The Freedom Bulletin

If one thing is for sure, it’s that medical costs have gone up recently. A new study showed that health insurance prices rose, on average, 9% in the past year. The Affordable Care Act may very well share the blame for this, and so might the fact that doctors perform too many medical procedures (surprisingly, doctors themselves admit to this).

But logic indicates that the main cause of how much something costs is…well…the price the seller chooses to charge. You wouldn’t think the New York Times would have to do an article on this obvious fact, but they did.

The reason why doctors and hospitals charge so much for their services is simple: because they can do so without losing customers. If you have cancer, for example, you might need chemotherapy to live, and if you have a broken bone, you need to get a cast. People don’t have the option of going without these things if they decide they cost too much money. In economic terms, the demand for health services is inelastic. Governmental policies have exacerbated this problem – for example, the Durham-Humphrey Amendment by requiring people to visit a doctor and get a prescription before being allowed to buy medication, and the individual mandate by actually requiring people by law to buy health insurance.

The only solution to this problem, in my opinion, is price ceilings. This idea has been floated around a little bit, including in California where a bill called AB 52 would limit health insurance price increases, by Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, who created a similar policy, and more recently, State Rep. Ron Mariano, who more sensibly focused on the prices of health services themselves, proposing a bill that would limit prices paid to the costliest hospitals. This bill is definitely a step in the right direction.

As such an ardent advocate of liberty, it might appear strange to support government telling businesses how much money they can charge. Shouldn’t people be able to engage in any transactions they choose? But I look at excessive prices as akin not to consensual transactions but to extortion. People have a right to their own money, and doctors do not have a right to suck a person dry of all their money for performing a medical procedure that the person needs to live. Doctors, just like any other merchant, deserve compensation for the services they sell, but because their customers are not truly choosing to purchase those services, doctors should not be allowed to take so much money that people have no more money left to spend on anything else. It would be impossible for everyone to agree on a particular price at which a transaction becomes extortion. But people should certainly be discussing this question and working toward instituting a price ceiling on medical services, instead of continuing to let doctors and hospitals extort people.

There’s nothing wrong with the government setting maximum prices that sellers are allowed to charge for goods and services that have inelastic demand. The Boston Herald called Mariano’s idea “a move toward government price controls, plain and simple.” But I believe there is nothing wrong with that.

A very short pretrial hearing took place today in the case of mobster Whitey Bulger’s girlfriend, Catherine Greig. She is charged with harboring a fugitive for living with him for 16 years on the lam, and federal prosecutors have hinted that they plan to file additional charges, although it is not clear what kind of charges.

Today’s hearing, in the tiny courtroom of Magistrate Judge Jennifer C. Boal, began promptly at 11:30 and was all over by 11:36. Greig, currently in jail awaiting trial, didn’t bother to show up, but her lawyer Kevin Reddington, as well as his son, who is helping him with the case, was in court along with Assistant U.S. Attorneys Jack Pirozzolo and Jamie Herbert.

Pirozzolo reported that discovery was going as planned, and Reddington said, “I’m in the process of reviewing the discovery. As counsel indicated, it’s quite voluminous.”

Magistrate Boal said that Judge Douglas Woodlock, who will be taking over as the case gets closer to trial (and also presided over the cases of Chuck Turner and Dianne Wilkerson), is planning for a trial date of April 16 or April 23. Because the first date is during school vacation week, both sides settled on the 23rd. “That ship has already sailed for me as far as school vacation,” said Reddington, smiling. “It has not sailed for me,” Pirozzolo replied.

With respect to the possible additional charges, Magistrate Boal said that the government “should deal with that promptly, given the trial date.”

Reddington had filed a motion to allow Greig to be released on bail as she awaits trial, and gave arguments and called witnesses on her behalf at an earlier hearing. For that reason, he declined to give any further arguments today, only saying that releasing Greig to the custody of her twin sister, Margaret McCusker, and putting both their homes up as collateral, “appears to be more than appropriate,” and praising a real estate lawyer who had worked hard at appraising the houses and other such tasks. “I don’t feel there’s a need for further argument,” he told Boal. The U.S. has yet to file a response to the bail motion, and Boal indicated that she would make a ruling after they do.

