A reality based independent journal of observation & analysis, serving the Flathead Valley & Montana since 2006. © James Conner.

8 May 2015

Flathead Memo: Bernie’s health care mistake and a bullyboy judge

Bernie Sanders’ weak platform plank on healthcare. Sen. Bernie Sanders has the most progressive health care plank in the Democratic Party:

Health care: Shamefully, the United States remains the only major country on earth that does not guarantee health care to all people. The United States must move toward a Medicare-for-all single-payer system. Health care is a right, not a privilege.

He’s right about needing a single-payer system, and that health care is a right, but he’s wrong to use Medicare as an example of the kind of single-payer system to which we should aspire and move. Medicare is single-payer, and much about it is good, but it’s also stingy-payer. It doesn’t cover everything, forcing Medicare recipients to purchase expensive private “medigap” policies, and the prescription drug benefit is provided through private health insurers.

What we need is what I call American Care: a cradle to grave, all citizens enrolled automatically at birth, everyone covered for everything, no copays, federal single-payer system financed through progressive taxation.

What kind of judge keeps a jury deliberating 18 days in a simple murder trial? A judge that’s trying to bully the jurors into convicting the defendant. A judge in New York, Maxwell Wiley, almost got away with doing that this week. In the end, he declared a mistrial because the jury was hung, 11 for conviction, and one for not guilty.

The case was notorious. Thirty-three years ago, six-year-old Etan Patz disappeared on his was to school and never was found. In theory, he could still be alive today.

The trial lasted four months. The prosecution’s case depended on a confession from Pedro Hernandez, 54, whom defense lawyers described as a man with a mental disorder that impaired his ability to separate reality from fantasy.

Because Etan’s body was never found, the prosecution’s case rested almost entirely on Mr. Hernandez’s own words in videotaped confessions he gave to the police, a prosecutor and several psychiatrists who examined him while he was in state custody.

Prosecutors, led by Joan Illuzzi-Orbon, had no scientific evidence from a crime scene or an autopsy to buttress Mr. Hernandez’s account. Investigators never found the boy’s clothes or the pilot’s hat he was wearing, nor a small tote bag crammed with toy cars and pencils that he carried.

Muddying the picture, the defense team, led by Harvey Fishbein, also introduced evidence pointing to another possible culprit: Jose A. Ramos, a convicted child molester who knew an employee of the Patz family and was for years the prime suspect in the case.

The holdout, Adam Sirois, believed the confession did not provide proof beyond a reasonable doubt:

“For me, his confession was very bizarre,” Mr. Sirois said. “No matter how many times it happened, it got more and more bizarre.”

He gave weight to the defense argument that Mr. Hernandez was coerced into admitting he killed Etan. Mr. Sirois said that he had concerns about what happened in the six hours Mr. Hernandez spoke with detectives and prosecutors, but before they turned on a video camera to record his confession, and whether Mr. Hernandez understood his rights. The defendant’s mental health was a “huge” issue for Mr. Sirois, he said, as well as the possibility that Mr. Ramos committed the crime.

“Ultimately I couldn’t find enough evidence that wasn’t circumstantial to convict,” he said.

At the beginning of deliberations, a majority believed Hernandez was guilty. Over the course of a few days, all but Sirois gave in and voted guilty. Were they genuinely persuaded of his guilt? Or were they just weary of the endless debate, homesick, and because they didn’t like Hernandez, willing to convict him to end their own incarceration? At that point, the objective became breaking Sirois, but convinced his doubts were honest and reasonable, he proved to have an iron will. Good for him.

Compelling juries to extend deliberations until someone breaks and a guilty verdict is adopted is not justice. It’s malpractice.