WhackyNation

While the fate of killer Naveed Haq continues to mark time, now that the judge has declared a mistrial, the Seattle region and the entire nation goes on ignoring the real issue in the Haq case and in every other case in which an admitted killer pleads insanity as a defense.

In that sense, the American view is archaic and murderers get off the hook because our court system fails to meet the issue head-on. In Denmark and a few other countries, killers relying on an “insanity” defense face two trials — a system the U.S. and all other countries should adopt.

In the two-trial system, a defendant’s case is first heard by a bank of reputable psychiatrists, whose mission is simple and limited in scope. Their duty is to hear basic evidence in the case and cross-examination of the defendant to determine whether he or she is clearly mentally insane or was insane at the time of the murder.

If the psychiatrists find that the defendant is insane or was insane at the time of the murder, the defendant is ordered to a mental-health asylum for treatment and, possibly, for lifetime care. If, on the other hand, the psychiatrists find that the defendant was faking insanity at the time of the crime, he or she is then ordered to trial.

At the second trial, the defendant can no longer use an insanity plea as a defense and is tried on the basis of the facts in the case. Any reference to insanity is ruled out of order by the judge and cannot be considered by a jury. The two-trial system is not only humane; it is plausible and fair to everyone concerned.

The European two-trial system for insanity/murder cases is based on sound judgment and eminent fairness. It recognizes the fundamental truth that ordinary citizens are not qualified to determine whether a man or woman is insane or was insane at the time of a murder.

Thus, a jury in the second trial is responsible only for determining the guilt or innocence of a defendant — based exclusively on evidence. Ordinary jurors should not be saddled with the complex decision of whether a defendant was insane at the time a murder was committed.

One wonders why neither associations of lawyers nor members of Congress have ever pondered the issue and sought to introduce the two-trial system to courts of law in the case of killers who plead insanity as a defense. Perhaps an organization of ordinary citizens can succeed where lawyers and lawmakers have failed.

I find it significant and disturbing that, before the deadlock occurred in Haq’s case and the judge dismissed the jury, the jurors had already decided that “Haq was not guilty of first-degree murder” but they couldn’t agree on a lesser charge of second-degree attempted murder.

Obviously, they were influenced by Haq’s plea of insanity, as introduced in the trial by his lawyers. The jurors did not have the expertise and training, as psychiatrists have, to determine the sanity or insanity of the defendant. I rest my case.

We are now feeling the effects of a serious error that was made earlier this year by the nation’s highest court, the Supreme Court of the United States. It came in a decision by the court to overrule lower courts and approve the “top two” voting system that had been approved unwisely by Washington State’s voters back in 2004.

History, tradition, and just plain common sense created and sustained the right of political parties to nominate their own candidates. That right, enunciated by the forefathers in writing the U.S. Constitution and other statutes, was an important process that was and still is the basis for the two-party system.

For more than two centuries, the two-party system has been the apparatus that has sustained the political health of the world’s greatest democracy, the republic of the United States of America. Like it or not, the two-party system has placed great responsibility on the two major parties, the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, to find and sponsor the best candidates for all elective offices.

If the top-two voting system remains the law in many regions, it will wreak political havoc wherever it is permitted to flourish. We can already see the serious danger of the top-two process. In many state elections just this year, the voting public will have to select between two top Democrats or two top Republicans, reflecting the political preferences of voters in each district.

It’s no surprise that leaders of the two major political parties in Washington State — and elsewhere throughout the U S. — already see the danger in retention of a top-two system that actually gives voters little choice in choosing between the political philosophies of two candidates from the same party.

It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to project what will happen if the top-two system becomes the voting law of the land. Those regions that have been traditionally strong Democratic areas will never have a chance to consider opposing candidates from the Republican Party — and vice versa in the case of strong Republican regions.

What would be bound to happen is that both major parties would soon become irresponsible and lose their interest in upholding good government and promoting worthy candidates for all offices. Candidates should be responsible not only to the voters in their district; they should also be responsible to their political party.

What seems to have been forgotten in the rush to install top-two systems is the fact that the robust two-party system, supported by healthy and vigorous Democratic and Republican Parties, has been the meat and potatoes, to choose an old but wise reference, of a political system that has sustained America all these years.

I am surprised and terribly disappointed that at least a majority of justices in the Supreme Court of the United States failed to take into consideration the value of the two-party system in the political fiber of America. Perhaps they will change their minds the next time the top-two system comes to their attention in a future case.

