Excuse me Officer Cutts, which way to Death Row please?

thanks to Mabel, the Pirate's own Poet Laureate

Cutts, Cutts
he has no guts

Thought he'd try crying
they knew he was lying

Remorse for Jessee? Regrets for Blake?
So obvious in Court, he was merely a fake

No verdict yet, the jurors in and out
Strange it seemed, was there any doubt?

Cutts was nervous, seemed to know by then,
He was gonna be going straight to the Pen.

Police Officer Cutts is really very tough
Death Row for this guy is simply not enough

Roll the bastard in a rug
Let cellmate Bubba give him a hug

One down, many more to go
Our system works - it's starting to show

Jurors please make it right
Listen to the facts and help us fight

There's lots more undecided crimes,
Too many attorneys helping these slimes.

Peterson, Mack, Cutts ~ a pretty good start ~
Finding these bastards GUILTY will warm the cockles of our hearts!

Charla's Song

It was one of the most powerfully emotional court watching experiences since Sharon Rocha finally had her chance to speak about Scott Peterson. Finally it was Soorya Townsley's turn to speak for her daughter, Charla Mack.

"I was one of those lucky mothers to be best friends with my daughter, we chatted three or four times every day. In those last years, Charla and I cleared our past mother-daughter conflicts.

Now when I awake, I feel a thick, deep-seated depression that is hard to shake off. I feel like I have weights all around my body and it is an effort to move. Just like an alcoholic. I have been forced to live moment-to-moment, not to think any further, because otherwise I might have to lie down and die of sorrow.

The day to day reality is I can no longer experience the living picture of Charla in my life. All this stopped now because of an indulgent, cowardly man. THIS MAN who decided to play GOD!!! I don't know if at this point I will ever find peace until I die.

Charla's dream was to sing professionally, or start a business developing seminars for couples. Charla believed she could tame Darren's rage and get him involved. There was a song she wanted to sing to Darren . . ."

And then the music started. It was Charla singing a country-western song. Suddenly, Charla was there in the courtroom, confronting them all. The murderer, the judge, the lawyers, the families, the friends. There she was reminding the of her sweetness, her beauty, her betrayal, her trust, her fear. She seemed to say:

