it took their minds off the evidence of the defendant’s guilt.

3. Every really great trial attorney I’ve ever known reads the sports page. Although sports hardly ever comes up in jury selection, people seems to sense who’s up on sports — and seem to believe that is important.

4. All really great trial lawyers understand that “justice” and morality hardly ever eat at the same table. Every juror comes in with a notion that someone best be dangling from a rope by the end of the day. Lawyers who get billion-dollar verdicts out of juries for the widow whose beloved smoked himself to death work on this principle. Sure, the deceased smoked 14 cigarettes an hour, BUT THE CIGARETTE COMPANIES LIED ABOUT THE DANGERS OF CIGARETTES!! Average people may not think that standard to them­selves, but put a good looking lawyer with a $200 hair­cut in front of them, and let him talk for three hours — while they braid the rope.

5. All really great trial lawyers believe, deep down, they are making a difference. The personal injury lawyers I know believe corporations must be dealt with; their counterparts for the defense despise malingering plaintiffs. No matter how trivial the case, both believe they are rescuing the world from some evil and, in fact, they are. In America the best incentive to not steal from people is the fear of lawyers.

In the complex world of jury trials, there are never any certainties. Anyone who has tried 100 or more jury cases in his or her life will tell you there’s very little science to it. Almost always a jury trial is a Hail Mary pass. But the edge an attor­ney has to get is to make his client an “us” because he knows, deep down, facts and morals have almost nothing to do with it.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED BRUCE HANIFY 2012

I made one good friend from this interview; and one solid enemy.  The ideas expressed herein I think are pretty good, but I’ve never met anyone willing to take them to the next step.  Institutions tend to be institutional.

Interesting read, anyway, so I’ve included it.

This is the interview, as it was printed, word for word.

Interviewing the Law BRUCE HANIFY Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Yakima County, WA: Narcotics Division

Over the last several issues, TALKING RAVEN has featured interviews with knowledgeable experts and professionals from respectable institutions and government agencies. I knew this “intoxication” issue would be incomplete without talking to a narc. Bruce Hanify is not your average narcotics officer; his peers respect his work and probably consider him a maverick in his field, which is prosecution. Mr. Hanify is one of those guys you head off with in a court of law after you’ve been arrested for a ncarcotics-related crime in Yakima County, WA. To many outsiders, Yakima is a postcard-perfect picture of wholesome Northwest Americana. (One of my favorite actors, Kyle MacLachlan, hails from Yakima.) To Bruce Hanify, his co-workers and superior officers Yakima is a major drug war conduit with an incestuous underbelly of state welfare programs. Hanify was vacationing on the Olympic Peninsula when he agreed to meet me and chat about “intoxication.” Well over six foot and maybe 200 pounds, Hanify, 38, has a fighter’s gait and sometimes speaks tru da side uv hiz mout when making a point. His short combustive laugh, like a misfired shotgun blast, occasionally peppers our conversation. Hanify’s eyes are kind, I thought, from seeing too much that wasn’t. During an otherwise pleasant meeting, I couldn’t help feeling under the influence of a series of small, completely irrational teenage paranoid flashbacks: “I CAN’T BELIEVE I’M TALKIN’ WITH A NARC, MAN!” — ANTERO ALLI

TALKING RAVEN: What do you do and long have you done it?

BRUCE HANIFY: Half of my work at this point is drug practice which involves search and seizure and privacy-type issues and I’ve been working for the Narcotics Division since 1990. The law enforcement emphasis in Yakima, which I think is the same for most Washington counties, is in theory to go out and get the dealers .… an art form in itself. But, in practice, a lot of the people that get nailed are people who are guilty of simple possession. In other words, the Class “C” felony, which means, in actual sentencing, 20 to 30 days in jail for mostly cocaine and some heroin cases. Then, you’ve got the misdemeanor marijuana offenses, which I personally do not deal with, but our office does. At least half of the drug cases filed in Yakima every year are cocaine cases; Yakima is known as a major conduit for cocaine supply.

TR: Where does the Yakima cocaine come from and how does it get there?

BH: Statistically, the belief is that it comes mostly from Mexico through California. It probably comes via mostly illegal immigrants running it up to make a quick buck. It’s a lot like the prohibition era in that respect; poor people looking for money.

TR: From your personal experience, what are some of your ideas and theories about why the so-called “drug problem” might never be solved?

BH: Let me explain that by sharing a perspective I have about modern society. If you look at a society that is democratic, like ours supposedly is, you look at where psychic energy is invested. This country invests enormous sums of psychic energy in welfare or state-dependence, and also on drug and substance dependence. You don’t realize this until you prosecute and you see people coming in and getting the most attention they’ve ever had in their lives while they’re being prosecuted for a crime. The judge will ask them about their past and their history. For the first time in their lives they’re asked about their personal history and it’s in the context of being prosecuted. Most people don’t understand the enormity of this be we’ve developed whole populations, in terms of tens of millions of people, who are dependent upon the state to define them and part of the fuel for that dependency is drug and alcohol use.

TR: Speak more on this connection between dependence on the state and drug addiction .…

BH: It doesn’t mean I’m right, but I’ve never met an alcoholic or drug addict who’s ever said, “Howdy, I’m sure glad I’m dependent on drugs.” When people describe their condition of dependence, they describe despair. When you look at the principle of despair and ask yourself, “Is the cure for despair punishment and incarceration?” The naswer has to be no. But if you look at the actual things our society does, the answer has traditionally been more dependence, more welfare, more structures in the school, and more incarceration itself. Prison especically is a form of dependence. I’ve seen people who, for the first time in their lives, have family because they’re being prosecuted; the judge is their family. The defense and the prosecutor are their family.

TR: Let’s return to the so-called “drug problem.”

BH: We recently had prosecutor’s training where certain Supreme Court justices, who shall remain unnamed, were invited to speak with several hundred prosecutors. One of the nine Supreme Court justices asked a table of us who work criminal appeals, “What do you think we should do about the drug wars? We’re spending so much money on this; the court systems are tied up by drug cases.” Now, this is a Supreme Court justice [Note: It was Richard Guy of Spokane, with whom I had worked for a short time out of law school.], a real level-headed guy without a stand on the issue one way or another, wanting us to tell him what to do. From my experience with police officers going out on crime calls, I think about it from the angle of “What makes a human being give up his or her claim to independence and self-government in order to become overly dependent and invoke the machinery of the state to shape his or her life?” That’s a very interesting and very dangerous concept. What concerns me the most and what your readers can be certain of is that people in government at policy-making institutes, understand that we have whole populations dependent upon the invocation of the state to shape and determine the course of their daily lives.

