A reader adds a first-hand perspective to a recent post:
I have no idea whether narcoanalysis will be useful as a psycho-diagnostic technique or as a law enforcement or intelligence gathering device, although it does seem less onerous than waterboarding. I do know that it can be very useful to the criminal defense attorney in certain limited instances. In the early part of my career I defended more than 50 homicide cases and found the technique to be very useful in three cases. I was fortunate to have the services of an experienced psychiatrist who had used it in treating what we now call PTSD in WW2 veterans suffering from repressed memories of traumatic events.
My first and most helpful experience was with a man who had undoubtedly shot and killed his wife but could not recall exactly how or why. When pressed to recall the event he could do so up to a point and then would start belching – a rather bizarre response. He was under indictment for second-degree murder under circumstances that suggested an execution-style killing. He had come back from a visit to the factory where he was employed while it was on strike.
The first indication that he was being truthful while undergoing the amytal interview came when he contradicted an earlier account of the reason for his visit to the strike scene. Before the medicated interview he said he had gone there to see how it was going. Under amytal he said he had gone there to try to get on television.
At the crucial point in the interview, for the first time he described how while he was pointing the gun at his wife to try to get her to admit a marital indiscretion, she grabbed the gun and jerked it downward, causing it to discharge. The 15-degree downward angulated entrance wound suggested she might have been on her knees begging for mercy without the revered memory he had suppressed. I played the recording of the interview for the grand jury, who returned a superseding indictment for manslaughter, based on causing death while in the commission of the unlawful act of threatening her with a gun.
On another occasion I used the technique to gain some confirmation of my client’s claim that although he had gone along on a burglary, it was his partner who suddenly displayed a gun and killed two elderly people. His account of this was accompanied by the emotional response one would expect under these circumstances. He still went to prison for murder, but his partner was sentenced to death.
In another case the client admitted the complicity of another that he had refused to acknowledge even when confronted with evidence that only made sense if another was involved. More that admitting the involvement of another, he identified the person, which he confirmed when confronted with the tape recording.
All these people were of modest intellect. It is accepted that a thoroughgoing sociopath can lie even under the influence of amytal. Ordinarily, an attorney would not bother to use the technique with that kind of defendant.
The above video is a scene from John Huston’s Let There Be Light, a 1946 documentary about the experimental treatment program for traumatized WWII veterans that employed hypnosis and sodium amytal. From the film’s Wiki page:
The film, commissioned by the United States Army Signal Corps, was the final entry in a John Huston trilogy of films produced at the request of the U.S. Government. This documentary film follows 75 U.S. soldiers who have sustained debilitating emotional trauma and depression. … The film was controversial in its portrayal of shell-shocked soldiers from the war. “Twenty percent of our army casualties”, the narrator says, “suffered psychoneurotic symptoms: a sense of impending disaster, hopelessness, fear, and isolation.” Apparently due to the potentially demoralizing effects the film might have on recruitment, it was subsequently banned by the Army after its production, although some pirated copies had been made.
A reader responds to the April 1 post with a succinct email:
Dick.
Another elaborates on that sentiment:
Dammit, I got Rickrolled by you, or by Andrew, or by whoever’s idea it was to put up the Rick Astley video. I thought the link was probably to Andrew’s message to readers that he put up the night before, about taking a week off. But no – I click on the link and up pops the youthful Richard Paul Astley of 1987. It has been quite a while since I have been Rickrolled at The Dish.
Another:
I thought Andrew was REALLY going to send a “message to his long-time readers”. On second thoughts, I guess he did!!! CURSES.
I want to quickly note how difficult it was finding a version of the “Never Gonna Give You Up” video that doesn’t have a pre-roll ad, which defeats the whole purpose of the rickroll. Advertising really is ruining everything.
President Barack Obama stands in front of the Easter Bunny while he participates in the annual Easter Egg Roll on the White House tennis court on April 1, 2013. Thousands of people are expected to attend the 134-year-old tradition of rolling colored eggs down the White House lawn that was started by President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1878. By Mark Wilson/Getty Images.
