The American presidency is designed to disappoint... - George Friedman, CEO of Stratfor
The American presidency is designed to disappoint. Each candidate must promise things that are beyond his power to deliver. No candidate could expect to be elected by emphasizing how little power the office actually has and how voters should therefore expect little from him. So candidates promise great, transformative programs. What the winner actually can deliver depends upon what other institutions, nations and reality will allow him. Though the gap between promises and realities destroys immodest candidates, from the founding fathers' point of view, it protects the republic. They distrusted government in general and the office of the president in particular. Congress, the Supreme Court and the Federal Reserve Board all circumscribe the president's power over domestic life. This and the authority of the states greatly limit the president's power, just as the country's founders intended. To achieve anything substantial, the president must create a coalition of political interests to shape decision-making in other branches of the government. Yet at the same time -- and this is the main paradox of American political culture -- the presidency is seen as a decisive institution and the person holding that office is seen as being of overriding importance...
Charges
of racism and on-the-fly rules changes hallmarked the short-lived
takeover of media coordination of the Reverend Willie Tompkins'
campaign as the Democratic nominee for Sheriff of McLennan County.
Kathy
Schroeder, who has mounted a one-woman Facebook campaign against GOP
hopeful Parnell McNamara for the past month, suddenly announced on
Monday that in the future all media communication with Rev. Tompkins
must first be printed on the “Race for McLennan County Sheriff”
page.
The fact that Ms. Schroeder is not an administrator on the Facebook page didn't seem to cramp her style.
She also engaged in spirited debate with other participants over whether her mention of Mr. Tompkins' campaign, if successful, would mark the distinction of becoming the first black man elected Sheriff of McLennan County.
Vigorous debate, pro and con, resulted. Mr. Tompkins said nothing about it.
We'd
love to provide a sample, but all of her work disappeared –
suddenly and without explanation.
We
had discussed talking over his part as a witness in the murder trial
of Mohammed Muneer Deeb, a conspirator convicted of capital murder in
the killings of three high school aged Methodist Home residents
dubbed the “Lake Waco Murders.”
Rev.
Tompkins was working as a security guard at a Skaggs Albertson's
store on Valley Mills Dr. when Mr. Deeb got in the habit of dropping
in for coffee. He revealed his involvement in a murder-for-hire plot
with three men that went tragically wrong when they attacked the
wrong youths due to a mistaken identity of one of the young ladies.
When
he apprehended what Mr. Deeb was talking about, he turned his
knowledge over to Sgt. Truman Simon of the Waco police, who was the
lead investigator in the trials of David Wayne Spence and two other
parties to the killings. Mr. Spence was later executed by lethal
injection.
Mr.
Deeb won a new trial in which he was acquitted in 1992 after an
appeal to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals resulted in the
suppression of hearsay testimony, a reversible error committed by
Judge John McLean of the 249th
Judicial District at Cleburne, where the case had been moved on a
motion for a change of venue.
He
died several years later of cancer while he operated a computer
repair service in Dallas.
During
the trial, Mr. Deeb's attorney objected vigorously to hearsay
testimony offered by a jail house snitch who was housed with Mr.
Spence in the Brazos County Jail at Bryan. He testified as to remarks
made by “Chili, David Wayne Spence, regarding Mr. Deeb's hiring he
and his two fellow assailants with promises of a share in the life
insurance he took out on his intended victim.
Judge
McLean overruled all the attorney's objections, entering a notation
of a “running objection” on the trial's record.
When
Mr. Deeb requested the Court's permission to represent himself, Judge
McLean remarked, “That's kind of like doing your own open heart
surgery.”
Hargill
– In the darkness of night, terror stalks rural homes when an
unfamiliar vehicle cruises by, parks in the dark, or its occupants start nosing around an isolated
farmhouse.
The
tiny hamlet of Hargill, Texas, sits at the intersection of two farm
to market roads - FM 490 and 493 - in the rich valley floodplain farmlands just north of
the border, about 25 miles northeast of McAllen and Reynosa.
There
is an eerie similarity to what Pedro Alvarado's relatives are telling
newsmen in the shooting of an ICE Agent who was doing a stakeout for
the Department of Homeland Security of his home in a wooded area
north of town on July 3, and the fatal deep night shooting of a
15-year-old girl at Whitney in a wooded area of the family's property
near the corner of two rural highways - 933 and FM 1713 - on July 24.
In the Hargill shooting, Special Agent Kelton Harrison staked out a rural farm house in an "anticipated drug deal."