The next hearing for Greig is scheduled for November 29 at 2:00.

Through the years, the federal criminal code has grown and grown, shrinking the number of things people are allowed to do and shrinking the amount of liberty Americans enjoy. The Wall Street Journal had a great article the other day about the growing list of federal crimes, and the lack of mens rea – or criminal intent – required:

For centuries, a bedrock principle of criminal law has held that people must know they are doing something wrong before they can be found guilty. The concept is known as mens rea, Latin for a “guilty mind.”

This legal protection is now being eroded as the U.S. federal criminal code dramatically swells. In recent decades, Congress has repeatedly crafted laws that weaken or disregard the notion of criminal intent. Today not only are there thousands more criminal laws than before, but it is easier to fall afoul of them.

Read the rest at the Wall Street Journal.

Governor Deval Patrick signed a bill reforming Massachusetts’s alimony laws yesterday. The bill, overall, will decrease the amount of alimony people have to pay to their ex-spouses, limiting payments to a set amount of time based on the length of the marriage.

This bill, while it doesn’t go as far as I would, is a step in the right direction. I don’t think there should be such thing as alimony or spousal support at all. The way I see it, no adult has a right to be financially supported by another adult, and there is no reason why one person should be required to continue financially supporting another just because they have in the past. If one person agrees to financially support another, fine, but this is a favor, not a right, and the giver has a right to withdraw it at any time.

I’ve heard many supporters of alimony argue that stay-at-home spouses contribute just as much to the marriage as those who have jobs, and that they are making a big sacrifice by giving up their careers to take care of the house and/or children. Yes, housework does require some time and effort. But in my experience as a single person who both takes care of my house and has a full-time job, commuting to my job and spending the day in an office is way more tiring and time consuming than doing the cleaning, cooking, shopping, and laundry that I need to do. If I could choose between working full-time and not having to do any chores around the house, or doing all the chores and not having to work, I would definitely choose the second. Each type of work is work to some extent – I’m not trying to say that spouses who stay at home do nothing but sit around all day. But having a job – unless you have an unusually easy job – is simply more time-consuming and stressful than working around the house. For one spouse to be the breadwinner and the other to stay at home is just not an equal division of labor.

And yes, staying home for a long time is an impediment if you decide to go back into the job market at a later date. But it’s not exactly a sacrifice to receive the material goods you need for free, instead of having to work for them. Plus, unless someone forced you to stay at home, you don’t have a right to demand restitution for this because it was your own choice.

For one spouse to be allowed to live off the money of another is a windfall that they did nothing to earn. Even if someone freely chooses to do such a favor – and many people are pressured into it against their will – they should also be free to change their mind and stop the financial support at any time. Alimony punishes people for doing a favor for their spouse, and rewards people for having received financial support that they did not earn. If anything, the spouse who received the financial support should have to pay alimony as a way of repaying the favor that they received!

So while eliminating lifetime alimony is a good start, I hope alimony laws are changed even more in the direction of equality and justice.

The suppression hearing in the Thomas Mortimer IV case finished up today with testimony from four state troopers who executed search warrants in the quadruple murder case. To sum up, on Friday we learned that officers made three warrantless searches of the Winchester, MA home where Mortimer lived with his wife, Laura Stone Mortimer, mother-in-law, Ellen Stone, son Thomas “Finn” Mortimer V, and daughter Charlotte Mortimer. The first was to conduct a well-being check at the request of Laura’s sister, Debra Stone Sochat, the second was to remove Ellen’s dog from the home, and the third was a more thorough sweep of the home to make sure there were no injured people or a suspect. Mortimer’s defense lawyer, Denise Regan, filed a motion to suppress all evidence gathered as a result of these searches because they took place before any search warrants were issued. She also filed a motion to suppress evidence that was gathered after search warrants arrived but was outside the scope of the warrants, and it was that motion that was the focus of today’s testimony.