TR: You mentioned the principle of despair a little while ago. Wha are some of your thoughts about possible cures and alleviations for despair?

BH: I have a real life story about that because of what I do to stay in shape. When people hear I do this, they wonder about me, so don’t get me wrong, but I work out in a boxing club. Most of the people who work out there are typically young men twelve t0 eighteen years old. Everyone of those young men thrives on someone saying, “I believe in you. You’re a worthwhile person and you have something to work towards.” Young men need to be told that by an adult person who will help him get there through discipline. We don’t really provide that in our society. At the same time, we’re pretending that a greater law enforcement mechanism or greater welfare spending will give these kids what they don’t have. So I think the problem is spiritual and moral in nature.

TR: Describe the most appalling encounter you’ve had during actual crime calls.

BH: Generally speaking, when you see households of ten or fifteen kids under the age of eight who swear like sailors and hate authority figures, without any psychological framework to guide them. It’s devestating. The adults they’re growing up with are mostly drug-dependent. When these kids encounter demonic rage — the kind you see at murder scenes — within himself or herself, there’s absolutely no structure in place to deal with it.

TR: What do you mean by “demonic rage” at murder scenes?

BH: Since I’ve been prosecuting I’ve learned that less than 10% of the people we process through the system are truly criminal. A good 85% to 90% we process are welfare-dependent, drug-dependent people who don’t know how to direct their own lives. That small percentage of people who are truly cruel, truly rapacious and truly murderous — when you see that, there’s a terrible feeling asociated with that which you learn to intuit. That intuition is a great asset to have when you’re on the streets. My theory about the energy of demonic rage is that some people, at various points in their lives, become susceptible to possession by the force. I don’t mean to sound religious or anything, but if it possesses them, I think it’s pretty much a permanent possession. I also think if you’re a 14 or 15 year old kid without much psychological framework or discipline who opens their psyche to drugs, you can become susceptible to that kind of possession.

TR: Let’s change the subject. Here’s a more exotic question. Several kinds of opium poppy grow wild in the state of Washington, in people’s backyards, and on hillsides. Had any poppy cases yet?

BH: No; none. I don’t personally know where the plant is categorized, but I can tell you that in title 69.50 of the Revised Code of Washington, every single mind-altering substance in the world is classified as a Schedule I, II, III or IV drug; it’s probably in there somewhere. In terms of law enforcement, there hasn’t been a lot of attention paid to it yet but when there is, legislation is sure to follow. That’s usually the way it works.

TR: I want to talk more about despair. In my own life, I’ve managed to kick the habit of cynacism, but am still working on despair which I’m looking at now as an addiction and as something that feeds on itself. Once you enter a condition of despair, it might be a symptom or a product of overdependence elswhere, robbing your autonomy and diminishing your place in life. I’m thinking that despair might be a natural outcome of self-diminishment … Have you met or known any adults overwhelmed by despair who have kicked the habit?

BH: It’s interesting how you phrased that the way you did. You said the addiction to despair may be the product and outcome of some other addiction. As a prosecutor I’ve noticed that our society, and maybe most Western societies, preaches a doctrine of Must Feel Good .… a dogma of self-esteem. You don’t dare feel any sort of depression. As any creative person knows, depression is part of the process of creating. I am suspicious that despair may be a symptom of our institutional determination and insistence that people feel good all the time. I suspect the pharmaceutical companies and doctors’ interest in Prozac is to make sure no one ever feels bad. In my own warrior philosophy I believe one of the engines of progress in a human being is feeling bad about something. I write poetry, for example, as an outlet for whatever that feeling is. When society and the pharmaceutical people try and condition that out of you, the question then is where does the creativity go? What would be the natural psychic response to that loss of creativity? It may be despair.

TR: Got any examples of good luck stories of people kicking the habit of despair?

BH: There are success stories. I used to hear a lot of drug addicts and alcoholics say they hit the road to recovery in a “Blue Light Special.” That means until seeing the flashing blue lights in their rearview mirror, they don’t even understand they have a problem. As a prosecutor, you see the need for state intervention in many people’s lives to alert them to the fact that there is a problem. Once they begin to work the force of that problem, as you yourself have begun to work the force of trouble in TALKING RAVEN, I think you’re on the road to freedom. I don’t think the freedom comes in six months or two years. I think it comes in ten or fifteen or twenty.

TR: The virtue of persistence.

BH: By virtue of understanding that soul engaged in life sometimes feels bad and sometimes looks but but that’s part of what being human is. Trying to drug it away or psychotherapize it away or State it away with some sort of huge welfare system is … bullshit. (Blasts of combustive laughter) Editor’s Note: Mr. Hanify has been writing quite a bit lately. We were pleased to publish his provactive piece on wrestling demons, “COMMUNION”, somewhere in this issue.

READ THE PROSECUTOR SERIES AT BRUCEHANIFY.COM

Define “Drug”: A Drug Warrior’s Thoughts on the 45-Year-Old War on Drugs

Bruce Han­ify 2011 All Rights Reserved

May 22, 2012, by Bruce Hanify

The former employees included deputy prosecutor Carol Case, legal assistant Kathy Nielsen, and administrative assistant Elaine Sundt. Hollie Hutton, daughter of former employee Robin Porter, who was fired in February, 2007 and died within a year of her termination, appeared on behalf of her mother in the lawsuit.

In an 80-page pleading to the superior court, attorneys Stephanie Bloomfield and James Beck of Tacoma law firm Gordon Thomas Honeywell alleged a disturbing pattern of age discrimination that resulted in the firing of Carol Case, Elaine Sundt and Robin Porter. Administrative assistant Nielsen, who suffered severe physical and emotional distress brought on by work­place harassment, resigned under extreme duress. While only four individuals joined in the lawsuit, there appeared to be an office policy of subjecting older employees to a calculated pattern of Machiavellian harassment, according to allegations contained within the legal pleading.

The allegations in the pleading, while not proven in a trial, apparently were sufficiently credible to induce the county to settle the lawsuit.

In a press release issued by Gordon Thomas Honeywell, it was revealed that elected prosecutor Deb Kelly admitted that her office suffered a turnover rate between 210 and 215%. However, Kelly blamed the settlement on the legal system:

“This settle­ment was made by the excess insurance company strictly for economic reasons,” Kelly said in a statement released Saturday.

