Monthly Archives: April 2025

but what if he’s guilty?

Posted on by
2

The concept of due process is getting a lot of attention right now, and rightly so. It’s at the heart of the Trump administration’s attempt to destroy democracy. Due process–the adherence to the laws that balance the power of the State against the civil rights and liberties of the individual–is the primary defense against the US becoming a police state.

Most folks can grasp that concept in theory, but a LOT of people have trouble with the practice itself.

I spent seven years or so as a private investigator specializing in criminal defense; I had a contract with a Public Defender program. For the most part, the lawyers I worked for represented people charged with major crimes…robbery, rape, murder, etc. I rarely told strangers what I did for a living, because it would almost always result in some variation of this conversation:

“Do you ever have a guilty client?”
“Almost all of my clients are guilty.”
“How can you defend a person you KNOW to be guilty?”
“Because I believe in civil rights and liberties.”
“But if you KNOW they’re guilty?”
“They still have rights.”
“But if you KNOW they’re GUILTY?”
“The only way to protect the rights of the innocent is to force the State to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt every single time.”
“Sure, you have to protect the innocent, but if YOU KNOW THEY”RE GUILTY?”

The Fifth Amendment of the US Constitution tells us No person shall…be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law. It’s really that simple. It doesn’t say ‘No citizen.’ It doesn’t say, “No white person.’ It doesn’t say, “No rich person.’ It says NO PERSON. Period. Every person who is at risk of losing their life, their liberty, or their property MUST be allowed the full protection of the law BEFORE any penalty can be applied.

“Let the jury consider their verdict,” the King said, for about the twentieth time that day.
“No, no!” said the Queen. “Sentence first–verdict afterwards.”

Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who probably paid a higher proportion of his income in taxes than Donald Trump, has the right to expect the same due process of law as Donald Trump. Not because he’s been illegally detained and imprisoned (although he has), but because EVERYBODY in the US is–or should be–protected by due process. Timothy McVeigh, who killed 168 people in an act of terrorism 30 years ago yesterday, received more due process than Garcia.

I’ll also say this. As somebody who spent years helping defend the guilty, there is nothing more terrifying than an innocent client. There is so much at stake with an innocent client. Seeing an innocent person go to prison feels a hundred times worse than seeing a guilty person go free. And the ONLY way to protect the rights of an innocent person is to require the State to follow the law EVERY SINGLE TIME, even with the guilty.

in which I look at an old photo (part 6)

Posted on by
Reply

As I’ve explained elsewhere, about a year ago I came across an article on some photo website that suggested looking at and analyzing your old photos as if they were made by a different person. The idea seemed a wee bit silly to me, but I was just coming out of a photographic slump…so what the hell, I thought I’d try it.

That slump is long dead now, though I suspect it had more to do with buying a camera that fits my approach to photography than with this practice of looking at old photos. That said, I’ve found some unexpected value in looking at my old photographs. I’m not learning anything new about photography (as I recall, the article was about evaluating or improving your compositional skills or something), but I’ve been surprised to find a weird sense of formality in my photos.

I don’t think of myself as being a formal photographer. I tend to shoot sparingly (I learned photography in the film era, which meant every shot cost money and I was rather poor), but quickly. I’ve been doing this photo stuff long enough that I don’t really think much when it comes to composition. I just put myself or my subject in a position that feels right, then take the photo. While I don’t believe there are any rules that MUST BE OBEYED, I do think there are some very strong photographic suggestions that ought to be considered. For example, if you’re making an informal portrait, you should be reluctant to have your subject strike a pose and you should avoid putting your subject in the center of the frame.

10;29 AM, Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Like this. This is Sakim. I’ll tell you about Sakim in a moment. First, the photo. It’s everything you don’t want in an informal portrait–stiff pose, center of the frame. But (to me, at any rate) it works as a photograph. Why? Partly because of the composition; all the lines direct your eye to him and the angle of his arms matches the angle of the light on the sidewalk. It also works partly because this genuinely represents this particular person at this particular moment.

I was noodling along the riverwalk when I saw Sakim approaching. He was wearing a black baseball cap with smiley faces on it, drinking juice from a soft packet, and walking in a sort of marching gait that I associate with psychiatric patients. I’ve worked with a lot of psychiatric patients, mostly in a prison setting. I’m comfortable encountering them in unscripted public settings. I’ve found folks with emotional issues are often eager to visit with people IF those people are relaxed around them. Of course, the opposite is also true; some folks just want to be left alone. You can’t always tell until you start visiting with them.

