Justice Not So Blind

Scott Hardie | February 1, 2007
Should victims of a traumatic crime have their outstanding warrants overlooked? Is there room for the discretion of the detectives or the police chief in such matters?

After a woman in Tampa was raped, the police discovered an outstanding arrest warrant on her and put her in jail for two days, where she was denied the second dose of the morning-after pill. (link)

Amy Austin | February 1, 2007
"Overlooked"? Not so much. But I think a suspension of such things (a year?) might be in order at the very least -- seems to me like the right/"humane" thing to do. Discretion is a tricky thing, too... if, for instance, the alleged reason for being denied her pill is true (do I really need to link to previous discussion on health-care providers/pharmacists using their religious stance as means to deny medication?); however, if it was really a matter of following protocol and she was not "given orders" to issue the pill... is this oversight an instance in which we want someone to use discretion??? How about at least going to check on it with the "powers that be" -- why wouldn't someone there have been privy to the situation and taken care of it accordingly, if not for the fact that the victim had turned into just another criminal.

As someone who has been burglarized (as well as a victim of other crimes) and never paid any restitution (not that it was ordered... or if it was, I don't remember -- and the expression "blood from a turnip" comes to mind anyway), I don't think that being victimized recuses one from the penalties of victimizing another. After all, how much compassion do we have for those who were "victimized" before committing any crime (i.e., "he did it because he was abused as a child")? I think everyone would agree that it's a shame for a child to be abused, but when said child becomes an adult and abuses/molests/kills/whatever himself, we do not say, "That's okay -- here's your get-out-of-jail-free card for being a victim yourself." Same, same. But like I said, I think it's entirely reasonable to temporarily suspend such warrants/penalties in a case such as this, so that investigation and recovery, etc. can go unimpeded as it would with anyone else.

Kerry Odell | February 1, 2007
Not at all....if you victimize someone you deserve to pay the penalty, just as you would demand for the person who victimized you.

She made her bed...

Amy Austin | February 2, 2007
Would you want to go to jail just hours after being raped, Kerry?

Kris Weberg | February 2, 2007
The denial of the second dose of emergency contraceptive is what bothers me; the point of prison is hardly to allow criminals to become the victims of still other criminals, regardless of what certain insanely "tough on crime" sorts sometimes seem to think.

My own thought is that the woman should have received proper contraception and post-rape care under the watchful eye of police, and then been tossed into a cell somewhere.

Seriously, at what point did we as a society go from arguing that criminals sacrificed certain of their rights by committing crimes to arguing that they cease to be humans deserving of some degree of humane treatment?

Anna Gregoline | February 2, 2007
Should victims of a traumatic crime have their outstanding warrants overlooked?

Of course not - that's not the question to ask, I think.

My point through all of this was:

If it was heart medication she needed to take a certain time - would they have denied her that too?

The whole thing makes me so freaking mad that they would treat someone this way who has a legitamite prescription.

Amy Austin | February 2, 2007
I don't think it's a case that begs only one question. You make an excellent point, Anna, but still, I ask you: do you think it's fair to throw someone so recently traumatized into further trauma (jail), without regard to the investigation of or recovery from the crime committed against them???

I find it hard to believe that you, of all people, Anna -- as I remember the passion with which you have spoken about rape in past discussions -- would say "yes" to that.

Aaron Shurtleff | February 2, 2007
At the risk of adding fuel to the fire... :)

An additional issue I found was the statement in the article (I'm paraphrasing from the leaky sieve I generously call my memory) that once they found out the victim had an outstanding warrant, they stopped the investigation in the middle of looking for the crime scene to put her in jail. Not that I'm saying the withholding of the morning-after pill was OK (I think we can all agree that it is very wrong to do that, no matter what the reason), but how do you stop investigating one crime just because you find another?!

If that's how the Tampa PD rolls, I'm going to put a big stash of pot in my house before I go on a killing spree, because then once they find the pot, they'll apparently stop and not investigate the murders!

And the outstanding warrant was for failing to pay restitution?! That could have easily waited, as Amy suggested. (I would argue that, depending on the severity of the crime that the warrant was for, there could be circumstances where placing the victim into custody might be warranted (I'm being careful, since I'm not thinking out all of the possibilities too well, and I don't want to get roasted unnecessarily!), but that's an issue for another day.)

This makes me sad to live in the Tampa Bay area.

Kerry Odell | February 4, 2007
Amy -

Of course not....however, I wouldn't want to go to jail at any point and I choose to live my life in a manner that prevents that.

If you break the law you should expect to go to jail at some point, whether your current life situation is conducive to the "trauma" of jail or not. Seems to me jail used to be much worse before all the rights granted to convicts or "alleged" convicts as it were.

We all make choices. She made a bad one. I've made bad ones and had to pay the consequences for them. If it were a male sexual child predator who got raped then put in jail, would you be saying the same thing or would it just be filed under the "he got what he deserved" files?? I wonder.

Perhaps the answer is to remit her to a psychiatric ward where they can counsel her about the rape, but still held in protective custody as dictated by the warrant.

There were mistakes made by the Tampa PD it seems, but she made the choices that brought her to that place just as the officer's made choices that will possibly change their lives forever.

Life is all about the choices we make and I fully believe that I'm responsible for the all choices I make whether it is as simple as using a toothpick in a moving car or murder. I smoked for a while...it wasn't the cigarette company's fault or my relatives' fault for setting a bad example...it was my choice and my fault and someday I may just pay for that with my life.