Mr. Alvarado and his two sons, one 18, the other 16, piled into the car
and cruised past Agent Harrison's Jeep SUV, which was parked near their home.
The
16-year-old boy shot an estimated 6 rounds with a .22 rifle,
shattering both the rear and front windshields of the vehicle.
The
rifle shots wounded Agent Harrison in his back.
He
put his Jeep in gear and fled, driving down the highway in an effort
to escape the deadly onslaught.
Mr.
Alvarado and the older brother, Arnoldo, shot numerous times with 9
mm handguns as the agent fled down the arrow-straight farm to market
road that leads to the crossroads at Hargill.
When
Agent Harrison lost control due to the shock of his
wounds, his Jeep veered into another wooded area at the roadside.
Mr.
Alvarado and his elder son are both charged in U.S. District Court
with assault of a federal officer and knowingly carrying a firearm during a
violent crime.
The
younger son, whose name was witheld because of his youth, is charged
with attempted capital murder in State District Court. It remains to
be seen if he will be certified by a juvenile court as an adult.
Sentiment
in the Hispanic community is running high. The local press has
carried stories that assert juveniles are tried as adults in state
courts because of a desire to punish them, while federal judges
rarely if ever try juveniles in federal courts for their offenses.
A
U.S. Magistrate declined to set bond on Mr. Alvarado and his son, noting for the record that the father's behavior showed
“dangerous traits.”
In
the Whitney case, when Edwin Odell Collins, a 40-year-old truck
driver, saw the approach of flashlights focused on the ground, he
assumed it was a band of people coming to get him and possibly harm
his family.
He
told investigators at the Hill County Sheriff's Department that he
loaded a 12 gauge semiautomatic shotgun and urged his two sons and
his daughter to get in the family's mini-van with him and flee.
They
headed for the back door of the family's convenience store, which is located at the front of the family's home place and open 24 hours, but for some reason he changed his mind. The four of
them alighted from the vehicle and began to run across the pasture
for the perceived safety of a heavily wooded treeline.
He
ordered his kids to fall back a hundred yards while he waited with
the shotgun to kill the people with the flashlights.
But
when he heard a scream, he turned and fired in the dark.
The
blast struck his daughter in the back; she died at the scene of the
shooting, where Mr Collins and his two sons hid in a state of terror
for the rest of the night.
At
daylight, they approached the store, where he asked his father if
police had responded to a dropped call he had attempted to place to
the 911 emergency line.
He
didn't tell his father, the children's grandfather, that his daughter
lay dead in the woods. According to Chief Deputy S. Girsh, Mr.
Collins did not appear to be intoxicated by alcohol, under the
influence of drugs, or suffering from a psychiatric emergency.
When
his father said no, he had not heard anything from police, he and the
two boys continued to the Hill County Sheriff's Office in Hillsboro,
where he told investigating officers that he had shot his daughter
and left her body in the woods without calling in for emergency
medical assistance.
He
is charged with the murder of his daughter, and has been released on
a $500,000 surety bond.
Penny postcard of Dirty Harry's visit to United Nations Plaza
A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. - The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
Gotham City – The Joker sent a message to the White House; it said it's an
act of political suicide to support regulation of gun sales, either
domestic, or international.
A
majority of U.S. Senators joined Batman's arch-nemesis; they sent their
own message.
When
a coalition of 51 Senators delivered a letter to the White House
asserting they would never vote to ratify a United Nations treaty
aimed at curtailing the international trade in small arms, the Obama
Administration backed off its support for the measure.
Russian
representatives at the United Nations echoed the opinion, and joined
the U.S. by voting against the final version of the treaty at the end
of a week-long conference on gun control on Friday.
According
to Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kansas) and 50 others, the effort to regulate
a $60 billion a year global commerce in small arms - much of it illicit - “restricts the
rights of law-abiding American gun owners.”
That
sentiment echoed the position of the National Rifle Association and
gun manufacturers who lobbied long and hard against the proposal,
which had earlier gained the enthusiastic approval of the President, Barack Hussein Obama, and the Secretary of State, Hilary Rodham Clinton.
In
a similar writing, former UN Ambassador John Bolton said the treaty
advocates “hope to use restrictions on international gun sales to
control gun sales at home.” Ambassador Bolton and President George
W. Bush had opposed the notion of international control of arms sales
during the previous Administration, saying they preferred national
laws to international laws to control the commerce in small arms
across borders.
An
Associated Press Fact Check pointed out that if the terms of an
international treaty are counter to the provisions of the U.S.
