Stop picking on the 'tutes!

We have all manner of discrimination in the U.S., based on race, color, religious beliefs, sexual orientation. . . and while you might think we have enough to argue about right there, how about a new target?

Prostitutes.

Okay, so it's not happening here in America, but check this out: in Australia, a prostitute sued a hotel because they refused to let her rent one of their rooms for work purposes.  She didn't just sue for access to the room, either, but for the equivalent of $30,000.

You see, prostitution is legal in that part of the world.  As the Guardian reports, " discrimination based on lawful sexual activity is outlawed. Prostitutes have been heading to towns such as Moranbah, where they base themselves for short periods to cash in on an Australian mining boom fuelled by Chinese demand for raw materials."

'Raw materials,' is that what we're calling it now?

Smutty jokes aside (don't worry, I'll come back to them) this is a fascinating case.  I can see how someone might sue for not being allowed a room when they are doing something lawful, you know, like having sex.  But here she's essentially forcing the hotel to rent her office space.  And presumably, other guests aren't too happy about her customer base, or perhaps the grunts and groans of business-in-progress.

Be interesting to see if the decision is appealed, after all I assume it being in Australia the original ruling came from a kangaroo court. But what do you think?  Should the poor young lady (or old hag, who knows?) be put out of her legal business because hotel owners and guests disapprove?  I mean, what next?  Hotels banning sex altogether?

Australia.  They're upside down.

DWI eradicated

Almost completely.  And yes, I'm serious.

Oh, wait, I'm not being clear: DWI has not been stopped in Austin, oh no, it's alive and well in our fair city.  But it has been eradicated from my docket of cases.

You see, I was having lunch with a friend yesterday and he was asking about the kinds of mischief kids get up to.  I told him there's a lot of vehicle burglaries, some home burglaries, and a whole heck of a lot of pot smoking.

And that got me thinking about the kinds of crimes I used to handle in adult court, that I don't see much here. You would expect there to be less rape, robbery, and murder simply because kids don't get into that stuff as much, and so it is.  But the biggest change is DWI.  Now, you may think that this would be normal - after all, kids can't even get licenses until they are, what, fifteen? But consider:

• most kids we see are aged fifteen and older
• juvenile delinquents just loooove getting their hands on (and in) other people cars
• most of the kids we see drink, and many are there for substance abuse

So in the nine months I've been in juvie, how many have I had?  One.  Not even one conviction, just one kid charged with it.  There was no conviction in that case because the blood test came back a big fat zero for alcohol, and while he was found with MJ on his person, there was no way to prove he was intoxicated while driving.

Care to explain this to me?   (Although don't get me wrong, I'm delighted we seem to have very few intoxicated children driving on our roads.)  Could it even be the one area where kids are more sensible, more mature, than adults/  Doesn't seem likely, but who knows. . .

And while we're on the subject, I came across an article about the different penalties for DWI across the world.  South Africa gets the award for cracking down hardest:

• In South Africa, drinking and driving results in a ten-year prison sentence or the equivalent of a $10,000 fine and, in some cases, both.  (Compare to Texas, where this is the potential penalty for a third DWI conviction, and even then prison time is rare.)

 The Scandinavians, who I always think of as a little soft on crime, come in next:

• Finland and Sweden automatically sentence drunk drivers to one-year jail sentences including hard labor. In Norway, a drunk driver is jailed for three weeks with hard labor and loses their license for a year. If they do it again, they lose their license forever.

 Less harsh, and more amusing:

• Turkey: punishes drunk drivers by taking them 20 miles from their town and making them walk back with a police escort. 
• Poland: drunk drivers are subject to jail, fine, mandatory attendance at political lectures. (Evil bastards.)
• Malaya: if a man is caught driving drunk he is jailed. If he is married, his wife is jailed, too. 

Oh, media, how could you?

Dear Media,

I turned on my TV this morning, as I do every day while I drink my first cup of tea. I like these times when we're together, slowly warming up to the day. Of course, you get up first, by the time my kettle boils you've been up for a while, gathering news, readying it for me, sorting and condensing so I can go into the world knowing a little, just a little, of what's going on. I appreciate that, and I always have.

But lately things have been getting weird. I don't know, it's almost like you're not really trying any more. As if our morning routine has become a burden and other things (dare I say other people?) have caught your eye and drawn you away from me.

Why do I bring this up now? Because I'm not a nag and haven't wanted to pester you with my own insecurities over recent months. Maybe I should have because this morning you went too far.

