I Had a Long Dream

about swimming across the sea. Name that tune. Actually, that IS the name. About 6 minutes of very minimal lyrics and lots of good guitar melody. I had to take a road trip awhile back with one of my trippy co-workers. He makes me listen to all kinds of things that are outside my comfort zone (I once thought about killing him because he made me listen to an entire White Stripes CD), and one of those was "A Long Dream About Swimming Across the Sea." Makes you want to go lay down in some tall grass and stare at the clouds.

He also made me listen to some compilation from the Brian Jonestown Massacre (that is the name, right, of the group with that crazy guy who has gone through like 40 bandmates over the years?). That was pretty darn good too.

Today, I took my bike to the C-store and put air in the tires. I am going to start riding my bike to work in two weeks, and I am going to do it all summer. Today, I paid $46 to fill up my smallish SUV, and we have some of the lowest gas prices in the country. This reminds me of the Reagan years - I will be nice and skinny because I will have to walk and ride my bike everywhere. Just like Michigan during the great depression of the 70's and 80's.

So I was unhappy this week because I have a kid doing 30 to 45 years for something, and (a) he really is just a kid; and (b) nobody even died. If nobody died, you just should not be in prison for that long. NOBODY DIED.

One of Those Weeks

This week has convinced me that, without question, if you want to be a judge or a prosecutor you should have to do a mandatory month in prison. A REAL prison, with real inmates, living a real prisoner's life. I wonder if I could garner any support for that movement...

It's just the way that those in authority toss around years of incarceration like chump change is grating. And scary.

Anyway, I had a rough week at work.

Plus, all these tornadoes. What's up with that? The freaking tornado siren has gone off three times in the last 24 hours, and twice tornadoes have touched down close by my house. Icky. But I have the children well-trained on the drill: take the dogs and the telephone and go to the basement.

I Read Trash

And I'm proud of it. I got stimulated by the government (i.e. the Bush Admin. graciously gave me some of my tax dollars back) (and I should never, ever, ever, use the word "stimulated" in the same document, let alone paragraph, as "Bush Admin."). Anyway, my small child and I went to Barnes and Noble and spent $80 plus on books (books written in English are printed in America, right? I mean, I would really hate to not be a good American and spend my stimulated money elsewhere.). He got a big Goosebumps anthology and a pirate book; I got some Kurt Vonnegut short stories and...teen vampire romance!!! Twilight, New Moon and Eclipse. And I have finished the first two and enjoyed them thoroughly.

Civil Standards in Criminal Cases

Here is what is bothering me currently; why is it ever okay, pre-conviction, to use a "preponderance of the evidence" standard to decide something in a criminal case? It should not be.

Forfeiture: you are alleged to have killed/conspired to kill/helped to kill someone. Prosecution wants to use the statements of the dead someone against you at trial. The doctrine of forfeiture exists; that is, if you removed the witness so they could not testify against you, you don't get to cry foul on confrontation grounds. Or so said the United States Supreme Court in a BIGAMY case a zillion years ago, where no-one was dead. So the Reynolds case survived Crawford; neither case defines the limits of the doctrine. Giles v. California was argued on April 22; but that is a much more specific question: if you kill someone without the intent to remove them as a witness, is there forfeiture? Why have so many states (not necessarily mine, but people here seem to think it implicit) adopted the preponderance standard? And the judge gets to decide? What if the person is not connected to the crime by any physical evidence? Just a co-defendant who got a deal? Is that a preponderance?

I think using a preponderance standard pre-conviction undermines the process.
Just my opinion.

I Haven't Been Posting Much

Because it is soccer AND baseball season at the same time. Almost every night, I am at a practice or game.

My small child is going through a very coordinated spell. Monday night (when the weather was quite pleasant) he scored three of his team's four goals. Last night, when it was cold as a well-digger's - parts - he went three for three batting, scored once, had a couple RBIs, and did a very decent job catching and at short stop.

Road Trips Are FUN!!!

Today, I drove a very long way to a minimum security facility, to interview a person there (not directly pertinent to this, but somewhat, what the hell do people do to deal with what I call "psycho spouse accusation cases"??? As in, you have a very floridly crazy - redundancy alert - angry spouse who spews a bunch of stuff that is not verifiable by physical evidence and someone ends up convicted of two or three felonies. I see several such cases a year; always erodes my faith in the jury system a trifle.).

ANYWAY: I was not really happy about the long drive because it was through radio wasteland (like, Nebraska radio stations, and those are just SAD). After awhile, though, I woke up, and realized that I was driving a brand new car from the state motor pool, and it had Sirius!!! Then, my day was all good. I listened to E Street Radio the whole rest of the time (so about seven hours). I heard a live concert from Atlantic City in August 1975; I hear three different versions of Saint in the City; I heard two different versions of I Came for You (both only accompanied by a piano); I heard an insane version of Tenth Avenue Freezeout, which included a bit of Redheaded Woman; two version of Growing Up (which I just put on one of my Itunes cds); and on and on and on. It was very exciting. Sadly, we speculate that the Sirius came as a trial with the new cars, and the state will not continue to pay for it. But still.

Question re: NCIC

Do your prosecutors routinely give you NCICs in discovery? If they don't, why not?