Everything in life is a choice...even taxes - you could choose not to pay and have to deal with the consequences like many have done. Am I on my high horse? Perhaps, but I'm not going to teach my son that it's ok to blame someone else for everything that goes wrong in his life....too many people live by that philosophy now.

At any rate, the beauty of this country is that we can have this discussion and many others, with all the perspectives, without fear of censorship or punishment. Am I right? Are you right? I don't know, but I do respect your position :).

k.

Jackie Mason | February 4, 2007
[hidden by request]

Kris Weberg | February 4, 2007
It's really disturbing how many people appear to genuinely subscribe to that worst of doctrines, the equation of arrest with guilt. In this case, the woman's probably guilty; but there are incidents of false arrest, for example, and there are even times -- yes, today -- when the innocent are horribly railroaded. Anyone heard of the West Memphis Three, or the Innocence Project? Or the Texas legal system?

Not everything in life is a choice, no. Birth defects are not a choice. Cancer is not a choice. Beign falsely arrested is not a choice. The law is administered by people, and people, not by choice, make mistakes.

Aaron Shurtleff | February 5, 2007
Wait...Texas has a legal system?!? :)

Amy Austin | February 5, 2007
Yep, sure do : "Eeny Meeny Miney Moe..."

Anna Gregoline | February 5, 2007
Also, very right Kris. I read more than a few articles on this that implied the outstanding warrant might be in error - the victim at least stated she thought it had been paid. How are we to know? Our legal system has far too many errors in it for me to believe in it wholeheartedly - I mean, we still execute innocent people on occaison! Why can't this be wrong too?

Even if it's not wrong, I don't believe for a second that they wouldn't have given her ANY OTHER MEDICATION. Just not this one. And that's wrong on so many levels - human rights, women's rights, patient's rights (she had a valid prescription) and inmate/custodial rights.

Anna Gregoline | February 5, 2007
Double post.

Kris Weberg | February 19, 2007
While I think the discussion so far has been really interesting, and I'd stand behind the general drift of my points (as would, I suspect, everyone else who's added to the conversation), some new information has come to light in this case. Thanks to CNN's preliminary report, we might have all missed some vital parts of this story:

A jail worker with religious objections blocked her from ingesting a morning-after pill to prevent pregnancy, her attorney says, keeping her from taking the required second dose for more than 24 hours longer than recommended....The student had failed to pay $4,585 restitution after a 2003 juvenile arrest, McElroy said. Moore said his client is convinced that she paid the fine and that the warrant was probably the result of a clerical error...For the emergency contraceptive to work, the first pill must be taken within three days of unprotected sex and the second 12 hours after the first. The woman had already taken the first pill soon after the assault Saturday, Moore said. She was unable to take the second pill until Monday afternoon. The jail allowed it, he said, after media inquiries.

Scott Hardie | February 19, 2007
I'm willing to flex to your side on this one. Pharmacists are employed by private businesses and are entitled to choose their own conduct. But a jailor is an employee of the state and has to behave according to different rules. The woman deserves whatever settlement her attorney can get.

Kris Weberg | February 26, 2007
Stanley Fish has an interesting op-ed in the New York Times dealing with some of this stuff, though he comes to an opposite conclusion from Scott's on the matter. (For the record, I am sympathetic to the op-ed's points, but recognize its limits and the problems in claiming its approach to these matters is universalizable; a claim that Fish doesn't make and shouldn't be attributed with, mind you).

Stanley Fish:

An attorney may believe that a client is guilty as sin, but that belief, while not abandoned, is put to one side in deference to the belief that everyone is entitled to a defense. A professor of literature may believe that a particular book is barely worth reading, but if a departmental syllabus requires it, she will teach it because she also believes that she has a duty to abide by departmental decisions. [...] “Honoring the difference” is the positive description of what some might call self-contradictory or hypocritical.

[...]

Livers of the unified life accept no such separating of paradigms. Health care workers who refuse to dispense birth control pills don’t think of themselves as alternating between the demands of their profession and the demands of their religion. It is their view that religious obligations are always in force and always trump lesser obligations like the duty to fill prescriptions written by a licensed medical practitioner. (Pharmacists’ rights, it seems, include the right not to do one’s job as a pharmacist.) This can sound like admirable zeal and an expression of personal integrity until one asks, how far will it be taken? Karen Brauer, a member of the organization Pharmacists for Life, contends that pharmacists have the right not only to refuse to fill prescriptions they consider immoral but to refuse to refer customers to other pharmacies. If I did that, she told The Washington Post in 2005, it would be like saying, “ ‘I don’t kill people myself, but let me tell you about the guy down the street who does.’ ”

But why stop there? If in your judgment the guy down the street is really killing people, not sending customers to him is hardly sufficient. He has to be stopped, put out of business, run out of town, killed. While the notion of the unified life is rhetorically appealing — it seems to breathe integrity — it is the entire point of liberal democracies like ours to erect barriers against its full realization. The distinction between the public and the private is at bottom a device to assure that dealings between citizens will be ruled by secular, administrative and political norms rather than religious ones. Only then, the argument goes, can we be safe from the zealot who decides that we are pawns of Satan and acts accordingly. The strong religious believer asks, Must I be one person at home and in the sanctity of my church and another when I venture out into the world? The liberal state answers, Yes.