The grueling, tragic murder trial of Naveed Haq, now going on in a Seattle court, brings up a suggestion I have made, along with several other observers, to effect profound changes in jurisprudence regarding plaintiffs whose attorneys say should not be convicted because they are mentally unbalanced and in need of serious treatment.

Haq, who was born in Pakistan and has been a U.S. resident for a number of years, committed a deplorable crime back in 2006, when he penetrated the headquarters of the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle, shot and killed one member of the federation and seriously wounded five other women.

On the witness stand, Haq’s mother recited a sorrowful tale of her son’s rapidly deteriorating mental state. Of course, she was appealing to the jury to excuse her son’s behavior and deadly action. On the other hand, the prosecuting attorney in the case has shrugged off the “mental status” claim and pursued the position that Haq was sane and that he carefully planned his murderous action.

Was he sane or insane and was he responsible or not responsible for his deadly assault? These are questions that keeping coming up in many other murder cases in American courts. And, as is the case in the countless other cases, the Seattle jurors in Haq’s murder trial are given the unenviable task of judging whether a plaintiff is sane or insane.

In the commentaries I have made on such cases in the past four or five decades, I have stated, as I still do, that jurors do not have the expertise and experience to make a decision regarding the mental state of plaintiffs in murder or other criminal proceedings. That decision should be left to psychiatrists and/or psychologists.

It is far too big and too impractical a task to ask ordinary citizens to make judgments in such cases. Therefore, as I have said so many times, a drastic change should be made in federal, state, and local laws to correct a major flaw in our court systems. It’s a change that was made several years ago in Denmark and one or two other European countries. Under Danish law, for example, plaintiffs in murder cases, who say they are mentally ill and were insane at the time they committed a murder, must first go through a trial in which reputable psychiatrists and/or psychologists determine whether a plaintiff is a bonafide mental case.

If they decide that a plaintiff is insane and was not fully responsible for his or her actions, the plaintiff is ordered immediately into an agency treating the mentally ill — there to stay until the state or nation decides when the plaintiff is cured and should be released, or whether he or she should remain in the agency for the rest of his or her life.

If the experts decide the plaintiff is sane and was mentally stable at the time of the crime, he or she is then ordered to face trial for that crime. In the second trial before ordinary citizens, neither the plaintiff nor his or her lawyers can bring up the mental issue — and the judge proceeds with the trial on the basis of the evidence.

I think the “two trial” idea is one that is based on common sense and fairness and that it should become the law in federal, state, and local courts. What would it take to make the idea a reality in the United States? It would take the combined resources of the President and Congress, all 50 state legislatures, and all county and city councils. Maybe that sounds like an insurmountable task. But, if an advanced country like Denmark can do it and make it succeed, America can and should do it, too.

In my many years of work as a reporter, columnist, critic, and TV/Radio commentator, I have often been critical of actions or inactions by the courts or by judges at many levels of jurisprudence. This time, however, I am happy to single out a judge for great praise and to wish many other judges in America would learn from his most recent decision.

His name is Peter Paul Olszewski, Jr., and he is a judge in Lucerne County in Pennsylvania. The Associated Press reports the judge is outspoken from the bench and that he is known in the county particularly because he provides extremely creative sentences for wrongdoers.

In this case, three Spanish-speaking defendants and their attorneys appeared before Judge Olszewski on charges of being in a group of young men who accosted two men on a city street, asked them if they had any marijuana, ordered them to empty their pockets, struck them on the head, threatened them with a gun, and told them to stay out of the neighborhood.

The defendants, ranging in age from 17 to 22, were the principals in the attack, although there were other Spanish-speaking young men in the group of attackers. A fourth fellow arrested was already in jail on other charges, so he was not included in the sentencing by Judge Olszewski.

The judge sentenced the three principals to jail terms of at least four months, but he also granted them immediate parole of one year on condition that they go to school to learn to speak and write English! In passing sentence, the judge said all three would be given English tests at the end of their parole period, then added:

“If you don’t pass the English test, you will return to this court and receive the full sentence I had first intended — a sentence of 24 months.”

According to the A.P., Judge Olszewski has created a remarkable impression in the community, not always for his unusual sentences but also for his record of helping those persons who are hauled before him for a variety of infractions.

