Prisoner Rights Run Amok in Sex-change Case

(Wikipedia Commons)

by Diane Dimond

I unequivocally oppose a recent pro-prisoner court order that you may find positively shocking. I know I did.

The prisoner at the center of the controversy is MichelleKosilek. But up until 1993, this person was known as Robert Kosilek. In 1990, Robert’s wife, Cheryl, already distressed over his drinking came home to find him dressed up in her clothes. A fight ensued and the trial court found Robert was guilty of strangling Cheryl with a wire and abandoning her naked body in the family car outside a local mall.

Just before Kosilek went on trial for Cheryl’s murder in 1993, he declared he was a woman trapped in a man’s body and legally changed his name to Michelle. Kosilek appeared in court with long luxurious hair and wearing eye makeup, rouge, women’s glasses, slim cut jeans and a set of dangling circle earrings. Despite self-identifying as a female, upon conviction, Kosilek was sentenced to an all-male prison in Norfolk, Massachusetts to serve life in prison without parole.

Over the years, Kosilek’s attorneys have repeatedly filed motions asking the court to order sex-reassignment surgery for the convicted murderer. In 2002, after specialists testified Kosilek did, indeed, suffer from severe gender identity disorder the court allowed Kosilek to begin receiving taxpayer funded psychotherapy, female hormone injections, laser hair removal and access to women’s underwear and make-up. All of that wasn’t enough for Kosilek’s peace of mind, however. Court documents revealed s/he  attempted self-castration and twice attempted suicide in prison.

Now, let’s pause here so I can be clear. I have no doubt that gender identity disorder exists and that it can be psychological hell for those who are born this way. But there are lots of people on the outside struggling with Kosilek’s problem, unable to come up with the money for a gender reassignment operation. Do we afford convicted killers health care rights that law abiding citizens don’t have? The answer is yes, according to a recent decision from U.S. District Court Judge Mark Wolf.

“It may seem strange that in the United States citizens do not generally have a constitutional right to adequate medical care, but the Eighth Amendment promises prisoners such care,” Judge Wolf wrote in ruling that the state of Massachusetts must pay for the prisoner’s sex-change operation. To do otherwise, Wolf ruled, would constitution cruel and unusual punishment.

Now, stop and think about this a minute. Here is a person who lives in the general population of an all – male prison. It may be one thing for him to dress up like the character Klinger from the old M*A*S*H* TV series but it might be something altogether more dangerous for Kosilek to actually become transgendered and think nothing will change within his testosterone driven prison community. Judge Wolf heard testimony from prison officials about the unique security problems Kosilek’s case would present but he dismissed the argument. As it stands now Kosilek gets his free operation but the state could appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court which would delay things.

Other states have grappled with similar federal cases filed by prisoners wanting a sex change operation but I couldn’t find one where a judge actually ordered taxpayer funded surgery.

Judge Wolf’s apparently groundbreaking decision seems so shortsighted to me. He made it sound as if he had no choice in the matter, that it was a “medical necessity” for this prisoner. It’s as if the judge forgot that the state has already bent over backward to accommodate this prisoner’s numerous wishes over the years.

I’m not the only one who is outraged by this. After the ruling, U.S. Senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts said Kosilek’s surgery would be, “An outrageous abuse of taxpayer dollars.” A niece of Cheryl Kosilek nearly begged the state to quickly appeal the decision saying, “As far as I’m concerned, he deserves nothing. If he wants to attempt suicide … let him.”

Judge Wolf’s written ruling didn’t address what would happen to Kosilek after the operation. Would s/he be left to fend for her/himself in the all-male population or be transferred to a women’s prison? What if Kosilek decides he is unhappy with the results and wants further surgery? And, most important, what signal does this send to all the other poor but law-abiding souls who cannot afford the psychotherapy, the hormones, the gender reassignment surgery? For the truly desperate it seems to be an invitation to commit a really serious crime so they can advance their goal of changing sexes.

