The Freedom Bulletin

Guess who managed to send in an update to the Harvard alumni directory? None other than convicted mail bomber, triple murderer, and 1962 Harvard grad Theodore “Ted” Kaczynski. The Unabomber’s brief profile appeared in the “Harvard and Radcliffe Classes of 1962 – Fiftieth Anniversary Report,” a book given out to alumni at their 50th reunion this week, and his name was listed under his state in the back of the book.

His profile reads as follows:

Theodore John Kaczynski

Home Address: No. 04475-046, US Penitentiary-Max, P.O. Box 8500, Florence, CO 8126-8500.

Occupation: Prisoner.

House/Dorm: Eliot.

Degrees: AB ’62; MA, Univ. of Michigan ’65; PhD, ibid. ’67.

Publications: Technological Slavery (Feral House, 2010).

Awards: Eight life sentences, issued by the United States District Court for the Eastern District of California, 1998

Although I personally find this to be slightly amusing (in a strange way), as did Alex Taussig, who first broke the news via Twitter, I understand that it is a serious matter to those killed and injured by Kaczynski’s mail bombs, as well as their friends and relatives.

But this is not a reason to forbid Kaczynski from being listed in the directory. Susan Mosser, the widow of Unabomber victim Thomas Mosser, said she was “disappointed in Harvard” for publishing Kaczynski’s information. And according to AP, Harvard issued a statement saying that they “regret publishing Kaczynski’s references to his convictions and apologize for any distress that it may have caused others.”

With all due respect, I would have been disappointed in Harvard (which, for purposes of full disclosure, happens to be my alma mater as well)  if they had received Kaczynski’s information and not printed it. First of all, he did not write anything offensive or inflammatory in his profile, but simply stated basic biographical facts about himself. According to the Boston Globe, a Harvard Alumni Association spokesman confirmed that the profile Kaczynski sent was within the guidelines for the directory. Second of all, although some people are offended by the mere existence of Kaczynski’s listing, the job of the Alumni Association is not to eliminate anything that people might find offensive, but to compile a comprehensive listing of the information sent in by alumni. No matter what he did and no matter how notorious he is, Theodore Kaczynski is a graduate of Harvard, and he should be listed as such.

Yesterday, Dharun Ravi was sentenced to 30 days in prison for using a webcam to spy on his roommate at Rutgers University, Tyler Clementi, and inviting his friends to join him. The next day, Clementi committed suicide.

Ravi could have received up to 10 years in prison. In addition to the 30 days, he was sentenced to 3 years of probation, counseling about alternative lifestyles, and a $10,000 fine to be paid to a fund for victims of hate crimes.

Much has been made of the fact that Tyler was gay, and as a result, Ravi was convicted of hate crime charges in addition to the underlying crimes, which included invasion of privacy and evidence tampering.

In my opinion, Tyler’s orientation is not what makes this crime so bad; the way that Dharun treated him was cruel and wrong no matter what the sexual orientation, race, gender, or other demographic characteristics of the people involved. To ridicule someone to your friends, to spy on them when they want to be alone, and invite your friends to join in the spying, violates that person’s rights, and it is bullying.

For this reason, I think that this sentence is on the lenient side. Our society seems to be very reluctant to treat mental/emotional harm as seriously as physical harm. Crimes that involve psychological torment tend not to be punished as harshly as those involving physical injuries, even though, in reality, they can be just as damaging, if not more so. An example of this is the Phoebe Prince case, in which the students who bullied Phoebe to death reached plea deals and avoided jail time. Although Ravi’s actions may not have been the only cause, or even the main cause, of Clementi’s suicide, they certainly were a cause to some extent. And even if Clementi was still alive today, there is no question that he would have suffered significant emotional harm from Ravi’s actions. The legal system needs to treat psychological harm as seriously as physical harm, and by giving such a lenient sentence, the judge in this case did not achieve that.

5/22 update: Ian Parker at the New Yorker makes some interesting observations about the role that Ravi’s lack of remorse played in his sentence. I actually admire that Ravi stuck with his belief that his actions did not constitute a crime, instead of apologizing, flip-flopping, or trying to take back what he did. He even refused to take the government up on its offer of a plea deal with no jail time, saying, “I’m never going to regret not taking the plea. If I took the plea, I would have had to testify that I did what I did to intimidate Tyler, and that would be a lie.” Ravi may very well be telling the truth when he claims that he did not act out of anti-gay bias or to intimidate Tyler. But the legal system should not be as concerned with the motivations behind Ravi’s actions as it is with the actions themselves. No matter his motives, Ravi did the things that he did intentionally (it’s not as if his fingers slipped, causing him to accidentally tweet mean comments and turn his webcam on), and those actions violated Clementi’s privacy rights and caused him significant harm.

Guest post by John Victor

The following was written by John, a visitor to this blog who reached out to share his views about the Pring-Wilson case. All opinions belong to him and are not necessarily my own. Thank you again John for providing your opinions and analysis!

The Pring-Wilson/Michael Colono murder trial involved a Harvard graduate student who was attacked by two Puerto Ricans in Cambridge, Massachusetts. This should have been an open and shut case of justifiable homicide. All Alex Pring-Wilson’s lawyer had to do was to reenact the case for the jury and demonstrate physically what actually happened during the attack. He did neither. Instead reports lead me to believe that he attempted to create “reasonable doubt” by attacking the hostile witnesses that were associates of the victim. This bit of legal “bullying” itself fell right into the trap set by the prosecutor, who portrayed Pring-Wilson as a “rich kid bully” that beat up and killed a poor innocent street kid. The result was a conviction of manslaughter in the first trial, and a hung jury (with 10 of the 12 jurors voting to convict). Pring-Wilson then pleaded guilty and took a plea bargain after family finances became an issue.

