As April winds on, time is drawing ever nearer to the date when we are due to make the move south from our Home in Glenrothes Fife to our new home to be in Bristol, a little matter of about 405 miles of displacement and so far a whole lot of misery for Nicola and me in terms of packing.
While we are both looking forward to starting new in Bristol, and I am looking forward to starting the LPC with BPP in September and hopefully fitting in as much legal experience as I can in the next few months before then, I never thought in the immediate that it would be so difficult to pack up our current home in preparation to move, but the last few days have been hell on earth as we have sought to reduce our possessions to a more manageable level prior to going, everything from books to clothes to ornaments has been a huge struggle for us both to deal with. Who on earth packs 15 boxes of books for example, everything from old Beano annuals and Ladybird readers from childhood to a tonne weight of my law books and uni work, plus masses of general interest books and pulp fiction, not to mention 6 large boxes containing our CD collection of way over 1200 albums and a couple of hundred DVD’s! As I type I am looking at a copy of Black Sabbaths worst album ‘Born Again’ (the one with Ian Gillan ‘singing’ which I bought out of curiosity and instantly regretted it!) and wondering whether to take it or throw it against the living room wall! Its ‘cover’ would probably look much better smashed (or ‘trashed’) anyway, I mean Gillan himself said he ‘vomited’ when he first clocked sight of it!
Slowly however (getting back to the move) we are getting on top of it and have managed to ditch a mass of stuff over the last few days, probably lots of it that we will later look back on and say ‘why the hell did I throw that out?’
I am not from London although a large part of my family is including my Father. Nonetheless the concept of the election of a Mayor is one that I am unfamiliar with and not convinced of the necessity for as it is after all merely another layer of expensive red tape. Nonetheless, London has a Mayor and currently the race for election is on.
To the casual observer however, it would appear at the moment that the race for office is a two horse race between the Conservative and incumbent candidate Bullingdon sorry Boris Johnson* and the Notorious ‘Red’ (or is that ‘crying’) Ken Livingston* with some fringe activities by the Liberal Tories, sorry Lie’beral Democraps sorry Liable demoscratch, SORRY! (Bloody Keyboard!) the ‘Liberal Democrats’ (finally, you know Paddy pantsdowns party) (er. do they still exist? is there life on Mars?) and a few other more well known ‘parties’.
Some would argue that both of the Labour and Tory candidates have had their day (including myself) and should step aside in favour of some fresh blood and a more positive fresh direction in office rather than playing politics as they always do, as this week has seen with some pretty rubbish squabbling over who pays tax for what. the fact that some candidates have reduced the debate to one of who pays more tax is pretty pathetic, not to mention being bereft of policy.
Not so according to the BBC, Sky and various other media outlets however who have recently been accused in The Guardian of excluding non major party candidates from televised and other media events, including specifically the sole independent candidate Siobhan Benita who has not been invited to take part in live televised debates or hustings, and has otherwise been sidelined in coverage in favour of the major party figures, which in my mind presents an entirely false image to the electorate who may not even be aware that other candidates are taking part (though I have to say that I have no problem with the British Nazi sorry ‘National’ Party candidate being suppressed! Launched into and lost in space would be more fitting or a meeting with ‘Handy’ John Prescott down a dark alley).
In my own opinion if I were voting in this or any election I would like to actually know who all of the candidates are. In this case, there are actually only 7 candidates as detailed here, including those mentioned above. Hardly a huge unmanageable number to deal with in a live debate setting. Yet the BBC claims to be acting in the interests of the electorate (which I doubt is really something they should be doing anyway short of giving unbiased and full news coverage) Indeed a number of quotes from the recent Guardian article pretty much sum up how ridiculous the BBC position is becoming.
The BBC maintains that its guidelines only require it to give airtime to candidates from parties with a track record in a previous relevant election, or with clear evidence of support in the polls……
According to Ric Bailey the BBC’s chief advisor of politics has stated that the BBC’s “way of providing election coverage is the result of a long-standing system in the UK – not just the BBC – which has established that it is in the broader interests of the electorate that not all candidates have to be treated identically. You are right, of course, that licence fee payers should be able to have access to all candidates – but with ‘due weight’……
then….