Witness by witness, here’s what the court heard today:

Trooper David Twomey of the state police searched Mortimer’s home in the late afternoon of June 16, 2010, pursuant to a warrant. He found five “separately designated,” typed copies of a letter that Mortimer allegedly wrote, confessing to killing his wife, children, and mother-in-law. One was in the trash in the kitchen, along with bloodstained napkins, Quaker granola bar boxes, batteries, and a bluish pill. Another letter was on the coffee table in the family room, where Laura’s and Finn’s bodies were found, along with more pills, two glasses, and a can of Red Bull. Another letter was on the kitchen counter, and yet another was on the kitchen table. Additionally, in the basement, near the door leading from the house to the garage, were plastic bags with “what appeared to be vomit and clothing,” which Twomey indicated were large enough to fit over an adult’s head. A red Lexus in the garage had a garden hose hooked up from the exhaust pipe to the window, as well as a hammer and a knife in the passenger seat, and in the laundry room was more prescription medication. During cross-examination, Twomey was asked if he read the letter on the coffee table, and he admitted, “I did peruse through it, but my primary function was to document the scene.” He also said that the letters in the trash weren’t ripped up and weren’t visible until he went through the trash.

Trooper Jeffrey Saunders, also of the state police, kept a record of all items seized during the search of the home. He found typewritten letters in a wastebasket in the basement, near a computer and printer, which he read and which “appeared similar” to the others found in the house.

Sgt. Robert Manning was in charge of the search of the house and was the one who actually brought the search warrant applications to a superior court judge. (He was familiar to me because he questioned Neil Entwistle and testified in his trial.) After getting a search warrant for the home at 4:40 p.m. on June 16, he obtained a warrant for Mortimer’s arrest in the early morning hours of June 17. Cell tower records indicated at one point that Mortimer was near Andover, MA, and his cell phone was found in the trash at a gas station in that area. A bulletin was sent out to the public to be on alert for him, and Manning was informed of Mortimer’s arrest after police received a tip from the small town of Bernardston, MA. That evening he obtained and executed additional warrants for the three computers in the Winchester home and for documents and financial records. In the home he noticed three pieces of evidence consistent with a suicide attempt: the hose attached to the car exhaust pipe, the bag with clothing with vomit on it, and the prescription drugs on the coffee table, which he described as a sleep aid in Ellen’s name. There were also receipts, a bank statement, and an unemployment assistance form.

Trooper Scott McCormack described the search of the home. In the laundry room, “there was a considerable amount of blood on the floor, as well as two handbags that were strewn about.” He also mentioned the pieces of evidence that were consistent with a suicide attempt, adding that the clothing in the plastic bag was men’s clothing. Additionally, he searched the car that Mortimer was driving when he was arrested, a Toyota Highlander. His wallet was in the front driver’s side, containing less than $100 cash, two TD Bank cards in Tom’s and Laura’s names, Tom’s Brookline Bank debit card, Laura’s American Express, and two Simon gift cards, one of which had a phone number on it that was found in the phone records of Ellen’s landline. Right before this call, at 7:22 a.m. on June 15, the same phone had called both Tom’s employer and Finn’s day care, and interviews with those two places indicated that Tom had called himself and his son in sick. McCormack said of this evidence, “I believe that they showed that…Thomas Mortimer needed some sort of financial means to maintain his existence on the run, on the flight.” A lottery ticket in the car, with a date of June 12, was, according to him, “a chance at financial means to be gained after the homicide.” Batteries, a water bottle, and a flashlight were in the console, and a PowerAde, a roll of toilet paper, strewn-about clothing, and a gallon of water were in the back seat. A backpack in the wayback contained wipes, water bottles, plastic silverware, and Quaker granola bars, and a duffel bag contained gauze pads, ointment, a sewing kit, and more clothes. According to a receipt in the car, Mortimer used his wife’s American Express card to purchase Peppermint Patties at Hess Express in Winchester at 7:44 a.m. on June 15.  All these items, McCormack said, “showed…Mr. Mortimer’s actions after the murders. Obviously flight was his intention, which would again go to consciousness of guilt.”

It looks like Mortimer may have tried to kill himself in four different ways…but (obviously) none of them worked.

After a very brief recess for a court procedure in another case, prosecutor Adrienne Lynch said that she would have called another witness, Trooper Jay McCartney, but because he was unavailable, both sides stipulated to what he would have testified: that he executed a search warrant in the house and car, could describe the contents of the trash and car, saw bloodstains, and photographed all this evidence.