I can see providing a prisoner a heart transplant or expensive cancer treatments so they don’t die. That, to me, fits in the “medically necessary” category. But, to those Kosilek sympathizers who declare granting this operation is humane – I asked them one question: How humane was Robert Kosilek when he pulled that wire around his wife’s neck and tugged on it until it nearly took her head off? He’s gotten enough rewards for his murderous behavior.

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Failure to Test is a Failure of Justice

by Diane Dimond

The evidence had been there all along. It had been sitting on a shelf inside a cold storage facility at the Houston Police Department for 12 years. After a determined detective tracked it down and sent it off to the lab for testing the state of Texas realized it had a found a serial rapist. The criminal’s name is Roland Ali Westbrooks and his story highlights why every state in the union should make testing of backlogged rape kits a top priority.

For more than two decades law enforcement has had the ability to take even the tiniest specks of evidence from a rape victim – bodily fluids, stray hairs, fingernail scrapings – and match the DNA findings to information stored in a national data base called CODIS. Every time a rape kit is processed the DNA print is supposed to be entered into CODIS. And the reason for this is simple: Rapists rape repeatedly. They hardly ever have just one victim.

One study on serial offenders puts the average number of a rapist’s victims at seven while another study puts it at 11. To put this in perspective, realize that if we get just one of these perps off the street we’ve prevented several future crimes. Every year in America there are roughly 200 thousand reported rapes and it is not just women who are attacked. 10% of all rape victims are men.

The first time we know Roland Ali Westbrooks struck was in August 1995. It was a nighttime home invasion and his victim was a complete stranger, a teenager girl alone in her bedroom. Houston police say as he put a pillow over the 16 year olds face he threatened to kill her if she screamed. The girl reported the attack immediately and submitted to a complete rape examination.

Like tens of thousands of other rape kits nationwide her evidence package was never processed and no one was ever arrested for her brutal assault. After a cold case detective re-opened the teen’s case earlier this year and ordered the DNA in her kit to finally be processed, her rapist was identified as Ronald Westbrooks. The good news was that he was already in jail! The bad news was that Westbrooks was in prison because he had been convicted of another rape – a crime that occurred in 1997 – two years after the attack on the teenager. That attack might never have taken place if the 16 year olds rape kit had been tested in a timely fashion. Police suspect Westbrooks left more victims and are investigating that now.

To be sure states have made some progress in winnowing down their backlog of rape kits. When I first wrote about this topic in 2008 there were 400,000 bundles of untested evidence. Today, the best estimates put the national number at about 180 thousand. But that’s still way too many.

Sometimes lab work isn’t necessary as police have already gotten a confession or the victim withdraws the complaint. But in too many other cases it becomes a matter of indifference, inconvenience or finances. Each test costs about $1,500.

In most jurisdictions it is still up to the discretion of the investigating detective whether to order up a full lab analysis of a rape kit. Usually the victim is never told whether her evidence has been processed or relegated to some shelf to gather dust I can think of no other crime where police have definitive evidence of a crime and fail to process it. I think it is unconscionable.

Information from these kits, entered into CODIS, would likely mean numerous outstanding sex crimes could be solved. The perpetrator could be identified, taken off the streets or slapped with a longer prison sentence if they are already behind bars like Roland Westbrooks. More importantly, victims could finally feel a sense of justice.

It’s already happening in Texas. The popular Texas-based blog Grits for Breakfast reports that when “Tarrant County tested their entire backlog they identified five serial rapists by matching the results to CODIS.” Imagine – five dangerous criminals were scooped up just by testing evidence that was already there!

May I be so blunt as to ask, “What the heck are we waiting for?” And don’t tell me it’s a matter of money. The money spent on processing these kits would be far less than what we would have to pay out to investigate and prosecute these rapists’ future crimes.

