Probable Cause

Without ever having served any time in one, I cannot call myself an expert on prisons.  But I suspect I know something more about them than the average person.  I’ve visited more than a few throughout California in my work as a criminal defense attorney.  I know that prisons are considered by inmates to be better than jails.  I know this because I’m currently representing a prisoner in a habeas case, which has required him to be transported from the prison in Coalinga to Fresno and he has made it clear he would much rather be in the prison.

From what I’ve seen, while prisons are better than jails, prisons suck.

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Last week, I sat in a courtroom – so far as I can tell, the only courtroom – in Corcoran, California, waiting for my case to be called.

Corcoran is apparently a small, scared, little hick town full of frightened citizens.  I came to this conclusion because of the little man who sat near the front of the courtroom, next to his court-appointed attorney who was, with loud, booming voice, questioning a woman who looked like a deer caught in the headlights.  I realized later she held this look because, like so many officers of the state – she was apparently a guard at the local prison – she was trying to make sure the answers she gave to the defense attorney’s probing questions did not help his client, or hurt (what turned out to be) her case.

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In 1956, with freakishly-ironic prescience, Philip K. Dick wrote:

As they walked along the busy, yellow-lit tiers of offices, Anderton said: “You’re acquainted with the theory of precrime, of course.  I presume we can take that for granted.”

“I have the information publicly available,” Witwer replied. “With the aid of your precog mutants, you’ve boldly and successfully abolished the postcrime punitive system of jails and fines.  As we all realize, punishment was never much of a deterrent, and could scarcely have afforded comfort to a victim already dead.” (Philip K. Dick, The Minority Report (1956).)

The story continues:

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Some of you will wonder why this article is going to start off, in a minute here, by talking about and quoting from comments made at so-called “town hall meetings” regarding Obama’s health care plan.  Is this blog “going political” or something?

There are actually two answers to that, the most simplistic of which is “no.”  Although, in a way, this blog is unavoidably political: the legal system is, at bottom, the reification of the politics of a given jurisdiction — or to be more honest about it, it is the reification of the politics of those who have the power over the legal system, such that they can reify their political views in a concrete system of law.  But I really want to save that discussion for another post.  At any rate, it must be admitted that, on the one hand, this blog has always been political.

On the other hand, this blog does focus on the legal system; it is my “professional” blog and I am an attorney.  We don’t typically think of discussions of the law as being political discussions, per se.  This post will maintain a focus on the legal system; not health care.  In that sense, then, this post is not a sign that the blog is “going political.”

The most I will say about Obama’s health care plan is that I’m not a socialist.  But, again, that particular issue is for discussion for another post and, with respect to Obama and/or political footballs like health care plans, for another blog.

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On page one of today’s San Francisco Chronicle, above the fold, is another article concerning California’s prisons.  If I did the math right, California’s prisons hold 7.2% of the nation’s prisoners, which currently number about 2.29 million.  (Today, with more than two-and-a-quarter million prisoners, the United States has the world’s highest documented incarceration rate. Even with its supposedly-high level of political oppression, China is number two with only 1.5 million.  The United States holds just 5% of the world’s population, but 25% of the world’s incarcerated population.)

Why so much?

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Sometimes, when things don’t go your way, you have to take things into your own paws.  Well, that’s one less court hearing I have to worry about, I guess.

At least until she’s caught again!

You can almost hear the two at the door: “Wait!  What about us?!”

Yesterday, I got a phone call from the litigation coordinator at Pleasant Valley State Prison saying that if I take off my pants one more time at check-in, I won’t be allowed to visit again. As I told him, if this happens, we can hash it out with the Attorney General: refusing to allow an attorney to see his client is theoretically a misdemeanor. And the guard responsible has to pay $500 out of his own pocket to the client.

I say “theoretically” because the government routinely breaks its own laws with impunity. Frankly, I don’t know why we make laws saying the government has to do this, or cannot do that; when it suits them, they simply ignore those laws.

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Before starting this post, let me point out that for years I was a card-carrying registered Republican. My beliefs about the Democratic Party are such that even after coming to the sad conclusion that I could no longer support the Republicans, I registered as “No Preference.” For reasons mostly relating to time, I won’t go into all the reasons for this right now.

However, I miss the old Republican Party. If we had truth-in-­­advertising laws, the new Republican Party would change its name to the “Let’s See If We Can Destroy America” Party. Then maybe we could have a real Republican Party again.

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