Murder And The Media: The Relentless Pursuit Of Pain And Pathos.

Alternative Sources Of Pain And Pathos: With the end of capital punishment, the news media entered into a new relationship with the ill-fated “cast” of the standard homicide case.

 

VERY FEW PEOPLE under the age of seventy will remember Caryl Chessman. His execution in the San Quentin gas chamber on 2 May 1960 was the occasion for an international outpouring of condemnation and disgust. The good and the great of the United States (from Aldous Huxley and Norman Mailer to the former First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt) had appealed for clemency, but the State of California killed him anyway. Not for murder, mind, but for robbery, kidnapping and rape. The Supreme Court of the State of California had confirmed Chessman as the notorious “Red Light Bandit”. He’d managed to keep the cyanide out of the hole for 11 long years through numerous appeals and stays of execution, but California got him in the end.

 

The execution of Chessman unleashed a wave of popular revulsion against the death penalty in the United States. Over the course of the succeeding decade-and-a-half, state after state either abolished sentences of death altogether, or operated as if they had by commuting them to life imprisonment.

 

Not in the Deep South, of course, where the death penalty operated as an unacknowledged form of judicial terrorism against the black population of the old Confederacy. So extreme was the sexual psycho-pathology of the Southern Baptist male that Black American men were as frequently put to death for rape as they were for murder. The alleged “defilement” of a white woman by a black man drove Southern juries (and lynch mobs) into murderous frenzies.

 

With debate still raging in the lengthening shadow of Chessman’s execution, New Zealand finally rid itself of the death penalty in 1961. The legislation was made the subject of a conscience vote because in the years since 1949, when the First National Government had restored the death penalty (Labour having abolished it in 1941) a growing number of National Party members and MPs had found themselves conscientiously opposed to its retention. Interestingly, the liberal National Party Justice Minister, Ralph Hanan’s, majority for repeal included the new back-bench MP for Tamaki, Robert Muldoon.

 

The news media’s progressive role in the abolition of the death penalty might seem strange to a generation raised on the vicarious cruelty of reality television. Perhaps it was because journalists, as proxies for the crowds that once gathered to watch these grim events, were required to witness executions.

 

Only a pathological sadist could derive any pleasure from watching a defenceless man, often crying uncontrollably and begging for mercy, being frogmarched to the centre of a platform, where a canvas hood is thrust over his head, a noose tightened around his neck, and, at a signal from the Sheriff, dropped through a trap-door to his (hopefully) instant death. Seasoned reporters dreaded the execution assignment and their stories tended to be terse and generally sparing of the readers’ feelings.

 

There were exceptions. The relentlessly factual and highly detailed description of the February 1957 hanging of wife-murderer, Walter James Bolton, so horrified the public that it ended up being the last execution ever carried out in New Zealand.

 

With the end of capital punishment, however, the news media entered into a new relationship with the ill-fated “cast” of the standard homicide case.

 

The victims of deadly violence have always supplied reporters with sensational copy, but, in the days of the death penalty, the apprehension and conviction of the murderer naturally shifted the focus away from the dead to the one about to die. Often, the public found themselves caught up in the defence lawyers’ appeals for mercy on behalf of perpetrators who frequently turned out to be as much sinned against as sinning.

 

But when the worst that could happen to a murderer was being locked in a prison cell for a couple of decades (at most) journalists began to look elsewhere for the sort of pain and pathos that sells newspapers. The murder victims were, of course, beyond the reporter’s reach, but their family and friends were still very much alive. What’s more, the new, humane, Justice System often left the murder victim’s family and friends feeling cheated of the revenge they so desperately wished to see exacted upon the body of the person who had robbed them of their loved one.

 

Thus began the inexorable rise of “the victim’s family” as an unassailable source of commentary on the whys and wherefores, rights and wrongs, of contemporary crime and punishment. It was from distraught parents, heartbroken husbands and wives, and bereft children that journalists sought definitive judgements on the conduct of the accused’s trial and the appropriateness of any sentence. From the intense pain and suffering of these stricken human-beings the news media was happy to mine bitter attacks on the rights of accused persons, the leniency of judges and the manifest inadequacies of the nation’s laws.

 

Not surprisingly, politicians of every hue have been quick to attach themselves to the public outrage whipped up by this sort of journalism. The consequent electoral auction has seen an alarming narrowing of the crucial distance which jurists, over many centuries, have laboriously imposed between the raw grief of the victim’s family and the need for justice to be dispensed dispassionately, without fear or favour. The whole purpose of the Crown making itself the aggrieved party – as opposed to the victim’s relatives – along with the state’s insistence on being the only agency legally entitled to exact retribution for proven offences, is at risk of being forgotten.