On Friday, there were mentions of two defense witnesses who would be called today, but they never ended up taking the stand. After the defense files a supplemental memorandum, the next court date, for oral arguments on the suppression motions, will be October 24 at 9:00 a.m.

More from the Winchester Patch and Winchester Star.

GQ had an excellent article about GOP presidential candidate and former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson:

“With Gary, and it’s okay to call him Gary, it’s not so much the things he says and does that are spectacularly unusual (or spectacularly misguided, depending on your point of view) for a presidential candidate. It’s the things he doesn’t say and do.

Like now. He’s in a bike shop in Hooksett, New Hampshire. Elsewhere in this fine state, Mitt Romney has been back and forth, back and forth, being his robotic self. Shaking hands, slapping backs, lifting babies, smiling. Sarah came through on her bus tour. Even Ron Paul has been doing the hustle at donor house parties.”

Thank you GQ for bringing attention to Gary and his campaign. His pro-liberty views deserve to be shared with as many people as possible. Read the rest: “Is This the Sanest Man Running for President?“

Remember Thomas Mortimer IV, the Winchester, MA man accused of four murders? After a long time without any hearings in his case, there was a pretty big one today. Mortimer’s defense team filed a two motions to suppress evidence, one based on a warrantless search and the other on a search that exceeded the scope of the warrant.

Mortimer, 44, stands accused of the first-degree murders of his wife, Laura Stone Mortimer, mother-in-law Ragna Ellen Stone, and children Thomas “Finn” Mortimer V and Charlotte Mortimer. Seven witnesses took the stand today, including Laura’s sister, Debra Stone Sochat, to describe the day the four bodies were discovered.

Mortimer entered the courtroom at about 9:10, calm and somewhat detached-looking, wearing the same outfit that he has worn at previous hearings – a light blue shirt, crimson tie, and khaki pants. He wore handcuffs and chains around his ankles for the entire hearing and sat at the defense table with his lawyers, Denise Regan and Eva Vekos.

The hearing, before Middlesex Superior Court Judge Leila R. Kern, opened with a brief discussion of a defense motion to sequester the witnesses. Assistant District Attorney Adrienne Lynch argued that Debra Sochat should be allowed to watch the other witnesses’ testimony because “she is the survivor of these four homicide victims and she would like to be at the hearing.” Both sides quickly agreed that Debra, the second witness of the day, should sit out the first witness’s testimony but could be there for the rest.

Here is a rundown of what we learned at the hearing, witness by witness:

Daniel P. Murphy is Debra Stone Sochat’s neighbor. A retired mechanic at the Winchester Department of Public Works, he is friendly with many of the police and firefighters in the town. He described how on June 16, 2010 he drove with Debra and her two children to the home at 2 Windsong Lane where her mother, sister, niece, nephew, and brother-in-law lived. Debra was worried because she hadn’t been able to reach her mother in two days. After unsuccessfully trying all the doors and looking in the windows, Murphy offered to kick down the main door, between the house and the garage, but ended up calling the Winchester Police Department when they noticed that the house had an alarm that might go off. While waiting for the police to arrive, Murphy saw a chilling sight through the windows near the main door: “some bloodstains on the floor and on the switch if you look through the window.” Firefighters broke open the door and he and Debra followed. “I got about two steps in the door,” Murphy testified, when the firefighters “rushed us out of the house.” He tried to calm Debra down, saying “she was just worried and nervous about her mother…had a feeling like there might have been something bad like she fell down the stairs or something.”

Debra Stone Sochat, Laura Mortimer’s sister and Ellen Stone’s daughter, took the stand looking somber but composed, with a black v-neck dress and her blond hair in a bun. “I saw my mother every day,” she said, adding that she spoke to her “at least five times a day.” Her parents, Ellen and David Stone, had owned the Windsong Lane home for 35 years, but their divorce was just becoming finalized at the time of Ellen’s death, and David had moved out a while ago.