“The county had no option for going forward on its own, short of hiring its own attorneys and spending hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars.

“If Washington were a loser-pays state, this lawsuit would never have been filed.”

Going Younger The Clallam County Prosecutor’s campaign against her older workers commenced when she appointed 30-something deputy prosecutor Mark Nichols to the position of chief deputy, which one former employee allegedly characterized as “putting a five-year-old in charge of dynamite.” Kelly stated in a deposition that it did not matter to her that Nichols, two to three years out of law school when she made him king, did not meet the job require­ments of having “extensive experience in municipal law.” Some might argue that his experience with principles of leadership shared a similar depth.

Upon Nichols’ appointment to that administrative post, a campaign of “going younger” was waged against those unfortunate enough to have the capacity to exercise independent judgment. The campaign consisted first of harassing and intimidating older workers, then replacing them with younger workers — with the apparent intention of chilling dissent. Both Kelly and Nichols were surprisingly candid in their aim to replace those they regarded as obsolete. Nichols told one employee:

“Look, Carol [Case] is an older generation, or is older and she just doesn’t understand young people. Over the past year we’ve been trying to get younger people in the office.”

“Keystone Nazis” One anonymous source shared with this writer that former members of the office secretly referred to the tactics Nichols and Kelly engaged in as befitting “Keystone Nazis.” Examples of their hostile workplace conduct allegedly consisted of:

While prosecutor Kelly used her county computer to shop eBay, employee Porter was fired for “internet use” within days of receiving a workplace evaluation that praised her work and dedica­tion. A number of questionable disciplinary issues were leveled against Porter, who complained of being singled out and treated unfairly. Several employees agreed that Nichols was out to “get” her. Porter’s firing established the pattern of creating conditions that couldn’t be met, so that the employee could then be fired.

After Porter was fired, Nichols then turned the tools of his Inquisition toward Nielsen. While Nielsen had been receiving glowing workplace evaluations, she was now being accused of insubordination for consulting with her supervising attorney about office problems. In one particularly chilling incident, two younger employees were invited to one of Nielsen’s disciplinary meetings, where they taunted her.

Insubordination On January 16, 2008, Robin Porter died. Employee Sundt committed the sin of sitting at Porter’s memorial with three female employees who were out of favor with Kelly, including Carol Case. Nichols commenced a campaign of isolating and ridiculing Ms. Sundt. In fact, at one disciplinary meeting, prosecutor Kelly accused Sundt of “disloyalty” for sitting with forbidden members of the office at Porter’s funeral.

At one point, Sundt consulted an attorney about her situation, who mailed the prosecutor’s office alleging age and gender discrimination. Within minutes of being informed by Kelly of the letter, Nichols asked Kelly out for coffee, then emailed Sundt with a list of questions about who she was spending time with at the office, and who she was talking to. In retaliation for consulting with a lawyer about workplace hostility, Sundt was placed on administrative leave. (Sundt suffered a heart attack while being deposed for this case.)

62-year-old attorney Carol Case was sent to a “fitness for duty exam” — normally reserved for emergency personnel only, never for attorneys — for the crime of defending herself against false accusations. Case was declared fit for duty, which didn’t fit in with the Going Younger protocols. Amazingly, Case survived a sustained campaign of emotional and mental torment. Eventually she was fired. That was exactly the wrong thing to do. Case fought back. And won. Let it be said that this blogger believes she is the perfect replace­ment for Mark Nichols.

Employees who dared to confront Nichols about the double standard of subjecting older employees to surveillance, taunting, and being “set up” to be fired — while giving a pass to younger employees — were certain to understand that their job was at risk. What is startling about this case is the number of past and former employees who testified about the hostile workplace conditions. Several current employees demonstrated remarkable courage given the risks they faced.

As stated, none of these claims were fully tested in court, but the plaintiffs had plenty of evidence to support their cause — and Clallam County settled, which likely means they faced an even larger loss had they gone to trial.

In their press release, Gordon Thomas Honeywell wrote:

“The substantial amount of money paid out to these women should serve as a reminder that no one is above the law, even an elected pros­e­cu­tor” stated James Beck. “Once Kelly and Nichols were made aware of the discrimination claims, instead of putting a stop to it and treating people fairly, they chose to retaliate. These four women brought this lawsuit to take back their good names, and with the hope that it might prevent Kelly and Nichols from engaging in similar conduct in the future.”

#  #  #  #

May 23, 2012  The Sequim Gazette reported today:

Kelly said the issues in the office were never about age discrimination, disability or retaliation but rather a power struggle.

She said she and Nichols take complaints of harassment and discrimination very seriously.

Patterson said he absolutely believed Kelly and Nichols did the right things.

“They were holding people accountable that were not held accountable previously,” he said.  Clallam County Settles $1.6 Million Age Discrimination Suit

FULL DISCLOSURE: I was employed as a deputy prosecutor at Clallam County from November, 2005 to September, 2006, but chose to leave because I found the working unnecessarily tense.  I am proud to say that I worked for one of the great prosecuting attorneys of this state, Jeff Sullivan.  Sullivan was an old school lawyer: principle before personality.  While I might have wanted to continue prosecuting in my hometown (I was born in Port Angeles, and graduated from Forks High School), it was obvious to me that the office was headed to some sort of conflagration.  Having read through Honeywell’s pleading, it is very clear that I made the right decision.  I was appalled by what I read in that document.  It was far worse than I thought — in part because I left before it got any juicier.

Robin Porter was my secretary and a friend of mine.  She was a lovely person, with a vibrant sense of humor, and was quite tormented by the intimidation she experienced in that environment.  When I learned that she died, I felt very strongly that she died of a broken heart — related to getting fired.  I still believe that.  Can’t prove it, but I believe it.  Let me say there are karmic obligations beyond the financial for those who enjoy tormenting fellow beings.

Elaine, Carol, Kathy, Congratulations.  Holly, I loved your mother as a friend.  I’m proud of you. This Bud’s on me.

OF INTEREST:  Three drug cases investigated by the Olympic Peninsula Narcotics Enforcement Team were dismissed after Superior Court Judge Ken Williams found the Prosecutor’s Office violated court rules by not disclosing the identity of its key witness to the defense.  Drug Cases Dismissed

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED BRUCE HANIFY 2012

Before we get started, let me confess that I have been personally and professionally involved in the entire imbroglio of illicit drug use for what now seems like my entire life.  I prosecuted drug cases for 15 years, and defended them for 10.  What follows is an honest account of the battle thus far, as I understand it.

