for a judge to go beyond a prosecutor's wishes

They see it as a direct affront to the authority of the courts, as well as get very agitated when they waste time on cases scheduled where everyone shows up but the defendant.

Your going to either get no bail or a very, very high bail when you go in front of a judge for a Failure To Appear.

And people really don't get the seriousness of this. I saw more people go down the path of ruining their lives by turning what would have been a case where they just got a fine or some probabtion into an extended jail stay because they blew off the court date.

If she deserved punishment for missing the court date, Why didn't they just put her on home confinement with an ankle bracelet? She's not a murderer.

And why couldn't they at least transport her to a hospital to give birth?

It's not like a woman about to give birth is a flight risk, and even if she did somehow escape home confinement...so what? She wasn't convicted of a violent crime in the first place.

And it sounds like this is where V.I. Warshawski would be hired.

That's how probation works.

She even admits she knew she was in trouble and made the choice to remain a fugitive instead of turning herself in.

She dug the hole in regards to her position. By violated her parole within a few weeks. By not staying in touch with her PO and keeping a current address as her probation required, then blowing off court dates.

When you have a history of violating probation and then making the intentional choice to remain a fugitive when told you have issues you have to settle with the court guess what- you don't get bail anymore. You don't get kid glove treatment like an ankle monitor. You go to jail.

She made the choices. And she knew full well when she started probation exactly what the repercussions of failing to follow the rules would be- going back to jail.

Now as to why she had to give birth in the jail, I don't know. Cook County is pretty big so I imagine they have in-house medical facilities but I don't have enough direct experience with them in particular to comment on it.

as far as I could throw a pro-Daley alderman.

And see how it works out for you.

This isn't a case of Justice gone wrong. This is a case of a person who entirely dug her own hole.

She was caught stealing money from customers/her employer at work. She made that choice.

She was out in probabtion isntead of in jail- that's a better place but it means you have to comply with all the legal orders and terms of probation. She even got a pretty sweet deal where if she just kept her nose clean and complied with the terms of her probation for 2 years they would wipe her record clean.

Within a few weeks she was out driving without a license and got pulled over for speeding. Driving without a license=probation violation. Racism or the system or anything else didn't make her choose to do that. She made her choice. She knew what she had to do when she accepted the terms of her probation.

She didn't keep her probation officer up to date on her residence. The thing about them mailing notices to the wrong place is a crap excuse from her because she would have also been required to check in with her PO regularly and would have known she had a court date had she been doing that.

She finally called her PO and when told she had a warrant isntead of owning up to her responsibility and being accountable for her actions she decided to become a fugitive and just blow it all off.

She made 100% of those choices herself.

She took what was a small problem- getting caught stealing at work- and when given a golden chance to get it totally off her record by just not breaking the law or the probabtion terms for 24 months she shit it away by first making the bad choice to drive without a license in violation or her probation and then making the exact wrong choice at every decision point from there on.

Cash theft is not homicide. There were no real victims. If she'd committed grand larceny, she'd be in Joliet.

And again, the reasons she didn't show up were grounded in legitimate distrust of the system.

Looking at it as "the law is the law and that's all that matters" is a right-wing, economic royalist argument. That viewpoint never benefits working people, immigrants, people of color, LGBTQ people, women, or the poor, whose numbers include people from all of those groups and others.

Now that the Voting Rights Act has been gutted, there's essentially nothing in the letter of the law that serves or protects anyone but rich white CIS heterosexual men-nothing, in other words, that protects the majority of the American people.

I'm not arguing for lawlessness-obviously we need to arrest and punish murderers, rapists, child molesters and embezzling CEOs...but "the law is the law" is a viewpoint that should be left in the 18th Century, with powdered wigs, the cat-o-nine tails, and slave-owning presidents.

If YOU were African-American, Latinx-American, Muslim-American, LGBTQ-American or Female-American, would YOU trust the Cook County justice system not to screw you over for the sake of screwing you over? Would you think you could get decent treatment in that system when people in THOSE demographics never receive it there?

"And again, the reasons she didn't show up were grounded in legitimate distrust of the system. "

Bullsht.

Are you just making this assumption based on.... anything?

Believe it or not people of color are every bit as responsible or irresponsible as everyone else. There are just as many people who just flat out make bad choice or don't care about consequences in every race. It's pretty bigoted in a way to assume that every person of color must make their decisions based on one factor only.