“Judge Olszewski has ordered young defendants who are dropouts to finish school. He often orders defendants to get full-time employment. But he also has his staff of workers at the courthouse coordinate with an employment agency in the county to help them find the jobs.”

What an extraordinary judge he is! How I wish his example could be adopted by law schools and courts at every level throughout the U.S. Imagine what a breath of fresh air could filter through the illegal-immigration issue if lawmakers and jurists would heed Judge Olszewski’s order to three miscreants to learn to speak English, or else….!

Oh, yes. There’s one more important point to be made. The three young men told to learn to speak English were legal residents, not illegals. That should be added information for all the foreigners who have entered the U.S. legally but who have not bothered to learn the language — or, perhaps, even to become citizens.

Once again, judges in the Left-leaning 9^th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, headquartered in San Francisco, have rendered what amounts to an un-American decision in a case involving Costco Wholesale, the Issaquah-based firm. When I say “un-American,” I mean a three-judge panel of the 9^th Circuit Court has violated not only the U.S. Constitution but also the historic American tradition of free trade and competition.

Specifically, the three judges have overturned a lower court’s decision, which agreed that Costco had a right to price its liquor, wine, and beer sales below the prices mandated by the Washington State Liquor Control Board. Costco sued, saying the state board’s control of prices was, as a Seattle Times report put it, “anti-competitive and violated a federal law designed to limit monopolies.”

In its ruling, the three-judge panel declared that “the liquor board can ban distributors from offering high-volume discounts and variations in prices to different retailers.” It also “upheld rules requiring distributors to make deliveries to each store, rather than a retailer’s central warehouse.”

What a monstrous decision that is! The justices apparently are unaware of the nature of America’s free, competitive system of commerce and the right of private firms to set prices on goods and services at whatever level they wish consistent with principles in a society that has prospered under the capitalist system.

Orders such as the panel judges have issued are similar to those found in Socialist or Communist states, where dictators or ruling tyrants run a country’s affairs without the judgment of the people or private industry. Of course, private industry seldom functions in such countries.

As could have been expected, Jim Senegal, Costco’s chief executive operating out of the company’s national headquarters in Issaquah, said he was not particularly happy with the panel’s decision, which is an obvious understatement. However, he added: “We don’t think the 9^th Circuit Court was as thoughtful about protecting the consumer as it should be.”

I think he could have used much stronger words in condemning the court’s action. Now, he has a choice of filing an appeal with the full 9^th Circuit Court or taking his case to Washington and the Supreme Court of the United States. Based on previous Liberal findings of the 9^th Circuit Court, I hope Senegal instructs his attorneys to take his case to the highest court in the land.

Meanwhile, I am reminded of columns and editorials I wrote some years ago in Seattle newspapers calling for the state legislature to abolish the Liquor Control Board and turn over administration and control of liquor, beer, and wine sales to private industry, where it belongs.

The next step, then, probably should be taken by the legislature to ban the liquor control board and get the state out of the liquor, wine, and beer business entirely.

It has become starkly evident that the voters of King County and Washington State have their work cut out for them at the voting booth in the elections of the next few years. Their task will be to remember the names of the justices, on one hand, and the King County Council members, on the other hand, who gave the back of their political hand to the taxpayers of the county and the state.

First in line for repudiation by taxpaying voters should be the five justices who thumbed their noses at voters by rejecting I-747, the tax-saving measure voters had approved a few years earlier by a resounding majority. But even worse, the justices said in the 5-to-4 vote that the taxpayers who voted for 747 didn’t really know what they were doing! What an insult!

Then, as if to insult King County taxpayers even more, the five Democratic members of the County Council, passed three new tax measures related to mental health, ferries and levees, and transit fares. The Demos voted for all three new tax measures, and Republican members, to the consternation of conservative taxpayers, voted with the Demos on some of the issues.

The voters’ anger was not so much directed at the measures themselves, which had some legitimacy and need going for them. It was directed — as is my anger — at the justices for their insult to the intelligence of voters and their declaration that their opinion should superseded a vote of the people — and at the council members for ignoring the taxpayers’ revolt at the general election earlier this month.

I have a suggestion for Tim Eyman, the state’s most outspoken foe of excessive taxation and the voters’ best friend. He should gather the names of the five justices and the five council members who voted for all new tax measures, toss in the names of the Republican council members who voted with them, and place them on banners at future elections. Vote them out!

