Month: March 2002

Memo to Jeff Luers: Don't Do the Crime If You Can't Do the Time

In June 2000, Jeff Luers and Craig Marshall went to a Chevrolet dealership in Oregon and set three pickups on fire, causing an estimated $40,000 in damage. Almost a year later, on June 11, 2001, the 22-year old activist was sentenced to 22 years in jail for those acts of arson and related crimes. A large portion of that sentence does not carry any parole option, so Luers will likely spend close to 15 years in jail. Good for him.

The facts behind Luers’ case show that whatever else he is, he is not very bright. Luers had been just released from jail on a disorderly conduct charge. Plainclothes police were tailing him but lost him near the car dealership. He was arrested 10 minutes after the fire by another office on a traffic violation!

Luers received a 22-year sentence for two reasons. First, unlike Marshall, he refused to plea bargain. Marshall plead to lesser charges and received 5 1/2 years. As one newspaper account put it, Luers chose to roll the dice on a trial and lost big time. Second, Luers was also convicted of trying to ignite a gasoline tanker at Eugene’s Tyree Oil Co. in May 2000. The judge apparently decided that based on those two incidents, Luers was a serial arsonist and gave him a stiff sentence in response.

Of course animal rights and environmental extremists see Luers as a victim due to his long sentence. They seem to think that Luers and the right to commit arson because his conscience told him it was the right thing to do, but society does not have the right to protect itself against arsonists such as Luers.

Luers himself recently wrote a letter to Rep. Scott McInnis, who is conducting hearings into ecoterrorism, which is reproduced in its entirety below,

Dear Mr Scott McInnis,

I am writing in response to your recent statements and questions about me. I do not appreciate your deliberate and malicious misrepresentations of my words to further your political goals. Not only have you taken my words and formed new sentences with them attributing them to me, you have quoted me as saying things that I have never said. As an elected Representative of the people, I believe it is your legal and moral duty to be truthful when carrying out the political and legal activities of your office.

However I do appreciate your concern about me ” [wasting] away in prison for the next two plus decades.” You will be pleased to know that is not the case. I have stayed quite active in my college studies working towards my BA. Also, I have had a unique opportunity to discuss my situation with media from around the globe who have shown a surprising interest in my sentence.

You must realize Scott, that two years ago I was just a young man frustrated by the increasingly severe destruction of the environment. I burned some tires on some trucks as a result of that frustration. Perhaps my actions were misguided. Perhaps they can be rationalized as the lesser of two evils. It is all perspective.

Had I been given a reasonable sentence I would have been forgotten by the public. I would have been one news story.I would have served my sentence and finished my BA. I would have been released, reunited with my family and enjoyed the rest of my life. Yes, I would have continued to be active in efforts to protect the environment, but I would have avoided activities that would lead me back to prison.

By giving me a sentence of 22 years, viewed by a majority of people as overly harsh and extreme, the system has put me in the spot light, giving me international attention. I have been made to be an example. However, that has only served to make me a political prisoner and for some perhaps even a martyr. This is not a role I chose to fill. It was forced upon me. It is oppression that creates revolutionaries Scott, and it is injustice that ignites revolutions.

In defense of Mother Earth

Sincerely,

Jeff Luers

If Luers thinks he has much of a spotlight, he is deluding himself — in a couple years no one but the small cadre of true believers will remember him (his case was barely reported nationally as it was). But he has received a lot of attention from other extremists.

According to an article by Josh Harper in a recent issue of No Compromise, for example,

The fire Free was convicted of setting was an act of compassion. The gas guzzling monstrosities known as SUV’s slaughter more animals each year than the fur industry, emit fumes that harm the well being of plants and animals alike, and take us further down the path of a world without green spaces. As forests, grasslands, and other wild areas fall to make more room for parking lots and freeways, is it any wonder that people are beginning to attack the auto industry?

Animal rights, extremist environmental sites, and anarchist sites are filled with similar screeds condemning the injustices supposedly done to Luers.

Luers is appealing his sentence, but faces an uphill battle. Meanwhile the car dealership recently filed a civil suit against Luers and Marshall to cover the cost of the destroyed property.

With any luck, the dealers will have to wait 20 years before seeing any money from Luers.

Sources:

Man Called ‘Free’ Sits In Prison. Bryan Denson, The Oregonian, September 25, 2001.

Chevy dealer sues anarchists convicted in arson fire. Associated Press, February 27, 200.

In Honor of Jeff Luers. Josh Harper, No Compromise, Issue 18, Summer 2001.

Guard Who Crushed Kittens Receives One Year Jail Sentence

A former Sing Sing prison guard was sentenced this week to a year in jail for killing five kittens in a garbage compactor.

Saying that the crime was “so offensive and so calculated and so gratuitously cruel, it diminishes the humanity of everybody,” Westchester Supreme Court Justice Kenneth Lange sentenced Ronald Hunlock, 48, to a year in prison.