 

It all raises a very uncomfortable question. Which is worse: the death penalty, or what happens to society’s understanding of justice when capital punishment is abolished?

 

This essay was posted on The Daily Blog of Wednesday, 3 December 2014.

Keeping Justice's Blindfold In Place

Blind Justice: The blindfold Lady Justice traditionally wears is to deny her the opportunity to be moved by either partiality or pity. Under our system of Justice only evidence brought before the courts can convict the accused. But the Sensible Sentencing Trust-sponsored "Christie's Law" would allow the suffering of victims to unbalance Justice's scales - fundamentally prejudicing the right of accused persons to a fair trial.

GARTH McVICAR is using the tragic death of Christie Marceau to secure a further erosion of New Zealanders’ legal rights.

In November of 2011 Miss Marceau was stabbed to death in her North Shore home and died in her mother’s arms. The man accused of attacking her had earlier been charged with her kidnapping. Over the strenuous objections of the Police, he had been remanded on bail to a house less than a kilometre from the Marceau home.

Mr McVicar’s Sensible Sentencing Trust (SST), with the full support of Miss Marceau’s parents, is now promoting what it is calling “Christie’s Law”: a series of measures which will make it much more difficult for judges to grant bail to people accused of serious crimes.

That Miss Marceau’s parents should want to prevent other families from enduring the horror and heartbreak which they have been forced to endure is entirely understandable. That Mr McVicar’s trust has fastened upon their grief in order to advance its private political agenda is despicable.

For there can be no disputing the SST’s radical right-wing politics. A brief perusal of “Christie’s Law” reveals that Mr McVicar and his supporters, by making the decisions of judges subject to a police veto, are attempting to undermine the independence of the New Zealand judiciary. They are also attempting to overturn what is arguably the most important of our legal rights – the presumption of innocence.

The presumption of innocence requires the state to prove the guilt of an accused person “beyond reasonable doubt”. And until such time as his or her guilt is proven, that person remains (and must be considered) innocent of the crime/s of which s/he is charged.

It is the presumption of innocence that makes the right to be granted bail so important. Without it, merely being charged with an offence could see the accused deprived of their liberty for days, weeks, months – even years. Time which, in the event of their eventual acquittal, can never be returned. The unreasonable denial of bail is, quite simply, an open invitation to serious injustice.

Of course, an absolute adherence to the logic of presumed innocence would be as dangerous as its persistent and unreasonable denial. To release accused persons whose actions, mental stability, and/or past history of offending render them a credible and serious threat to the safety of the public would be very wrong. Accordingly, we have given our judges the authority to refuse bail when, by granting it, people’s lives and property would be recklessly endangered.

In the overwhelming majority of cases that come before them our judges exercise this discretion wisely. But judges, like the rest of us, are fallible human-beings. In a tiny handful of cases they make a decision which, with hindsight, turns out to have been reckless and foolhardy. The decision to grant bail to the person accused of Miss Marceau’s murder clearly falls into this category.

The truly evil aspect of the SST’s promotion of “Christie’s Law” is that it pretends that the fallibility of our justice system is fixable. That if you threaten judges with sufficiently dire sanctions, and give police the power of veto over bail decisions, then the number of tragic mistakes will be lessened. What they leave unsaid, of course, is that in attempting to eliminate one kind of mistake “Christie’s Law” would almost certainly give rise to a host of others. Intimidated judges and over-zealous policemen would very soon begin to deny bail to anyone and everyone charged with serious crimes. The presumption of innocence would be turned on its head. Gross injustices, far from being reduced, would multiply.

New Zealanders should reject not only the measures contained in “Christie’s Law” but the very idea of attaching the victim of a fatal stabbing to such overt politicking. There is a reason why the prosecution of serious crime became the exclusive preserve of the state, and the SST’s posturing throws it into stark relief.

The administration of justice cannot be conducted impartially, or according to the dictates of reason, if it is in any way drawn into the emotionally charged environment of grief and anger to which the victims of crime, through no fault of their own, are remanded. It’s why Justice is always pictured wearing a blindfold. It is to prevent her from seeing the grief and anger of crime’s victims – lest, out of pity for their plight, she negates the rights of the accused.