I call for a nationwide initiative to examine every relevant kit. Let’s get every state to dedicate one group of lab technicians to examine the most recent kits so as to stop currently active rapists. A second group should examine the oldest kits with an eye on the ones that might come up against a statute of limitations problem. Let’s get that information into CODIS and see how many more perps we can get off the streets.

The perfect tool is already sitting there if we would just use it! Anybody with me?

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Why We Dislike Lawyers

by Diane Dimond

Question: What’s the difference between a lawyer and a shark? Answer: Nothing.

Okay, look, right off the bat I want to say that I work with a lot of lawyers and I count many of them as good friends. But we’ve all heard the old jokes, and, let’s face it, the public’s general perception of lawyer’s honesty and integrity is pretty rotten. The latest Harris poll on the subject puts attorneys way down at the bottom of the list with members of Congress, car salesmen, and, yes, journalists.

But since lawyers are the crux of our justice system I think it is important that we take a closer look at the way some of them operate. Why is it so many of us curl our upper lip at the very mention of dealing with a lawyer? Maybe it’s the sheer number of them these days. Maybe because we believe they make so much money on other people’s misery. Or maybe it is that so many of us are forced to turn to lawyers these days to handle things that used to be settled with a hand-shake and someone’s good word.

Despite what we see on TV in dramas like Law and Order and The Good Wife, most lawyering goes on in a stealthy way. It is done out of plain sight – in board rooms and depositions, in front of secret grand juries or in the confines of a prosecutor’s office. When engaged in their profession lawyers speak a different language than we do and they follow a set of rules most of us will never understood. It is human nature not to trust what we don’t know or what we can’t see or hold in our hands.

Casey Anthony Murder Defendant

I’ve spent the last few months closely covering a capital murder trial taking place in Orlando, Florida. And it struck me as I watched the defense lay out its presentation in the case of Florida vs. Casey Marie Anthony that there is another more basic reason why we think the way we do about lawyers. They often destroy innocent people in the name of defending their clients.

To watch defense attorneys Jose Baez and Cheney Mason conduct their case on behalf of Ms. Anthony was painful. Of course, they had every right (and a duty) to do what they could to insure their client got a fair trial, especially since she was facing a possible death sentence. But they did not have the right to vilify and destroy bystanders to the murder of 2 year old Caylee Anthony. The scorched earth, take-no prisoners behavior should not be allowed.

Defense Attorney Jose Baez in Action

During the defense’s opening statement Baez promised the jury they would hear evidence that there was no murder and that the little girl had drowned in the family’s back yard pool. He blamed Grandfather George Anthony for discarding her body. There has been no evidence presented to back up that claim.

Baez told the jurors that repeated sexual molestation of his client by both her father, George, and her brother, Lee, had turned her into a trained liar who naturally kept secrets. He promised evidence to explain why his client let 31 days go by before finally admitting her daughter was gone. At first, jurors heard exactly the opposite – clear denials that any sort of sexual abuse ever took place. The jury also heard testimony from more than a dozen of Casey Anthony’s friends and co-workers that showed she was a known liar and thief long before her daughter went missing.

Roy Kronk Found Caylee Anthony's Remains

Baez’s opening statement also smeared the reputation of a man named Roy Kronk, a county meter reader who found Caylee’s skeleton remains in the woods six months after she was last seen. He reported the tiny child’s skull was still wrapped in duct tape which had snarled in her long hair. The defense lawyer called Kronk a “morally corrupt individual” and promised evidence that would show he had stolen Caylee’s remains after she drowned in the Anthony’s backyard pool and waited for the reward money to grow. Kronk came and went from the witness box and no such evidence was presented against him.

I’ve highlighted the Casey Anthony case, but it is far from the only trial in which lawyers have made reckless claims on behalf of their clients leaving human despair in their wake. Believe me, it happens all the time in courthouses across the country.