Hunlock actually received six separate one-year sentences — one for each of the kittens as well as one for the mother cat — but the judge allowed Hunlock to serve the sentences concurrently.

Under 3-year-old New York statute, the maximum prison time Hunlock could have received was two years.

On March 22, 2002, Hunlock was officially fired from his job (he had been on suspension without pay since being arrested) and forfeited over half a million in pension and retirement benefits as a result.

Sources:

Sing Sing guard gets year in jail for crushing cats. Owen Motiz, New York Daily News, March 23, 2002.

Sing Sing guard gets year in jail for killing 5 kittens. Jim Fitzgerald, Associated Press, March 22, 2002.

The Pundits are Polarized, Not the Public

FoxNews has an article quoting Michael Moore and Bernard Goldberg making the case that the United States is very divided politically. The main evidence for this is the absurdly close 2000 election and the popularity of ideological books such as the recent bestsellers by Moore and Goldberg. I suspect the reality is just the opposite.

One of the longstanding debates between the left and the right is whether the news media — especially broadcast television — is biased toward one side or the other. As someone who is often infuriated at news broadcasts, I think the answer is neither. Rather, news broadcasts are targeted toward a middle-of-the-road relatively non-ideological political position which I suspect the vast majority of Americans subscribe to.

What the Left and Right do not want to hear is that, for the most part, Americans aren’t really into ideological politics. In fact most of the people I know a) are not really interested in politics and b) tend to have a mishmash of views across the ideological spectrum. I see a fair amount of interest in very narrow special interest politics — someone concerned about federal funding for breast cancer research, abortion-related activism, but not much beyond that.

Of course people like Michael Moore and Bernard Goldberg want to think that there is this deep political division and that they are appealing to their respective side, but I suspect sales of their books are driven largely because of the general middle-of-the-road consensus. Personally, being an extremely ideological person in a relatively non-ideological society drives me nuts. My idea of entertaining television is “Crossfire.” So of course the minority of ideological folks, fed up with the bland centrist television news, are going to flock to buy books like Bias or Stupid White Men.

The 2000 election is really the clincher. Moore thinks that because Gore and Bush were separated by a few hundred votes, that is an indication of a divided country. Maybe among hardcore Democrat and Republican activists, but the reason they were so close is that they held almost identical positions. Sure they differed on some of the details — details that most people don’t seem to give a hoot about — but their broader ideological positions were almost identical. Bush moved to the Left on abortion, Gore moved to the Right on free trade, and they looked more like members of the same party during the nationally televised debates than sworn ideological enemies.

If Americans were really divided by ideology, I would have thought Ralph Nader would have actually been able to poll significant numbers. Moore, after all, campaigned incessantly on behalf of Nader as the true left/liberal candidate and I suspect his performance in the polls — under 5 percent — closely reflects the number of people in Moore’s ideological tent.

And 5 percent of adults in the United States is more than enough to make a book like Moore’s a best seller. And the same phenomenon probably explains Goldberg’s success. Yes, 400,000 copies is a lot of books, but it’s still a drop in the buck to the small percentage of committed ideological conservatives.

The claim that Americans are polarized is simply wishful thinking on the part of Moore, Goldberg and other ideological activists.

Source:

There’s a Bias, but Is It Left or Right? FoxNews, March 26, 2002.

Charles Paul Freund’s “In Praise of Vulgarity”

I normally don’t like to just say “here’s a link, go read it,” but Charles Paul Freund’s article, In Praise of Vulgarity, is one of the best essays I have read in a very long time. Unfortunately, it is almost 9,000 words long and doesn’t lend itself well to reading on the web. Print it out and curl up with it for half an hour or check it out in the March 2002 issue of Reason.

Nigerian Woman’s Adultery Death Sentence Thrown Out

A sharia appeals court recently overturned the death sentence of Safiya Husaini, 35, who had been ordered stoned to death after being convicted of adultery. Safiya’s case had become a worldwide cause and an embarrassment to Nigeria’s government.

The sharia court ruled that the adultery in question took place before the sharia law had been passed, and so the crime was beyond the court’s jurisdiction.

The issue is not likely to go away, however, even though Nigeria’s justice minister, Godwin Agabi, recently ordered sharia state courts to rewrite their rules to bring them in harmony with Nigeria’s national criminal statutes. But, in fact, just as the decision to throw out Safiya’s conviction was announced, it was revealed that another divorced woman had been sentenced to death after being convicted of adultery by an Islamic court.

Nigeria is deeply divided between Muslims and Christians. The imposition of sharia law in parts of Nigeria have led to riots that have left thousands of people dead.

Muslims have had enough influence to impose sharia courts on 12 of Nigeria’s 36 states. The Nigerian justice minister insisted that it is illegal for sharia courts to impose harsher sentences on Muslims than the national law allowed for.

Nigeria will hold elections in early 2003, however, and the issue of Islamic law will be a major issue in those elections.

Sources:

Woman spared Nigeria stoning death. CNN, March 25, 2002.

Sharia court frees Nigerian woman. The BBC, March 25, 2002.