Here are the two principles:

First, government is force.  It is sheer lunacy to expect government to work like a fine instrument in, say, the hands of a Leonardo.  Government, ultimately, is about taking your money and throwing you into jail — or worse.  And the big mystery about government isn’t really such a mystery.  When and where and how people want government to use force is an outgrowth of cultural dynamics that are sometimes difficult to spot up close.  It usually takes at least a century of separation before people can honestly assess what was going on in some specific period.  And then there are those notable exceptions, like the “War Between the States” and the Fall of Rome, where no two historians have ever agreed on much of anything.  The War on Drugs is equally perplexing.  Whenever these things are researched in detail, they fail to yield easy answers.

Government does not solve problems creatively.  Never has, never will.   What government does is wipe out the competition.  Government is not a nanny or an art teacher or your Aunt Rose.  It is the biggest, dullest boy on the block, and when you get in the way, it whomps you.  The questions addressed by the American constitution are never the legitimacy of force, but when, where and how force ought to be applied — and to what end.  Creativity can only occur when absolute freedom of choice is allowed to operate.  In the case of politics and law, creativity is more an adolescent indulgence than an event we can all look forward to.  Hence, the first principle forces us to conclude that no matter which course of action we choose, it won’t be pretty.

The second principle people are likely to miss derives from the Equal Protection clause, found in the 14th Amendment — a major Civil War era modification to the constitution:

.… No State shall .… . deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Put simply, you cannot equally enforce laws unless there is a general social agreement about what it is you’re trying to do.  If you doubt how critical this is, compare a mostly homogenous population like Japan’s to our heterogeneous nation.  A Japanese pretty much understands where he or she is, what’s going on, and what’s expected of him, whether he’s at a wedding, or in a courtroom.  We don’t have much of that in the United States.  The first big question on the table is, then:

Define ‘drug.’

You can see the problem immediately.  If you passed a drug law in Japan, chances are most Japanese would understand what the law intended.  Here it is not so clear.  What a drug is to a Christian Scientist is not the same thing as a drug to your physician, and so on.  It is extremely unlikely that we will ever have much agreement as to the federal government’s proper role in the regulation of drugs because few of us could agree on what what is being regulated: meth, or aspirin?  Even my subtitle, “the 45-Year-Old War on Drugs”, is meaningless.  Younger readers would think the War on Drugs began with Reagan’s coronation of it as such, but for old folks like myself it started in ’67, after Art Linkletter’s daughter fell (?) out a window and died; and for the Reefer Dudes it started in the 20s; and for the purist Libertarian types, it started with the  .… .

The Food and Drug Act, passed in 1906.  That generation of people had witnessed one of the largest populations of opium addicts ever seen in this country.  Between opium-laced consumer products and wounded Civil War veterans, the United States experienced a widespread, chronic problem with serious drug addiction.  You could argue — many do — that nothing needed to be done, but if you put yourself in that time and think about people making money selling dope-laden consumer products to pregnant women, you can understand why it seemed advisable for the federal government to step in, i.e., poisonous foods and poisonous drugs are in the same category, socially speaking.  Aren’t they?

Consider: do you want to repeal the Food and Drug laws?  The first time someone’s baby dies from bad formula, we’re right back where we started.

The complexities multiply exponentially.  You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to understand that relaxing the federal government’s current reach and financial take might rejuvenate many torpid areas of our country. When you look at the enormity of power and the financial drain represented by the federal government, you can say, “They should get out of drugs.”  But then someone’s baby dies, and everyone says, ‘Why doesn’t someone stop them?’  That’s the reality of having a huge country, a heterogeneous population, and a distant, abstract, often dismally stupid national government.  There is never going to be one easy answer because the answer will change with the question.  You can take that same observation and apply it to any of the other thousands of things our federal government is doing.  There will always be folks standing in line saying, “Look at these good things”, and then folks in the other line, saying, “Tsk, tsk, such a waste!”

So let’s start from the outside and work our way back.  Let us argue, as many do, that “treatment is the right answer.”  Okay.  I agree.  Treatment is a better answer than punishment.  Now let’s look at three factors which complicate that picture entirely:

1)  Presuming we are going to mandate treatment, which will require taxation and governmental regulation, we are still fighting a War on Drugs.  We may be fighting more like a Peace Corps engagement than a U.S. Army Search and Destroy mission, but we’re still in a War.  People will have to be arrested.  Force will be necessary.  Do you doubt this?  How would you expect to enforce laws that are sweetly written but don’t carry the force of law?  What you’re really doing is shifting the use of force, so let’s be honest about that.

2)  The assumption is that once we move the emphasis from punishment to treatment the drug cartels will disappear and the cost of the War will drop.  Where is the proof for this?  The fact is, you will still need to expend a great amount of money to treat addiction on a national scale, and you will still have competition.  In other words, there is no legitimate reason to expect that things will suddenly improve.  Probably we would have to expend even greater effort than before because now you are arguing against something you have given tacit approval to.  Maybe not.  I’m just throwing that out there.

3) The other assumption is, once you legalize drugs, market prices will drop, but I ask again: where is the proof of this?  Perhaps the only way to do that is to get rid of the competition altogether and give people their drugs, but .… given the general inefficiencies of government (and government’s well-documented resistance to anything like facts), you know as well as I do they’d screw that up so badly, we’d probably spend three times what we’re spending now.  Besides, this option works best when you have the option of wiping out the competition.  Back to where we started.

So .… what is the answer?  I believe I started this post by saying “There is no one answer.”  And I stand by that, with this proviso: treating addicts like they’re monsters is not a good idea.  Addiction, like financial chaos, like obesity, like mental illness, is a weakness many people suffer from that is rooted in brain chemistry, developmental dynamics, social pressures, and so on.  The answer — if we’re forced to resort to force — lies somewhere in providing suitable training structures and medical treatments that address mental illness and dietary challenges.  Pulverizing a person’s self-image to make a point is likely to reinforce the negative behavior, in my view, which is the real moral difficulty with our War on Drugs.

#  #  #  #

Two Thoughts About Prohibition  Almost always people resort to the tired and incongruent analogy of Prohibition: “We tried it during Prohibition and it didn’t work.  Ha Ha Ha!”  Well, here are two thoughts about Prohibition you might want to consider:

#1  Socially, Prohibition was feminism’s first major electoral victory after obtaining the right to vote.  Women rebelled against drunken, abusive men.  Guess what?  It served them (the men) right.  Since they couldn’t control themselves, they shouldn’t whine about somebody knockin’ ‘em around.  By the way, this has a direct bearing on whether or how a free people can regulate themselves.  The fact is, drunkenness and drug abuse are inconsistent with freedom.  Most people resent being reminded of that.  Easier to bray.