I don’t recall how we struck up a conversation, but based on past experience I suspect I initiated it. I do recall he had a soft, gentle, deeply accented voice. We spoke about the weather (it was warm for October, but Sakim said it was chillier than where he was from) and his juice (he didn’t mind that his juice was warm). He wasn’t entirely comfortable having a conversation, but I had the feeling he didn’t really want the conversation to end. My sense was that he didn’t quite know how to have a casual conversation and was always concerned that he wasn’t doing it right.

After a few moments I asked if I could take his photo and he agreed. He took his cap off and stuck it down the front of his pants (which was disappointing–I really wanted him to leave it on, but I didn’t want him to feel like he’d made a mistake by taking it off). Then he struck this awkward pose. He had the sun to his back, which left his face in shadow, so I asked if we could trade places. He struck the same pose again. I told him he could relax. He said he was relaxed. Without lifting the camera to my eye, I recall asking him to take a couple steps this way and that way until it felt like he was in the right position, then I raised the camera and took a single shot. I showed him the photo and thanked him; he said “Okay” or something, then he turned around and went marching off.

Sakim never smiled the entire time we talked. Never showed any emotional affect at all. The entire encounter couldn’t have taken more than 3-5 minutes. I left feeling like I’d sort of failed him somehow.

When I got home and looked at the day’s photos, I almost deleted this one. I was only looking at Sakim and thinking about his awkward attempt to engage with a stranger. It’s NOT a good photo of him. He looks a little sad and distant. But even though it violated my sense of informal portraiture, and even though it’s not a good photo of Sakim, I felt it still worked as a photograph. Despite that, I’m not sure I ever posted it on social media.

If nothing else, this practice of looking at old photographs has reminded me of my 3-5 minutes with Sakim. It’s been almost 13 years. I hope he’s okay.

hands off, the fringes

Posted on by
11

Like a million other concerned people, I attended the local Hands Off! protest yesterday. I wasn’t sure how many people would show up, considering it was a cold, blustery day (about 42F with steady 14mph winds and gusts about twice that). I thought we might still get a thousand people. Maybe.

The local news estimated the attendance to be around 7,500, and they tend to be conservative in their estimates. It was an eclectic crowd with a variety of concerns. Climate change, veteran’s benefits, social security, health care, education, trans rights, social justice, the court system, immigrant’s rights, Ukraine, and more. But there was absolutely universal condemnation of Comrade Trump, Elon Musk, and DOGE.

The protest began, as all protests do, with speeches. I confess, I paid little attention to the actual speeches, though I was pleased to hear the crowd cheering and applauding. During the speeches, I left the main crowd and moved around the fringes. Why? Because there are folks who want to protest and make their voices heard BUT for any of a thousand reasons may be uncomfortable with crowds.

The folks on the fringe of the protest were pretty much the same people who made up the rest of the crowd. They were mostly white (this IS Iowa, after all) but beyond that they seemed to be a fairly representative sample of the protesters. There were young kids (some in strollers), and working class folks, and church-goers, and goths, and office workers, and trans folk, and wine moms, and college students, and old folks (some using walkers), and union members, and passers-by who just wanted to know what the hell was going on.

One of the things I found most interesting about the event was that everybody was 1) happy and 2) pissed off. They were pissed off enough to give up their Saturday to carry signs and listen to speeches and shout for Elon Musk to be deported and for Donald Trump to be impeached and to take over one of the main city streets and march a mile or so in cold, blustery weather to the state capitol building, where they listened to still more speeches. But they were also happy and laughing and clearly delighted to be with others who agreed with them. There was a tremendous sense of relief, and a sense of urgency, and a sense of something approaching hope and optimism. That all seems contradictory, but it didn’t feel like it.

Nobody there thought this march–or any of the hundreds of other marches–was going to change anything. Nobody there was that innocent. But it felt like there was a shared commitment to changing the way we govern ourselves. There was a very clear feeling of joy at the chance to express themselves, to carry signs and chant slogans and shout out their frustration and rage and hope.

It was also clear that this was the first time a lot of these people had attended a protest. At the beginning, there was a tentativeness to the crowd. A lot of looking around to see if anybody was watching, if anybody was upset or offended by what they were doing. This was especially clear when the organizers asked them to take to the street and march up to the capitol, where we’d join up with a second protest. We are a car-brained culture, and these people were unsure about the propriety of taking over a street without permission.

But they did it. And when cars approached the head of the march, they had to stop and make a U-turn. At the back of the march, a lone police officer in a squad car followed to insure no drivers disrupted the march from behind. Within a few hundred yards, this crowd of normal Iowans were chanting, “Whose street? OUR STREET!” There was a palpable sense of released anger and resentment and liberation. It really was OUR street.