Constitution, the nation cannot ratify any such agreement.
World
opinion expressed in news dispatches throughout the globe attributed
the sudden policy shift by the Obama Administration to public
reaction to a mass shooting of theater patrons attending the premier
of a Batman movie by an assailant costumed as The Joker, wearing a helmet, full body armor, and armed
with an AR-15, a tactical shotgun, and two semiautomatic pistols at
Aurora, Colorado.
The
alleged gunman is a University of Colorado neuroscience doctoral
candidate who had dropped out after participating in studies of behavioral control in
that institution's laboratories.
Hillsboro
– E.O. Collins, who admitted to Hill County deputies that he took a
shot in the dark with his 12-gauge when he heard his daughter scream,
gained his release at 5 p.m. today when a Dallas bonding agency
underwrote the surety on a $500,000 bond.
Charged
with murder, Mr. Collins told lawmen that he heard the girl's scream
after a wild flight into the woodsy area of his family property's
fence line as he and his children fled intruders with flashlights.
Terrified,
Mr. Collins assumed they had come to do him harm.
When
he saw the reflection of the flashlights approaching, he ordered his
two sons and a 15-year-old daughter to retreat.
His
daughter screamed in the dark; Mr. Collins fired in that direction,
and he found the child dead, facedown, a shotgun blast to her back
having killed her.
Instead, Obama's stand on the government's role ended up right where it was after the mass shooting in Colorado last week: Enforce existing law better.(click here)
That is same view held by his Republican opponent, Mitt Romney, as both reach for broader and more politically appealing ways to keep guns away from killers.
Dallas bail bonding company goes defendant's half-million dollar bail at 5 p.m. Friday afternoon
(click image for a larger view)
A shot in the dark - the target - a scream
Whitney
– Edwin Odell Collins must have looked like the last nine yards of
hell when he walked in the front door of the Hill County Sheriff's
Office in downtown Hillsboro.
An
arrest warrant says he had “numerous scratches on his arms, face
and shoulder,” and the right shoulder of Mr. Collins' shirt was
“torn off.”
He
told deputies he had a need to speak with someone - “to make a
report.”
As
he talked, he told a horrific tale of terror and an entire night he
and his children spent hiding in the trees along a fence line on the
family's home place; the lawmen realized that “the Accused was
about to escape so that there was no time to procure a warrant.”
The
terrible truth came in bits and snatches, according to the deputies'
affidavit, as they “attempted to obtain more information as to the
location of the shooting and the body of the victim.”
The
victim is Judith Collins, Mr. Collins' 15-year-old daughter.
She
lay face down and dead, more than 12 miles away along the heavily
wooded fenceline where Mr. Collins and his children took refuge
during their long night of terror, fatally shot in the back, cut down
by a blast from her father's semi-automatic shotgun.
In
the laconic words of the affidavit, “E. Collins advised that he
knew that he had killed his (daughter) Judith Collins and he then
remained hiding in the woods with his two surviving children until
daylight.”
At
some point, he attempted to contact authorities through the emergency
911 system, but the cell phone dropped the call just as he began to
speak to the operator.
At
the time the sun arose, he and his 17-year-old son Alex and
11-year-old Logan went to the back door of the family business, a
24-hour convenience store named Collins Hitchin' Post, and asked his
father if deputies had responded to a 911 call he made during the
night.
When
his father said no, he and his sons left the property in his vehicle
and headed for the Sheriff's Office in Hillsboro.
“E.
Collins advised that he did not tell his father about shooting Judith
Collins nor did he call for any emergency services from the store's
landline phone.”
When
the lawmen were unable to get Mr. Collins to tell them exactly where
the shooting took place and where to find the child's body, they took
the girl's 17-year-old brother Alex with them so he could help them
locate the crime scene quickly.
It
was at that point that they detained E. Collins in connection with a
murder investigation, in spite of his confusing story about how
during the early morning hours of the night, “he thought that
someone was trying to get him at his residence...”
He
told them how he armed himself with the shotgun, and loaded the three
kids in the family's minivan to drive toward the front of the
property and the store, which is located at the corner of FM 933 and
FM 1713, just north of Whitney.
They
could see the lights from two flashlights, Mr. Collins said, shining
on the ground while people walked through the semi-rural property in
the darkness of night.
Panicked,
they alighted from the vehicle and ended up “running through the
fields and the woods to get away from the people and he ended up
shooting his daughter and killing her,” according to an
Investigator Collins, who served as the affiant I the statement Mr.
Collins gave officers.