#2  The very idea that you can ban alcohol is, on its face, absurd.  Prohibition was easily one of the most ill-conceived legal maneuvers in the history of man .… and it has a direct bearing on how we should treat addicts: punish them, or help them?

In related news, something that I would like to see more of: Genuine discussion of how certain drugs, like psychedelics, ACTUALLY HELP PEOPLE.  Victoria Harris provides a reasonably interesting primer on how changing social views affect how we treat questions of what ought to be legal, but comments like THIS ONE are better than the article.  MDMA and various other substances actually do promote psychological insight.  Blanket prohibitions against certain drugs aren’t scientific.  They’re hysterical and impractical and .… cruel.

Some people are calling Obama’s stance on drugs Disingenuous.  Wow.  Where have I heard that before?

Childhood chum Martin Shaughnessy wrote: “Actually, there is a short answer. All drugs should be legal, high quality, priced to market conditions, and readily available. What happens when you give a junkie all the dope they want? Problem Solved. Damn, you think too much, Bruce.”

UPDATE  While I am grateful for Martin’s feedback, he makes my point for me.  The position, “legalize drugs”, produces the same result as “abolish the FDA.”  Sounds great over Sunday fried chicken, but I’ll guarantee you will NEVER win a national election on it.  Everyone’s liberal about drug use till they think about taking their grand kids to Target and having to dodge stoners.  Or, like I tell my Libertarian friends, “Two weeks after drugs are legalized, there’ll be a bounty on you guys.  Twenty bucks a scalp.”  No one seems to think political and social realities are relevant to the discussion — which was the point of my post.

Rob DeWitt wrote:  “You rightfully employ the image of a national opium problem in the early 20th century. Imagine if there had been television and movies everywhere in 1900, subtly explaining to everybody who passed by that seeing a problem with opium addiction and the casual use of opium and cocaine in patent medicine was just an indication that you were an uptight asshole who’d never get laid. There would not only not have been a greatest generation, there would likely not have been their fathers fighting WWI, either.”

Hard-hitting stuff.  And way beyond what Deniers are able to grasp, I know.

Also, this, at Vanderleun’s:

mjazz: If meth was legal, the “tweaker next door” wouldn’t care if Mr. Hanify was spying on him. It would be like the lady next door shooting you for watching her grow tomatoes.

I replied:

“Spying”?

That’s funny. And paranoid.

If you were rational, you’d realize I’m not taking a specific position. I’m talking about society, and human nature.

UPDATE:  I was asked to give the Keynote speech last night at Mike Maki’s gala benefit dinner and silent auction Olympia Women’s Club, Abigail Stuart House.  Mike and some friends were arrested in October for growing and distributing psilocybin mushrooms.

Mike and I are veterans of the West End of the Olympic Peninsula, circa 1970s.  I was commenting that things were sure mellow back in those days.  People who came to see the national parks in the summer used to always say, “You Pacific Northwest people sure are friendly!”  Yes, we were.  And then political operatives invaded, and started correcting thoughts and words.  Hasn’t been the same since.

Of sinister historical note: the mania to correct people’s thoughts has not come from traditionally conservative institutions, like the Catholic Church, say.  It has come from modern day “churchmen” who have all but destroyed the individualism that was inherent in my Pacific Northwest.   It has all the features of a science fiction plot.

We see this negative pattern played out in discussions about topics like drugs.  If you have an opinion that differs from the self-righteous, they crucify you.

What is that about?

All in all a very interesting evening.  Martin Shaughnessy’s reply and the hysterics demonstrated by some comments at American Digest betray a complete inability to even consider that other people don’t agree with you.  They regard people who are opposed to legalizing drugs as “uninformed.”  Here’s a newsflash for you guys: Marijuana causes significant mental health impairment in many people.  I can’t help but notice that my friends who still smoke are .… oh.  Not current.  The rest of us see it.  We’re waiting for you to figure it out.

And why and how are you so anxious to see people die?  Eh?  Just a question.

Interested readers may enjoy my Prosecutor Series.

This interview of Jerry Garcia is probably the single best summation of the Sixties I have ever seen.  Please note there was a very specific kind of moment in which there was clarity, but .… “It went away as soon as it was publicized.”

[video mp4=“http://www.brucehanify.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Grateful-Dead-Jerry-Garcia-Interview-1994.mp4” poster=“http://www.brucehanify.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/jerry-garcia-ripple-rose-ben-upham.jpg” preload=“yes” autoplay=“no” loop=“no” width=“575” height=“422”]

Interview of Jerry Garcia

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED BRUCE HANIFY 2012

Have you ever considered that the brain must learn how to see?  Vision is not automatic. Even if we couldn’t test infants, we know from dramatic blind-to-sight stories that the brain must learn how to process visual data. Apparently it does this by processing moving images. (Read about MIT’s neuro-scientific experiments on the faculty of vision in Out of Darkness, Sight: How the Brain Learns to See.) Does that mean that at one time in evolution we couldn’t see light? Like, maybe we were pod people? Aliens implanted our eyes? I leave those titillating questions to greater minds than my own. (A friend of mine used to ponder why we had to have eyebrows. I quickly answered that many folks don’t. That seemed hugely funny at the time.)

In his book, Cosmic Consciousness, Canadian physician Dr. Richard Maurice Bucke observed how the human family apparently could not see BLUE until very recently in our history. He provides further examples of how our senses evolved new detections of fragrances, and so on. What seems simple to us was preceded by incredibly long, complex biological changes. Bucke also predicted something I believe: human beings are now poised to enter a higher state of consciousness he called cosmic consciousness. Much of the disarray we’re experiencing at the moment is apparently part of this process.

Readers who are interested in some of the marvelous structural changes in our brains, and how that has affected self consciousness, should make the time to read Julian Jaynes’ The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Brain and Erich Neumann’s Origins and History of Consciousness. What you and I refer to as “right” and “left” brain is a fairly recent development in the long evolution of the homo sapiens. For many millennia, we humans lived inside a brain where there was no such distinction. It is useful to learn how these things work because many politicized terms are actually functions of changes in brain structure and chemistry, as opposed to objective truths. If people took more time to study these things, instead of starting fights at holidays, we’d all be better off. Of course, Tony Buzan’s books are invaluable tools as well.