It’s the only way voters who are weary of soaring taxes to fight back and make their voices heard. And it is also the way to remind the justices of the State Supreme Court that voting taxpayers are not the idiots the justices indicated they were in invalidating the I-747 tax measure.

In the case of the council members’ hasty judgments, the retaliation should be directed not so much at their votes to add new costly measures but their failure to slash the growing costs of county government and to privatize many operations county and state governments have seized from the private sector.

If the council members were to cut back state operations and costs, the three measures they just passed could be paid for without adding a nickel to the tax load borne by county residents. It is more apparent than ever that the only action political officeholders consider on any new public need is to increase taxes, instead of cutting expenses.

Our state and federal laws and the state and federal constitutions clearly state that our governments should consist of three equal but separate branches, each of which is empowered with certain well defined authorities. But all of our cherished documents also declare that the supreme power rests with the fourth “branch,” the people.

Apparently the Washington State Supreme Court — at least five of its members — doesn’t recognize that vital truth. By a 5-to-4 vote, the court has quashed the will of the people, as expressed in Initiative 747, the property-tax measure, which was approved by a large majority of voters back in 2001.

That initiative, created and promoted by Tim Eyman, the public’s watchdog on taxes and related financial measures, became state law and was designed to limit the amount of property-tax growth in all counties to 1 percent a year. One would have thought the vote and the initiative’s intention were crystal clear to anyone.

But, no, five of the justices disregarded the public’s wishes and voted to quash the new law. Their reasoning should go down in the records as an indication that those judges consider their judgment and wishes as being superior to the will of the people. Shame on them!

Their explanation of the reason they voted to reject the initiative was reported this way in the press: “Simply put, a voter reading the text of the initiative would have perceived a much smaller impact on government coffers than would actually occur under I-747. The text of the initiative misled voters about the substantive impact of the initiative on existing law.”

What a lame bit of reasoning for justices on the state’s highest court! It’s a direct insult to the intelligence of every voter who voted to pass the initiative in 2001. To put it simply, the five justices said the voters didn’t know what they were doing six years ago and didn’t understand the nature of the initiative.

What gall! What impudence! Voters should mark down the names of all five justices, led by Justice Bobbe Bridge, who wrote the majority decision, and when they come up again for re-election, they will know who the critters were and kick them off the bench. They should also vote against King County Superior Court Judge Mary Roberts, who first determined that voters didn’t know what they were doing in 2001.

Ironically, the court’s misguided decision comes in the same week in which voters across the state indicated in unmistakable fashion that they are angry over soaring taxes and the new attempts to boost them even higher. Maybe it’s time for voters to amend the state and federal constitutions to indicate that the “fourth arm of government,” the voice of the people, ranks higher in authority than the legislative, executive, and judicial voices.

I’ll bet such amendments would pass by huge majorities in all cases — but that they would then be adjudged as invalid by 5-to-4 judicial decisions! It won’t happen, of course, but it would be immensely interesting and history-making if it did.

I couldn’t help but notice the resurgence of MoveOn.org this month. In my neck of the woods (Eastern Washington) they have been staging a variety of events, including the heckling of my Congressman Doc Hastings at an open forum. Mostly, they focus their anger on their opposition to the war, but they have also been claiming that Bush is eroding our civil liberties.

At this stage in the war (and political cycle), another post by me, or anyone else, debating the merits of the war would probably serve little purpose. But I do want to challenge the accusation levied by MoveOn.org spokeman Steve Verhey that President Bush has eroded American civil liberties in the name of fighting the war on terror.

I would suggest that the historical record indicates exactly the opposite. In fact, I would go further and argue that no president in American history has done a better job of balancing respect for civil liberties with the necessities of war and crisis than President Bush. Using history as a guide, let’s look at how other presidents have behaved when confronting similar crises.

When the United States was fighting “Indian wars” many Natives were stripped of their land. When the Supreme Court stepped in and said Georgia could not expel thousands of Indians to Oklahoma (Worcester v. Georgia, 1832), President Andrew Jackson completely ignored the Supreme Court and expelled them anyway. Pres. Jackson became famous for his statement, “[Chief Justice] Mr. Marshall has made his decision, now let Mr. Marshall enforce his decision.” President Bush, in contrast, has had many disagreements with the US Supreme Court, but he has not once ignored any of their rulings. When he lost battles over military tribunals, he ordered changes to the way they were conducted.