No, her reasons for not showing up were not based on mistrust. It even explains in the article that she missed the hearing for her probation violation because she failed to keep her PO informed of a proper address, didn't retrieve mail from where it was going and failed to check i with her PO. That wasn't mistrust, that was the same thing as the initial probabtion violation was- irresponsibility or just not giving a damm.

Then after that it wasn't mistrust- she says she knew she was going to have to go to jail so she chose to be a fugitive instead.

And I say all this woman of mixed race heritage, my dad is Filipino and my mom was Native American (Lumbee) and most people who just see me assuming I'm mixed Asian/African ancestry. Yes, I would be concerned I may not get fair and equal treatment, but that would mean I would be even more careful and diligent to ensure I complied with all the terms of my probabtion and didn't give the system any reason to come after me. Had she simply not driven around without a license (knowing it was a violation) and kept in contact with her PO she wouldn't have had to worry about her treatment at the hearings because there wouldn't be any- so you can quit with the angle of throwing race into it to claim I don't get it.

Nor was I claiming this woman was a saint.

Also, I had no way of knowing your own ethnicity, though I'd extend what I said to Native Americans and their natural reasons for not believing the white man's justice system would ever give them a fair shake.

Have you heard no stories from your other Native Americans about this?

I'll ask it this way:

Regardless for the reason she didn't show up for the court dates, why SHOULD she have believed she'd have any chance of decent treatment if she did show up for that court date? Why shouldn't she have assumed that they'd stick it to her no matter what she did, even if she DID "play by the rules"?

Why are you being an apologist for the justice system?

And why does it seem to be so important to you to call this woman out?

"people of color are every bit as responsible or irresponsible as everyone else..."

As no one has made that argument or expressed that sentiment, I'm guessing you stated it just to have something to argue against. I'm also guessing you'll allege otherwise.

But that's how it works.

Bail is granted in cases where the amount of bail is felt high enough to ensure the person returns to court on their court date.

When people have a history of not complying with terms set by the court and of intentionally not showing up for court then they have shown they are a flight risk and can't be trusted to show up for court if released.

You don't get to keep blowing off court dates without repercussions.

She had responsibilities too.

She at every juncture intentionally chose the irresponsible choice.

When caught for the initial theft she was given a great chance by the courts to do 24 months probation and if she just kept her nose clean they would wipe her record clean- and she shit all all over that chance within weeks.

Responsibility works all ways here.

Last edited Thu Aug 17, 2017, 02:00 PM - Edit history (1)

An entirely understandable choice when faced with the actions of any judicial and correctional institutions in this country as they apply to anybody who isn't a cis white hetero male.

Everybody else mostly loses in our courtrooms.

And at the moment, there seems to be little chance of changing that.

The humanitarian needs of her pregnancy should have mattered more than payback for what amounts to petty theft.

At most, her original sentence should simply have been to repay the money she stole-in installments if that was all she could afford.

(note, the title of this post is edited to remove overstatement. I never meant to imply that people of color would habitually disobey judges-they'd be less likely to do so in many cases, out of fear-merely that nobody, at least nobody who is white, male and privileged, would be entitled to pass moral judgment on them if they did. I didn't realize what my initial post title sounded like, I got it wrong, my bad).

To declare that anyone who isn't a white male would just act irresponsibly and blow off their legal responsibilities and blow off the tents of their probation.

People of color and other minorities are just as capable of being responsible and making the right choices and doing the right thing as everyone else in the world. Every fucking day people of color do the right thing in our legal system and meet their obligations. Your declaration that most of them would blow off their responsibilities when in probabtion and would blow off court dates is racist as hell.


Any no, most of "us" don't blow off court dates and choose to become fugitives instead. Maybe you are that irresponsible and like the criminal lifestyle, but most people are responsible, including most people given chances at probation.

Last edited Thu Aug 17, 2017, 02:04 PM - Edit history (1)

are never responsible or law-abiding.

I would never say or thing anything remotely close to that.

Some are even part of the judicial/correctional system.

I can, however, see how it could have been taken that way and have edited it.

I'm talking about the natural distrust people who aren't white CIS hetero males would feel about the system.

Even the vast majority who do "play by the rules" don't believe that the rules are in their interest.

Why do you think virtually every parent of color has to have "the talk" with their kids about cops and judges?

Do you actually believe we are anywhere close to "equal justice for all" in this country? Or will be any time soon, if ever?