Years of life experience and somewhere over 200 jury trials have taught me that human beings don’t “see” nearly so well as they think. Have you ever watched the Selective Attention Test, from Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris?

HOW MANY TIMES DOES THE TEAM IN WHITE PASS THE BALL?

In my experience it is the rare juror who understands that our brains don’t work very well, if by “well” you mean ‘I am certain.’ Have you ever driven into traffic only to discover — perhaps at great cost — that you had a “blind spot”? Well, the intellect is pockmarked with blind spots. If you don’t believe me, sign up for a logic or math class at your local college; and if you’re “left-brained”, take a course on literature or women’s studies. You’ll find out in short order that your brain is ordering what it sees. It does not see nearly so well as you may believe. Alas, sight is very much a function of belief. Hard to accept, isn’t it? Yet it is true, and that fact has a direct bearing on what we can expect in the wake of this change in Ages. Those of us who are alive at this time are like the blind folks in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. We think we see, but we never ask:

‘What do we think we’re seeing?’

Once you ask that question, life gets very interesting indeed. It is, in fact, the only honest question that can ever be asked, because once we ask it, we have to take responsibility for what we see.

The early Christian Bishop, Synesius of Cyrene (370–413), made a number of remarkable statements about our imagination, or our soul, that have a bearing on this discussion. I want to share two with you. They are somewhat difficult to grasp, but they will repay attentive reading:

Imagination is the sense of the senses (the first body of the soul), necessary to all others: it inheres at the same time in both the soul and the body, It dwells within us: established in the head, as in a citadel which nature has built for us, and it governs the animal life. The hearing and the sight are not true senses, but rather instruments of sense, which put the animal in relation with the exterior world; in the service of imagination they transmit to their mistress impressions received by them from without, sensations which are transmitted to us from the objects by which we are surrounded. Imagination is the collective sense in which are united our various senses: in reality it is that which hears and which sees; it is through it that all the perceptions occur; and it assigns to each organ its particular function. From it all the faculties proceed: they are like the rays which go out of the centre and meet wholly in the centre: many in progression, and one and the same in origin. The sense to which the organs are indispensable is a purely material sense; or, to speak more correctly, it is only a sense when it enters into the service of the imagination: imagination is the sense which has power of acting instantaneously without intermediaries. It has a divine character through which it approaches intuitive Intellect.

It will thus be established that the soul, as we have advanced, contains in itself the images of the things which become. It encloses them wholly, but it produces them outwardly only at a convenient time; imagination is similar to a mirror in which it reflects itself, so that the animal perceives the images which have their seats in the soul.

Synesius seems to be saying two things: first, that the animal world, of which we are a part, is very limited in what it can see, as indicated by the MIT study; and, second, that we we call “truth” is, according to Synesius, a function of how are soul presents the world to us. Lest you think that closes the discussion, Synesius writes at length about how to restore the imagination to its proper abode, the soul. He seemed to think that we corrupted the process of sight by rejecting those things which the soul knows. In other words, part of the soul’s bondage is to find itself ensnared in interpretations which are closer to the animal kingdom. If imagination is restored to its proper place, we could consistently produce harmonious and prosperous conditions on earth.

One way of understanding this is to look at what happens when people project evil onto a politicized label (pick your label). What they’ve done at that point is to ensure an outcome consistent with their expectation.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED BRUCE HANIFY 2012

The following Prosecutor Series encapsulates what I learned during my 15 years as a deputy prosecutor. They are intended to shed some informal light on a very dark area: crime.  Hope you enjoy them.

#  #  #  #

I was born before 1960, when the world was Black-and-White. Repressed men and women mumbled innuendos through cigarette-clenched lips. Dangerous, existential conflicts circled restless dreams like a hungry lion — kept in check by house payments, kids, and alcohol. You know what I mean. If you are 50-years-old or older, you were likely conceived in a cloud of Chesterfield smoke and learned to accept lipstick on your restaurant glass as a part of the Surgeon General’s recommended diet for future depressives. Yeah.

That’s Noir, man.

The A&E execs pay people to answer the question: “What is film Noir?” Are you kidding me? Noir is not a film, man. It’s the world America’s World War II combat vets revealed through films like Black Angel and The Asphalt Jungle. The world of Noir started with All Quiet on the Western Front and ended with Cape Fear. That’s Noir, Jack. About 30 years. If you throw in Twilight Zone’s five seasons, 35 years.  Noir is the world that shaped my soul.

My sisters and I grew up in a house where the specters of the dead did not let us forget the shadowy side of life. My mother’s first husband was killed at Normandy; her second husband — my father — landed at Normandy and survived the Battle of the Bulge through VE Day. We didn’t watch war movies with either of our folks around.  The end result of my early years was that I was always more at home in the 1940s than I am in our own time, which seems so .… so much like a pampered kid from a one-child family. They’re only cute to their parents. The rest of us are forced to endure their specialness.

Flash forward to the summer of ’88. Freshly divorced, and restless, I began what would turn out to be a near-career of prosecution in Yakima County. One afternoon I was arguing a summary judgment motion in a civil case against the County. I turned and saw that Jeff Sullivan, the elected prosecutor, was watching me in action. I barely got back to my office when the phone rang. It was Sullivan. On a sweaty August day in 1988, I hung up my spurs as an insurance defense attorney and became a deputy prosecutor.  I would spend my next 12 years in that office.

Yakima was a shooting gallery. It seemed there was a drive-by shooting almost every week. A friend of mine in the defense business went with his client’s family to the Pizza Hut for lunch break during his client’s trial for .… a drive-by.  A car backfired. Every single person at that table instinctively ducked for cover. That’s how it was. Without even realizing it, I learned to check belt lines when I was on the street, in stores. Yakima was my sweaty introduction to America’s post-Noir world, a place where there was neither romance, nor honor.  Smarmy greed and cruel force were the dominant currents in America’s deteriorating social scene.

Man perfected by society is the best of all animals; he is the most terrible of all when he lives without law, and without justice.  Aristotle

The only entity that can mediate between the individual and the tribe is, for better or worse, a state, and it is the prosecutor’s peculiar responsibility to enforce the will of the state against an individual.  Because justice is rooted in proportionality, and proportionality cannot take shape without something with which to measure its application, i.e., force, it necessarily involves the use of power against others.  Hence there is always an element of war in politics.  You cannot impose an income tax without making “polite” war on the citizenry.  There is no nice way to part someone from what they’ve cultivated through effort and intelligence.  You have to take it from them, and if they resist, you have to imprison or kill them.  People want to hear these things expressed in terms of ideals, but up close, it doesn’t work that way.