During the Civil War, President Lincoln, who most historians consider our greatest president, routinely ignored and violated the Constitution. He unilaterally suspended the Writ of Habeas Corpus on his own authority. He tried US civilians in military courts, even when civilian courts were up and running. He instituted a draft without authority. He imposed an income tax in direct conflict with Constitutional law. Bush, on the other hand, has not done anything close to what Lincoln did. The US Congress, with bi-partisan support, did pass the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 which denied the Writ of Habeas Corpus to Guantanamo Bay detainees. This restriction of jurisdiction, however, is explicitly allowed for by the US Constitution in Article III, Section 2, Paragraph 2. Whereas Lincoln went around the Constitution to suspend Habeas, Bush is simply narrowing Habeas via the very process set up in the Constitution…and he, unlike Lincoln, is getting permision from Congress.

During WWI, President Wilson pushed for and passed the Sedition Act of 1918 which forbade Americans to use “disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language” towards the United States. The law also contained prohibitions on “unpatriotic speech,” stating “Provided, That any employee or official of the United States Government who commits any disloyal act or utters any unpatriotic or disloyal language, or who, in an abusive and violent manner criticizes the Army or Navy or the flag of the United States shall be at once dismissed from the service.” IN fact, the Sedition Act made it illegal to criticize the US form of government, stating, “whoever, when the United States is at war, shall willfully utter, print, write or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government of the United States or the Constitution of the United States…” is guilty under the Act. Simply put, this bill made the Patriot Act look like a Boy Scout guide. Many men were imprisoned simply for protesting America’s involvement in WWI. The famous socialist Eugene Debts was sentenced to 20 years in jail for his “anti-war activities.” Today, as evidenced by our recent MoveOn.org events, people are free to protest away without any fear of imprisonment.

President Roosevelt takes the prize from most egregious violations of civil liberties during a time of war. He literally imprisoned thousands of American citizens of Japanese decent simply because of their ancestry. Less well-know is the fact that Roosevelt also used military tribunals to try and execute American citizens (See Ex Parte Quirin, 1942). Can you imagine the cerebral implosion that would take place on the Left if President Bush started rounding up Muslims and putting them in interment camps, or if he used military tribunals to try and execute American citizens/civilians? When we compare Bush’s decision to wiretap incoming phone calls from Afghanistan to Roosevelt’s actions of imprisonment and execution, President Bush comes out looking like the Mother Teresa of civil liberties.

As a last example, I would remind people that President Truman tried to seize America’s steel mills in the name of fighting the Korean War, even though there was no direct threat of North Korean attacks on US soil. The Supreme Court stepped in and stopped him. Once again, in comparison, Bush has never acted in such an arbitrary manner towards private property or civil liberties.

In the end, when history compares the way President Bush has respected civil liberties in comparison to other presidents, he will not only come out on top, but he will come out so far on top as to not even have anyone as a “close second.” We should remind people of that the next time MoveOn.org decides to use their very well protected civil liberties to claim they have lost their civil liberties.

Because it continues to haunt us, who can forget it?  Before it issued its surprisingly shortsighted decision regarding trials of the dangerous war prisoners at Guantanamo, someone should have informed the highest court in the land that the United States has been at war with the evil Islamic radicals for at least 28 years — and most certainly since the terrorists killed more than 3,000 persons in the 2001 plane bombings of the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and the crash in Pennsylvania. 

What more tragic evidence is needed to persuade the Supreme Court justices that America is at war with what may be its most despicable enemy in history?  Worst of all, the ruling that the Guantanamo prisoners cannot be tried by military tribunals — as has always been the case in wartime — undoubtedly will be a sharp blow weakening the administration’s domestic surveillance program.   

I will acknowledge that some important cogs were missing in the administration’s case to have military courts try the Guantanamo prisoners.  For example, Congress should have quickly enacted a formal declaration of war against the terrorists immediately after the September 11, 2001 attacks. 

With that formal declaration of war, the administration and Congress could then have invoked the usual wartime Mobilization Act, as was done in the First and Second World Wars.  Under a Mobilization Act, there would have been no doubt that the captured terrorists committing crimes could have been tried by military courts. 

