Saturday, October 25, 2003
(8:18 PM) | Anonymous:
And If You Want These Kind Of Dreams, It's Oklahomophobia
I am guilty of a terrible crime. I was listening to the Chili Peppers yesterday, and wondered if I could come up with a witty word that involves and embodies the general feeling of my state like Californication does. Thus came the title. Imagine my disappointment when I found 8 Google links to it already. Luckily, they all refer to an album by little known comic "Mondo Fax" and, to my renewed joy, that page contained the strangest Amazon.com product description ever:
"I love this movie like I do, you will definetly want to own these DVDs so you can count on high-performance products at a fair price. Made of hardened steel, the replacement blades are factory sharpened for superior performance. The EB-016 will fit the following Black & Decker delivers a powerful musical message with Once Upon A Time . Her silky style is seasoned and tight everyone gets a chance to get to the 88 Olympics run track and are on their way out of your 2-D objects. Create and manipulate light bulbs, spotlights, sunlight, and ambient lighting with powerful lighting tools."
(Note: I think this is some sort of Amazon screw up..and probably the reason why this page was only available as cached)
So, feeling the need to seize a chance to populize the phrase before Mondo Fax hits the big time, I wanted to share it with you all. The only problem was I had to come up with something to post about. This probably isn't the ideal order in which the creative process should go, I apologize...
That said..I think it worked out okay.
Basically, I began searching for some "news" I could comment on that might fit the title. I hit paydirt with this article. It deals with the execution of Jay Neill in Geronimo Oklahoma, which is about an hour and a half south of my humble abode. Back in 1984, driven by debt Neill and his lover decided to rob the town's bank. His lover stayed in the car while Neill went in and stabbed 3 bank employees to death, stabbing so deep as to break their ribs. He also shot four customers, killing one. The catch in this trial, apparently, was that Neill was gay.
Now, in the 18 years between the crime and his eventual execution, Neill was a model prisoner. He got the highest marks from everyone involved, and had converted to Buddhism, and showed every remorse for the families. One could probably argue that since the death penalty is supposedly only to be used for those who show no remorse, this individual case was wrong. But something more was involved here - what brought this case to people's attention was the blatant anti-homosexual remarks used by the prosecution in order to secure the death penalty.
The prosecutors closing statement started like this:
"I want you to think briefly about the man you're setting [sic] in judgment on and determining what the appropriate punishment should be," the prosecutor told the jury. "[J]ust put in the back of your mind - what if I was sitting in judgment on this person without relating it to Jay Neill, and I'd like to go through some things that to me depict the true person, what kind of person he is. He is a homosexual. The person you're sitting in judgment on-disregard Jay Neill. You're deciding the life or death on a person that's a vowed homosexual."
Keep that quote in your memory, and let me give you the United Nations Guidelines for the role of prosecutors in trials:
they are to "perform their duties fairly, consistently and expeditiously, and respect and protect human dignity and uphold human rights," and "carry out their functions impartially and avoid all political, social, religious, racial, cultural, sexual or any other kind of discrimination." The right to freedom from discrimination on the basis of sex, which includes sexual orientation, is recognized in international treaties, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
What the heck kind of prosecutor is this than? The whole point of that opening line is to take away the dignity of the person on trial, and dehumanize him because he happens to be gay!
I don't want to get too far away from the facts here. I mean, if you do support the death penalty, there's a very legitimate argument, due to the brutality of these murders, for this man to be killed. But this fact makes the prosecutions arguments all the more ridiculous. Since the state of Oklahoma does quite vibrantly believe and often utilize the death penalty, there were plenty of other ways for him to get that feather in his cap. Instead, to insure it he basically says "When considering whether to kill this man, remember - he's homosexual (thus he's automatically of deplorable character, and our society will be better off with one less of his kind)."
I'm not sure this case could have happened many other places than Oklahoma. At least, there's no way it could have been as blatant elsewhere. The kind of discrimination I've seen since moving here is really somewhat shocking. It's more than just the occasional racist or anti-gay joke, it's that I often see an unmistakable avoidance towards helping people of other races, or people who are homosexual, in stores. It's a disgust, an air of supremacy that before now I'd only seen in movies. It's that dramatic and defined, as if it were scripted.
I think, somewhat thankfully, we've reached a point where no prosecutor could keep his papers after saying something like "I want you to think briefly about the man you're "setting" in judgement upon, and I'd like to go through some things that to me depict what kind of person he is. The person you're sitting in judgment upon is black. You're deciding the life or death on a person that's black." Yet, the case wasn't thrown out for obvious sexual-bias on the part of the prosecutor, the prosecutor didn't even get a slap on the wrist. Heck, he probably got a promotion.
What, perhaps, is most perplexing to me is that I'm pretty sure if I took this to work on monday, or to school, or just to random people in the mall and asked them about it, they'd say it was a valid line of defense. I'm not sure that if I just printed out his entire closing statement (the quoted line is not the only prejudicial one) any great number of people would find something out of the ordinary until I pointed it out.
What confirms this for me is that I've been searching on the net pretty relentlessly to find other articles on this case, and nearly all of them ignore the prosecutor's comments. I doubt the linked article was merely made up, as it includes the support of Amnesty International and several large watch groups. Yet, this blatant disregard for the stated duty goes unnoticed and the lawyer involved likely gets a hefty pay raise for delivering a death sentence.
This isn't the first time this happened. The article references another execution of an african-american lesbian woman who killed her lover. The prosecution again emphasized the defendants homosexuality by making major points based around the fact that she was "the man" in the relationship, and that she wore the pants in the family, and that she spelled her name, Wanda Jean Allen, in a "masculine way."
I could argue the wrongness of the death penalty here, but that's not my point. I think regardless of your beliefs on capital punishment, it's easy to see how destructive this sort of discrimination can be to the justice system. When we start judging people based off who they are rather than on what they've done we're in definite trouble. I could keep trying again and again to restate what I mean to make it clearer, but I think the dissenting opinion given by Judge Carlos Lucero definitely says it better:
"..what is it that makes the comments more than merely improper? As prosecutors know, gays and lesbians are routinely subject to invidious bias in all corners of society...The openly gay defendant thus finds himself at a disadvantage from the outset of his prosecution. When a prosecutor directs the jury to make its guilt-innocence or life-death determination on the basis of anti-homosexual bias, that disadvantage is magnified exponentially and raises constitutional concerns. This is so because prosecutors occupy a position of trust, and their exhortations carry significant weight with juries... Justification for these remarks was unquestionably illegitimate. Exploiting his position of trust and spinning the reality of anti-gay prejudice to a pivotal position in the capital-sentencing phase, the prosecutor undermined the possibility that petitioner's sentence would be based on reason rather than emotion."
Dream of Oklahomophobia.
(Dang I'm getting good at these one line closings!)