I learned that it’s easy enough to short-circuit the ritual that Tomasky complains about. I’ll ask for the check when I know we’ll be adding nothing else to it, even if we are still eating. Or I’ll say, “…and we’ll take the check, too,” when the waiter is walking away with coffee orders. And when the check comes, I’m all set with my credit card, handing it over immediately so I don’t have to wait for the waitress to come back yet again. (Yes, it’s possible there is an error on the check, but that’s rare, and it can be dealt with even after the card is run.)
I don’t do this when I’m out with casual friends or in a too-large group, because I don’t want to be seen as an anal-retentive clod. But when I’m with my family? Or, especially, on my own? It’s nice to reclaim those 20 minutes.
You get an app on your phone with a QR code which changes based on the tip percent. If everything works out, you can turn on the app and the wait staff can come by with another phone, take a picture of the code, and the transaction goes through, with a receipt emailed to you. Oh, and:
– LevelUp combines purchases and charges you once every week or two (like iTunes) to reduce draconian credit card interchange fees
– For now, at least, LevelUp charges no credit card fees to restaurants
– Restaurants provide “rewards,” so if you spend $100 you get a $10 bonus (and the restaurant pays an additional percentage here, but remember, they only pay it when you’ve already spent $100 and they’ve saved on interchange fees the whole time). It’s sort of like reverse Groupon: the restaurant gets you in the door, and you get a reward after you’ve given them continued business, not up-front.
I’m not a shill for LevelUp, I just use it a lot, and it works very well. And they claim it’s safer than using a credit card.
The other:
I’m emailing you at 2:40am Eastern so clearly I work in a restaurant and have had my after-work drinks (ahem, forgive typos) so: many restaurants already do this! I’m not shilling for one particular product, but we use Tabbedout in the restaurant where I work. It’s even better than the “hand-held” credit device the author wants. You just use a free app on your phone. Your credit card number is encrypted so it’s safe and really convenient. You (the customer) pay whenever you want and … leave. Seriously, it takes :30 seconds, not 20 minutes.
But, ya know what? Consumers aren’t ready – yet. I push this fantastic app every single night at every single table. The general response: HORROR! NO WIRES! CREDIT CARD STOLEN! Ok, a bit exaggerated, but nonetheless, I could easily map a sociological study about who is ready to embrace this technology. People under 30 = cool, let’s try it! Those 30-40 = interested but must do intensive research. Those 40+ = Huh, I just learned how to text and take pics with my smartphone so there is NO WAY I will pay a restaurant bill with this “new” contraption.
Look, I am a 53-year-old server who is clearly not a millennial. I freak my friends out (even the really young ones!) when I deposit printed checks via a mobile banking app (glorious, I will never need to walk inside a bank again), so I am not the obvious demographic for mobile payment apps. But they exist and work really well. It’s a combo of restaurants not understanding how awesome and inexpensive this is and consumers still – still! – thinking that it’s a risk to pay by phone. The funniest/ironic thing is this: as a server, you give me your credit card. I process it. I could easily steal the number (it happens it all the time, unfortunately, Google it) and use it. When paying via a mobile app, I never see your credit card number. It can’t be stolen. And you don’t have to wait for me. Open app, pay your tab, leave.
So, that dude at The Daily Beast who wrote this article is simply uninformed. I know he got stats from the NRA (the other NRA), but he was talking about a device attachment. There is an app for that and it works great. Catch up to the times, restaurant diners!
If you’re saying it’s a pricey way to keep pets occupied because of the damage incurred to iPads, I have to tell you that after hours of fun with our cats and said apps we haven’t a single scratch on the screen. iPad screens are really tough.
Disclosure: This content is not sponsored by Apple.
As a lawyer who used to include criminal defense (including indigent defense) among my practice areas, I will agree with the original post: there is a huge, huge disparity between the resources of the state and the resources of the criminal defendant. You should include in that disparity not only the budget of the prosecutor’s office, but that of every law enforcement agency that investigates and enforces the law, including the police and sheriffs departments, state police, regional drug task forces, federal and state bureaus of investigation, and the like. The State provides very limited resources to indigent defendants, when itself has practically unlimited resources available to prosecute. It is not a fair fight, but criminal defense attorneys do the best they can with what they are given to work with.
