The Peace Bishop

So who are these people, the Pax Christi? I first ran into them in the early 80's and they were people completely outside of my experience.

I was a backslid Baptist and had no interest whatsoever in self-sacrifice for any purpose. These people seemed to waltz into prison without a second thought. And not even for some risk that might have brought a shot at some big bucks. Incredible.

There didn't seem to be very many of them. I supposed going to prison for religious reasons tended to winnow those few pieces of weighty grain from all the rest of us light little pieces of chaff the wind could blow away.

For me, Bishop John Fitzpatrick was the center of it all. He was the Bishop in Brownsville from 1971 until 1991 and I bumped into him only rarely, at a restaurant or a meeting. I wish I could report I felt some type of religious awe, but in those days (and maybe now) my religious awe receptors were blunted. I felt a different type of awe. The type of awe I felt around dangerous people: Billy Jack the junior high school bully, biker friends of my brother in Austin, the antiquities smuggler from Mexico, the reputed hit-man from up the Valley.

For one thing, he scared me because he was unafraid of a federal judge.

The Bishop and the Federal Judge were in a head to head dispute. The Federal Judge was a devout Catholic and was standing on THE LAW. The Bishop, GOD'S LAW.

The faithful, including the director of Casa Romero, were helping refugees from El Salvador. They were "transporting" refugees in violation of federal criminal law. So they were being prosecuted.

This is how the Fifth Circuit describes the Bishops position:

Bishop John Fitzpatrick, Bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brownsville, testified that meeting material human needs represents an essential aspect of Christianity, and that each individual remains free to fulfill this obligation according to the directives of his or her own conscience. Although no law of the Roman Catholic Church specifically requires Roman Catholics to provide sanctuary or rides to Salvadorans, Bishop Fitzpatrick believes that providing such assistance constitutes an appropriate expression of the Christian gospel.

I was, in those days, still trying to be a good lawyer which I thought meant supporting THE LAW. But in this dispute I knew that the Bishop was expressing one of those self-evident truths. You, know, that thing about being created equal and endowed by our Creator with those inalienable rights. So, I knew the Bishop was right and the Judge was wrong. This from a backslid Baptist.

Of course, though when the law and God's law come into conflict, people of conscience go to prison. This was the Pax Christi.

So who are these Pax Christi? They support "Christian nonviolence on the personal, communal, national and international levels...nuclear, conventional and domestic disarmament, an end to the international arms trade, economic conversion to a non-military economy, conscientious objection, and nonviolent alternatives to war...the struggle against economic injustice, militarism, and environmental destruction which are particularly harmful to those who are poor, minorities, children, and women...and universal human rights, both at home and abroad, through solidarity with oppressed and marginalized people struggling for dignity."

The group was formed just after World War II when German and French Catholics met to discuss the senselessness of having killed each other by the millions in just a few years. It came to the United States in 1972.

OK, how did that fit me? Well, first I wasn't religious and second I hadn't exactly been a pacifist. It is true, I had opposed the Viet Nam war, but this conviction only came after I drew a number 53 in the draft lottery, pretty well assuring if the war didn't end, I'd be draft. (It did. I wasn't.) Before I drew my lottery number I favored stopping the dominoes and I expressed the certainty that, "Some things are worth fighting for." (Yes, even the grammar was bad).

And not being a pacifist, although I had the courage for the occasional fist fight in High School, I certainly didn't have the courage to stand up to a federal judge as a lawyer. So before the Pax Christi Bishop and the Pax Christi members, I stood in dread and wonder.

I haven't gotten much braver as the years have passed, but I have come to the view this fearless, small group are right about most everything. Kathy and I converted to Catholicism. And now, when I have money for dues, I join to get the newsletters and to the extent my faint-heartedness permits, I participate.

Dear Raulito, please give a message to our new President if you see her.

Well, Raulito, this arrest of the Women in White is not good news. That's fidelista stuff and we need to turn over a new leaf. While you are at it, I suggest you go ahead and cut loose all 75 of the dissident husbands.

We want a new level of tolerance to go along with our distributism. After all, I'll bet when each of those husbands gets his own little plot of land, gardening will become more interesting that protest and with all of the changes you will be making, there will be little to protest against.

I know, I know, George W. and his predecessor have their own violations. I have met with protesters who spent six months in the Federal Prisons for protesting at the School of the Americas.

And of course the Berrigan Brothers. And all of those conscientious objectors.

And then there are those reservists and soldiers who change their minds about going to Iraq. Some were recruited as minors.

