I might prefer a prisoner to a politician.
In my law practice, many of my clients are lifers. A lifer has been sentenced to prison for life. In California, a life sentence can be irrevocable, or it can come with the possibility of release – a.k.a. parole. All of my lifer clients have the possibility of parole. My duty is go with my clients before commissioners of the parole board and advocate for them. It is hard job, because parole is hard to obtain. It is harder for my clients than for me.
Most of my lifers are murderers. Some have killed multiple victims. One client killed a man, got released on parole, and then killed another man. Some of my clients committed lesser-but-still-grave offenses, such as kidnaping or intentional mayhem.
My friends wonder what it is like to interact with murderers. It feels very normal. Maybe that’s because they are on best behavior with me, but I don’t think so. Almost all of them have, at least to some degree, reformed. You can usually see this in their prison records: indifferent or hostile to prison rules coming in; increasing conformity to the rules as time goes by.
Recently, I watched a famous politician on the internet. I reacted to him in the way that my friends expect me to react to my clients. I was disgusted. On reflection, I discovered that I feared my clients less, and respected them more, than this politician.
2. The prisoner and the politician: biographies.
That might sound hyperbolic. Let me justify my opinion by drawing a comparison between the prisoners and the politician. I’ll start by talking about their biographies.
My client did not know his biological father. He was physically abused by his step-father. His mother did not protect him, in part because she was often drunk. He did poorly in school.
Because my client got along poorly with his mother and his step-father, during high school he moved in with a man he worked for. That man molested him.
In his late teens, my client burglarized a relative’s home. A house-sitter interrupted the burglary, and my client’s accomplice beat her to death. My client claims that he did not witness the beating, nor know about it until it was almost over. But perhaps he deliberately minimizes his knowledge of the crime or his involvement in it, or both.
My client has labored to rehabilitate himself during his decades in prison. He has taken many courses about anger and violence. He has regularly attended Alcoholics Anonymous and knows his 12-steps. He has acquired vocations in prison.
His early prison career was marked by many 115's – serious rules violations. Now, not so much. But he did within months of his parole hearing pick up a 115 for possession of contraband – a smuggled cell phone.
He had the cell phone because wanted to be able to talk unrestrictedly with his son. A correctional officer explained to me that cell phones are a security risk because any un-monitored prisoner contact with the outside is perilous; but that most prisoners who possess this contraband do so because they miss their families.
As for his upbringing, his parents were divorced when he was little, but his mother’s second husband, an Army officer, adopted him when he was five. He had regular contact with his natural father, a Navy officer.
After he graduated from high school, he followed his high school math teacher to Atlanta. While he studied at Emory University, he married her. After he graduated from Emory, he obtained a Ph.D. from Tulane University. His first job after finishing school was teaching.
After unsuccessful races for Congress, Gingrich was elected to his first term in 1978. During his first term, he divorced his cancer-stricken wife and married his second of three wives.
Gingrich at one time was considered a model for even Democrats for emulate – a man who percolated with brilliance. Presently, a new tactic eclipses his enunciation of brilliant ideas. His new public persona is less glittery with fresh ideas and more focused on scathing attacks, denunciations untethered to truth.
In typical fashion, Gingrich recently warned newly-confirmed Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan away from deciding cases by examining sharia. (Sharia is the law code that derives from the Qur’an.) He threatened that she would not remain in office if she did. The imagined source of Kagan’s attraction to sharia apparently is that, as dean of Harvard Law, she accepted an endowment on behalf of the university. It came from a wealthy Saudi, and its purpose was to create four professorships at Harvard Law to study and teach Islamic finance.
Gingrich knows better. My own law professor taught comparative criminal law; this included study of the Soviet criminal-justice system. But that did not make him a communist. And I studied Greek mythology as a teenager. But I never sacrificed so much as an aphid to Zeus. You can study something – and Islamic finance is important in the world – without wanting it.
This is pure Gingrich in his present incarnation.
3. Part 1 conclusion.
In Part 2, I will begin to construct a 10-point comparison between my client and Gingrich, to say who is more admirable, or less dangerous.
Links
A Gingrich biography: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/newt/boyernewt2.html
A report on a typical scathing speech by Gingrich, including his remarks about Kagel and sharia: http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenote/2010/09/newt-gingrich-kathleen-sebelius-behaving-in-the-spirit-of-soviet-tyranny.html
Kagel and sharia: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/michaeltomasky/2010/aug/05/usa-islam-elena-kagan-sharia-nonsense:
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