THIS WAS ME
LOOK BEYOND HIS LIES, HIS CROCODILE TEARS,
THIS WAS ME
I BEGGED YOU TO PROTECT US,
THIS WAS ME
WE NEEDED YOUR HELP,
THIS WAS ME
YOU WOULDN'T LISTEN,
THIS WAS ME
HEAR MY SONG?
THIS WAS ME
HEAR ME NOW?
THIS WAS ME

~~~

Darren Mack, of the once respected and powerful Reno, NV Mack family, used privilege to plow his way through divorce court, to get it his way. He used anything he thought of to hold up the inevitable.

Lies and accusations, gave fuel to his reasons to stall paying alimony and child support for their precious daughter Erica.

When things seemed not to his liking, Mack upset with a turn in the contentious divorce proceedings, decided Judge Chuck Weller was corrupt.

He stabbed estranged wife, Charla at least seven times when she arrived at his home, (as ordered by the court) to drop off their daughter. Then he drove downtown to a parking garage, where he sniper-style shot Judge Weller from 170 yards away.

A note found in the condo where Charla's bloodstained body was found, made cryptic references to the plan. Simple, "Dan take Erica to Joan." On the morning of the killing Mack's longtime friend Dan Osbourne drove Erica to the home of mack's mother, Joan, at Mack's request. The note also mentioned the garage door at the condo being open before the words, "end problem".

The trial was moved to Las Vegas because of extensive media coverage and possible family influence in the close Reno community. It ended on November 5 when Mack entered his pleas after prosecutors had finished presenting their case. Soon after, Mack changed lawyers, and tried unsuccessfully to withdraw his pleas and get another trial.

Finally, District Judge Douglas Herndon listened to those left behind and then sentenced Darren Mack to a minimum of 36 years in prison, the maximum terms of a plea deal - life in prison with possibility of parole after 20 years on the murder charge.

The judge also upheld the prosecutor's recommendation of sentencing Mack to 40 years with parole, after an additional 16 years for attempted murder with a deadly weapon. Both terms are to run back-to-back.

In handing down the sentence, Herndon cited the heinous nature of the crimes and Mack's lack of remorse.

"The truth is, Mr. Mack is guilty of these crimes, but he doesn't want to hear anything about that," the judge said while emphasizing that while he allowed Mack to speak at length, he never said the one thing he hoped we would hear: "I'm sorry."

The judge went on to make an emotional plea for both families to "be be a bigger person" for the sake of the couple's nine year old daughter.

"You have a young child at a very impressionable age, soon to enter her teen years and the adult life. You all can either choose to raise her, disparaging both parents, or you cantry to get past the court cases, the criminal proceedings . . . and teach her the good things about both these parents.

She needs to be raised with hugs and kisses," Herndon said with tears in his eyes.

She also needs a mother who is alive, and a father who is not in prison.

But the needs of Erica and so many others didn't matter to Darren Mack, one more man, whose personal desires and needs, changed everything for so many. And the beat goes on.

When a Man Loves a Woman

A classic song, one I play over and over. It ranks way up there among my all time favorites. Percy Sledge immortalized it, but it's the divine Miss M, the one and only Bette Midler herself, who belts it out with such emotion that it never fails to grab my heart.

"When a man loves a woman, can't keep his mind on nothin' else . . . He'd give up all his comfort, sleep out in the rain, if that's the way she said it should be."

It isn't stated explicitly, but the song seems to promise that love will last, that it will remain steadfast through tough times and passion, even when the spark of youth is gone. The song is great, but the song is at best a lovely promise and a fairy tale. Love takes work and faith and honesty and compromise. And sometimes - evidenced by more than 50% of marriages winding up in divorce - it doesn't last.

So what does happen when a man no longer loves a woman in this millennium? The increasingly violent answers to that question are providing a seemingly endless series of criminal cases.

The benign, normal answer would be to separate from that woman, get up and leave. The split and the way it happens is a choice. Does he start a fight in order to have an excuse to take off? Does he leave a message on a cell phone? Or leave a yellow sticky on the fridge to announce it's over? Does he confess he has fallen in love with someone else or admit he doesn't want the responsibility or pressure of an ongoing relationship? Does he hide those things of value that he might lose or have to split? Does he step up to the plate and deal with his decision?

Or does he just leave? There's always that old story that begins, He just went out to get a pack of cigarettes and never came home."

Any of these messy, sad, painful endings are at least still on the radar of humanity. The woman has the chance to get over it, get past it, find a new life, or even to dwell and mourn forever. But more and more , it seems lately, the choice is anything but. Instead, the man defiles, abuses, and finally kills the woman. And more and more he even chooses to have the life he created that waits to be born in her womb is taken without so much as an after-thought.