Still, if it weren’t for the state, we would soon find ourselves in a Hobbesian nightmare of endless strife.

It is in justice that the ordering of society is centered.  Aristotle

The entire universe is a power system. In any dynamic, whether mechanical or psychic, there is an exchange of energy.  In intimate relationships there is sexual power, emotional power, financial power, even psychological power — unless the two persons are exceptionally evolved. Even kindness can be used to manipulate the other. Sometimes one party is an extremely secure person, the other is not, and so on.  Always there is conflict in human relationships.  The best relationships are the ones where each party pulls his or her own weight and respects the other person without resort to guilt, or fear.  It is by this mechanism that our personalities and our character evolve.

Almost all the world’s problems can be traced to the improper exercise of power.  The purpose of forensics in the law is to shape the personality so that it gives expression to the principle of proportion, which could be defined as the “circumscribed application of force.”  True maturity in the law and in politics consists of getting the personality out of the way.

There is no human being who cannot fall prey to greed or evil.  It takes a tremendous amount of work to free yourself from distorted attachments to the power dynamic. Most of us practice power rituals we believe are unique and useful but which are, in fact, primitive force plastered over with a Smiley Face.  In the final run, Death is the Joker that forces us all to let go of all our delusions.

The law is reason, free from passion.  Aristotle

Over time, the force of personality is concentrated by responsibility, whereas evasion of responsibility weakens its force, which is why I’ve told the prosecutors I’ve trained that you cannot achieve justice with political ideology or personal preference because when you do that, you are imposing your personality upon other people which is — to use the old-fashioned term — tyranny.  To apply force justly upon others, your will must be guided by principle.  It takes an uncommonly evolved personality to understand how quickly principle can be distorted by greed, pettiness and cruelty, whether open, or concealed.

Therein lies the primary issue of power: whether its application is conscious or unconscious, principled or tyrannical.  It is the same for all human beings, in all circumstances. You can only disengage from manipulation if there is a conscious effort to cultivate a sterling character fortified by solid principle — or the pain of adversity forces you to let go.

In my 15 years as a prosecutor, I actually got to know, and exercise, power, albeit at modest levels. In the next installment, we’ll continue with real life stories of prosecution, and how I learned to observe the State in action.

Or, more properly, how I learned to exercise power.

Welcome to my world.

Books by Bruce Hanify at Smashwords
Bruce Hanify 2010 All Rights Reserved

The sinfulness of crime might be described as an unjust application of power, and the “cry of distress” that follows. A crime is a crime because it leaps the fence of personal space and takes what hasn’t been earned.  This is true not just of those individuals society labels as “criminal”, but also of most politicians, quite a few marriages, and perhaps all employment relationships.  A persistent flaw in human nature is to try to scalp what hasn’t been earned, which is why we say that those who have evolved beyond such things have “character.”  They have mastered the arts of self-control.  It’s not until we are challenged by powerful events — or perhaps even a powerful person — that we are forced to measure our personal use of power and begin to reckon whether our character is in proper working order.

People like to tell me, “You just see the world that way because of the work you do!” This is whistling past the graveyard, a talisman that keeps the bogey away, I’m sure, but it’s also a touch dehumanizing. Think of it this way: people inside the medical field observe what folks do to their bodies. We inside the criminal justice system observe what folks do to their souls. The reason people can’t address that is simple: they don’t want to. We lawyers remind people of the moral and spiritual realities they don’t want to face. The more someone hates lawyers, the less they want to talk about what’s real. It’s the law.

High Priests? A freshly minted lawyer, talking to me my last summer before law school, passed on something I never forgot: “If nothing else, law school teaches you how to think.” Of course that is not true in many cases — I have known my share of dunderheaded lawyers — but there is certainly truth to it. The law school process, if properly conducted, forces you to divorce your ego from from the facts, from prior assumptions, from your cherished opinions. An unanswered legal question doesn’t care if you’re Republican or Democrat, Baptist or Catholic. You learn to tangle with the merits of an idea, not hold your expectations hostage to one outcome or another. The best lawyers are often isolated from the common run of humanity, because the common run of humanity associates truth with passion.  Lawyers learn how to dismantle passion and examine the merits of the idea.  Bill Clinton called it ‘compartmentalizing.’  Brilliant.  And very true.

I don’t know how many people truly appreciate what lawyers do. The truth is, our functions as lawyers are priestly.  Lawyers are conditioned to keep confidences; forced to perform duties in areas of fear and degradation that other people would flee; develop skills of problem-solving that defy ordinary understanding. My early years as a deputy prosecutor were a hot house that forced me to grow in ways I would have otherwise never understood. You learn to keep your cool under the most demanding circumstances.  Just the facts, ma’am.

One of the earliest things you must accept as a prosecutor is that there’s nobody to talk to. Lawyers talk to other lawyers about their cases; they talk to cops; they talk to people inside the system. But your friends and the people in your family have no idea what trial attorneys actually do — the stress, the uncertainty, the constant pushing of self past the last default position you thought was the extreme — even if they think they do from watching tv. And attorneys tend to talk about their cases, not yours. Most of us don’t — actually, can’t — talk about the mistreatment we daily receive from members of the public.  We learn to joke about it.  We very seldom receive praise; and the criticisms are, by and large, cliches that are mocked behind closed doors.  The mocking masks a lot of pain, and that pain, over the long run, is what builds skill.

To be a lawyer means to be outcast, more often than not.  The summer before I went to law school I made an appointment with a doctor’s office for a physical, to comply with university requirements. In response to the nurse’s questions, I innocently mentioned that I was going to law school. She frowned, made a note, and left the examination room. Next thing I know, I’m getting a cat scan. That was the start of my education: the mere whisper of the word lawyer changes the weather in a doctor’s office, and that was 30 years ago.

When you say “There are too many lawyers in this country” you are describing a symptom, not a cause.  The correct diagnosis is, “There are too many people in this country who are unwilling to honestly take responsibility for themselves.”  Lawyers are forced to step into that space where people abdicate personal responsibility.  That’s what lawyers do.

Many people disagree with this statement, but think it through: the more self-sufficient you are in your decisions, in your actions, the less external authority is required.