The question for all of us–including honorable lawyers who read this now–is what do we as a society do with attorneys who deliberately demolish the reputation of others in their quest for their client’s acquittal? If they make promises to a jury at the expense of others and don’t follow through shouldn’t there be some sort of penalty? If you or I repeatedly lied about important issues at our job, wouldn’t we face consequences?

Most other professions have a code of behavior. I submit that criminal defense attorneys should be held to one as well.

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We Need A New Drug Policy

by Diane Dimond

Forty years ago this month President Richard Nixon declared his "War on Drugs." Now, four decades later can we honestly say we’ve got a handle on the problem?

No, of course we can’t. The drug scourge continues with its ever increasing criminality and murderous violence. It heaps economic hardships on families, communities and prison systems. Our decades' long drug war gives off the stinking scent of failure and the undeniable conclusion that the way we’ve tackled the problem so far just isn’t working

So how long do we keep doing the same old things before we change course? Isn’t it time for a radical shift in strategy to try to lessen the impact illegal drug trade has had on all of us?

You might think that the conservative Nixon, the president shamed by Watergate, ordered up a callous punishment-oriented drug control policy. But he didn’t. Richard Nixon’s $155 million War on Drugs budget (back in 1971) earmarked two-thirds of the money to go for treatment and rehabilitation of drug addicts.

Somewhere along the line each succeeding president lost sight of the idea that if you can cut back on the demand for illegal drugs you can cripple the violent trade that sprouts up to supply it.

Today, most of our anti-drug budget goes toward interdiction efforts and punishing people. Two years ago, the White House Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske said the War on Drugs was over, but it sure feels like we’re still waging very expensive combat against an elusive problem that just keeps growing.

So, back to the reports I read. The first was from an organization called Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. LEAP is a group of current and former front-line responders to the war on drugs. Its members are police, prosecutors, judges, FBI and DEA agents, corrections officials, military officers and others who know firsthand what it is like to wage this never-ending war. They embrace the idea of radical change, fully admitting that everything they have done in their law enforcement career was for naught when it comes to stemming the tide of the illegal drug trade and the abuse of those poisons. They passionately urge lawmakers to embrace the idea of legalizing, regulating and taxing these drugs

I know it sounds revolutionary. But imagine the chilling effect it would have on, say, the Mexican drug cartel. If there’s no more profit in smuggling drugs across the border into the United States their violent gangs would lose power and control. The tens of thousands of drug related murders each year would dwindle. America’s tax coffers would get much needed infusions. Drug addicts could get proper medical help in weaning themselves off their drug of choice. Why, they might even become contributing taxpaying citizens.

LEAP isn’t the only group of knowledgeable people calling for this radical move. Earlier this month a group of internationally known dignitaries including former U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz, former Chairman of the Federal Reserve Paul Volker, former presidents of several countries and the U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan endorsed the idea. In a report from their Global Commission on Drug Policy they labeled the War on Drugs a failure and encouraged nations, worldwide, to pursue the idea of legalization, regulation and taxation

Hey, it worked with booze when we lifted prohibition back in the 1930’s. Why wouldn’t it work now?

I recently wrote in this space about how state lawmakers have courageously stepped up to the plate to pass their own immigration laws after Washington’s monumental failure to act on that issue. Same thing here with the nation’s drug related problems. While Congress wallows in budget battles and sex scandals, 16 states and the District of Columbia have passed laws legalizing medicinal marijuana for those with doctor’s prescriptions. 14 states have decriminalized possession of small amounts of pot.

For some inane reason, the Department of Justice Department silently and consistently continues to raid legal growers, registered medicinal marijuana clinics and patients who find relief from marijuana. The DOJ has conducted nearly 100 such raids in so-called "legal" states, according to LEAP’s report. That’s about double the number of such raids during the President George W. Bush years.

I don’t know about you but I don’t want my taxpayer dollars going for police actions against legally approved operations. What a waste of money.