As
he and his kids stood at the rear of the business, said Mr. Collins,
he heard a bang he thought might be a gunshot, so they ran for the
wooded area along the fence line southeast of the store in order to
hide in the woods.
He
ordered his children to move back about a hundred yards while he
waited with his gun to kill the people with the flashlights.
When
he heard “one of his daughters scream,” he “turned and shot his
shotgun in the direction of the scream.”
Again,
in the stony language of the investigator, the story takes its fatal
turn.
“E.
Collins advised that he was approximately ten feet from his daughter
Judith Collins and that he shot her in the back with his
semi-automatic 12 gauge shotgun.”
A
magistrate set his bond at $500,000. Prosecutors will seek to prove
that he “intentionally
or knowingly caused the death of an individual;” or “intended to
cause serious bodily injury and commited an act clearly dangerous to
human life” that caused the death of an individual
if a Grand Jury returns an indictment on the charge of murder.
Ronald Jackson found guilty of brutal attacks on his son (click here for an earlier report on the matter) You see, back in the day, the desk would never touch a story like this one. Just wasn't fit for consumption by patrons of the public penny prints, you see.
But things seem to have changed, as it were. Oh, yeah. - The Legendary
Robinson
– In the early morning hours of Wednesday, July 11, Douglas Clinton
Mills went to the home of auto dealer Ray Easley at 807 Robinson Rd.
and attacked him with his fists.
After
he had beaten the man to the floor, he pummeled his head with a lamp,
then slammed it with a computer, according to an audio and videotaped
statement he gave to police officers and Texas Rangers who arrested
him Friday, July 13, at a Motel 6 in Woodway, for aggravated assault.
Officers
who filed the probable cause affidavit in support of his arrest said
Mr. Mills waived his statutory warnings to keep silent, or expect
anything said to be used against him in court, and to be represented
by an attorney.
Police
did not say how they were alerted to Mr. Easley's perilous condition
at noon on Wednesday, July 11, when they arrived to find him bloodied
and unconscious in his home adjacent to his auto sales lot. They also
did not say how they came by the information that Mr. Mills might be
responsible for the attack, or where to find him.
“Easley
had obviously been severely beaten by an unknown person(s). Easley
was covered in blood, his eyes and face swollen, and his skull
fractured,” according to the affidavit.
Ray
Easley succumbed to multiple fractures of the skull and the resulting
concussions. He never regained consciousness and succumbed to his
injuries over the weekend at Hillcrest Baptist Memorial Hospital.
The
aggravated assault charge against Mr. Mills was then upgraded to
murder, and Precinct 1 Justice Court Judge Billy Martin set his bail
at $500,000.
On
Wednesday, Judge Martin relented and agreed to release the affidavit
of probable cause that was filed in his court pursuant to a warrant
of arrest.
Waco
– What started off as a discussion of a procedural error prompted
District Attorney Abel Reyna to advise County Commissioners to seek
the advice of their attorney.
In
a dispute over accounting of a claim for compensatory hours worked by
a departing clerk of Justice Court Pct. 7, Judge Jean Laster Boone
freely admitted she and her chief clerk have been keeping double
entry books in overtime hours accounted as “compensatory” time
paid instead of overtime.
Records
turned in to the payroll department showed that a departing employee
had made a claim for a large number of hours worked in excess of 40
hours per week during her time as an employee.
But
a separate record kept internally in the Court's payroll system
showed she had worked many hours of overtime not turned in on payroll
records at the time the pay period came to an end.
In
an audio recording of the discussion, Commissioner Kelly Snell is
clearly heard asking if it's not true that the employee – and the
Judge – had both asserted in writing that the employee worked but
40 hours during the affected pay periods.
County
Auditor Stan Chambers spoke up and said that now that the employee is
leaving, she is seeking to be paid from her “compensatory bank.”
Several members of the Court then remarked that the record reflects
that the hours worked were 40, and 40 hours only. There is no other
record to be had, other than one kept as a separate account,
internally, in the Justice Court's records.
Judge
Boone assured the Court that she and her staff will in the future use
the county's payroll records system to keep track of the actual hours
worked.
When
questions from County Judge Jim Lewis, Commissioners Ben Perry, Kelly
Snell and Joe Mashek showed that the judge and her staff had engaged
in the double entry scheme, District Attorney Abel Reyna, who was
visiting the Court in regard to another matter, stepped in. He
advised them to seek the counsel of their attorney before proceeding
any further.
