law Archives - Page 2 of 3 - Ramblin' with Roger

Proposed Arizona legislation supports Sharia law

ANY religion can be reason for taking a wide range of discriminatory actions against another.

It’s quite the irony: Arizona was one of the states that had introduced legislation banning Sharia law, which is the moral code and religious law of a prophetic religion; this usually understood to refer to Islam in our country.

Yet with the passage of Arizona Senate Bill 1062, passed by both houses of the AZ legislature, the legislature may have inadvertently opened the door for Sharia law in the state.

But conservative Arizonans should also remember that as there is no state-sanctioned religion in the United States, SB 1062 provides a foothold into Arizona of both Sharia law, and, yes, even Satanism. Believe it or not, “the Devil made me do it”… will become the law of the land in the Grand Canyon state.

Take a look at the bill. The items crossed out ~~like so~~ was in the original law. Items IN CAPS are the new regulations.

Sec. 2. Section 41-1493.01, Arizona Revised Statutes, is amended to read:

41-1493.01. Free exercise of religion protected; definition

A. Free exercise of religion is a fundamental right that applies in this state even if laws, rules or other government actions are facially neutral.

B. Except as provided in subsection C, government OF THIS SECTION, STATE ACTION shall not substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion even if the burden results from a rule of general applicability.

C. Government STATE ACTION may substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion only if it THE GOVERNMENT OR NONGOVERNMENTAL PERSON SEEKING THE ENFORCEMENT OF STATE ACTION demonstrates that application of the burden to the person PERSON’S EXERCISE OF RELIGION IN THIS PARTICULAR INSTANCE is both:

1. In furtherance of a compelling governmental interest.

2. The least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest.

D. A person whose religious exercise is burdened in violation of this section may assert that violation as a claim or defense in a judicial proceeding, and obtain appropriate relief against a government REGARDLESS OF WHETHER THE GOVERNMENT IS A PARTY TO THE PROCEEDING.

E. A PERSON THAT ASSERTS A VIOLATION OF THIS SECTION MUST ESTABLISH ALL OF THE FOLLOWING:

1. THAT THE PERSON’S ACTION OR REFUSAL TO ACT IS MOTIVATED BY A RELIGIOUS BELIEF.

2. THAT THE PERSON’S RELIGIOUS BELIEF IS SINCERELY HELD.

3. THAT THE STATE ACTION SUBSTANTIALLY BURDENS THE EXERCISE OF THE PERSON’S RELIGIOUS BELIEFS.

F. THE PERSON ASSERTING A CLAIM OR DEFENSE UNDER SUBSECTION D OF THIS SECTION MAY OBTAIN INJUNCTIVE AND DECLARATORY RELIEF. A party who prevails in any action to enforce this article against a government shall recover attorney fees and costs.

E. G. In FOR THE PURPOSES OF this section, the term substantially burden is intended solely to ensure that this article is not triggered by trivial, technical or de minimis infractions.

H. FOR THE PURPOSES OF THIS SECTION, “STATE ACTION” MEANS ANY ACTION, EXCEPT FOR THE REQUIREMENTS PRESCRIBED BY SECTION 41-1493.04, BY THE GOVERNMENT OR THE IMPLEMENTATION OR APPLICATION OF ANY LAW, INCLUDING STATE AND LOCAL LAWS, ORDINANCES, RULES, REGULATIONS AND POLICIES, WHETHER STATUTORY OR OTHERWISE, AND WHETHER THE IMPLEMENTATION OR APPLICATION IS MADE BY THE GOVERNMENT OR NONGOVERNMENTAL PERSONS.

Thus religion – ANY religion – can be the reason for taking a wide range of discriminatory actions against another. The law was supposedly “helping” people who did not want to serve gays. But might not a mixed-race couple be denied service because “MY religion” frowns on such things? That pregnant young woman does not appear to have a ring on her finger; throw her out! Talk about your slippery slope. The burden of proof is on the government to declare a compelling state need. This is not merely discriminatory, it is bad law.

