Unnecessary crime of the day: Hazing

Following up on my post about Judge Posner's musings on things that don't need to be crimes, here is a fresh example: hazing.

This will be a continuing series. 

Posner on Decriminalization

Judge Posner has a lengthy essay / book review in the New Republic, discussing the topic of crime and punishment and the fact that too many Americans are in prison. It is worth a read.

Like me, Judge Posner thinks there should be fewer crimes. Decriminalization of marijuana and other drugs is the low-hanging fruit, but Posner does not stop there:

There are also other candidates for decriminalization, such as prostitution and copyright infringement (which should be just a civil offense); and it is time that the age of consent were reduced to 16 or even 15, in recognition of contemporary sexual mores. Gambling should be decriminalized, and probably environmental offenses as well, such as killing a migratory bird; such offenses should be left to the civil law, with its financial sanctions.

I'm with him on prostitution, of course, but some of his other ideas strike me as a little strange—or at least trivial. How many people are wasting away in prison on a copyright rap? And would changing the age of consent from 16 to 15 make any difference whatsoever to prison populations?

I'm all for legalizing all forms of gambling, but again I wonder how many people actually go to jail on gambling offenses. When I was a law clerk, Judge Rosenbaum did preside over a money-laundering trial that came out of an FBI take down of a St. Paul bookie operation, so it's not fanciful. But the defendant who was convicted (one was acquitted) was sentenced to probation. My understanding is that most money laundering and gambling prosecutions are efforts to go after the more public manifestations of organized crime. So I guess if you made gambling legal it might have the side-benefit of making organized crime less profitable.

I guess I'd be okay with decriminalizing migratory bird murder, too, but it would be pretty far down the list as well.

What do you think, Mr. Gillette? Should the Man get out of the copyright-enforcement racket? Any other crimes you'd like to see taken off the books?

Tattoos part deux

Last month, I posted about a gentleman accused of murder in Kansas had to bring a motion asking the court to allow him to cover up a tattoo on his neck that spelled "MURDER" (or "REDRUM" depending on how you were looking at it). At the time, I thought it was sort of a unique motion. I was wrong. This month brings a similar motion in an Indiana murder trial.

First thought is not always the best thought.

I belong to the generation of people that cannot point to World War II or the Great Depression as a thing that made my childhood rough. Instead, the thing I can point out to children as being rough about my childhood is that people only got 3 or 4 channels on their TV.* These were ABC, CBS, NBC, and PBS. If I recall correctly, the only baseball we could watch was the Game of the Week on Saturday afternoon. Since it was often nice out when the game was airing, I did not watch it very much.

The United States is Still Paying a Veteran's Pension ...

... to the child of a Civil War vet.

Punk in Drublic (apologies to NOFX)

The Arizona Republic has a story about a recent ruling by the Arizona Court of Appeals that overturned a Scottsdale, Arizona ordinance that prohibited being drunk in public. The ruling is here. Why can't the city ban being drunk in public? Because it turns out that an Arizona state law prevents local governments (counties, municipalities, or "other" political subdivisions) from adopting or enforce any local law, ordinance or resolution includes "being a common drunkard or being found in an intoxicated condition" as one of the elements of a criminal offense. The state law has been on the books for over 40 years. 

Is Oklahoma ok?

Two recent news items caught my interest this morning. The first is Slate's story about a study by the National Academy of Sciences that 1 in 25 criminal defendants sentenced to death in the United States are actually innocent. The other is this story about a botched execution in Oklahoma. As a result of the botched execution, Clayton Lockett "convulsed several times," spoke three times after prison officials tried to declare that Mr. Lockett was unconscious and according to USA Today eventually died of a heart attack 40 minutes after the execution began.

When a tattoo might mean trouble.

The poet Alan Ginsberg used the motto "first thought best thought" as his guiding principal on how to be a fearless writer. Should that motto apply when the writing in question is a tattoo?

A nice return on an investment.

In 1985, former Wisconsin Senator Herb Kohl purchased the Milwaukee Bucks basketball team for $18 million. According to ESPN, Senator Kohl is now selling a majority interest in the team for $550 million. The Bucks had a record of 15-67 this year, which is the worst record of any team in the NBA. I know the value of an NBA franchise is not based entirely on the team's record but one wonders what price Senator Kohl could have gotten for the team if it had been good.

Being the champion and the nature of reality.

Given his love of basketball, I am a little surprised that Mr. Torvik has not already pointed out that our joint alma mater, the University of Minnesota, won the NIT men's basketball championship last night. Some might say that the Golden Gophers are one of two national champions in men's college basketball. Given that the other tournament, run by NCAA, contains 68 teams, others might say this means the Gophers are the 69th best team in the country. It's all a matter of perspective.