Another goes into more detail:
When a prosecutor needs something checked or needs a witness, a staffer places a call to the police and it’s taken care of; when a public defender wants something checked, s/he pays for the investigator out of the office budget. When a prosecutor in an arson case wants an expert, he calls the fire marshall’s office, and there’s no budget impact; the public defender has to find and pay for any help out of their budget. How about a multiple-defendant case? One prosecutor, but each defendant requires a separate attorney, most of which have to be hired outside the agency, at the agency’s expense, to prevent conflicts of interest.
The list goes on, but the important point is that if you segregated out all the government expense post-arrest and compared it to the public defender’s budget, the resource gap would be even more shockingly large.
Another reader:
“It should come as no surprise, then, that you’re more likely to wind up in jail if represented by a taxpayer-financed lawyer than by one you hire yourself.” I am a public defender in Florida and I have to push back against this.
Granted, I came out of a top law school with a robust loan repayment assistance program and I practice in one of the best public defender offices in the country, so my experience may not be representative. However, I disagree with the contention that funding disparities are the primary reason my clients are more likely to be incarcerated than defendants with private attorneys.
All of my clients have one thing in common: they’re indigent. Otherwise, they would not be entitled to my services. What does that mean? For starters, they tend to be underemployed or unemployed. After any conviction there is a sentencing hearing, where the defense attorney proffers mitigation in order to get a better sentence. One common argument is “Your honor, my client has a job and if you jail him for even a month he’ll lose his job. He’ll become destitute. The family that relies on him will become destitute.” This is a powerful argument and judges respond to that.
My clients tend to be undereducated. They tend to have prior histories. They tend to be black or brown. Studies show that similarly situated minority defendants get harsher sentences than white defendants, even controlling for the nature of the crime and the defendant’s prior convictions.
The person who can hire a private attorney tends to be the accountant who got a DUI after a happy hour or the doctor who smacked around his wife in a fit of anger. It can cost more than $5,000 to defend a petty misdemeanor if a trial is involved. Defending a serious felony can typically only be afforded by the affluent.
Yes, I wish I had more funding. I wish I had a smaller case load and more investigators. But even for the smallest misdemeanor case, I can pay $2,000 to an expert witness without even requiring office approval. In fact, the prosecutors that I fight against have higher case loads and routinely complain to me about their inability to adequately prepare their cases. I am always better prepared than they are for a case. Literally always.
My clients are more likely to go to jail. This is true. It’s not because of my inability to match the prosecutor’s ability to investigate or prepare for trial. It’s because of their socioeconomic background coupled with draconian maximum sentences that result in plea deals for the vast majority of cases.
Another:
Allow a public defender to offer her perspective. But where to begin? With the fact that I have a law degree, two master’s degrees, and a PhD from an Ivy League university, but still make only $40,000 per year at my job as an appellate-level public defender? My colleagues doing similar work for the State with similar levels of legal experience make at least $25,000 more. The disparity is a function of the particular politics of my state, but there is some level of disparity in every state, even though both public defenders and prosecutors are paid by the state.
I wonder if the ADA who wrote about how difficult her/his job is as compared to the defense really believes this. Whether an indigent criminal defendant is represented by a public defender or a court-appointed private attorney, he or she is being represented by someone with a lot of education and little money. I make $40,000 a year four years out of law school. The most experienced person in my office makes $95,000 after 35 years of practice and a U.S. Supreme Court victory. Court appointed attorneys in my state are paid about $60 an hour for their work, and they are at the mercy of the judge who signs their fee statement. The same judge who just presided over the trial and likely got frustrated with their many objections gets to decide whether they actually should get paid for the number of hours they claim to have put into the case.