“Due weight must be given to the coverage of major parties during the election period. Broadcasters must also consider giving appropriate coverage to other parties and independent candidates with significant views and perspectives.”
Now I have to say how dare the BBC or indeed any other media broadcaster with a duty to present the news in an unbiased and complete manner presume (behind whatever ‘guidelines’, ‘conventions’, ‘traditions’ or other brouhaha) to decide which candidates get coverage and what the electorate gets to know about them. These passages and statements clearly demonstrate and perpetuates a number of typically human and media failings in politics, including;
The idea that something is right just because we have been doing it for a long time, and
That the electorate need to be guided to the right candidate by a media organisation who claim to be ‘protecting their interests’, and
The fallacious idea that the media for some reason see themselves as having some kind of duty or right to influence an election, for example the infamous and patently scandalous ‘It’s the Sun Wot Won It‘ nonsense from 1992.
This is in essence political discrimination at its worst which is robbing the London mayoral electorate of their democratic right to make their mind up in an informed manner. The BBC as far as I am concerned are little more today than a runaway train of a publicly funded broadcaster badly in need of either being stripped back to little more than a news flash once a day or of being cut loose from the public purse to earn its living privately rather than being foisted upon the public at great and unavoidable taxed expense (It is a no brainer though, which do you privatise: (a) The NHS or (b) the BBC? Auntie gets it every time, or at least she should!).
No. As far as I am concerned, for this election to be fair, all candidates must be heard. The election should not simply be restricted to a race between two or three individuals simply because they have a major party backing, and the BBC and other broadcasters engaging in this election manipulation should be stopped from doing so or told forthwith to withdraw all coverage of all candidates.
The BBC should be ashamed. As a taxpayer funded organisation, they have absolutely no business whatsoever in purposely or inadvertently by their actions influencing a democratic election due to their compromised position of being funded just now by way of a conservative government. One could say they are hardly a neutral body. Nor do Sky or any other media outlets who have been guilty of the same thing. The people of London deserve to make their choice in a properly informed manner, and this in my mind requires that if one candidate is given a media platform, then all other candidates must also have the same platform, or not at all for any. This goes not just for the Mayoral race, but for any election, particularly general elections for example in 2010 where we had to face the ridiculous site of major three party leaders squabbling (and telling lots and lots of pure and simple lies as seen below) on live television while the dozens of other parties got not a look in.
Of course there are large parts of the population who may well just vote labour, Tory or god forbid BNP anyway without need of watching any of these docu-dramas. Nonetheless there are also a lot of people who may not have made up their minds yet, and they deserve more than simply being exposed only to the candidate whom the BBC or Sky give the greater coverage to.
Democracy?
Not in this country, so grab a broom its Shenanigans!
*Boris Johnson former member of: Bullingdon Club: the same outrageous, destructive and socially exclusive creepy ‘dining’ club from whence came our Prime Minister David Cameron, Chancellor George Osborne, and to which Tory Treasurer Michael Farmer paid for the admittance of his own son. One member in cabinet would be fine. Two members, a Mayor and further links? Is this Government representative of Britain? I think not!
*about whom the less said the better particularly with regards to his opinions on tax avoiders while allegedly avoiding tax himself as well as his extensive list of other controversies including racism, cronyism, Venezuelan oil etc, and just this week, the CROCODILE TEARS fake campaign video scandal where actors pretended to be ‘ordinary londoners’ backing Ken gushed over him and why he should be re-elected while Ken sat and cried upon allegedly seeing it for the first time, having allegedly seen it the night before according to The Daily Mail (I know, not very authoritative, but then…. neither is Ken Livingstone).
Some major encouraging developments have taken place over the last day regarding events recently discussed on LawBlogOne.
Garry T Allen
Firstly some good news from Oklahoma in the case of Garry T Allen who was due to be executed today, it has been reported that a stay of execution has been granted by a federal judge pending further investigation into his mental competence to face execution. This follows on from Allen having exhausted all state appeal processes. I must stress that this does not constitute a granting of clemency, merely a delay in proceedings to allow the question of Allen’s mental health to be adressed. It is nonetheless a positive step which should hopefully lead to Allen’s potentially unconstitutional capital sentence being commuted to life imprisonment given the copious evidence regarding his apparent long term and continually deteriorating mental health.