When the crowd took to the street, these two women with their “We the People” sign led the way. It seemed appropriate. Because it’s true. We, the people, are massively pissed off. And yesterday, we let those malignant fuckwits of the Trump administration know it.

I took a lot more photos of (and in) the crowd itself. But here I wanted to show the people who, at least at the beginning of the day, hovered around the fringe of the protest. The people who usually get overlooked. The people who don’t make the highlight reels or the news reports. As so many protest signs said, you know things are grim when even the introverts show up.

You’ll notice that most of these photographs are of women. You’ll notice they’re not drawing attention to themselves. They’re drawing attention to the signs they’re carrying. Signs they mostly made themselves. There’s a song from the 1950s resistance movement in South Africa that goes, “Wathint’ abafazi, wathint’ imbokodo.” This translates as:

When you strike the women, you strike stone.

We’ve been striking stone for decades. Centuries. Eventually, it’s going to spark a fire that will incinerate the patriarchy. It may still be a long time coming, but it’ll happen. And when it does, women like the ones in these photos–the ones quietly occupying space at the fringe–they’ll have helped light that spark.

this guy?

Posted on by
10

Okay, first off, I admit I’m confused. I mean, I understand that Donald Trump, with the assistance of a cadre of feral Christo-fascist authoritarians and the support of a cartoonist collection of buffoons, is conducting an aggressive frontal assault on the US Constitution. And so far it’s been mostly effective.

Unlike a LOT of folks, I’m inclined to think Trump has a plan. It’s a very simple, very very stupid, and very selfish plan, to be sure. It’s the sort of plan you’d expect from a cartoon villain. But it’s still a plan. As I see it, Donald Trump’s plan is as follows:

Make everybody dependent on the whims and wishes of Donald Trump.

It’s ridiculous, isn’t it. What Trump really wants, of course, is loyalty and respect. Two things he’ll never get. He’ll never get the respect he wants (and thinks he deserves), and I suspect he knows that. Nor will he ever get real loyalty, because loyalty is reciprocal; you earn loyalty by being loyal to others. Trump is loyal to nothing and nobody. Who’s going to respect of be loyal to this guy?

Since he can’t/won’t get the respect and loyalty he truly wants, Trump has to settle for a shabby substitute–unquestioned obedience. The problem for Trump, even as POTUS, is that there are HUGE intentional limits to presidential obedience in a representative democracy.

The president’s actual job is to preside over the government, not to rule it. ‘Preside’ literally means “to sit in front of.” The president is basically like an orchestra leader. In order for Trump to command unquestioned obedience, he has to first weaken or destroy the Constitutional constraints on presidential power.

That’s exactly what he’s doing. In his first term, Trump converted the entire Republican Party to so-called MAGA loyalists (I say ‘so-called’ because many/most of the GOP are just sycophantic cowards or craven opportunists, not actual loyalists). He also stacked the Supreme court with ‘loyalists’. The only check on his authority came from the professionals who occupied the Cabinet posts and the various governmental agencies. Now, in his second term, he’s replaced the Cabinet secretaries and the heads of every government agency with more so-called loyalists. He’s basically removed or degraded almost every federal administrative constraint on his authority (there are still some federal judges who remain independent, though they’re under attack now).

This guy? Powerful politicians and institutions are afraid of this guy? This fucking guy?

There are a few other social constraints that can challenge the president: independent law firms, universities, business interests, and independent news sources. Trump is making every effort to hobble or undermine them, threatening retaliation either in the form of investigations or by removing federal financial aid and federal contracts. In order to avoid this sort of persecution, these social institutions are being required to appeal to Trump personally. To humiliate themselves by publicly kissing his ring. You want to avoid tariffs on products you need? Humbly ask Trump to remove them for YOUR company. You want federal financial aid for teaching or research? Humbly ask Trump to restore the funding he denied. You want to practice law or receive federal contracts? Humbly ask Trump to overlook any earlier opposition and publicly promise to support him. You want access to the Trump administration as a news source? Humbly agree to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America. What kind of person or institution would humble themselves before this guy?

But hey, it’s working. Some large law firms and some universities have already compromised themselves; many news agencies have modified their coverage of Trump and are parroting his bullshit; a lot of businesses threatened by Trump’s trade practices are considering personal appeals to Trump and praising his harmful policies. Intimidation works. But c’mon, how could anybody be intimidated by this guy?

I find truly astonishing that so many people and institutions are afraid of this guy. He’s a cartoonish nitwit; he’s more a malignant Elmer Fudd than an evil genius. The sheer mass of his ignorance could bend light. He’s ten pounds of racist bullshit in a five pound bag. He’s a coward and a liar. People are afraid of taking on this guy?

This guy?