These attorneys go into court knowing that the judge is going to have every reason to rule for the State on every contested issue. It is true that the safest defense is often one which involves calling no witnesses, but that doesn’t mean that the defense attorney’s job is easier. The State starts with the moral high ground and always has more resources at its disposal: law enforcement officers to investigate and put pressure on witnesses, money for expert witnesses, discovery rules that can be bent to their advantage … the list is endless.
I understand that prosecutors and defense attorneys have chosen their lot, and I don’t begrudge prosecutors their higher pay and advantages in the courtroom. But for any prosector to claim that advocating for an indigent criminal defendant who has, by definition, been charged with a crime against the State is easier than being the champion of law and order and protector of public safety is just ludicrous.
One more:
As a public defender in Oregon, I’m paid for my work, but at a level far below that of the prosecutor. An entry level lawyer at my office starts out around $40,000 a year, and the senior staff here caps out at $75 or $80k. Across the street, the district attorney pays its staffers $45,000 a year on the low end, with pay capping off at beyond $100,000 for experienced attorneys. In other counties in Oregon, it’s common to have entry level prosecutor positions start at least $20,000 a year more than public defenders in the county. (Oregon is considering legislation this year, HB 3463, that would require public defenders to be paid at equivalent rates of prosecutors in their respective counties, by the way.)
Your reader who talks about all the other things prosecutors do that public defenders don’t? Please. First, the police officer who writes a report has done almost all the heavy lifting on a prosecutor’s case. A prosecutor rarely interviews witnesses on their own, because if they do, they have to discover any exculpatory information they write down under Brady v. Maryland. Most cases that I’ve taken to trial, I’ve spent countless hours tracking down witnesses, verifying my client’s statements and coming up with a theory of defense. All the prosecutor has to do is call each witness the police officer talked to and prove the elements of the crime, which is little more than checking the boxes. As for discovery, in most states, there are reciprocal discovery rules that require the defense to turn over evidence that they intend to use at trial. So both sides have to employ staff to produce discovery.
Lawyers should be paid comparably on both sides of the aisle. When you can’t pay public defenders as much as the prosecutor, it’s harder to keep and retain good lawyers. When you don’t have an effective lawyer fighting for an individual’s rights, it not only harms that individual but society as whole. Who do you think foots the bill for a new trial when a client’s underpaid lawyer missed some critical evidence or failed to investigate a key issue and the client is granted post-conviction relief?
Isn’t evolution the perfect metaphor for politicians changing their positions? Those who evolve on gay marriage, given the new political reality where opposition to gay marriage could threaten one’s political career, are better adapted to new selection pressures in their environment. Those who fail to evolve (e.g. patriarchs within the Republican party like Boehner and Chambliss) will fall to those same selection pressures – and they might bring down the entire party with them. It only takes small changes in an environment to render some organisms’s adaptive practices moot!
Here’s my cynicism on display. Regular people do change their minds, deliberate, and engage their practical reasons. Politicians, on the other hand, only care about survival – so like an ideal Darwinian entity, they’re only capable of evolution. And that’s precisely why regular people have to put the pressure on, with their voices and their votes.
As most of you have noticed with the multiple bylines today, Andrew is on blogcation this week. But he wanted to pass along this message to his long-time readers.
I’m uncomfortable with the term “gay rape”. Men who identify as straight rape other men. Rape is at least as much about power as it is about sex. I have a straight male friend who was raped while hitchhiking in 1991. His rapist gave no indication that he was gay and I’m guessing would not want others to identify him as gay. They met at a stadium concert, and traveled together for a few days while following the band from city to city. On the second or third day, his rapist followed him into a public bathroom at a gas station and raped him during a fill-up stop. Afterwards he refused to give my friend his belongings back (which were in his car), so my friend continued to ride with his rapist until the next stop at a concert venue. Preparing to run, he brought all of his belongings with him and made a dash for it.
I found out what happened to him when he got home. Most people he told didn’t believe him, or they told him “that’s what you get for hitchhiking”. I was surprised that our female friends were no more sympathetic than his male friends. One of our mutual friends was an anti-rape activist who trained women in self-defense techniques and rape prevention. I was astonished that she was totally unsympathetic, even going so far as to tell him that he shouldn’t tell people what happened to him, since it would make people less sympathetic to women who get raped.