When did it become acceptable to end a relationship or a marriage, by disposing of a woman like an old mattress waiting for the for the trash collector to haul it away and out of his sight? When did taking someone's life because they are unwanted or inconvenient become a choice?

Even if it isn't instant true love or a lengthy marriage or a sweethearts since high school situation, love and passion do - at some point - go hand in hand. Perhaps women are more likely to confuse the two, perhaps not. Does the love have to be life-long? Can a quick tryst on a secluded beach qualify, at least for the moment? Honestly, no, but that does not make it any less wicked and despicable to end a brief encounter with the ultimate display of contempt.

The public remains glued to the news, internet, televison, true crime books, and death row interviews, learning the sick details of men, as a matter of convenience, taking the place of God or whatever higher power, into their own hands. Nicole, Lana, Laci, Natalee, Julie, Stacy, Maria, and so many more have had their lives taken by the men they once loved and trusted. Men who had fathered their children or men they had just met. Relying on an internal compass doesn't seem to work any better in long marriages than it does in one night stands.

Far too often, a man decides to twist and distort the situation to produce the exact ending he wants - the quick exit to a mistake he has made and will not be held accountable for.

GET THIS THROUGH YOUR HEAD, TESTOSTERONE IS NO EXCUSE!

Women are not disposable, they do not have sell-by date and then discard stamped on their foreheads, they are not inconveniences. If you want out, GET-THE-HELL-OUT with out resorting to depravity! Pay the alimony and child support, deal with the anger like, well, like a MAN. Not a cowardly batterer.

The key word LOVE is lost to these men and replaced with selfish, self-serving, self important . . . SELF SELF SELF. So when it comes to an OJ or a Scott or a Drew or a Joran or on and on and on, it raises the question: when a man loves a woman does he really love anyone other than himself?

What goes wrong? Too many men need a new roadmap, a new song that addresses what happens when a man doesn't love a woman. When he loves the sex, the convenience and whatever is on his agenda. Sting almost got it right, but instead of "if you love somebody, set them free", change it to " if you loved somebody, set them free".

"You can't control an independent heart
Can't tear the one you love apart
Forever conditioned to believe that we can't live
We can't live here and be happy with less
So many riches, so many souls
Everything we see we want to possess.

If you love somebody, set them free . . ."

Thoughts on Sunday Bloody Sunday

Scott Peterson, O.J. Simpson, Phil Spector, Bobby Cutts, Drew Peterson, Cesar Armando Laurean - how many more?

WHY? WHY? WHY?

BECAUSE THEY WANTED TO!

Laci Peterson. Kathleen Peterson. Almost certainly Stacy Peterson. Nicole Simpson. Lana Clarkson. Christa Worthington. Those are just the famous ones. Maria Lauterbach. Amina Yaser Said. Sarah Yaser Said. Those are just the most recent "newsworthy” ones.

Fact: Women Murdered in the U.S in 2000 - recent yearly statistics available from the U.S. Department of Justice - more than 33 percent were killed by an intimate partner.

Fact: Nationally, homicide is a leading killer of young women—pregnant or not.

Must have missed the memo, because I thought we were supposed to be a civilized society, striving for improvement. We were supposed to be kind towards one other. War or attack aside, we were certainly not supposed to annihilate other human beings.

Instead, we seem to be in a place and time of unprecedented violence towards women and children. In a society that is completely hit-and-miss when it comes to convicting, imprisoning, or punishing the murderers.

Maybe it was always like this, but has the need to hammer it home for the 24 hour ratings-grabbing media reporting changed the program? It certainly feels as if our society has descended into some sort of collective psychosis - a violent whirlpool of rage, entitlement, and devaluation of human life.

Turn on any crime show (and I confess I watch some of them) and there are literally nonstop images of - mostly - women and young girls bound, tortured, pleading for their lives from behind their gags. Yes, the heroes and heroines are working feverishly to rescue these victims, but the camera always cuts back to those victims. And of course, women and children are much easier to target and victimize, on screen and off.

Have we become immune to the horrors of these acts and these images? I don't want to believe that this is what entertainment is, or that we have become a society so intellectually and spiritually impoverished that we think that as entertainment goes, so real life must follow.

Walking my dogs this morning, I had to pull hard to stop Sabre, an 80 lb. ball of fur, from going after a rabbit. That is instinct. Sabre doesn't see the rabbit as a living breathing creature with rights equal to his.

Humans are supposed to be more highly evolved. But if there is anything like an ethical evolutionary scale, we, the Human Race, are cashing in the chips, calling it a loss, and relegating ourselves to the lowest possible level imaginable.

From W.B. Yeats' poem "Slouching Towards Bethlehem": . . .

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold.
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. . .

What wouldn't I give to disagree with Yeats?