And had you not noticed that even the prosecutor thinks the judge was out of line on this?

And since you wanted to throw gender indemnity and sexual preference into the mix you decided to make it homophobic and sexist as well.

She made the choice most of US would make, including you when faced with the actions of any judicial and correctional institutions in this country as they apply to anybody who isn't a cis white hetero male.

Your statement was clear. That "most" of the people who are not "a cis white hetro male" would make the same choices she did.

She made the choice on multiple times to be irresponsible and choose the criminal path over the law abiding path.

In your world most minorities would choose the same.

Not only is that demonstrably false, despite your low expectations most minorities of any kind don't choose the criminal path when faced with choices, its deeply racist.

Now, it's not the kind of nazi marching with tiki torches overt racism. But it's still racist. You directly stated that the majority of all marigonalized minority groups, anyone other than "cis white males" would act just like this woman and faced with a chance to be honest and responsible or be a criminal would choose the criminal path. I get that you are simultaneously trying to excuse that behavior as coming from mistrust of the system, but your kind of bigotry of assuming that some groups of people just can't be law abiding based on nothing more than what ethnic group or gender they belong to, or that "most" minorities would actually make the incredibly stupid decision to choose to blow off a court date just based on mistrust of the system, shows the kind of condescending arrogant racist and bigoted attitude often found among the people who declare themselves "allies" of assuming that the people they claim to be "allies" of somehow are not smart enough to capable enough to do the right thing on their own.

No, Ken Burch, when put on probation most minorities don't make the same choice as she did to squander that chance and violate the probabtion. Most don't fail to keep up with the terms of their probation. Most don't skip court dates and choose to become fugitives. Us non white, non straight, non male Americans are actually capable of our own rational thought, our own intelligent decision making, and even though we have distrust of many parts of the system we still are responsible law abiding people who will make the smart and right choices- despite your own bigoted worldview assuming "most" of us would be criminals just like this woman was and "most" of us would make the stupid choices like this woman did and "most" of us would choose to become fugitives.

No, Ken Burch, while you may be right to say most of use have mistrust of the system, despite your bigoted assumptions "most" people who are not a "cis white male" are not in fact stupid, not criminals, and don't choose the stupid or criminal path when faced with decisions like her multiple ones that you claim most of us would mimic.

I wasn't saying that most people of color, or even MANY people of color, do anything illegal and you know it.

The vast majority of people in any demographic live and die without coming close to committing a crime.

And while there probably is racism in my being, in my origins, I did not write anything with racist intent, though I'll concede what I wrote could have been taken that way. As a result, I'll edit what I wrote. I am not a bigot-I am simply a person who tries to have some empathy with the way people in historically marginalized communities might see things.

My larger point is that the legal system is stacked-possibly hopelessly stacked-against anybody who isn't of my race, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation. You would have to concede the point, I think.

Why is it so important to you to personally demonize this woman, to insist that she had it coming, to defend the actions of this judge when even the prosecutor was saying he was out of line.? At worst, she was guilty of petty theft. If she was white and male, they'd have let it go at putting her on an ankle bracelet for a couple of months at the beginning of the thing. Are you really this much of a "law and order" type? If so, why? The law isn't on your side.

The tone of the post you typed out and it's intent was clear. You were claiming that most minorities (I'll just say it broadly since you choose to include virtually every marginalized group) would when faced with the choice make the criminal choice.

That is what you said. Period. Full stop.

Your "trying to have empathy" comes across more as trying to mansplain and whitesplain how all those poor oppressed people must be thinking, and how most of them will be criminals if facing those choices, blah blah blah. It's the same maddening attitude of arrogant superiority I get from a lot of white male liberals who will start out a statement with something like "Well as a woman of color in sure you"... Just stop. You clearly don't know what anyone else's life is like and your "trying to have empathy" is just your own bigoted assumptions of how those peoples will act and behave assuming the worst, but you think it's ok to assume the worst because you then make your own excuses for it by engageing in more bigoted thinking by assuming most people in marginalized groups have the same thought process and decision making process and most will think so much alike they will make the same decision. And you just of course think that decision will be the stupid and/or illegal one.

