Category Archives: Crime

UPDATE I: Commute The Troy Davis Death Sentence

Crime, Criminal Injustice, Justice, Law, Psychology & Pop-Psychology, The Courts

If it hasn’t yet, the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles, reconsidering the death sentence of Troy Davis, ought to consult Dr. Elizabeth F. Loftus. According to Dr. Loftus’ seminal work, eye-witness testimony is terribly unreliable.

A man should not be put to death based solely on the testimony of eye-witnesses most of whom have since recanted.

Troy Anthony Davis (born October 9, 1968) was convicted of the August 19, 1989, murder of Savannah, Georgia police officer Mark MacPhail. MacPhail was working as a security guard at a restaurant when he intervened in an argument between several men in a nearby parking lot. He was shot in the heart and face without having drawn his gun. One of the men, Sylvester “Redd” Coles, went to police and implicated Davis in the killing, and Davis was arrested four days later. During Davis’ 1991 trial, many witnesses testified they had seen Davis shoot MacPhail. Two others testified that Davis had confessed the murder to them. The murder weapon was never found, and no physical evidence linked Davis to the crime. Throughout his trial and subsequent appeals, Davis has maintained his innocence. Davis was convicted and sentenced to death in August 1991.

(I discovered the work of this leading world authority on memory in the late 1990s, when I was writing and raging about the the recovered memory ruse. I also heard Dr. Loftus testify in court thereby securing a man’s liberty. As is obvious from the prominence of characters like Drs. Phil and Drew Pinsky, the profession of psychology is festooned with popularizers, poor thinkers and plain charlatans. Elizabeth F. Loftus has always stood apart.)

On the other hand, Joshua Komisarjevsky needs killing.

He and his accomplice, Steven Hayes (already waiting to die), were arrested at the scene of the crime—the Petit family home in Cheshire, Connecticut. He and Hayes had just killed all three—and raped two—of the women of the Petit family. They then proceeded to burn down the house.

UPDATE I (Sept. 20):Breaking News vial Amnesty International: The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles denied clemency to Troy Davis on Tuesday. This means that very little is standing in the way of the state executing a potentially innocent man this Wednesday.” Amnesty International is “calling on the Board to reconsider its decision, and on the Chatham County (Savannah) District Attorney Larry Chisolm to do the right thing.”

More from Amnesty International:

Death penalty supporters like Bob Barr, former Texas Governor Mark White, and former FBI Director William Sessions also support clemency in this case, for the same reason. And at least three jurors from Davis’ trial have asked for his execution to be called off. Putting Troy Davis to death would be a grave injustice to those jurors who believe they sentenced Davis to death based on questionable information.

Although I want to see the Troy Davis death sentence commuted, I don’t like the way this cause celebre has the media omitting mention of the name of the victim. “A police officer from Savannah” is how this lot is referring to the late Mark Allen MacPhail. Google throws up not much about this heroic, off-duty officer. You have to dig:

The 27-year-old former Army Ranger was moonlighting on a security detail when he ran to help a homeless man, who had cried out because he was being pistol whipped. MacPhail was shot three times before he could draw his handgun.

Understandably, The victim’s widow, Joan MacPhail-Harris, has expressed the need for closure. She believes, however, that executing Davis will give her a sense of finality. Killing a man who may not have pulled the trigger is not the kind of closure a victim has the right to demand. A commutation of the death sentence would probably still mean life in jail for Davis. That should suffice.

UPDATED: Solyndra Scandal

Barack Obama, Business, China, Crime, Criminal Injustice, Economy, Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Ethics

“This new factory [Solyndra] is a result of the Recovery Act, a result of those loans,” puled Barack Obama back in 2009. “The company received the loan and expanded their operations,” the man continues with arrogant certitude. The president really doesn’t understand how a viable market functions. The fact that Solyndra was awarded $527 million from the taxpayers (at $479,000 per temporary job created), and was seen to be doing spiffy stuff with the funds—this, thinks Obama, is sufficient to secure a profitable market for the product.

Chris Horner, author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism (Regnery, 2007), has the goods on the racket Obama is running for green energy’s special pleaders. Obama has created a bubble worth $80 billion dollars, stolen from productive workers and funneled into these unsustainable, gangrene “revenue streams”

The waste. The theft. The thug from Chicago.

UPDATE (Sept. 15): “At least four other companies have received stimulus funding only to later file for bankruptcy, and two of those were working on alternative energy,” reports Fox News. The companies implicate China in their uncompetitiveness. Prediction: American rent seeking will morph into a political opportunity for Donald-Trump like, bellicose synophobia. The perfect distraction.

UPDATE IV: Bitchslapped in London (Bravo Michael Nutter; Boo Darcus Howe)

Ann Coulter, Britain, Crime, GUNS, Media, Political Correctness, Private Property, Race, Racism, Welfare

Srdja Trifkovic, at Chronicles Magazine, sums up “London’s Postmodern Riots” thus: “The problem with today’s Britain is that donkeys are in charge not only at Bramshill but also at Westminster and at No. 10, Downing Street. If and when ordinary Britons feel compelled to resort to more robust tools than BlackBerryss and Nokias when faced with a looting mob, the lions may have a chance once again.”