She had plans on June 15 to have Ellen over and prepare her mother’s favorite dinner. The last time the two spoke by phone, on June 14, Ellen “was really looking forward to having the dinner and she sounded very happy.” Debra also spoke to her sister on the 14th, about a possible trip to Martha’s Vineyard that weekend. “Tom didn’t really want to go but they were still talking about it and they were still thinking they were going to go,” Debra explained, adding that their father had bought a boat for 4-year-old Finn and wanted him to see it. The next morning, June 15th, Debra called Laura on her cell phone to set up a playdate for Finn, 2-year-old Charlotte, and her two children, Alexandra, 2 1/2, and Christian, 8 months. Tom answered, which Debra considered “very unusual.” “Hi Tom, how are you?” she asked. He replied, “Hi Debbie, how are you?” and told her when she asked for Laura, “She’s upstairs, she’s busy. She’ll have to call you back…It’s going to be a while before she calls you back.”

The entire day, Debra repeatedly tried to contact her mother, sister, and brother-in-law on their land lines and cell phones. She and her family even ate the dinner they had prepared for Ellen, thinking that she may have just lost her phone, which she had done “many times before.” When neither Ellen’s best friend nor her brother had heard from her, Debra’s husband, David Sochat, became worried, saying “I think we should go over there. I have a funny feeling that something’s wrong.” However, Debra vetoed the idea because “Laura and Tom have a very strict schedule with the children. They’re always in bed by 8:30…They’re very regimented with their schedule.”

The next morning, however, when she still could not reach anyone, Debra decided to go over. Her concern grew when she saw that the trash barrels were still out in the street from the day before, and that the cars were not arranged how they usually were. “I knew at that point that something was strange,” she testified. She and her neighbor, Dan Murphy, tried all the windows and doors but heard nothing except Ellen’s dog barking in an upstairs bedroom. Through the windows near the front door she saw “a light switch on the wall…which had blood on it.” She added, “There was blood smeared on the panel of the wood going up the stairs, there was blood on the floor, there was blood on the wall going up the stairs.” The oriental rug that Ellen had just gotten cleaned and “had been asking Tom for months to help put down” was missing. “I was hoping in my heart that it was a misunderstanding and I didn’t want the police to show up,” she said, but eventually she and Murphy agreed that calling the police was the best thing to do. Lt. Steven Osborne of the Winchester Fire Department arrived, entered the house, and “told me to leave immediately, that my mother had fallen.” Debra explained that her mother “had some medical issues so I was very worried.” She waited in the car with her children, who kept asking whether they would get to see “Cha Cha,” their nickname for their grandmother. Finally, officers came out of the house and told Debra the tragic news.

When asked what she would have done if the police hadn’t come, she said, ”I would have thrown a rock through a window and gone in myself to check on my mother.”

Lt. Steven Osborne of the Winchester Fire Department responded to Dan Murphy’s call and was the first to enter the Windsong Lane house to conduct a well-being check. He explained that he regularly conducts well-being checks when there is a person that family members or neighbors can’t get in touch with and are worried about. He broke down the door to the house after walking around and knocking on all the doors unsuccessfully. “I saw a person lying on the floor,” he said, and nearby he saw a child’s body covered with a blanket, which he lifted up to reveal a “large wound to the neck.” He “immediately realized it was a crime scene and backed out of the building,” and informed the police when they arrived that there were two bodies in the house. During cross-examination by defense attorney Regan, he admitted that the fire department has no written guidelines or formal training regarding well-being checks.

Officer Claude Austin of the Winchester Police Department responded to the house and was told by Osborne, “It’s bad, we have two bodies.” He told his officers to spread out around the house and went inside. The bodies near the main door were “basically covered with blood” and there were “trails of blood” on the floor, as well as bloody footprints leading to the living room. The boy’s body – which turned out to be Finn – was “ice cold” and “laying over a pool of blood, his throat had been sliced, his eyes were open, pale to the touch, just lifeless.” The woman’s body nearby – later identified as Laura – was surrounded by 4-5 pints of blood, and Austin said, “the only way to tell where the face was, as opposed to the back of the head, was hair.” A roll of paper towels was on the floor nearby, “as if someone was trying to clean up but it was something they couldn’t handle.” Leading to the front hallway were “drops of blood,” which he followed, with his gun drawn, and discovered Ellen’s body in the living room with a rug “placed right over the whole body…in a manner to just cover it.” More blood droplets led up the stairs, where Austin heard a TV and a dog barking and called for backup. He looked in all the rooms, noticing a frying pan on one bed, which he considered “peculiar,” and in what looked like a child’s bedroom found a horrible scene. In the crib, he said, “I saw a baby in a fetal position with a pool of blood underneath.” After scanning all the rooms – except the attic and basement – to make sure there were no injured or dangerous people – the officers left. In the garage Austin noticed that a garden hose was hooked up to the car’s exhaust, with the windows shut, which he described as consistent with a suicide attempt. Additionally, there were a knife and a hammer on the passenger seat. Finally, he entered the house a second time to escort the dog, who had been trapped in the upstairs bedroom, out of the house so he wouldn’t be running around in the crime scene.