I sometimes teach with one of Mumia Abu Jamal's lawyers.

Yes, Raulito, it is true, the Human Rights Watch faults the United States for Guantanamo, torture, secret prisons, detainee abuse, incarcerating a bigger percentage of the our population than anywhere else, death penalty, juvenile life without parole and abusing the rights of non-citizens. Whew.

Cuba, though, appears to have the worst record in Latin America. You have the death penalty and bad prison conditions like us, but Human Rights Watch gives you bad grades on other things:

Cuba remains the one country in Latin America that represses nearly all forms of political dissent. There have been no significant policy changes since Fidel Castro relinquished direct control of the government to his brother Raul Castro in August 2006. The government continues to enforce political conformity using criminal prosecutions, long-term and short-term detentions, mob harassment, police warnings, surveillance, house arrests, travel restrictions, and politically-motivated dismissals from employment. The end result is that Cubans are systematically denied basic rights to free expression, association, assembly, privacy, movement, and due process of law.

I highlighted that second sentence, because I want you to know everyone is hoping you will show Fidel how it's done.

I also know that George W. has been unwilling to talk to you, but maybe a little more distributism and some fewer long-term and short detentions will make it less embarrassing to hang out with you.

Hillary and Obama have both said they (with conditions) they will talk to you. And Nixon went to China; so maybe McCain would work things out with you.

If you see any of them, would you mention the problems we have with people drowning trying to cross the river near Brownsville and the tent city in Raymondville and all of these death penalty prosecutions in Brownsville. We could really use some help.

Those are pearls that were his eyes: /Nothing of him that doth fade

OK, Readers True, back to the face.

My niece Ana is an engineering student at Carnegie Mellon. The picture you see at the right is an example of work being done there that has the potential to make fine measurements of different parts of the face and face movement from videotapes.

Other attempts have involved maybe a hundred dots on the face that are monitored by software that measures changes.

There are a number of security companies that are hawking products that are intended to allow videotapes of crowds to pick out criminals. These seem to not to have been particularly successful yet, but the technology continues apace.

I was first exposed to the IDENT system for fingerprints about ten years ago when I started representing people accused of illegal entry into the United States. My first reaction was to have my clients refuse to incriminate themselves. How in the world would they ever prove who this guy was and that he was a Mexican national? Well, as a seasoned Assistant US Attorney showed me, they had solved that problem: Automatic Biometric Identification System (IDENT) using automated fingerprint identification systems (AFIS).

Every illegal alien would get each index finger swiped in a machine that recorded it. This then could be compared against a database (actually several databases) of other fingerprints to see if the alien was a recidivist or had a criminal history.

The old INS had been experimenting with this system in 1994 and by the time I was exposed to it in 1998 it was hot stuff.

Decades of success in just lying about your name and age ran head on into this new technology. (Can anyone imagine the plot of Les Miserable today with IDENT? Jean Valjean would never get the chance to reform and Javert would be replaced by a file clerk).

Now I love cool new gadgets and technology. I try to get the latest stuff whether or not I can afford it or figure out how to use it.

But advancing technology certainly changes old ideas about fresh starts and second chances. It also makes possible crimes of previously unimaginable magnitude.

I am still getting my mind around the complicity of New York based IBM in the holocaust. Without specially New York designed machines and punch cards to keep track of and route Polish Jews. They calculated rate of deaths per square kilometer due to progressive starvation and the number of Jews to be transported to the death camps. They kept tabs on trains dispatched to and from Auschwitz and Treblinka.

Says Robert Wolfe, the foremost expert on Nazi documentation and formerly chief of captured German records for the National Archives: ``For those who have complained that the proof is not there, this new evidence gives refutation. The juxtaposition of all these sources -- the new German documents, Justice Department records, the IBM files and eyewitness sources -- all together indicate it was not just trading with the enemy, not just IBM and the Third Reich. This is the proof that IBM enabled the Holocaust. The connection to New York is now proven.'' (Click on the title for the citation).

IBM ENABLED THE HOLOCAUST! My Sweet Lord. Why isn't this big news and shocking to all? Why isn't this part of the culture of understanding corporate evil? Why hasn't this monster been destroyed by Justice (Department of) or at least by justice? Why has not the wrath of an angry God ripped Big Blue asunder?

