In case you haven’t heard, Shawna Forde has been sentenced to death for the murders of Brisenia and Raul Junior Flores:
Ms. Thomas and fellow jurors were told during the trial that Ms. Forde and accomplices gained entry to the Flores home with the expectation of finding drugs there, which could be sold to finance Minutemen American Defense’s border-control operations. Finding no drugs, the intruders made away with inexpensive jewelry but, prosecutors said, not before fatally shooting young Brisenia and Mr. Flores. Both victims were American citizens born in the US.
“I see Shawna Forde as someone who would have liked to have been the face of a movement,” Thomas says.
Arriving at the death sentence was difficult, Thomas says, but it was aided by a picture of Brisenia presented during trial that was etched in her mind: “A little girl, with bright red fingernails; she’s wearing a white T-shirt and turquoise-colored pajama bottoms. She’s on a love seat. It’s a perfect, innocent picture until you realize that half of her face has been blown off.”
Read Terry Greene Sterling’s jailhouse interview with Forde (from last week) here:
I know in her mind,” Forde said of Gonzalez, “I am guilty and she hates me. I know her tragedy is extremely sad.” But on the other hand, she said “people shouldn’t deal drugs if they have kids.” (No drugs were found in the trailer.)
Forde told me she’d “lost a daughter” and she knows from experience Gonzalez will feel pain “the rest of her life” and her “tragedy is extremely sad.” “I wish I could say I was sorry it happened,” Forde said. “I am not sorry on my behalf because I didn’t do it.”
Monstrous. I don’t think anyone deserves the death penalty, but I am entirely unsurprised that the jury decided in favor of it.
Warning: GRAR ahead.
Last month, Slate published an article titled The Decline of the Serial Killer. “Statistics on serial murder are hard to come by—the FBI doesn’t keep numbers, according to a spokeswoman—but the data we do have suggests serial murders peaked in the 1980s and have been declining ever since,” the author states.
Is this really so? I’m not a criminologist. But neither is the guy who wrote this. And of the two “experts” he quotes*, one of them authored a shitty, shitty book that offers little more than pop-psych analysis and “insight” from people like James Dobson and Dr. Joyce Brothers. We don’t have a lot of perspective on what motivates serial killers, which is why the criminal profilers you see on TV are basically snake oil salesmen. Anyhow, I’m not here to discredit these bozos, I’m just saying: Just because the US crime rate dropped overall and you have a shoebox full of clippings that confirms what you already believe doesn’t necessarily prove that there are fewer active serial killers.
But for the sake of argument, let’s say that yes, there are fewer active serial killers now. But here’s where the article gets into some happy horseshit.
I admit that I spent many — probably too many — hours this weekend glued to the computer, compulsively refreshing about 10 different Firefox tabs, seeking updates on the Giffords shooting. I have read half of the Internet at this point, and the only definitive things I can say on the matter are a) Although it’s been useful this weekend, by God I hate the Huffington Post and b) Turns out FrumForum is not the Orthodox Jewish message board I assumed it was, based on the domain name.
I’m not here to minimize the tragedy. A nine-year-old girl died. A lot of people have been accused of inappropriate grandstanding in the wake of this event. But I want to discuss some of the ideological aspects right now. It’s how my brain processes these things. A few scattered thoughts.
I’m bothered by Jack Shafer’s “awesome stupidity,” stating that the county sheriff isn’t qualified to opine on Arizona’s horrendous influx of and ugly rhetorical fomentation by a fast-growing group of its citizens. I often respect (if not agree with) Shafer’s opinions, and I don’t agree with calls to repress political rhetoric/polemic if it’s protected by the First Amendment. But he’s way off-base here with his knee-jerk libertarian smear. Frankly, Arizona *is* a fucking cesspool.
The mental illness aspect: Loughner’s online footprint indicates that he’s quite mentally ill. (And wow, how the hell did this guy fall through the cracks in the system? Everyone around him, including his parents, had to have seen something was very, very wrong.) But we can’t fully prove that the mentally ill are more prone to commit violent acts than the rest of us. This 1999 study of assassinations of public officials [PDF] from the Journal of Forensic Science states that although 3/5s of the attackers in the study had been “evaluated or treated” by mental health professionals, “relatively few suffered from serious mental illness that directly affected their assassination behaviors.” Both studies linked here indicate that substance abuse was a very common factor.