The day of total drug legalization will come – just as it did with alcohol. The question is: How many more multiple billions of dollars will we spend before we finally see it’s the logical way to go?

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Thank You, Dr. Kevorkian

by Diane Dimond 

Hardly a day goes by that I don’t remember holding my stricken mother’s hand as she laid on a special hospital bed we had set up in her living room. It was there she took her last breath. Almost every day I think about how my father died in the bedroom of the home he loved so much. Both my parents passed away exactly how they lived – on their own terms. 

They wanted no heroic measures to prolong their lives and they adamantly told me – their only child – that they did not want to die in a cold, impersonal hospital room. They made me promise to abide by their wishes. And just in case, they signed a living will putting it all in writing. I thank Dr. Jack Kevorkian for that. He started the national dialogue about death that opened up the topic for discussion in my household.

When Kevorkian started down the path that ultimately earned him the nickname “Dr. Death” it was the early 80′s. He wrote a series of articles on the ethics of euthanasia for a German journal called Medicine and Law. In 1987, he hung out a shingle in Michigan as a physician available for consultation on “death counseling.” His first publicly revealed assisted suicide occurred in 1990 when he helped an Alzheimer’s patient take her life. She, like many other of his patients, was not terminal. But, she was suffering and for Kevorkian that was enough. 

“What difference does it make I’d someone is terminal,” he once said during an interview with CNN. “We are all terminal.” Truer words were never spoken. 

Jack Kevorkian, the son of Armenian immigrants, believed every person held the ultimate decision making power over their own life and death should be a dignified event. Yet, his legacy will likely be focused only on his stand on physician assisted suicide. Once asked what it felt like to take someone’s life Kevorkian said, “I didn’t do it to end a life. I did it to end the suffering the patient’s going through. The patient’s obviously suffering — what’s a doctor supposed to do, turn his back?"

Kevorkian wasn’t perfect in his judgment, as he assisted more than 130 people to end their lives, but I’m not one that believes he had self aggrandizement in mind. Like my parents, Kevorkian believed a mentally competent patient should always be in charge of his or her fate. The justice system may have branded him a criminal but it is clear he singlehandedly made generations of both young and older Americans think about their final moment.

When Kevorkian began to publicly preach about “the right to die” in Michigan in the early 90′s my parents in Albuquerque, New Mexico became disciples. Both Mom and Dad were the type who didn’t use twenty words if ten would do. They sat me down and bluntly told me they believed they – alone – should be in charge of their own lives right up until the moment of their deaths. They showed me their living will and made me promise.

My parents never faltered in their resolve – not even after Dr. Kevorkian had his medical license pulled by the state of Michigan or after he was sentenced to 10 to 25 years in prison on second degree murder charges in 1999. Kevorkian’s book Prescription: Medicide, The Goodness of Planned Death was in my father’s library. Included within was Kevorkian’s idea that executed prisoners should be put to death in a certain way so as to preserve their organs for donation to others. You see, he wasn’t all about death. 

By the time Kevorkian was released from prison on parole in June 2007 on his promise that he would never assist in another suicide both my parents were gone. But their life and death lesson remains indelibly etched in my soul. Because I watched them depart this earth marching to the drummer of their own choosing, I find I don’t fear death like I used to. I’m now able to look at it as a next adventure.

It’s ironic to think that at the end of his life Dr. Kevorkian did not choose the course toward death that he’d preached to so many. He died in a hospital in Royal Oak, Michigan after a month long battle with kidney problems and pneumonia. He was 83. He never married and had no children. His life became all about the death of others.

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Adjusting What We Think About Sexual Abusers

by Diane Dimond

We’re pretty good at punishing people who are caught and convicted of sexual abuse. We’re not so good at stopping the abuse in the first place, especially when children are involved. After all these years of open discussion about this scourge why is it still so prevalent?

Because, we keep attacking the problem the same old way!