This is a highly encouraging event in the continuing campaign to have capital punishment repealed throughout the USA. Connecticut now joins a growing group of states that have repealed capital punishment in recent years including New Mexico and New York. There are signs that more states will soon follow, including California. The jewel in the crown is of course Texas, the state with the largest capital punishment system in the USA, but something tells me that Texas will be the last state to make the change, if at all.
The only blot on the horizon for the Oklahoma repeal is of course the fact that the change is not retrospective meaning that those currently on death row will remain on death row, a circumstance that is apparently the result of compromise between the opposing political factions of the Connecticut Senate. This is arguably an unsustainable oddity and it remains to be seen how this will be dealt with in future. It could of course be dealt with simply should the Governor chose to do so by way of a moratorium in a manner similar to that undertaken in Oregon by Governor Kitzhaber. Whether this does happen is at the moment unknown.
The campaign will continue, and of course The World is Watching.
In the landmark 2002 case Atkins v Virginia the US Supreme Court ruled that executions of people suffering ‘mental retardation’ (or Intellectual Disability as it is also known) would be a violation of the Constitution’s ban on ‘cruel and unusual punishment’ and thereby unconstitutional.
An execution falling into this category is scheduled to take place in Oklahoma next Thursday, 12th April 2012.
Garry T. Allen was convicted in Oklahoma for the murder of his partner, Lawanna Gail Titswoth in 1986; and is currently on death row, his execution by lethal injection is scheduled for Thursday 12th April 2012.
During the course of his incarceration, Allen has made a number of appeals against sentence including in 1996 and 2008. In both case the appeals were rejected and the courts found Allen to be mentally competent to face execution, despite in the 1996 case considering and accepting the original trial evidence which suggested that Allen had suffered from a lifelong series of serious mental health issues, as the following extracts from the 1996 appeal show:
…..11. The record shows extensive mitigating evidence was presented by defense expert, Dr. Nelda Ferguson. She testified Allen was raised in poverty and hunger in an unstable family led by an alcoholic mother who rejected him. As a teenager Allen suffered debilitating mood swings which resulted in five or six suicide attempts. He began to abuse alcohol and drugs when he was seventeen or eighteen years old. All of Allen’s siblings are alcoholics. Even though Allen’s IQ indicates he is bright, he ultimately dropped out of high school after a six month placement in the Boley State School. While serving in the Navy, Allen was hospitalized for psychological problems, and the abuse of alcohol and drugs. He had also been admitted into the Oklahoma City Veteran’s Administration hospital for psychological problems.
12. Dr. Ferguson concluded the appellant was genetically predisposed to mental illness, and diagnosed Allen as having a personality disorder related to schizophrenia. He could not form and keep long-term relationships, he had little impulse control, and drinking greatly exacerbated these problems. Dr. Ferguson’s testimony was supported by Allen’s parents who testified to mental illness on both sides of the family, and Allen’s ex-wife who testified to Allen’s inability to control his temper. Allen himself testified he drank whenever possible.
13. Most of the evidence on which appellant bases this claim was in fact introduced: the maternal rejection; the drug and alcohol abuse; the hospitalization while in the Navy; and the personality disorder. The only challenged evidence not introduced is the possibility Allen suffered from Reye’s syndrome, the fact the environment of the Boley State Home was violent, and the specific label of organic brain damage. Given the very thorough mental health evidence presented by Dr. Ferguson, we find beyond a reasonable doubt the omission of this evidence did not undermine the validity of the re-sentencing hearing.
15. …..in this case the evidence of mental and social disability was credible, well developed, and uncontroverted…..’
There is therefore adequate evidence to suggest that at the time of the killing, Garry Allen was not only self-medicating an underlying mental illness with excessive drinking, but he had a history of mental illness, possible schizophrenia, diminished responsibility and control, and other potential illnesses which were never fully discussed including possible Reye’s Syndrome which can degeneratively affect the brain.
There are also suggestions that Allen is suffering from frontal lobe brain damage either through illness or through a gunshot injury sustained at the time of his apprehension for his crime and indications of dementia brought on by seizures, drug use and the gunshot wound as confirmed by psychological examination by a court appointed doctor as confirmed by an article by the Oklahoma Coalition to Abolish the Death penalty.