Nevertheless, nobody in the U.S. — nor in the world, for that matter — could have doubted that a state of war existed between America and the dastardly Al Qaida forces that have defied even the rule of peaceful Islamists.  They have repeated their boast time and again that their main desire is to kill Jews, Americans, and everyone allied with us. 

It was no surprise that the New York Times and many other pro-Liberal and anti-Bush newspapers and broadcast news media quickly went to the defense of the misguided Supreme Court decision and praised it for making a decision that supposedly protects the rights of Americans to demand regular court trials for the Guantanamo prisoners — as if those prisoners had committed minor civilian crimes.   

Among the Guantanamo prisoners are many Islamic radicals who were either trained in the perverse tactics of Al Qaida or who were members of groups supporting Osama bin Laden and his murderous forces.  They are clearly prisoners of war, not burglars or bank robbers caught by domestic police. 

In effect, the highest court’s decision places it squarely among the ranks of those Liberal Democrats and other anti-war elements who want our war efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan to fail because they insist on an instant pullout of our forces and those of our allies.  If they had their way, instant pullouts before victory is assured would produce a repeat of our pullout in Vietnam, a war we clearly should have and could have won. 

The Guantanamo decision is a blow to our war effort and endangers the security and the future of the American people.  Shame on the five justices who voted against the administration’s effort to administer proper justice at Guantanamo!

In a brilliant display of jurisprudence that made immediate legal history, the Supreme Court of the United States has scuttled programs in Seattle and Jefferson County, Kentucky, that use race as a determinant in assigning students to public schools. The court’s decision was by a 5-to-4 vote.

It was a decision that had to be made if public schools are to abide by the U.S. Constitution, which forbids decisions made on the basis of skin color. Admittedly, the Seattle School Board used the racial formula in desperation to solve the problem of school enrollments that exceeded capacity. But, in the final analysis, Chief Justice John Roberts, who wrote for the majority, put it best:

“For schools that never segregated on the basis of race, such as Seattle, or that have removed the vestiges of past segregation, such as Jefferson County, the way ‘to achieve a system of determining admission to the public schools on a non-racial basis’ is to stop assigning students on a racial basis. The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”

It was brilliant rhetoric and sound reasoning. But, as could have been expected, Democratic members of Congress who strongly opposed President Bush’s appointment of Roberts to the highest court were quick to condemn the court’s decision and to excoriate Roberts at the same time.

I think it was of great significance that the Supreme Court’s black member, Justice Clarence Thomas, concurred with the decision. He wrote: “Racial imbalance is the failure of a school district’s individual schools to match or approximate the demographic makeup of the student population at large….. Because racial imbalance is not inevitably linked to unconstitutional segregation, it is not unconstitutional in and of itself.”

Although the five justices rendering the majority opinion didn’t say so, I believe they hinted at the proper solution. It’s a solution I have been proposing for some time. It is substantially this: Racial equality should be achieved, not by tampering with school enrollments or other gimmicks, but by desegregating neighborhoods.

That means getting rid of ghettoes, primarily in the large urban areas. It also means getting rid of the real-estate industry’s habit of refusing to show minorities the homes that are for sale, lease, or rent in white neighborhoods. Only then can we achieve the racial equality consistent with the freedoms expressed in the Constitution.

For the most part, I have been an admirer and supporter of America’s courts and jurists, mainly because I believe they are the cornerstone of our freedom and the republic. But that has not always been the case with me. For example, I cite the continuing habit of too many judges to assume the role of learned psychiatrists in a number of cases.

Over the years in my longtime experience as a newsman in both the print and broadcast news media I have encountered judicial cases in which a man or woman on trial for murder or some other serious charge pleaded insanity as a defense. In many of those cases, the court decided the defendant was sane and that he or she should proceed to trial — or, in the case of an appellate court or even a state Supreme Court, adjudged to be guilty as charged, with no right of appeal.

Something has been seriously amiss in these judgments and continues to be amiss in similar cases tried today. Frequently, a jury decides a defendant is guilty without a doubt, based on evidence presented in the course of a trial. And an examination of the trial testimony would indicate the jury ruled correctly, as did the judge in pronouncing the sentence.

But, as I have done on several occasions before, I have to raise a pesky and seemingly unpopular point: Do the ladies and gentlemen schooled in the law and who practice it daily on the bench have the training, the experience, and the skill necessary to make a judgment on the sanity or insanity of a defendant? In other words, do they have the right to play psychiatrist?