The Oklahoma law considered back in 2010 was just as awful, but they had the good sense not to pass it. I would support a boycott of any state passing and signing into law, such a draconian measure, because only the loss of resources will have any effect on changing the tide.

Reflecting on the movie “12 Angry Men”

We ought to have the trial anyway, even though “everybody knows” he or she is guilty.

Have you seen the 1957 movie, 12 Angry Men? I highly recommend it. It was nominated for three Oscars: Best Picture, produced by Henry Fonda and Reginald Rose; Best Director, Sidney Lumet; and Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium, Reginald Rose.

The Golden Globes nominated the film, the director, lead actor Fonda, and supporting actor Lee J.Cobb. “A dissenting juror in a murder trial [played by Fonda] slowly manages to convince the others that the case is not as obviously clear as it seemed in court.”

Had a chance to watch it again this summer. I was doing apheresis at the blood bank which takes two hours, and this DVD, which I got for free about eight years ago by mailing some coupons from a Cheerios box, fit the bill at 95 minutes.

I was struck again by the racial/class issues. The defendant, who we see only at the very beginning of the film, with the judge’s charge to the jury, is young (18), Hispanic, and from a troubled neighborhood. The jury seems to think the case is a slam dunk, and quickly votes 11-1 to send the young man to his death. But as the Fonda character talks, he gets a second supporter. Immediately one juror thinks it’s the juror from the slums (played by Jack Klugman), but it’s not.

This film also starred Martin Balsam, John Fiedler, E.G. Marshall (who I know best from the 1960s lawyer show The Defenders, which also had a huge impact on me), Edward Binns , Joseph Sweeney, Ed Begley, George Voskovec (whose character has the best speech about the obligations of a jury) and Robert Webber.

The Fonda character, and his eventual allies, make observations about the inconsistencies in the testimonies, something a decent defense lawyer might have done. The young man, though, apparently had a court-appointed attorney who was going through the motions.

The film has always informed me or reinforced in me, several issues. 1) People with means generally have better legal representation than poorer folk. 2) We ought to have the trial anyway, even though “everybody knows” he or she is guilty. 3) Because of 1) in particular, I’ve long opposed the death penalty. 4) Because of 2), I wish we had more of a limit on pretrial and trial scuttlebutt.

Incidentally, there was a TV movie of 12 Angry Men in 1997, with a cast including recent Tony winner Courtney B. Vance; Ossie Davis; George C. Scott in the Cobb role; Armin Mueller-Stahl; Dorian Harewood in the Klugman role; the late James Gandolfini; Tony Danza; Jack Lemmon in the Fonda role; Hume Cronyn; Mykelti Williamson; Edward James Olmos; and William Petersen. I feel I should check it out soon, now that the original is fresh in my mind.

Florida: race, murder, self-defense

“The most damning element here is not that George Zimmerman was found not guilty: it’s the bitter knowledge that Trayvon Martin was found guilty.”

After George Zimmerman’s acquittal in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin death in Florida, the New York Daily News did a piece When will it end? Deadly racial targeting of black men and teens is hardly ancient history.

So I find it difficult to look at the case as a singular event but in the context of a social pattern. Black-on-black murder doesn’t make headlines, unless it hits an epic proportion, as it has in Chicago recently. Black-on-white murders statistically draw tougher sentences. So there is always uneasiness when a white-on-black killing takes place.

In the “good old days”, there were often no consequences, and in these days, laws such as Stand Your Ground can justify the same result.