No, we didn't take what you wrote and have now deleted the wrong way. What you wrote initially was clear and it's the same kind of condescending and arrogant attitude of "allies" who think themselves better than the rest who then instead of actually helping just make assumptions that everyone else is less capable of them, but think that's ok because they then make excuses for why that is. Instead of saying what you wrote could be taken the wrong way and not admitting where it came from in you you should probably sit down and ask yourself why you thought it was ok to make a post saying that when virtually every minority but straight white makes was faced with a serious of choices MOST would choose the irresponsible and criminal path. A statement like that doesn't come out by mistake and then get defended by mistake. You typed thy out because that's what you believe. I hate to use a phrase generally found in right circles, but in this case it fits what you wrote perfectly- "The soft bigotry of low expectations". Your statement was essentially "well that kind of criminal and irresponsible behavior is the best she or most minorities can because of" blah blah blah.

You should really sit down and look ok into your heart to find where that came from.

As to why in this case I take such an interest? Because I don't excuse people for bad judgement or criminal activity regardless of what their background, race, status or anything else is and this is a clear cut case of a person repeatedly and knowingly choosing the wrong path and then everyone amazed when she ends up in jail. You said:

At worst, she was guilty of petty theft. If she was white and male, they'd have let it go at putting her on an ankle bracelet for a couple of months at the beginning of the thing

Well, at the beginning yes- although I'll say it's probably larceny instead of petty theft becuse they don't give you two years probabtion for petty theft it takes more than that. And in the beginning she got off far easier than an ankle monitor and home confinement- she got probabtion that was set up to expunge her record if she successfully completed the probabtion period. An ankle monitor is actually a more severe form of probation/parole than what she got and it means the courts trusted her to comply (trusted her more than you even since you think she needed the more intensive monitoring)

That's actually a very sweet deal the courts have her, right down to a chance to have a clean record at the end of it. All she had to do is comply with the terms of the probabtion.

Despite your bigoted views in minority behaviors when most people, even minorities, when given a great chance like that will see it as a great chance and do what they need to in order to company with the court ordered probabtion terms and get their record clean.

She didn't. And up until this point I have much sympathy for her, she made one bad choice and has a chance to fix it. Instead during the first few weeks of her probabtion- even the the term you said she should get- she made the choice to go driving around without a divers license. That's a violation of probabtion. And even if the courts had given her the punishment you suggest of a few months she still would have been violating her probabtion in that same period.

So then she compounded that mistake by failing to keep her mailing address current and failing to keep in touch with here PO. Even if, as she claims, they didn't get her address change right had she kept in touch with her PO as required she would have known she had a hearing. She didn't. So she missed the hearing. Driving without a license isn't a huge violation so she may have gotten hit with more restrictions on her probabtion or maybe a week in jail then back to her probation, or maybe an ankle monitor with restricted movement only to home or work. They don't fully revoke probation for that minor an offense.

But instead she missed the hearing because she didn't stay in touch and keep her address current. So that again compounded the bad judgement and its implications and consequences. When she finally calls her PO he tells her that there is a warrant out for her- because when you don't comply with your probabtion and don't show up to court that's what happens to you no matter who you are.

Now she faces another choice. She can own up to her mistakes and turn herself in and accept the consequences, or she can choose to become a fugitive and go on the run. She chose the latter, and then kept also driving around without a license and that's how she got caught.

Her choices were not based on mistrust of the system. The system gave her every chance. The mistrust of the system didn't make her violate her parole within weeks of getting it. The mistrust or the system didn't make her fail to keep in contact with her PO and keep her address current. The mistrust of the system didn't make her choose to become a fugitive when she learned she had squandered the chance she was given with parole and now had to go to jail. She made all those choices and she alone is responsible.

You see, the difference in your attitude and mine is that I am mad at her for being given a great second chance with probabtion and then squandering that second chance with a whole bunch of stupid decisions. I am holding her to the same standard I hold everyone. I expect her to make better and smarter choices and when she doesn't want her to be accountable to society for that.

You are saying that when in the same circumstances "most" (your word) minorities would do exactly what she did, so you don't expect any better. Your basically saying that "most" minorities can't do any better than this and will behave just like this so we shouldn't expect any better or demand any better or hold them accountable because "most" can't follow the law or make smart decisions so you wise white males just need to have empathy and overlook it:

The way our views differ is I'm not holding her to a lower standard than I do myself or anyone else because of her race/gender/anything else. While you are setting lower expectations just based on those things with no actual knowledge of her as a person, just seeing skin color and gender and automatically lowering your expectations due to your so-called "empathy". Maybe that don't empathy....