Interestingly, the JFS study also states that attackers are unlikely to target public officials for political reasons. (This is an interesting post also about the shaky connection between political motivations and assassination attempts.) I’m very curious to see what comes out in the next few days in terms of Loughner’s political and social affiliations. Is he part of some larger conspiracy, a pawn in a Manchurian Candidate-style scenario? Eh, we’ll see. (The SPLC is alleging that he’s a follower of far-right-wing-loony David Wynn Miller, which does seem plausible. How anyone can understand what Miller’s trying to say, though — that’s another question.) The problem with media analysis — and, for that matter, vetted medical studies published in esteemed journals — is that you come up with the conclusion you were looking for going in.
This, I thought, was a particularly interesting Metafilter comment from back in August:
The current cycle will likely peak next spring. The usual pattern is for the Patriots to ride on the energy of electoral cycles and then the more violent ones will have a temper tantrum (usually in the form of mass killings) in the spring after the federal elections. You may recall the last cycle turned violent in 1995, six months after the right-wing frenzy gained the Republicans control of the House of Representatives for the first time since the Depression. The crazies like Tim McVeigh and Eric Rudolph don’t have any investment in electoral politics, but they are activated by political agitation and take the hot air coming from the far right as encouragement and approval for their own extremism.
The First Amendment vs eliminationist aspect: I’m of two minds when it comes to whether a) the violent political rhetoric of the Right somehow crosses the line of “protected speech,” and b) the rhetoric actually brings about this kind of violence. David Neiwert makes a compelling argument for a) yes and b) yes. Neiwert knows hate speech and hate groups better than most. The moment I hear dog-whistle words like treason, tyranny, traitor, sovereign, etc., come out of a pundit or politician’s mouth, I do get nervous. Because it means that that person is making two simultaneous statements — one directed at the general public, and the other at the fringe. Whether the fringe interprets this rhetoric as a call to arms is, to me, what determines whether it’s hate speech or not.
But we’re not talking Hal Turner calling for the murders of judges and Mexicans (which, as it turns out, may have been entirely payrolled by the FBI). We’re talking about greater nuance. Glenn Beck, who told us that it isn’t the time to pick up our guns and revolt — yet. Or Sharron Angle’s Second Amendment remedies. And Palin, Jesse Kelly, Beck, and all the other stupid, hateful *mainstream* political figures and pundits who use incendiary words and “surveyor’s symbols” on infographics. Even given the tragedy this weekend, I remain comfortable with letting them continue their stupid, hateful campaigns of stupid hate, because, eventually, and hopefully soon, they’ll shoot themselves in the foot (no pun intended) in doing so. As a defender of the First Amendment, I say, keep talking, bozos. But those of us who vehemently disagree (and I include myself in this) should be doing a lot more to exercise our own First Amendment rights in decrying this bullshit.*
The gun control aspect: This “insurrection timeline” is probably the most comprehensive list of violent insurrection (and attempts) since 2008. I think it’s casting entirely too wide a net, but it’s useful. I don’t have a lot to say on this, right now, other than I’ve read Loughner purchased his gun legally. (Although I have to question why someone with documented mental issues is legally entitled to do so…)
Anyhow, more later(ish).
*Not that I’m implying we should stage a leftist uprising or anything, she said.
I love this ghost story about the Gray Man at the Chelsea Hotel. Excerpt:
I hadn’t heard anything outside of the traffic down on 23rd Street and the occasional jet engine, and when I asked her what it was she said “I keep hearing a man’s voice saying ‘jump, go on jump. You’ll be fine, just go ahead and jump” and explained to me that a bizarre and inexplicable urge to jump off the roof of the Chelsea Hotel had entered her mind and would not be shaken. She asked that we move away from the edge of the roof where we had been perched, which is when we saw it.
A few yards away, half obscured by a chimney stack was the darkened silhouette of a man, watching us from an inkwell of a corner. It could have been my eyes playing tricks on my mind and I tried to convince myself this was the case. That is up until it moved, stepping back into the darkness behind it.
I can’t help it; I believe in ghosts. Yes, I’m an avowed atheist. I realize this is the dumbest thing (among the many other dumb things) I’ve admitted on this blog, but I believe in…something. My feeble rationale is that there must be some kind of…residual…um…energy? Like static electricity perhaps?
I once argued about it for three hours with my boyfriend at the time. I think I watched too much In Search Of as a kid.
Where did she go?
I am lazy. If you're bored, go visit my tumblr, updated daily with other people's witticisms and erudition.Also by me
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