A
computerized 26-week payroll system rejected by the Court earlier
this year was specially designed to prevent such discrepancies; had
they stuck with the new system – one that had been paid for out of
budgeted funds - it would have prevented any such misunderstanding,
according to Mr. Chambers.
Under
the system used at present, supervisors fill out time sheets; they
and the employee countersign them, and the payroll department makes
the payment.
Then
the payroll clerks in the County Treasurer's office audit the records
to make sure the payment is correct.
Under
the system Mr. Chambers advocated, the audit would be done first,
then the payment would have been made.
There
are many suits in equity filed each year on the county's behalf to
obtain judgments against employees who have been overpaid, he said at
the time. Many of them go uncollected, though the County is obligated
to pay attorneys' fees and court costs in an effort to recoup the
losses in erroneous payments.
But
the argument fell on deaf ears after employees of the Sheriff's
Department and other staff members complained bitterly about the new
“trust, but verify” accounting system. They said they would
actually be paid less each year, though the diminishment would have
been only the amount paid for each pay period for a 40 hour work
week. The actual amount of yearly salary would have remained the
same, aggregated over a year's time.
“I
will be defending my system to the end,” said Mr. Chambers. “The
system that I suggested would have given us a chance to audit
first...
“The
discussion had crossed over from a matter of a procedural error and
kind of tiptoed into the criminal,” he added.
“Mr.
Reyna put a stop to it, and he should have.”
To hear an audio recording of the remarks that led to Mr. Reyna's admonishment, one need only click the widget below:
Hewitt
– Jack Goodwin was only 20 when he boarded a plane at his duty
station in occupied Japan and flew into the hell of an undeclared
war.
He
fought only one day before the North Koreans took he and his comrades
prisoner of war – the day before his 20th birthday.
“I
spent 4 birthdays in captivity,” he recalls today, a rueful tone
very evident in his delivery.
Mr.
Goodwin is the historian for Korean War veterans in the central Texas
area. He is one of less than 60 POW's still living, a revered figure
in the ranks of America's forgotten warriors who made it home alive
from the Korean “conflict.”
They
got little if any recognition for their sacrifices. For instance,
when Mr. Goodwin got home after 4 years of the hell of a POW camp, he
was greeted by a lone photographer from the local Waco paper who
recorded his name and took his picture. That was the last he and the
other troopers ever heard of it.
There
were no boulevards lined with cheering citizens, no ticker tape
parades, no welcome home banquets.
But
he's upbeat. “We didn't have it so bad as prisoners of the North
Koreans. It was the Chinese who were so hard on prisoners. They
starved them, beat them – we had one death march – We had one
death march where we lost 100 men...” His voice trails off. He's in
his 80's now. It's been a long war for Jack Goodwin
The
Library of Congress is sponsoring a Veterans History Project, the
intention being to record their stories on video or audio in their
own words. The stories that are chosen will be archived in the
library for the duration. For particulars, you can learn of the
librarians' standards at this website:
http://www.loc.gov/vets/
They
gathered on Tuesday afternoon at VFW Post 6008 in Hewitt, members of
the Order of the Purple Heart, Vietnam Veterans, and many warriors
who served in the first war prosecuted under the command of the
United Nations in a place so obscure that President Harry S. Truman
admitted many years later he had to go to the Map Room at the White
House and consult the globe to find its location when the Department
of State first informed him of the need for American troops to be
sent there.
It
was a war of many firsts, and though it was not the first undeclared
war America ever fought, it was the first ever fought that committed
American fighting men to the control of an international tribunal
like the United Nations. It was the first in which the enemy
attempted to force POW's to confess to war crimes they did not
commit, crimes which no one committed because – in fact – they
never took place.
An
honored speaker, Mike O'Bric, outlined the “seven great betrayals”
that dictated their wartime experience, the first of which was
sending untrained, inexperienced troopers like young Jack Irwin into
harm's way to confront an enemy who had violated a treaty and flooded
across the DMZ in a strength at least 8 times that of their number.
They
were committed by generals and a President who assured Congressmen
they could handle it. The reality was stark. They wound up in a tiny
area of southeastern South Korea at a place called Pusan, starving,
nearly bereft of ammo and supplies, and helpless.
Waco
– Let's call him Ahab – not his real name, but, hey, his identity
is supposed to be kept confidential - because he's a child.
And
Ahab is a child. Let's make no mistake about that.
Until
you actually see him, watch him bounce up in the witness stand and
strain to reach the goose-necked condenser mike pointed nearly
straight down, the full impact of his stature does not really make an
impression.