I say they don’t and so do many psychiatrists, psychologists, and sociologists. Unfortunately, just as many say our courts do have that ability and that judges have the savvy and intelligence to make reasonable, sound decisions concerning the sanity or insanity of defendants.

The continuing controversy and our inability to come to some sensible decision on so crucial an issue are the reasons we haven’t given the European system a chance in all our courts of law. Several enlightened European nations, most notably those in the Northern countries, use a double-trial method in such instances.

In those nations, the first step is to have a board of skilled psychiatrists and psychologists examine a defendant who pleads mental incompetence when charged with a serious crime. If he or she is adjudged to be sane by the board, a regular trial is then convened to determine guilt.

If, on the other hand, the defendant is determined to be mentally incompetent, he or she is ordered into confinement for an indefinite term, there to be treated by professional help. These professionals make a decision as to whether the defendant is to remain under treatment and for how long.

The European system makes infinitely more sense and is far more humane than our one-trial system, in which psychiatrists choose up sides but in which the ultimate medical decision is made by an unskilled judge and/or jury.

12 men and women in Seattle finds the defendant guilty of two felonies.

The jury system worked … far better than I had expected.  I guess I have been jaded since the O-J verdict.  Sitting on this jury I kept wondering how my 11 peers would perform in the jury room.  I expected social justice and liberal politics would surface.

But, they didn’t.  My fellow jurors represented the spectrum of King county politics.  Yet, politics and personal world views never played in the jury’s decision making.   Everyone followed Judge Canova’s instructions to the letter and carefully weighed the evidence.  After 30 minutes, we polled ourselves: 8 guilty, 2 not guilty and 2 undecided.  For the next hour, we listened to the “not gulity” jurors explain their doubts.  The “guilty” jurors than answered the objections by either pointing to physical evidence or quoting witnesses from notes.  One by one the four dissenting jurors switched their votes to guilty.

Never was there a raised voice.  Never was there any disrespect.  It was wonderful civic discourse.  The process made me proud of our judicial system.  It made me proud of my fellow jurors.  It gave me hope for the future.

If only we could discuss political issues in the same way.

Lest we forget, the Washington State Supreme Court, some of whose decisions we have criticized in the past, deserves high commendation for its recent ruling that comments made by Conservative talk-show hosts cannot be considered as political contributions, as Liberals have charged.

Best of all, the court’s decision was unanimous. It was a terrific victory for free speech, and it sidetracked the attempt by Seattle’s city government and Democratic Liberals to force the talk-show hosts and their stations to report their programs as campaign contributions.

The ruling was also a great personal victory for talk-show hosts like John Carlson, the KVI Conservative, whose daily program has a tremendous following. Others who breathed a sigh of relief were Kirby Wilbur, Sean Hannity, Michael Medved, and the major Conservative curmudgeon of them all, Rush Limbaugh.

It should be noted that the entire episode stems from a greedy tax grab by Washington cities anxious to pad their treasuries with millions of dollars drawn from the state’s taxpayers through the legislature’s imposition of a 9.5-cent-a-gallon gas-tax increase, making Washington’s tax one of the highest in the nation, if not the highest of them all.

KVI’s Carlson and Wilbur spearheaded Initiative 912, which was designed to roll back the legislature’s tax-increase action. Despite a vigorous, daily campaign on KVI, the initiative barely failed, and the measure passed by the legislature became law — and Washington taxpayers have suffered the consequences.

Throughout the two-year dispute, the Liberal news media, in characteristic fashion, sided with the cities and against Carlson, Wilbur, and the No New Gas Tax organization that had been formed to support the initiative and oppose the legislature’s action in raising the tax on gasoline.

I have been wondering what would have happened if the roles had been reversed on an issue in which the reporters, editors, and anchors of the print and broadcast news media had practiced their usual Liberal slanting of the news in favor of, say, Liberal candidates for office or Liberal measures.

I know from longtime experience that the Liberal slant in the press can easily be proved on virtually any issue. Now, let us suppose that Conservatives — like KVI’s Carlson and Wilbur and organizations supporting them — went to court with a suit designed to force the press to declare its slanted articles and columns as political contributions to the Liberal cause.

Let us also suppose that the State Supreme Court had decided just the opposite and declared that the radio hosts’ programs should have been declared as political contributions. Can anyone imagine what a loud and