Tuesday, July 29, 2008 - Posts
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Chalk up another victory for the gambling-addiction defense.
Yesterday, attorneys for Tim Donaghy, the former NBA referee who admitted to betting on basketball games he officiated, filed a psychological "evaluation" that blames his crimes on compulsive gambling. The author is Stephen Block, a gambling treatment counselor. Sample quotes from the evaluation, as reported by the Associated Press: 1) "In my professional opinion, Mr. Donaghy would never have committed these offenses if he was not a pathological gambler." 2) "His gambling history demonstrates the need to gamble to fulfill the underlying need for 'action.' " 3) "He could not stop himself from gambling." The Washington Post supplies one more: 4) "His judgment and insight were impaired by his gambling behavior."
The plea worked. Today, Donaghy was sentenced to 15 months in prison instead of the 27 to 33 months that had been expected. According to the Post, the judge "said she took Donaghy's gambling addiction into account, as well as his cooperation with the government's investigation." Reuters quotes the judge on Donaghy's gambling addiction: "Although it contributed to his criminal conduct, it does not excuse it." No excuse, but a nice contribution: His sentence gets halved.
I'm not going to sit here and claim that compulsive gambling doesn't exist. But disorders that are powerful and real for some people have a way of being diagnosed in other people who don't share many of the symptoms but just happen to need a legal excuse. In this case, all we have is an evaluation solicited and supplied by the defendant's attorneys.
More to the point—and this is the crazy part—in this case, the crime is gambling. If you plug that information into the evaluation, here's what it boils down to: "Mr. Donaghy would never have committed this gambling if he was not a pathological gambler." No kidding! He committed gambling because "he could not stop himself from gambling," because "his judgment and insight were impaired by his gambling." How do we know his gambling is compulsive? Because of his "gambling history." The circularity is shameless.
And don't even get me started on the idea that Donaghy had a "need to gamble to fulfill the underlying need for 'action.'" An "underlying need for action" pretty well describes the motivation for half the world's crimes.
If you really believe Donaghy's gambling was addictive, don't just make it a mitigating factor in sentencing for the crime of gambling. Abolish the crime. Because a crime can't excuse itself.
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The female suicide bombers have struck again. And again. And again.
Yesterday morning, I wrote about a woman who blew herself up in Iraq last Thursday. The body count in that attack was eight. I don't remember what the count was in terms of how many women had done the deed this year.
Anyway, that number is already obsolete. By the end of the day, three more women had killed themselves. The body count in yesterday's attacks exceeds 60, with more than 200 others wounded. The Los Angeles Times reports:
According to U.S. Army figures, 27 suicide attacks this year have been carried out by women, compared with eight in all of 2007 ... A tally by The Times indicates that about a quarter of all suicide attacks this year in Iraq have been conducted by women.
Again, the Washington Post explains why women are delivering the bombs:
Wearing their flowing black garments, they can carry hidden explosives past most checkpoints because customs of modesty prevent male guards from frisking them. On Monday, four female suicide bombers in two Iraqi cities used this tactic to enter areas defended by hundreds of soldiers and police officers.
The New York Times adds:
Police officers interviewed at the scene said that the authorities had heard that six women would blow themselves up in the area. "We can't search women," complained Atheer Allawi, a police officer. "They are wearing abayas, and God knows what they can hide under them."
And again, Iraq failed to provide enough female security officers to do the job. The Associated Press reports:
Iraqi security forces had deployed about 200 women this week to search female pilgrims in Kazimiyah, but the attacks took place along the procession some six miles southeast of the shrine. There were too few women guards to search people in the procession itself.
The bombings will continue until we get the message: Stop treating women as though they're too meek to fight and kill. They're already killing. Search women. Deploy women.
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