I admitted that.

It simply hadn't occurred to me that that could read as it did, which it should have as a person who writes here a lot.

I'm no saint, but I'm not a bigot.

At worst, I'm a white democratic leftist who sometimes makes honest mistakes when writing about things outside my experience and am willing to acknowledge and correct them when they are pointed out. If you hadn't gone after me again in that last post, I'd probably be thanking you right now for calling out my wording.

It was a written(badly written, in hindsight) but written in any case from a place of human solidarity.

And I've acknowledged I was wrong to write it and edited it out, so why are you still calling me out?

You and I simply see this person differently.

As I read them, Your views about her sound a lot like George W. Bush's conservative-paternalist quote about "the soft bigotry of low expectations". And it sounds as though you see her as having, in some way "let down the side". It's possible that you think, if she HAD made the original court date, this judge would have done right by her. I'm not sure why you'd believe that, but you have the right to your views.

I see her, on the other hand, as someone who, even though she made a decision or two that some you might not have made(more on that in a minute)was largely a victim of at least two systems(the economic and the political). Her decision to take some money from her employer-remember, at this point neither of us know why she did that or how much she took-might not have been the decision other people would have made. It's entirely possible she made that choice out of sheer economic desperation, in response to a rent hike from a slumlord or some medical situation that suddenly popped up. At the moment, I'm not comfortable judging her at all for that with the limited amount of information either of us have here.

She then missed a court date. In practical terms not the wisest choice. Obviously, it's the kind of thing that would anger any judge.

But it's a fair question to ask why she should have trusted this judge NOT to throw the book at her even if she did show up.

(btw...I wouldn't assume the fact that she was on probation meant they were going easy on her-more likely, it was jail overcrowding.)

it's astounding that you'd actually believe this woman was "given a second chance". The truth is, in this country's white-supremacist judicial system, especially as administered in Chicago, the most racist city east of Boston in the North, she was never going to be treated fairly by the court system. If she had showed up for the court date, they likely would have thrown her into jail for forgetting to sign one part of the court papers, or for showing up two minutes late because traffic was backed up. They were going to get heru

You don't even seem to acknowledged that the PROSECUTOR thinks the judge was out of line to make this woman give birth in jail.

Essentially, it seems as though you are accusing me of being a bigot for being MORE sympathetic to an oppressed woman of color than you are, for being more willing to acknowledge that this may not be a simple question of her making bad choices. That is bizarre.

There are no low expectations in me towards anyone.

And I don't claim to speak FOR anybody.

Yes, she got a second chance. She wasn't just put on probation as a sentence, she was given a chance to go into a special program that cleared the conviction off your record once you finish probation.

The courts don't have to offer a system where you can have your record totally expunged once you complete probabtion. That is in fact a pretty unusual case, most people never get the opportunity to have a criminal record wiped clean. And having your record wiped clean is a HUGE thing for your future.

That is a second chance to start over with a clean slate. That isn't a white supremacist system going after her- they in fact gave her a huge break they never had to by offering her that special kind of probabtion.

You skipped right from that to her missing her court date while ignoring some pretty important facts in the middle.

She had a court date because she violated the terms of her probation within weeks of getting it. She was driving without a license.

She knew she was on probabtion and that meant she would be in trouble if she further violated the law. She knew she didn't have a valid license. She knew driving without a license was illegal.

She made the choice to drive without a license.

The courts didn't make her do it.
White supremacy did make her do it.
Her skin color didn't make her do it.

She is an adult who made that choice and got caught.


THAT choice she made is why she had a court date.

On top of that one of the required things on probation is to keep your addrsss up to date and make check ins with your PO. She failed to do that and therefore missed her court date.

The courts, white supremacy, her race or nothing else made her did that. It was her choice.

So she had an extra court date because she violated her probation. She didn't know about it because she was failing to properly keep in touch with her PO and keep him updated on her status and residence.

And she didn't miss that court date because she didn't trust the judge- you keep wanting to make her out to have only done this out of mistrust. She missed the court date because she wasn't aware of it because she wasn't keeping in touch with her PO and the courts. It was her irresponsible actions that were 100% to blame for missing that court date.