A new project from the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers, funded by the Ms. Foundation magazine, concludes it is time for us to adjust our collective thinking about sex offenders.

Perhaps the A.T.S.A.’s most important conclusion is that media coverage of abuse monsters has warped our sense of who they really are. Television, news, movies and books mainly focus on the most extreme “stranger danger” cases, those in which a child is kidnapped, sexually assaulted and murdered.

In reality, the sexual abuse of kids doesn’t usually come from outside their circle and murder is extremely rare.

Most often the perpetrator is a relative, a family friend or a trusted authority figure. But if a parent is intent on looking for a monster it’s easy for them to overlook warning signs from those closest to the family.

Another important conclusion? Too often we lump all abusers into one category and label them sex offenders or sexual predators. Not good and not smart.

A serial pedophile is quite different from a teenage boy caught with his underage girlfriend and reported to police by angry parents. Some jurisdictions view an errant nude sunbather or a drunk who exposes himself to urinate in the street as a sex offender. And then, there is the category of children with deeply rooted sexual behavior problems. All have to be handled differently.

It doesn’t keep the community safe when we brand all of these diverse types with the same scarlet letter and make them all become registrants of an official, ever-growing and very public National Sex Registry. Too often that’s exactly what happens.

The just released project paper from the A.T.S.A. calculates that in 2007 and 2008 alone, “More than 1500 sex offender related bills were proposed in state legislatures… over 275 new laws were enacted.” Generally, they did two things: Increased incarceration time and put in place intricate (and costly) monitoring systems and restrictions on where the released offender is allowed to work, live and interact within a community once released back into society.

After the convict does his or her time and returns to life on the outside, it’s as if the deck is forever stacked against them. What chance do they have to succeed if the stigma of being a registered sex offender keeps them from getting a well paying job or finding a place to live that is the mandated distance away from a school or public park? Even trying to join a church is tricky for them. If there is a Sunday school for youngsters on the property many states do not allow the convict to attend services there.

Everything they do for the rest of their lives will be viewed through the lens of their label: Sex Offender.

But, wait a minute, you say, “Once a sex offender always a sex offender, right?" Not necessarily.

Don’t mistake what I write here as being soft on sexual criminals. I am not. In fact, I believe there are career pedophiles that should never, ever, get out of prison. But the latest Department of Justice statistics peg the likelihood of a child molester repeating their crime after they’ve done their time at just 5.3 percent. And, the DOJ study concludes that of the 5.3 percent who do re-offend 40 percent commit another sex crime within a year or less. In other words, that first year back on the outside is a crucial time for them – they either assimilate or they don’t.

The way these offenders are treated – their isolation and loneliness – often causes their closest family members to retreat in shame as well. It has been well documented that relatives of the abusers often struggle with the disgrace and stress that comes with having someone close to them convicted as a sex offender. It’s too bad that our societal scarlet letter brands them as well because family could be our first line of support to help keep the ex-con from re-offending.

I propose we all take a deep breath and stop adding new laws until we can figure out a better way to attack the problem.

First, forget the one-size-fits all category of sex offender. Let’s identify all the varieties of offenders and determine what their range of punishments should be. And, as for our National Sex Offender Registry? Let’s not make the teenaged Romeo carry the stigma around for the rest of his life and let’s give those who have gone on to live law abiding lives for a set number of years the hope – the goal – of getting their names expunged.

We need to start thinking differently about how we define and tackle this problem. We’re smart. We can do better.

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Michael Jackson's Burial Mystery Revealed

by Diane Dimond

Fewer places are more beautiful than Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale, California. It’s a park-like 300 acres of rolling hills, massive trees, majestic marble statuary and soothing water features. Hubert Eaton, a devout Christian, took over an existing graveyard in the early 1900s and designed it to mark a new and glorious beginning, rather than the end of something.