It started out okay, when you covered the Olympics in London, which I think of as necessary fluff (after all, the events themselves haven't started, what else can you do?). After that segment, though, you cut to the news.

Let me repeat that: The News. Definition: "a person, thing, or event considered as a choice subject for journalistic treatment; newsworthy material."

As you cut back to the news studio, I steeled myself, ready for distressing reports from Syria and Afghanistan, maybe an update on the Colorado shooter. Perhaps even some economic news, I knew some housing reports were due.

You know, News.

You ignored me, though, you paid my needs no attention and I might almost think you did it on purpose because you know I am not interested in this stuff, and more importantly you know that we both know, this isn't News.

You told me that a 22-year-old girl cheated on her boyfriend.

That was your lead story for the News. And you lingered on it, too, showing me photos and film clips as though you had a war reporter on scene sending back vital footage of an actual event. I couldn't believe my eyes. Why would you do this to me, why would you betray me in my own living room, my tea barely cool enough to sip? This was our special time, our time to commune and you knowingly, intentionally, on purposely, violated what I thought was a beautiful relationship.

I'm not naive, I know that people, many people, are interested in this particular 22-year-old girl. But did you think the Internet didn't have it covered in the gossip blogs? Did you not think your own network would cover it on some entertainment show?

Even now, do you really think it is News?

Let me try and remain rational, logical, composed. Because I want us to get over this, get past it. But I don't want you doing it again, I don't want to turn my TV on in the future and find that, behind my back, you've constructed a story about a drunken movie star tossing dwarfs in a rundown London pub. Or even tossing off dwarfs. Those things aren't News.

You see, no one is affected when a 22-year-old cheats on her boyfriend (or tosses off a dwarf), except the boyfriend and the family of the dude she cheated with. Which adds up to about five people. In the world. So how is it news?

Here's the distinction as I see it:

• if something happens and lots of people are affected, or some are affected in dramatic or unusual ways, then it is News.
• if something ordinary happens and hundreds/thousands/millions of people express an interest because the person is famous, it's Entertainment.
  

Am I making sense? You know I'm an open-minded guy, I am willing to experiment with you, let you experiment with me. But a 22-year-old being attracted to a 41-year-old man isn't unusual. At all. In any way.

I can assume by your coverage of this "story" that loyalty is important to you, as you know it is to me. Life partners have bumps over the years and I'm willing to work with you to get past this.

But please, don't do this again. Especially when I'm trying to drink tea, it just isn't civilized. And it certainly isn't News.

Kids, drugs, and cops

I came across an interesting op-ed written by an Austin blogger, someone I link to from here because he's very involved in seeing that our criminal justice system improves.  Annoyingly, he also likes to hold cops and prosecutors accountable for their actions, an outrageous position that no right-minded human would go along with.  And I disagree with him on some issues.

But this is written not just from his perspective as a criminal justice observer, so to speak, but as a resident of the relevant part of Austin.  And if you're not from Austin, you should check it out anyway because I'm betting there's a part of your city where drugs are exchanged in plain sight, and where cops spend a lot of time arresting dealers and buyers.

It's also interesting to me because he's talking about the "Charlie" sector of Austin, where I roam every Thursday night with the Austin Police Department.  I pass through the corner he talks about, 12th and Chicon, two or three times an evening and, well, it ain't nothin' like my neighborhood.

His solution, in sum, is to tone down the arrests and do something "for the children."  Specifically, help those kids whose parents are in prison.   Not an original thought, as I'm sure he'd acknowledge, but I get to see that side of it, too, working down at the juvenile courts.  And picking a number out of the air, without thinking about it too hard, I'd say 90 percent or more of the kids I see have no father-figure in their lives.  I don't know how many are in prison but I'm betting a few.  A kid was crying in court today, arrested for assaulting someone, and he was telling the court his dad was doing life somewhere for something.  "You want to be like that, too?" the judge asked him.

He said, of course, "No," but it doesn't look good for him.

Of Dope and Discretion

Two quick things before I head out to my Thursday night ride-along.

First, a riddle: two men are consuming marijuana when a policeman walks into the room.  The man smoking the joint is arrested and charged with a misdemeanor, but the man eating it is charged with a felony.  Why?

(I'll post my answer - hey, there may be more than one correct answer, right? - over the weekend, but it has nothing to do with amounts or weights.)