Jelani Cobb has covered the Zimmerman trial for the New Yorker. Her stories are all worth reading. George Zimmerman, Not Guilty: Blood on the Leaves has some quotable pieces.
“The most damning element here is not that George Zimmerman was found not guilty: it’s the bitter knowledge that Trayvon Martin was found guilty.”
“Yet the problem is not that this case marks a low point in this country’s racial history—it’s that, after two centuries of common history, we’re still obligated to chart high points and low ones. To be black at times like this is to see current events on a real-time ticker, a Dow Jones average measuring the quality of one’s citizenship… That [Trayvon’s shooting] occurred in a country that elected and reëlected a black President doesn’t diminish the despair this verdict inspires, it intensifies it.”
*”Perhaps history does not repeat itself exactly, but it is certainly prone to extended paraphrases. Long before the jury announced its decision, many people had seen what the outcome would be, had known that it would be a strange echo of the words Zimmerman uttered that rainy night in central Florida: they always get away.”

Of course, the case may have hinged on the judge’s jury instruction, which was appallingly incomplete.

Perhaps not coincidentally, the review of the newly-released movie Fruitvale Station,- the true story of Oscar Julius Grant III, a young black man unjustly killed in California in 2009, notes how that story echoes the Martin case. “The film’s portrayal of a young black man as a complex human being– [not that] you’re either a thug or a saint, good or bad, black or white (sometimes literally), with no shades of grey between…. [T]he eagerness with which the pro-Zimmerman faction of the populace and media leapt breathlessly upon any scrap of negative information about his 17-year-old victim–he smoked pot! He talked like a thug on Twitter! He flipped off the camera in pictures! He may have stolen jewelry!… But even if every vile posthumous rumor that attached itself to Martin was true, even if he was a pot-dealing, thugged-out thief, what then? Is tweeting like Tupac a death-penalty offense?” Supporters of Trayvon have suggested he was a good son, someone who did well in school, who went to church, who did community service; assuming that’s true, that’s fine, but it’s just the “saint” side of the portrayal, and, for me, doesn’t materially affect the tragedy of the situation.

Another Florida case in which Stand Your Ground may be invoked is the first-degree murder case in which Michael Dunn, who is white, is charged with shooting into a car, killing 17-year old Jordan Davis, who was black, after an argument over loud music. (Sidebar: someone on Facebook complained about a person mentioning this case on FB, because the original story came out back in November 2012, as though it were old news, or resolved. Just this month, 2nd judge leaves the Michael Dunn/Jordan Davis case.)

Meanwhile, I came across this bizarre story from May 2013: Fla. mom gets 20 years for firing warning shots. “Marissa Alexander of Jacksonville had said the state’s ‘Stand Your Ground’ law should apply to her because she was defending herself against her allegedly abusive husband when she fired warning shots inside her home in August 2010. She told police it was to escape a brutal beating by her husband, against whom she had already taken out a protective order.” One is left wondering if she had instead killed her husband, she would be walking the streets, or whether her race (she’s black) or gender would have played into the case.
***
Related: this week is the 150th anniversary of the New York City Draft Riots. “With the ludicrous Newt Gingrich (who claims to be a historian) insisting the peaceful Trayvon Martin protesters were ‘prepared to be a lynch mob,’ it’s worth remembering that devastating eruption of white mob violence 150 years earlier when at least 11 black men were actually lynched.”

Lester Chambers of the Chambers Brothers Assaulted on Stage Dedicating Set to Trayvon Martin, with link to “Time has Come Today.”

Kids Who Die by Langston Hughes.

Mocking Religion

Not all speech is protected by the First Amendment. Is this merely art? Or is this yelling “fire” in a crowded movie theater, where the consequences of one’s action, chaos, was foreseeable?

The question on Facebook the other day, I’m only mildly paraphrasing: “Should the US government be condemning a movie” – we know which movie, I think – “to improve diplomatic relations?” For me, it’s an unequivocal “yes.” Not that the audience of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s denunciation really cares. They seem to be of the opinion that the United States should arrest the filmmakers, or worse.