I’m a 5th degree black belt who does analyses of physical attacks as part of my teaching. The following is my analysis of what actually happened in this street fight. I’ll be willing to put on a demonstration of events for anyone who challenges my conclusions. As it turned out, I’m the only one that has actually tried to reenact this fight.

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Lots of new evidence, including photos, video, audio, and 200 pages of documents, have been released in the Trayvon Martin case, some helpful to George Zimmerman‘s defense and some not.

First, according to photos and police reports, Zimmerman had a broken nose and cuts to the back of his head. Martin had only a cut on his finger in addition to the fatal gunshot wound to his chest. Zimmerman’s injuries seem to support his claim of self-defense…but the relative lack of injuries to Martin could argue against that theory that they were engaged in a violent physical fight before the shooting.

Released earlier by ABC News, medical records from Zimmerman’s doctor go into more detail about his injuries. He had a “closed fracture” of his nose, two black eyes, two cuts to the back of his head, a bruise to his lip, and a back injury the day after the shooting.

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As soon as I finish a blog post about Dominique Strauss-Kahn, a pretty significant new development happens. On Monday, as first reported by the New York Post, the man who arguably should be the new president of France filed a civil suit against Nafissatou Diallo, the hotel maid who accused him of attempted rape and sexual assault.

A year to the day after his shocking arrest and tragic fall from grace, it looks like DSK is seeking justice. He’s asking for $1 million for malicious prosecution, abuse of process, false imprisonment, defamation, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

Good for him.

According to AFP, DSK’s lawyer, William Taylor, said that Diallo “is directly responsible for his being arrested, imprisoned, and subjected to extraordinary pain, anguish, and expense. He is not required to simply endure what she did and her effort to profit for herself without fighting back.”

In his complaint, filed in the Bronx Supreme Court, DSK calls Diallo’s account a ”malicious and wanton false allegation.” As a result of this false allegation, according to the complaint, he lost his job as head of the International Monetary Fund and missed out on other professional opportunities, suffered “grievous harm to his personal and professional reputation,” was “subjected to a degrading and humiliating strip search; photographed naked; and forced to provide penal swabs as part of a forensic examination,” and finally, was “paraded in front of international media in handcuffs as part of a ‘perp walk’ intended to humiliate him, even though he committed no crime.”

I am appalled by the way the New York Police Department and Manhattan D.A.’s office treated Strauss-Kahn (at least before they changed their tune and dropped the charges against him due to lack of evidence). As far as I’m concerned, if anyone was sexually assaulted in this case, it was DSK. It is difficult to believe that an office that prosecutes people for (alleged) sexual assaults can itself inflict what is described above on a person that it is prosecuting. Yes, these invasive and degrading searches might be useful in gathering evidence, but they equal sexual assault, and it is never, ever acceptable to sexually assault someone.

Strauss-Kahn will never be able to fully undo the damage that was done to him as a result of Diallo’s accusations and law enforcement’s response. But I hope that with this lawsuit, he might be able to obtain some semblance of justice. Even if his lawsuit doesn’t succeed in court, I admire that in addition to seeking justice for himself, DSK is also, in a way, taking a stand for defendants’ rights, human dignity, and freedom.

5/16 update: Thanks to David Bookstaver and Arlene Hackel of the NY courts communications office, you can read the document filed by DSK here:

Defendant Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s Answer and Counterclaims (PDF)

For reference, here is Diallo’s original civil complaint against DSK, filed last August.

Appeals have been winding their way through the court system in two high-profile Massachusetts federal cases that The Freedom Bulletin has been following:

In the Gary Sampson case, prosecutors today got the right to appeal the ruling that granted the convicted murderer a new sentencing hearing. Sampson killed Jonathan Rizzo, Philip McCloskey, and Robert “Eli” Whitney during a 2001 spree, and he pleaded guilty to federal charges, making him eligible for the death penalty. In 2003, a jury voted to give him the ultimate punishment, a first in more than 50 years in Massachusetts. Today, Judge Mark Wolf issued a certificate of appealability, allowing the U.S. Attorney’s Office to lodge an appeal against his ruling last year to give Sampson a new penalty phase of his trial because a juror had lied about domestic violence in her past. This is called an interlocutory appeal because it is taking place before the sentencing re-trial, putting that proceeding on hold. The First Circuit Court of Appeals now gets to decide whether to hear the government’s appeal and, if yes, whether to grant it.

Source: Boston.com

Yesterday, oral arguments took place in the appeal of former Boston City Councilor Chuck Turner, who was convicted in 2010 of extortion under the color of official right (AKA taking a bribe). The main issue of debate before the First Circuit was the instructions that Judge Douglas Woodlock gave to the jury. Turner’s defense lawyer, Charles Rankin, argued that Judge Woodlock should have fully explained the difference between a “gratuity payment” and a bribe. But Assistant U.S. Attorney Kelly Lawrence argued that the jury instructions were fine and that Turner was clearly taking a bribe and not just a gratuity payment because he said to the FBI informant, ”You take care of me, I’ll take care of you. I’ll see you again.” A ruling will likely not be issued for a few months.

Source: Metro

It seems like there have been a lot of cases in the news lately where the government arrests and prosecutes someone not for actually carrying out a crime, but merely planning or plotting to carry out a crime.

The suspect in the airplane “underwear bomb” plot that was foiled by the CIA turned out to be a CIA informant himself, and it’s unclear whether charges will end up being filed against anyone involved in the plot.

But last week, on May Day, five self-described anarchists were arrested for participating in a plot to blow up a bridge in Ohio. The FBI had been watching and working with them for months, and an undercover agent provided them with defective bombs which they placed on the bridge and punched in the code to detonate. To their surprise, nothing happened, and the FBI assured the public that no one was ever in danger.

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