Then, when she finally gets in touch with her PO she finds out she has messed up and will most likely be arrested, so she has two choices. Go accept responsibility for her mistakes and do the sentence while asking for mercy or become a fugitive. Sure, maybe the judge would not have gone easy on her- he had no reason two given her repeated demonstration she wasn't going to act responsible on probabtion- but even so choosing to isntead become a fugitive means what- that when you eventually get caught, and you eventually will, what you get from the courts is going to be even worse because you chose to dig an even deeper hole.

None of that is because she didn't trust the system. None of her choices up until she had an arrest warrant issued can be explained away by some sort of "mistrust". You are ignoring repeated irresponsible and illegal acts by her and trying to explain it away as only her not trusting the system- but mistrust doesn't make you violate your probation multiple ways and times.

Her last encounter with a judge was when she was given the second chance and offered the deal to get her record expunged if she just finished her probation. She shit all over that chance within weeks by actions she freely chose to make. By the next time she had a chance to show up in court she had to reason to expect and leniency or to get off easy because her actions had shown she didn't deserve it at that point.

Sure, the system is stacked against people in many places. Sure, maybe she wouldn't have gotten as good a deal as a white person- but you can't declare that as an absolute fact. But you know what? You have a chance at being treated fairly if you follow the rules and show up. When you shit all over the rules and thumb your nose at the system when your on probation your going to get locked up 100% of the time no matter what race you are.

If this was a case where she had complied with what was needed and just had some minor shit they locked her up over I wouldn't be harsh on her. That's not the case here. She is to blame for her circumstances by at every juncture making the choice that made things worse for her.

to what you've presented.

Your accusations about my intent in writing what I wrote were way over the line.

I wrote with solidaristic intent, but failed to fully consider what I was writing. In the antiracist group I've been involved to, I've learned that intent doesn't matter, it's the effect that matters-and my words had an effect that was the opposite the intent, and that was a failure in my writing.

It was fair to say that what I wrote could be interpreted to mean what you read in them, and I take responsibility for being excessively sweeping in the statement I made. I deleted those words and admitted I was wrong to write them. Rather than leaving it at that, you imputed to me feelings I don't have and attitudes I don't have.

You have every right to have your own take on this situation, and I totally respect that. That right does not extend to not only making vicious accusations about another poster, but repeating those accusations when there was no reason to do so. I wrote something that conveyed meanings far different than what I meant it to-that's extremely different from your implication that I'm somehow deeply bigoted to the very core of my being.

My own view(and this derives from everything I've ever read or seen about how the justice system treats people of color in MOST of this country, even in some of the most "liberal" areas-and Chicago, under the rule of a mayor elected by a coalition of right-wing Dems and Republicans, is not liberal in any way whatsoever) is that this woman could have done everything the court asked, in exactly the way the court asked, and this judge, as well as most of the other white judges there, would STILL have done everything he could to make life hell for her, simply because of who she is.

As to the details I left out...I left them out simply because I thought everybody who's been following this thread knew them. Yes, driving without a license-and we don't know why she was driving without a license, the reasons she had for that may well have been justified in the practicality of the moment-but as probation violations go, that one was fairly trivial. It was a victimless violation.

It would be better if no one stole, or felt the need to steal.

Overall, I'd say this.

It would probably be better if, having stolen, receiving sentence and serving time, if this person had not violated probation-although I think she should at least have been given a chance to explain why.

It would, in theory, have been more prudent had she not missed the court date.

It's just that I don't accept that it's as simple as saying "she blew it and there's all there is to say".

Might I ask why you seem to be giving the criminal justice system so much of the benefit of the doubt?

... in jail

That's what drove Sandra Bland to suicide.

They don't profit from bail or even keep the money unless the person skips out. It's kept in a trust account and returned when the person shows up for court.

A person who is PART of the system is calling this out.

Does this not matter to you at all?

Another "tough on crime" judge kicking poor people in the ass for making stupid decisions and doing minor crimes while white collar criminals get financial bailouts, the Bush administration gets a parade for Iraq, and Trump uses the presidency as an ATM. The commenters at the bottom of the article sound like the kind of people who'd call Jesus of Nazareth a communist for cautioning them about casting stones.

NOTHING this woman did actually justified her imprisonment at that stage of her pregnancy. The world would not have come to an end had she yet again failed to appear, and anyone who suggests that she got what she deserves lacks even minimal decency.

And welcome to DU, btw!

All of them, including North Korea.

I don't think it's because we're so awesome and amazing at law enforcement. I think it's a sign that something is terribly wrong.