Allen also does not recall the killing now and did not appear to either during and shortly after the event although during the trial he did admit to his crimes and has since been highly remorseful. His mental health has however continued to deteriorate during his time on Death Row as is claimed on this extract from a 2005 Amnesty International article:
…..Garry Allen has epilepsy, which has apparently worsened during his time on death row. He has frequent seizures and doctors have said that he is so confused for periods after these seizures that he would not understand the reality of or reason for his impending execution. In 1993, Garry Allen’s IQ was measured at 111, above average. By 1999, it had dropped to 75. Doctors have reportedly put this down to his ongoing epileptic seizures combined with head injuries…..’
This examination was undertaken in 1999. it is probably fair to say that Allen’s condition has worsened since then bringing him within the remit of Atkins v Virginia.
In 2005 the Oklahoma board of Pardon and Parole (OPP) in light of the compelling facts regarding Allen’s mental health in an unprecedented move recommended that Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin grant clemency for Allen. This has so far been refused.
However the fact that the OPP board voted 4 to 1 in favour of clemency and that the board included one member who consistently votes against clemency in many capital cases shows that there was and remains significant weight to the arguments and evidence establishing that Allen must not be executed, but should instead have his capital sentence commuted to life imprisonment.
As such, where the Supreme Court decision in Atkins v Virginia renders the execution of death row inmates suffering from mental retardation / impairment, proceeding with the execution of Allen now would not only be inhumane (as all executions in the USA are), but also very likely unconstitutional. It must not be allowed to proceed in light of the pressing evidence against.
The argument that Allen should not be executed on the basis of his mental impairment is a persuasive one but not the only one which may be relevant. The US Supreme Court held in Ford v. Wainwright (477 U.S. 399 (1986)) that executing the insane is unconstitutional, meaning those inmates who are so out of touch with reality that they cannot understand their punishment or the purpose of it. It could be, and has been, argued that Allen is incapable of understanding the punishment he faces and therefore his sentence should be commuted to life in prison.
In this unusual and disturbing case, it seems that even the family of the victim do not want the execution to take place. Speaking out last week, Jasmine Allen, granddaughter of Garry Allen said:
….Our efforts to persuade Governor Fallin to reconsider this decision are in full swing, with calls, letters, petitions to the Governor, letters to editors, news conference, etc. My mother and I want to thank the OK-CADP (Oklahoma Coalition Against The Death Penalty), our friends and the public, for any energy, prayers, and assistance they can send our way…..”
What can you do now?
Please sign the NCADP petition for clemency for Allen available here
Tweet this post to your followers or publicise through Facebook or to Governor Fallin
Publicise this in any way you can, twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, anywhere. Strength is in numbers in these cases. Allen is scheduled to be executed on Thursday 12th, time is therefore of the essence.
Post co-authored by Julliette Frangos & Mike Farrell-Deveau, April 9th 2012.
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Blog posts reflect the views and opinions of the individual author or any other contributing and commenting individuals only.
While we are both looking forward to starting new in Bristol, and I am looking forward to starting the LPC with BPP in September and hopefully fitting in as much legal experience as I can in the next few months before then, I never thought in the immediate that it would be so difficult to pack up our current home in preparation to move, but the last few days have been hell on earth as we have sought to reduce our possessions to a more manageable level prior to going, everything from books to clothes to ornaments has been a huge struggle for us both to deal with. Who on earth packs 15 boxes of books for example, everything from old Beano annuals and Ladybird readers from childhood to a tonne weight of my law books and uni work, plus masses of general interest books and pulp fiction, not to mention 6 large boxes containing our CD collection of way over 1200 albums and a couple of hundred DVD’s! As I type I am looking at a copy of Black Sabbaths worst album ‘Born Again’ (the one with Ian Gillan ‘singing’ which I bought out of curiosity and instantly regretted it!) and wondering whether to take it or throw it against the living room wall! Its ‘cover’ would probably look much better smashed (or ‘trashed’) anyway, I mean Gillan himself said he ‘vomited’ when he first clocked sight of it!
Mike Farrell-Deveau
OU Law Society