Second, a quick shout out to a fellow prosecutor (former) writing novels.  Her second has just been released and is getting great reviews.  So if you're on the look-out for more summer reading, check out her book.  It's been described as a legal thriller exploring the intersection of sex and power in D.C.’s most secretive worlds.  Pretty timely, eh? (Click here to zip over to her web site.) I think her publisher is sending me a copy to review so I'll wait to say more.

Ballistics - matching bullets

Last week I showed you the brilliant photos that Greg Karim and his colleagues use to figure out whether a cartridge casing was fired from a particular gun. As promised, today I'm posting a series of photos that show how the same kind of examination is made on the bullets themselves.

Remember, here's the situation:

A bullet is removed from the body of a victim. It's placed into evidence and locked away. A gun is found on a suspect, who's now a hundred miles from the crime scene. The gun is also placed into evidence and locked away.

The essential question this time is: was the bullet from the victim fired from this gun? If so, that's some good evidence. If not, we need to know that too, so we can find the right murder weapon.

So, APD firearms guru Greg Karin retrieves the bullet and the gun from the evidence locker and retreats to his lab.As before , he fires the weapon into a barrel of water. He'll do a number of test fires, fifteen for example. Then he will put the bullet from the victim under a microscope, examine it, and take close-up photos. He will do the same with the test-fired bullets.

This is what he'll see:


Now, you'll see reference on these photos to two types of characteristics: class and individual. The examiner is looking to make matches in both classes, and here's their basic definitions:

Class characteristics can be defined as:

Intentional or design characteristics that would be common to a particular group or family of items.

The class characteristics of firearms that relate to the bullets fired from them includes the caliber of the firearm and the rifling pattern contained in the barrel of the firearm.

Where individual characteristics are:

marks produced by the random imperfections or irregularities of tool surfaces. These random imperfections or irregularities are produced incidental to manufacture and/or caused by use, corrosion, or damage. They are unique to that tool and distinguish it from all other tools.

Ballistics - matching casings

One of the coolest aspects of this job is getting to work with people who are masters in their field. Of course, given my job their field is inherently interesting so you can imagine how fun it is to work with, say, a top-notch firearms analyst.

You know, like Austin P.D.'s Greg Karim.

Two of the things Greg and his colleagues can do include tests to (1) determine whether or not a particular shell casing was fired in a particular gun; and (2) whether or not a particular bullet was fired from a particular gun.

I want to do two posts on this, one for each. You'll see why, below. First the casings, and we should be sure of terminology. Here are the terms we use:

Cartridge -- what you pull from the box of ammo you buy at Wal-Mart, and load into your gun.
Bullet -- the piece of lead that is expelled from the barrel of the gun when you shoot.
Casing -- the container for the propellant and bullet, which is left empty after use and either expelled from the gun (via ejector) or remains in the cylinder.

Here's how he works: a spent casing is found near the body of our imaginary victim. It's placed into evidence and locked away. A gun is found on a suspect, who's now a hundred miles from the crime scene. It is also placed into evidence and locked away.

The essential question is: was the casing found near the victim fired in this gun? If so, that's some good evidence. If not, we need to know that too, so we can find the right murder weapon.

So, Greg retrieves the casing and the gun from the evidence locker and retreats to his lab. There, he fires the weapon into a barrel of water, using identical ammunition to the found casing. He'll do a number of test fires, fifteen for example. Then he will put the casing from the crime scene under a microscope, examine it, and take close-up photos. He will do the same with the test-fired casing. I am simplifying, and he'd pull his hair out at such a poor summary of his laborious, time-intensive work, but this is essentially the process by which he can say whether or not the casing from near the body was fired from the gun found on the suspect.

What he's looking for are areas on the two casings that bear the same marks, showing that when you fire this type of ammo from this gun, you'll get this mark. The marks can come from the casing expanding inside the barrel (when it gets hot) and essentially being 'printed' with the marks in the barrel, and the marks can come from the firing mechanics themselves.

You know what? Best if I show you . . .

Pretty neat, huh? As you've probably figured out, these photos show the hypothetical casing from the crime scene (left) and the test-fire (right). They sure look like a match, but can we do better? Can we be more certain? Why yes, since you ask, we can. . .


The tiny black line down the center is where the subject casing and the test-fired casing meet. This is the photo that always impresses jurors (and me!) because you can see for yourself how the two match up.

Here are some more from other casing analyses (credit where it's due, these photos were actually taken by Erica Pusch, Greg's colleague at APD).


And coming up soon, images like this of the bullets themselves. Pretty neat, don't you think?