Sgt. Thomas Groux came to the crime scene as Lt. Austin’s backup. “It’s bad in there,” Austin told him. He entered the house and saw the bodies, which he described as having “massive trauma,” with Laura in a “pool of blood” and Finn with his “throat cut to the point where throat organs were hanging out.” Like Austin did, he described finding Ellen’s body and the trail of blood droplets going up the stairs. “We started going up to commence a search of the second floor,” he said, where he found Charlotte’s body. “There was a massive amount of blood in the crib itself,” he said, adding that trauma to her neck was visible although she was partially covered by a blanket. After leaving the house, Groux was “unsatisfied with the protective sweep that we had done…I just didn’t think the home was searched thoroughly enough for safety reasons.” So he and three other officers re-entered the house to check the basement and the bedroom where the dog was, which Austin hadn’t entered because he didn’t want the dog to escape. On cross-examination, he admitted that another Winchester police officer, Det. Wilkinson, entered the house to take pictures but “disengaged” because state police were taking over the investigation. He could not be 100% sure that Lt. McDonnell (or anyone else) hadn’t re-entered the house after he left, and additionally he said that he did not see any notes or letters in the house, which is significant because Mortimer is reported to have left letters confessing to the killings.

After a lunch break we heard from Trooper Scott McCormack of the Massachusetts State Police. When he arrived on the scene he was told that the home wasn’t secured, so he conducted a protective sweep with Sgt. Groux and other officers. “There was a distinct smell of human decomposition,” he said. “Finn was lying on his back…he had a very deliberate wound to his neck. It was very significant. His eyes were half open. He was covered in blood. He was lying in a pool of blood.” Near the bodies of Laura and Ellen, he observed “a tremendous amount of blood,” signs of a struggle including an overturned plant, and “a very distinctive dragging pattern.” Along with the other officers, he conducted a sweep of the entire house, including the attic, saying that “obviously it would heighten your sense of security.” He never looked anywhere other than where a person could be hiding, he said, nor did he enter the house again before a search warrant was issued later in the day. He spoke to Lt. McDonnell outside the home and said, “He clearly had been moved from what he’d observed. He was very emotional.” During cross-examination, he said that he had never been told that Winchester police had searched most of the house. He said that he observed notes in the home only after the issuance of the warrant. Regan mentioned various things that had happened as a result of the entry into the home: Mortimer’s car was seized and searched, he was arrested and taken to the Winchester police station, injuries were observed on him, biological samples were taken from him, photographs were taken of him, he spoke to his parents by phone, and he was overheard saying certain things (it wasn’t mentioned what exactly what these things were), which were confirmed in subsequent interviews with his parents.

The final witness of the day, Lt. Peter McDonnell of the Winchester Police Department, responded to the initial call for a well-being check at the Windsong Lane home. Sgt. Groux told him of the four bodies and that one bedroom and the basement had not been secured, so he participated in checking the home thoroughly along with Groux and Trooper McCormack. He did not, however, move or take any items.

Throughout all this testimony, Mortimer showed little emotion, at times whispering and nodding to his lawyers and smiling briefly on one occasion.

The hearing adjourned for the day at 3:00 but is still not over. Testimony is set to continue on Monday morning, I believe with two firefighters called by the defense.

More articles about today’s hearing from AP, Boston Globe, NECN, Winchester Patch, and Winchester Star.