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By B John Burns
January 28, 2010
It was an interesting spectacle last night to watch six Supreme Court justices sitting front row center (two were actually in the second row), taking a verbal beating from the President of the United States about a case they decided last week. Five of them, appropriately, displayed no reaction.
I agree with the President that the decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission is a major defeat in the effort to recapture our so-called democracy from Big Business.
On the other hand, I worry about elected officials making political fodder out of judicial decisions, whether we agree with them or not. Especially this year.
In the next few months, we’re going to be hearing a lot of misguided rhetoric about how our state Supreme Court abandoned the Constitution in going against what some argue is the will of the people in deciding Varnuim v. Brien (the gay marriage case). The people should be allowed to vote, the argument goes, upon whether a particular class of citizens should enjoy the same level of rights as others. It was always my impression that a bill of rights was incorporated into our Constitution for the very purpose of protecting the minority against the majority and that a judicial branch, not subject to political pressure, existed to assure that those rights are not impeded. But what do I know, right?
But last night our President, a former Constitutional Law professor at the Law School from which my boss graduated, used his State of the Union address to challenge a decision of the Court.
This is what I think. I think that if President Obama, for whatever reason, wanted to castigate the United States Supreme Court for something, the President should have castigated the Court for Gore v. Bush. Finally, we have somebody on the bully pulpit who can look those guys in the eye and exclaim, “Look what you did to us! What the hell were you thinking? Look what you put us through!!”
Of course, Chief Justice Rehnquist would not have been there to hear it, but it would have been fun anyway. |
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By B John Burns
January 8, 2010
This week brought one of the final chapters in the saga of Terry Harrington and Curtis McGhee. We all know the story. Two days after his 19th birthday, Mr. Harrington was sentenced, along with Mr. McGhee, to life in prison without parole for a 1977 murder of a retired police officer, committed at a time when Mr. Harrington was captain of his high school football team in Omaha, and being recruited for a possible athletic scholarship to Yale.
Nearly all of Mr. Harrington’s avenues for relief had run dry (like I say, you know this story), but Mr. Harrington’s family never gave up on him. When they protested his innocence to Anne Danaher in the parking lot of the Iowa State Penitentiary, where she was the prison barber, she listened. She invested her own money and her own time into digging up police reports and other records relating to the 1977 prosecution. From them, Ms. Danaher was able to ascertain that the defendants’ attorneys were not provided with highly exculpatory evidence that pointed directly towards another suspect, and that would have laid waste to the credibility of the state’s star witness against them.
Ms. Danaher brought this information to Waterloo attorney Mary Kennedy who initiated a very late action for postconviction relief. In 2003, when all reasonable hope had dissipated that Mr. Harrington or Mr. McGhee would ever leave the Iowa prison system with a pulse, the Iowa Supreme Court stepped up and did the right thing. After twenty five years in prison. |
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By B John Burns
December 30, 2009
If I was Assistant Black Hawk County Attorney Joel Dalrymple, I would just keep my mouth shut and let the heat from today’s decision in State v. Mosley just blow over.
But I’m not Assistant Black Hawk County Attorney Joel Dalrymple, and he took the other road.
“Obviously, we don’t agree with it,” he told the Des Moines Register within hours of the Court of Appeals’ decision. “I think it’s particularly disappointing for the victim, who has already had to testify in two separate trials and re-live this publicly.”
I’m sure the victim is disappointed. The victim has a right to be disappointed – disappointed in the Black Hawk County Attorney’s office. If the Black Hawk Attorney had not violated Iowa Rule of Evidence 5.404(b) in Mr. Mosely’s first trial, the victim would not have had to testify at the second. And if Dalrymple had not filed numerous motions to continue Mr. Mosely’s retrial, after the defendant repeatedly asserted in pretrial conferences that he wanted to go to trial within the 90-day speedy trial limitation period, the victim’s testimony at the second trial would not go for naught.
Hopefully, Dalrymple explained these things to the disappointed victim, and apologized for putting the victim in this position.
I don’t usually read unpublished Court of Appeals’ decisions, but I read this one. And I’m disappointed, too. I’m disappointed that Judge Vaitheswaran’s opinion contained no citations to 4A Iowa Practice: Criminal Procedure.
Congratulations to Patty Reynolds for winning Mr. Mosleys’ second appeal. The first was won by Jim Tomka after he passed away.
Hopefully, this isn’t the last time Assistant Black Hawk County Attorney Joel Dalrymple finds himself disappointed. He earned it. |
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The True Meaning of Christmas |
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By B John Burns
December 24, 2009
Several of you have mentioned to me that they haven’t seen much activity on my blog in the last few months. This is true. My attention has been on other things.
First, of course, I am working feverishly to finish the revisions for 4A Iowa Practice: Criminal Procedure. They’re due next Friday, and I’ve just a few touches to put on them before they’re ready. Based on past experience, the 2010 edition should be out in April (tax refund time).
Secondly, there’s “High Adventure on the Road”. Every year since the early 80s, I’ve ended the year making a recording of 15 to 20 of what I consider to be the best songs I’ve written during the year. This way, I’ll have them to go back to, to learn the ones I want to use in my show and to be able to shop the ones I think I might be able to sell to other artists.
In the past, I’ve given out a couple dozen of them to my closest friends, to get their input. Which ones should I be playing? Which ones should I bury forever? The quality of the CDs was less than that of a studio recording. If some audience member would come up to me at a gig wanting to buy a CD, I’d just give them one.
This year is different. This year, I took part of the royalties from 4A Iowa Practice: Criminal Procedure and invested in a 24-track state-of-the-art Tascam digital portable recording studio, to replace the 16-track Roland I’ve been using for the past 10 years. |
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Poems From Guantanamo
Published by the University of Iowa Press
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