No sentence which is driven by the raw emotions of crime’s victims can ever be “sensible”. Justice is not vengeance, and must never be allowed to become so. In using Miss Marceau’s name to achieve their political objectives, Mr McVicar and the SST are attempting to circumvent the duty we all share to keep Justice’s blindfold in place, and her scales in balance.

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 21 February 2012.

Helpless Victims?

Helpless Victims? Twenty years ago the feminist slogan was "Girls can do anything!" Today's feminists seem to be arguing precisely the opposite. That, far from being men's equals, like these Israeli women conscripts, they are really nothing more than helpless victims, utterly incapable of looking after themselves. The women in the photograph (and their M16s) would probably disagree.

"VICTIM" is a slippery word. Our hearts go out to the "victims" of natural disasters and random attacks – people who have suffered harm through no fault of their own. We are more sparing with our sympathy, however, if the "victims" are perceived to have, even in the slightest degree, participated in, or contributed to, their own misfortune.

The women involved in the political downfall of Dr Richard Worth provide a topical example. Across the airways and throughout the blogosphere debate has raged over the degree of culpability (if any) attributable to the former Cabinet Minister’s "victims".

The Left – especially the Feminist Left – has come down firmly on the side of the women, painting them has the helpless prey of a powerful and predatory male. The Right, while expressing scant sympathy for Dr Worth, has been equally reluctant to acknowledge the women’s "victimhood" unequivocally.

To the rising fury of the Left, right-wing commentators have homed in on the details of the women’s allegations – asking pertinent questions and raising reasonable doubts.

I must confess to harbouring one-or-two questions and doubts of my own in relation to this "sex scandal", but what worries me most is the Left’s apparent inability to assess critically the variety of allegations currently being levelled against Dr Worth.

In the ever-diminishing sorority of radical feminist ideologues, all that is required to convict a man of sexual misconduct is a woman’s accusation. To demand proof from the accuser, or an inquiry into the context of the accused’s alleged "crime", is tantamount to colluding in the woman’s ongoing victimisation by our repressive patriarchal society – to which, ultimately, all women fall victim.

But, to create an alternative society, one in which a man can be convicted of a serious offence purely on the accusation of a woman, is to create a society even more oppressive than the patriarchy it is intended to replace. To abandon the presumption of innocence; do away with a person’s right to confront their accuser; fatally compromise the fundamental rules of evidence; and renounce trial by jury and "reasonable doubt", is to undermine our justice system in its entirety.

Yet this is the road that many feminists (motivated, no doubt, by the very best of intentions) would have us go down.

Feminist sociologist, and Whanganui Family Violence Case Management Coodinator, Dr Angela Jury, for example, argues for "an ideological shift away from burdening abuse victims with the responsibility of choosing to end the abuse".

According to Dr Jury’s research: "the use of language around choice and freedom in advice to abused women – ‘you don’t have to live like this’, ‘you can leave’, ‘there is help available’. All of these – while probably selected as terms offering empowerment to victims – can also operate to engender a sense of weakness on the part of the victims … thus creating a sense of shame and self-blame."

Okaaaay.

But, if we’re not allowed to encourage the woman to end the abuse herself, by leaving the abuser and/or alerting the authorities, how are we supposed to keep her safe from harm? By encouraging others to alert the authorities on her behalf? But wouldn’t that mean dobbing in our neighbours, our workmates, even our friends – if we believed them guilty of abusing their wives, partners or children? And, what if the abuse victims were too overwhelmed by "shame and self-blame" to testify against their abusers – what then? Should they be convicted without hard evidence? Purely on the basis of our accusation?

No scope there for the most egregious miscarriages of justice!

But this is exactly the tangled ethical thicket into which an uncritical focus on victimhood leads us.

If we are to build a just and equitable society, it can only be constructed upon the assumption of a free and equal citizenry. And I use the word "assumption" quite deliberately here, because "freedom" and "equality" – like "justice" and "truth" – are abstract nouns which may, or may not, refer to real and concrete entities like you and me.

And yet, without assuming the abstract concepts of democratic citizenship refer to something real, we are lost. Because, if we are not free and equal citizens, then what are we? Nothing but problematic bundles of neuroses and psychoses? Bent and battered human vessels, chockfull of defective genetic material? Suitable cases for "expert" treatment?

Nothing but helpless victims.

This essay was originally published in The Dominion Post, The Timaru Herald, The Taranaki Daily News, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Evening Star of Friday, 12 June 2009.