I lost track of him a few years later, but during the time I knew him, he never really got over it. I never saw him in a sexual relationship again, and he was clearly traumatized not only by what happened to him, but by how what happened to him was received by his peers.
I’ve never laughed at a prison rape joke since.
Another:
First, I’m a subscriber, but this issue still freaks me out and so I am sending this to you anonymously. I just created this account for this email.
I am married. And mostly happily so, though I am in a utterly sexless marriage. We stay together mostly because we are best friends and have two beautiful children who’s lives don’t deserve to be impacted by their parents inadequacies. That of course, is important because like many married men I have in the past cruised anonymously for gay sex (that might be a worthy series of posts in their own right). For awhile, Squirt, Grinder, and other sites provided an easy and safe outlet. I was always oral and never had an inclination for anal (either giving or receiving). But whatever. The point of this email is that about four or five years ago, my wife was out of town and I decided to meet up with someone at the Key Bridge Marriott in Arlington, VA.
He, in turn, had someone else he was chatting with who was also at the hotel. So we walked down to this other guys room and decided to get some group play going. After a while, the first guy left (he couldn’t keep it up), and the second guy who was literally twice the size of me (probably 6’6″ and 300 lbs of muscle – and as massive a dick as I’ve ever seen – compared to my 5’9 160 lbs) continued on with me.
After a bit, he became much more aggressive and soon pinned me down and was attempting to insert himself in me. He was on me, had my legs apart, a rubber visible on the nightstand but clearly no intention of using it, and he told me very calmly that “it was time to fuck my sissy ass.” I can still remember the smell of his breath as he calmly looked me in the eyes and told me how he was going to rape me. I told him no, struggling, and he just ignored me, spreading my legs further and attempting to enter me. Which was incredibly painful for me, but must have been so for him too. He continued to hold me down and proceeded to stick his fingers in me to loosen me up. Somehow, I managed to twist out from him. And, frankly, I have no idea how I escaped, but somehow I did. And I ran.
Luckily, being in Virginia, I can carry a gun. And I had one in my pants pocket. As I was running to the door, and as he was charging me (it seemed like forever but must have taken place over less than a second or two) I was able to grab my pants and my gun in the front pocket, where he didn’t know it was, and pull it on him (I’m still not sure how I did it so seamlessly). He didn’t expect this and the entire dynamic of the situation changed remarkably. He backed up, trying to calm me down, as I kept the gun square on him and calmly walked backwards to the door, unlocking it behind me and stepping into the hall where I put my pants on as I continued walked backwards to the elevator running through the lobby shirtless and shoeless.
Being married, and with a job in DC where I wasn’t sure how they would respond to publicity over me like that, I was petrified to report anything. And who would I have reported it to? Would they have believed me or simply told me what did I expect?
I’m lucky I didn’t have to use the gun. For one, that would have raised more than a few questions from my wife. But also, I didn’t have a bullet in the chamber. I’ll never make that mistake again. Screw the know-nothings who say guns should be unloaded. An unloaded gun is a paperweight. Had I not moved at the right moment, or not had a gun available, or had to pull the trigger on an empty chamber, I have no doubt he would have raped and assaulted me and left me in a terrible physical condition (and likely exposed to HIV and a surefire hospital visit).
I’ve significantly changed my behavior after that incident. But I still get traumatized over what happened. And of course, that’s both an attempted rape AND a defensive gun use that like so many others will never be officially tabulated. And it all makes me question how common this problem is, especially among the large segment of married men who seek to cruise anonymously.
In hindsight I set myself up for it with terribly risky behavior. And it’s a miracle I’ve not come down with HIV. But it’s not something I could ever ever report because of the impact it would have on my life and those I am closest too. I just pray that this monster was turned in by someone who was in a position to turn him in. Otherwise, he remains at large.
The Dish 