This leads me to all sorts of further questions. Should a government official comment on art at all? I use the term “art” loosely. In 1992, Dan Quayle, then the Vice-President, complained that TV character, Murphy Brown, deliberately had a child out of wedlock. Should he have been allowed to do that? Indeed, there are devotees who believe Quayle was right. I say yes, he should have said it, though I disagreed with him.

(When controversial art is paid for, in part or in toto, with public money, that becomes a whole new level of controversy.)

Should the Innocence of Muslims filmmaker be arrested? The film trailer is certainly crude and vile, and misleading even to some of the actors in the film, who swear Mohammed wasn’t even mentioned by name in the copies of the script THEY read. Seems as though some sort of fraud has taken place, but I’m not a lawyer.

Not all speech is protected by the First Amendment. Is this merely art? Or is this yelling “fire” in a crowded movie theater, where the consequences of one’s action, chaos, was foreseeable? The Supreme Court case Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969) allows proscribing “speech” if it will incite imminent lawless action, such as riots. It would SEEM that the Danish cartoon situation of a half-decade ago would suggest that the film would be received badly. But could the filmmakers have foreseen such a violent outcome? Don’t know.

In any case, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, the alleged filmmaker, who was convicted of bank fraud, could go back to jail because the terms of his release stipulated that he be barred from accessing the Internet or assuming aliases without the approval of his probation officer.

Should the sensitivities of religious folks be taken into consideration? I remember the uproar over the Monty Python comedy Life of Brian (1979) and Martin Scorsese The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), directed by Martin Scorcese (1988), not to mention Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ (2004). All appear on a list of The 50 most controversial movies ever, at #14, #1, and #20, respectively. I’ve only seen Brian, which I personally found uproariously funny, not to mention clearly NOT speaking about Jesus. Didn’t see the other two, but I think people, including politicians, can express their dismay without banning them outright.

And not so incidentally, I think artists should be able to make political statements, whether it be Barbra Streisand or Toby Keith. If people are annoyed by them and decide not to buy their albums, see their films, etc., that’s the way the marketplace works.

If this is more rambling than usual, blame Facebook.

V is for a Virginia Slave Law

Based on the age of Blair Underwood’s ancestor, and the age of the slaves, it was believed that the slaves were likely his parents or other relatives.

The one television program the Daughter and I watch together is an NBC show called Who Do You Think You Are? It involves stars looking back at their genealogy. An episode we saw recently featured actor Blair Underwood, which I hope you can find here or here or here at the third notch 21 minutes in, with him walking down the steps.

What Underwood discovers is that one of his ancestors at the end of the 18th century, Samuel Scott, actually owns property in Virginia. He is distressed, though, to discover that Scott also owns two slaves! Well, until the researcher he is with explains to him the Virginia Slave Law of 1806 [Shepherd, Statutes at Large, III, 252; passed January 25, 1806]: “The General Assembly moved to remove the free Negro population from Virginia with a law that stated that all emancipated slaves, freed after May 1, 1806, who remained in the Commonwealth more than a year, would forfeit his right to freedom and be sold by the Overseers of the Poor for the benefit of the parish. Families wishing to stay were to petition the legislature through the local county court.”

This was known as a manumission law by which someone who was a free black could be enslaved, or re-enslaved. Based on the age of Scott, the ancestor, and the age of the slaves, it was believed that the slaves were likely his parents or other relatives, protected by the “peculiar institution” rather than being forced to leave the state, or worse.
***
It appears that modern-day Virginia is now involved with a new Jim Crow attitude:

Virginia knows it has DNA evidence that may prove the innocence of dozens of men convicted of crimes they didn’t commit. Men just like [Bennett] Barbour. So why won’t the state say who they are?

“Bennett Barbour was convicted in 1978 of a rape he didn’t commit…The Commonwealth of Virginia learned that Bennett Barbour was innocent nearly two years ago when DNA testing cleared him of the crime. Virginia authorities, however, never informed Barbour of his innocence.” An irritating story.

ABC Wednesday – Round 10