[SNIP]

Srdja’s sentiment is a hopeful one. More telling are images such as this one, showing the oppressed disrobing before the oppressor, or wielding a broom to clean-up after the goons.

Described in “Sacrificing Kids To PC Pietism,” the prototypical western man “is flabby in body and mind. He is fearful and easily cowed. He erupts in tears at a drop of a hat. He is gripped by the culture of apology, and flagellates over sins he has not committed. His eternal state of expiation is driven not by goodness, but by insufferable self-righteousness.”

This archetypal man forgives unspeakable violence against himself and those he is obligated to protect. He would not hurt a fly, much less repel a foe. An astute alien would notice that, in this regard, there is not a dime’s worth of difference between the ‘conservative’ and ‘liberal’ earthling. …
Not only does this generic Joe refuse to identify his proud, empowered attackers, but he rejects the possibility that they act out of ingrained animus for his kind. The swarms that descended to take what is his—to hurt him and even kill him—he jocularly terms mischief-makers, teens, twitter-operators, technology savvy youth. Yes, this brow-beaten, emasculated, excuse-for-a-man uses diminutives to describe the contempt-filled stalkers who menace him and who would squash him like the bug he is

UPDATE I (June 11): COULTER’S SAFE SCREED. Here is my reply to the posting of Ann Coulter’s “diagnosis” to my Facebook Wall:

Myron, Larry Auster has diagnosed this “leftist spinning,” to which Coulter, generally a PC writer, adheres. Coulter’s shtick, like Mark Steyn’s, relies on maintaining the illusion of American exceptionalism. As if the US doesn’t run as enormous a Managerial State as the EU and UK! Here Auster writes:

“While I don’t have all the facts as to numbers, my impression of the article is that they’re trying to make the non-black involvement seem much more than it is. The truth seems to be that the riots were started by blacks, and then others (whites and Muslims) joined in, especially in the looting. But it remains mainly a black thing, and The Guardian is trying to deny that. Also, it’s not surprising that whites would be involved. As Charles Murray wrote ten years years ago, underclass whites in Britain are in their behavior very much like underclass blacks–products of the welfare state, of fatherlessness, etc., and producers of fatherlessness. And we’ve known for years about the yobs who can be as unruly and dangerous as the black thugs. Britain has this huge low-level white population of which there is no equivalent in America. So it’s no surprise that they would join with the blacks.”

Ann Coulter’s column is generally safe. That’s her secret. As Canadian writer Kevin Michael Grace once mused: “The secret to becoming a successful right-wing columnist is to echo the mob while complimenting yourself on your daring. That’s all there is to Ann Coulter’s craft, the rest is exploitation of the sexual masochism of the American male—he just can’t get enough of the kitten with claws.”

UPDATE II: Some people are able to distinguish right from wrong. One such individual is Mayor Michael Nutter. Via Pat Buchanan:

“You’ve damaged your own race,” said Mayor Michael Nutter to the black youths of Philadelphia whose flash mobs have been beating and robbing shoppers in the fashionable district of downtown.
“Take those God-darn hoodies down,” the mayor went on in his blistering lecture. “Pull your pants up and buy a belt, ’cause no one wants to see your underwear or the crack of your butt.”
And the mayor had some advice for teenagers looking for work.
“You walk into somebody’s office with your hair uncombed and a pick in the back and your shoes untied and your pants half down, tattoos up and down your arms and on your neck, and you wonder why somebody won’t hire you?
“They don’t hire you ’cause you look like you’re crazy.”
Nutter is African-American and the first leader to speak out about the racial character of the flash mobs attacking people in one American city after another. And where are our other leaders?

Other people can only distinguish one race from the other.

How telling that this gas bag has so many YouTube viewers. What herd mentality would drive anyone to think of Darcus Howe—a West Indian “writer,” who has made himself comfortable in London—as a voice worth heeding? Darcus blames the wanton destruction of private property on the emasculated British bobby. “The worst violence visited [on England] and its capital since Goering’s Luftwaffe executed the ‘Blitz'” is the fault of the lefty, community-oriented police, which would sooner jail a gun owner for defending what’s his than stop a hateful hooligan from destroying what is not his.

These are the defenders of private property, died guarding his community from hooligans. Darcus the drek stands with evil.

Think the film “Harry Brown” with Michael Caine …

The London riots were the work of moral barbarians with no loyalty to the people in whose midst they live and no love for the society to which they give nothing, only take.

UPDATE III (Aug 12): Compassionate Fascist: I think Ann Coulter is attractive; her politics are what’s unattractive.

UPDATE IV: Larry Auster has sent the correct URL for the image of the submissive and the barbarian.