As
he testified against his father about an offense that could net him a
possible life sentence for aggravated endangering a child, a
frightening picture of a wretched Mother's Day weekend in May, 2011
unfolded like some evil monster – there to slowly crush a child's
care free life.
The
call and response of the prosecutor's questions and Ahab's simple
answers – some so low you could barely make out his “Yes,” or
“I don't know” response – began to get to everyone in earshot.
Jurors could not hide their disgust with the trim, bearded and
bespectacled man sitting at the defendant's table dressed in a neatly
pressed oxford cloth business shirt.
More
than one person's eyes revealed the glistening glaze of stinging
tears, the kind you would like to hide, but can't.
At
critical junctures in the questioning, Ahab cut his eyes rapidly
toward his father, their sudden swivel in his little face flickering
and furtive, before he answered.
A
sample:
“Did
your dad take you to the doctor?”
“No.”
“What
did your hand look like?”
“Kind
of purple...”
“Your
dad told you to tell people that other kids beat you up.”
“Yes.”
“You
didn't like living with your dad and Clorice?”
Ahab
said he didn't know.
“You
told someone you didn't like living with your dad because they made
you do chores...”
Chores.
Let's
get back to Thursday afternoon, the day the nightmare began for Ahab.
His
stepmother, Clorice, found a greasy bowl in the dishes Ahab and his
little brothers and sisters had been assigned to wash.
A
witness later testified that it was Clorice who would inspect Ahab's
work around the house. At the time, he was 9. Now he's 10. Clorice
held two jobs at the time. She was hard to satisfy, according to the
testimony of the man who lived with them.
When
his father, Ronald Wayne Jackson, got home from work at an area
Burger King, he took all the dishes out of the cabinets and made Ahab
wash them. All of them.
He
made him do pushups and sit-ups, run wind sprints in the yard, and
when he found he wasn't satisfied with this form of discipline, he
got out a board and beat him with it.
The
kid said it's got tape on one end of it, that it's a two by four, and
that his dad broke it on his foot.
That's
when he got out the golf club and went back to work on him.
He
lashed him with a belt.
A
forensic social worker and a Child Protective Services testified that
the little boy's body was covered with bruises, chunks of his skin
approximately two inches by four inches had been ripped from his
buttocks, and his foot and hand were fractured and bleeding.
Their
impression of his overall affect - “...very flat, totally
shaken...”
Ahab
didn't go to school Friday. He stayed home and cleaned up the yard.
He stacked bricks. He picked up trash. His dad told people that some
kids in the neighborhood jumped him and beat him up. When a man who
lived with the family returned that afternoon, he asked him to take
the kids to the park.
Ahab
had trouble getting ready to go. The man said he found him half on
and half off his bed, on his stomach, unable to pull on his shoes
because his foot was swollen and bleeding. He helped him get dressed.
Ahab stayed in the car while the other kids played. At the Burger
King, he vomited after downing about half his soft drink.
He
didn't go to school in LaVega on Monday, either. When he arrived on
Tuesday, the teacher sent him to the nurse. He was limping. The
school's guidance counselor took him to a hospital.
His
treatment, according to Ahab: “They wrapped something around my
hand.”
It
still hurts when he bends his fingers back, he said.
It
wasn't the first time it had happened.
When
social workers arrived at the house in September of 2010, they found
the kid beaten so severely, they had EMS workers take him to the
emergency room by ambulance; he stayed there all night.
When
the jurors – a multi-ethnic mix of 9 men and 3 women - would file
in or out of the room, they kept their eyes averted. They didn't look
at Ahab's dad. They looked at the floor. They pretended to take notes
on the big yellow legal pads the court furnished them. As they
listened, some drilled the accused child beater with looks of
disgust. Others stared into space, nonplussed.
District
Judge Matt Johnson felt the trial was at a stopping place. He called
a recess a few minutes after 4 p.m. Everyone but the attorneys and
the judge fled into the wilting heat of a blazing afternoon. A few
witnesses remain to be questioned today.
If
convicted, the couple could face ultimate sentences of life in
prison, not less that 5 or more than 99 years, and a fine of $10,000.
Ronald's
offense is beating the boy with deadly weapons; Clorice's alleged
crime is standing by and doing nothing.
Ahab
doesn't live with his dad any more. He now lives with his “auntie.”
He
still limps, slightly, when his weight comes down on his right foot.
As he left the courthouse rotunda following his testimony,
accompanied by a victim's assistance coordinator and his kin and
almost skipping on his way to the elevator, he was smiling, looking
forward to the rest of his day.