So my love of the new technology always comes with a queasy feeling. What is the human cost to the IDENT system alone. One anti-immigrant website argues there are more than 366,000 incarcerated illegal immigrants. http://immigrationcounters.com/

That may be high, because the Justice Department numbers look like they are closer to 200,000. In any case, the IDENT system has enabled a new efficiency that allows incarcerating huge numbers who w0uld previously have been sent back, unidentified.

I am no longer able to hear about or meet people incarcerated for immigration offenses without seeing in my minds eye, also, young wives and children who are now left to destitution. (Little Cosette cannot be saved by Jean Valjean because he is in Three Rivers federal prison). I know about them because they call and write and visit me. They wait out in the hall at court. These, Readers True, are real people and it is hard to meet them and not have the flesh crawl every time one the young men they depend upon gets duck-walked away in chains.

Automated Biometric Identification Systems for the face are now here and will soon be highly efficient. For a while, glasses or a new mustache would fool the systems, but now some of the new 3-D systems claim they can make an identification even with a stocking over the face and sun glasses.

The data bases for Illegal Entries have been collecting photographs from the beginning. But this is a sea change. Soon it will be possible to take photographs of crowds and identify everyone.

It will also be possible to sort these based on age, gender and race, prior criminal history, income level, house value, employment history, disease history, book purchases, credit card expenditures.

It will be possible to correlate the face with automobile ownership and travel history as recorded in GPS systems. And cell phone use as shown by tower locations and with searches of key words used in the conversations. And e-mail communications based on key words used and internet search history.

Also, check another dimension noted by Mr. Kurgan in his blog for today: http://andyoubrutus.blogspot.com/

If the FACS develops to its full promise, it will be possible to pick out who is worried or frightened or angry. And all this from a videotape of everyone at a football game or a protest march.

Just think what the Nazis could have done with this neat technology.

Before We Get To The Waterboarding

A standing joke among criminal defense lawyers is the perspicacity of arresting officers in finding probable cause to search a truck or car for contraband.

"I suspected he was carrying drugs, because he would not look at me and the guilty avert their eyes." Or, "I suspected he was carrying drugs, because he looked right at me and that is what drug dealers do to avoid suspicion."

"He acted nervous." Or, "He acted too calm for someone who had been stopped by the police."

And the one I like: "He only had one key with him, and that is typical of drug dealers." The first time I heard that I was in the courtroom with only one key with me.

Many officers clearly have better noses than bloodhounds:

"I smelled the strong odor of burning marihuana." And, "I smelled the distinctive odor of wet marihuana."

And another favorite. "The car was empty, but I could tell it had been abandoned because of the smell of illegal aliens." I prepared a cross-examination on this to test the officer's nose on distinguishing between an illegal alien or a permanent resident or merely a laser passing card. Also, I thought it would be instructive if his nose could tell whether it was a Mexican illegal alien or a Central American illegal alien who might have a right to sanctuary claims.

At border crossings, a similar phenomena occurs in the claimed ability of the agents to tell a truth teller from a liar.

The typical statement: "No, I didn't know there were ten kilos of cocaine welded into the gas tank of the car I was driving."

The feds do not audiotape or videotape interviews, so there is always a dispute about what was actually said. If two officers are present, their versions will differ slightly. And then the accused will have a different version. And then there will be a dispute about what was written down and when. And how it should have been translated and if the officer actually understood.

The officer at trial will want to testify, "He hesitated and then stammered in his response, and moved his hand in a characteristic evasive manner, so in my experience, I could tell he was lying."

Just like the movie in which the prospective father in law claimed he was a human lie detector machine.

The inquiry to come, si Dios quiere, Readers True, is whether a lie detector machine or a lie detector person can really tell if someone is lying. This is of interest to me, naturally, because if you can tell when someone is lying I want to be able to do it for the purposes of judging a witness If the claim is just hogwash, I want to be able to show that during cross-examination.

In truth, I don't want to know if my friends are trying to protect me from an ugly truth, so I have no desire to apply the skill in personal life.

However, if a Javert or a Flambeau or a Monk can read the liar, it would be nice to find out. On the other hand, how do we distinguish that officer from Barney Fife and Fearless Fosdick when they come to testify?

For those among you who sit on the front row and raise your hand to be recognized, I offer the following texts in preparation for these (occasional and intermittent) sessions:

The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals by Charles Darwin.
Interrogations, Confessions, and Entrapment edited by G. Daniel Lassiter.
Never be Lied to Again by David J. Lieberman.
Principles of Kinesic Interview and Interrogation by Stan B. Walters.
What the Face Reveals edited by Paul Ekman and Erika L. Rosenberg.