Regular people have never spent a restless, sleepless night, roiling in the sweat of their anxiety, the night before a trial.  They do not know about the feverish dreams, the doubt, the maniacal repetitions of questions, and answers, that roll through the night.  I have walked into court knowing that I owed money, or knowing that a girlfriend was breaking things off with me, or knowing that someone was angry with me, and had to give that case all that I had.  Do people really know what goes into trying a case?  A lot of really great artists would give up their dreams at that point, but the indomitable trial lawyer continues to slog his way through enemy territory.  Win, lose or draw, he or she is among the toughest breed of human being ever made.

And then there is the damage done to the fabric of one’s soul .… .

My first two weeks at the prosecutor’s office, I learned a lesson I never forgot. Uncertain what to do with myself one afternoon, I wandered into an office and casually picked up a handful of photos, turned them over and discovered they were autopsy photos of a six-week old baby, burned with cigarettes, and beaten, methodically, by his mother and her boyfriend over the course of his short, nasty, brutish life. There were other pictures, other reports, as the weeks went by. There were busted eyes, swollen vaginas, protruding bones, carrion-riddled bodies. Drugs. Insanity. Death. The little dead boy, battered and burned, remains in my mind to this day. Note to self: don’t look at pictures.  To this day I expertly filter out information that doesn’t concern me.  I don’t watch law shows.

I had a talent for criminal stuff. Can’t tell you why, exactly. I just did. The cops loved me. “Hanify smiles when he gigs ‘em”, they joked. I was just a grunt, but I was a grunt with style. My ability to inflict pain became razor sharp. I made it personal. Like collecting scalps.

It didn’t occur to me that I might be getting sick. Sick? The whole world was sick, chump. Don’t tell me what’s sick. Sick is having some idea of the suffering that goes on in this world and shoving it from your mind so that you don’t have to deal with it. That’s sick. Sick is knowing your teen is filling his mind with garbage and calling it “culture.”  That’s sick.

Inside the criminal justice system, those anomalous shapes and difficulties get worked through a massive factory press that produces still further anomalies.  Uniformity of result is never a part of the process, but wisdom, eventually, is.

Books by Bruce Hanify at Smashwords
Bruce Hanify 2010 All Rights Reserved

Behind you sits a roomful of criminal defendants, their friends and family. The bulk of them want to see “the man” — uh, that would be you, poodle — eat it.  Maybe the judge decides this is the right moment to play “whip the prosecutor.” On the slightest pretense, he finds something to nitpick — something entirely irrelevant, mind you. His nitpicking is consciously inaccurate, designed to diminish you and enlarge him. He gets appreciative titters from an audience that can’t vote. Oh ha ha! A laugh at the prosecutor’s expense.

Breaks the day up.

The System doesn’t have a brain, only a stomach. There’s a guy who told the truth about a hunting violation who got hit with the entire fine and suspended jail time for telling the truth, whereas the mother-son check schemers walk out the door because the subpoenaed bank witness doesn’t bother to show up, and the judge dismissed the case.  I turn around to watch the kid check-writer mouth “f _ _ _ you” to me as he leaves.  He and his mother will be laughing when they hit the curb. Have to remember to send that kid a valentine next spring.

You get through your 40 to 50 pretrials and probation violations.  Now it’s on to the motions. The troopers, deputies and officers in the back row have been grumbling, and restless. Well, some of them. The lazier ones who don’t like to work, but like the overtime, are content. You might get a call from a sergeant later: “Goddamnit, I don’t want to pay overtime!”

Yeah yeah.

Two suppressions went okay; the judge suppresses the third. I dismiss that case. On to the bench trials.

The monkey-man in the wife-beater grins through mottled teeth while he scratches his pits from the witness stand. He makes a weird monkey sound when he grins and has an odd habit of scratching at his pits, like .… you know. A monkey. He tells his side of the story through a perma-fried grin. Yeah, I saw the crippled woman beat the hell out of Joe. Sure, Joe is big and mean and lazy as a cut dog, but on this particular day he was all victim! Poor Joe didn’t stand a chance!

The crippled woman is convicted. Can’t have people her that on the street! People like monkey man deserve to feel safe, too, you know. The law is blind to clothes and body odor. And brains.

Well, and sometimes blind to truth, but that doesn’t matter.

I hug my files to my chest and leave the courtroom, four new convictions to forget.

Back to the bunker, with its surplus desk and tired, beige phone, cracked and smudged with black stains.  Back to the other grunts who have the same dark humor I do.  We crank out rounds of sarcasm and derision while closing out files and making notes before going home.

Come 5:30 I’ll go home to a dark house and watch Clint Eastwood movies.  By the time I lay down, this day will no longer be.

But tomorrow?  Promises more of the same.

Books by Bruce Hanify at Smashwords
Bruce Hanify 2010 All Rights Reserved

by Bruce Hanify

My curtains were closed; the lights were low. I hadn’t had anyone over to the house for probably six months. The sighs of the dead heaved across the dimly-lit nether world I now inhabited.  Hell had seized my heart and silenced my tongue. The winds of madness drove upon my shattered gate. I looked around the darkness. When had it happened? Had there been a specific day?

It wasn’t a day, but a thing. There was the elderly couple stabbed to death by two teens who knocked at their door just as they sat down for dinner. The frail little couple — farmers, born in that same America my parents knew — died during dinner. The woman had gotten up from the table to answer the door. It was the last thing she ever did. In death she wore a look of resignation and sorrow.  Her brave, devoted husband had put up quite a fight. Of course, it was one of the children — their middle-aged son — who had to find his parents this way. Where do you go with that horror?

Sometime after that I brought home the movie Consenting Adults. Wow! Great erotic opener! Two sexy couples getting to know each other, a powerfully erotic scene that left you wondering:

Would they?

And then came the next scene. Eddy Otis kills his wife, Kay, by clubbing her to death. I turned off the television and wept. I wept hot tears, but my heart was cold as ice. I pretty much quit watching movies after that. Plato’s Republic stands unresolved: there are corrosive souls who corrode others. Hollywood is a magnet for the spiritually maligned.

The straw that broke me was the family of four killed in Outlook. The elected prosecutor and a senior deputy tried the case, but I, who handled the felony appeals by then and was consulted on procedural matters, was familiar with all the facts, and eventually inherited the appeal.  That case proved more than I could bear, though I yet live.  I was plunged into dark seas without a map or compass. It would be sometime before I crawled ashore, a weather-beaten, miserable rat.

But I survived, and became someone entirely different from who I had been before.

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