But this otherwise majestic place sits atop some dark secrets. I was able to glimpse a peek at the King of Pop’s eternal throne, and the reality is stranger than his Thriller video, sitting atop more than a dozen floors of secret subterranean burial sections housing the remains of ancient devil worshippers and Gypsies, sacrificial fonts and crypts decorated with pentagrams and a secreted area with shelves housing at least a thousand abandoned urns containing the ashes of souls no one claimed.

My behind-the-scenes tour of the cemetery was done by a man who had worked there for several years in a job that had him in the bowels of every single building, the entire breadth of the grounds, and he knew the place like the back of his hand.

“There’s Spencer Tracy’s plot -- and over here Errol Flynn’s,” says my guide, pointing to the appropriate places. After rounding a corner of one elaborate building, he motioned toward an out-of-the-way flower bed, pulled back a low hanging palm frond and said, “Hardly anyone has ever seen this.” He pointed to a plaque which read: Walter Elias Disney. Engraved underneath: “Ashes scattered in paradise.” Resting below, at the foot of a Little Mermaid statue, was a small stuffed Mickey Mouse.

Inside the mammoth Freedom Mausoleum, my guide points to a low marble bench and then up to the wall where a side-by-side crypt held the remains of Gracie Allen (1902-1964) and George Burns (1896-1996). He explains that every Tuesday for decades, Burns would sit on that bench and visit with his departed soulmate. The simple legend on their crypt reads: “Together Again.”  Nat King Cole’s crypt is above and to the right.

Downstairs in this particular building, down into more marble walls holding the remains of members of the Three Stooges and the Marx Brothers, Alan Ladd, Dorothy Dandridge, Clara Bow and many others, my chest tightens. It was like breathing in a heavy dose of musty mold--a rotting, suffocating odor that forces staffers to leave open opposing doors so the breeze can carry at least some of the smell away. This smell of death cropped up randomly, in various buildings, throughout our excursion.

The talk of workers on the property immediately after his death was of exactly where Michael Jackson would spend eternity. His final family memorial service was at Forest Lawn’s Great Mausoleum, inside the elaborate Memorial Court of Honor.  In that hall, Jackson’s casket was staged under a stunning stained glass rendition of Leonardo da Vinci’s "Last Supper" masterpiece which occupies an entire wall.

This location likely would have met with Michael’s approval. He once commissioned his own special Last Supper painting and for years it hung directly over his bed at Neverland Ranch. In Jackson’s version he occupies the center space where Jesus is usually seen and instead of the disciples there are some of Jackson’s heroes painted in, among them Abraham Lincoln, Albert Einstein, Charlie Chaplin, Elvis Presley and Little Richard.

Once the hoopla surrounding Jackson’s death was over, Jackson was permanently buried in the uber-expensive “Golden Key” section of Forest Lawn, in the Great Mausoleum, which is outlined with a prohibitively tall brick wall. Only family members in possession of a special key are allowed to enter this rarified space where the likes of Mary Pickford, Sammy Davis Jr. and Humphrey Bogart are interred. It’s a vast and lavish area of the cemetery surrounded with glittering marble statues and elaborate sarcophaguses.

Until his body was moved, sources tell me, Michael Jackson was stored in a crypt almost directly underneath the Last Supper masterpiece. To get to that spot, my guide showed me a wide marble staircase, roped off to keep the public out, but clearly visible as going down. The first sunken level is where it’s expected Jackson will be held.

Standing at the top of these stairs is like standing on the top floor of an apartment building and being able to see all the levels of staircases. It has an eerie feeling to it, and, according to multiple sources, this is the route to the secret underground catacombs.

Michael Jackson lay in repose over no fewer than 13 subterranean floors, each holding intriguing secrets, some which could date as far back to the late 1800s. As one cemetery insider told me, ”It’s sort of the opposite of the stairway to heaven.”

When asked to confirm these areas, a Forest Lawn spokesperson denied they exist. But my sources, including another former Forest Lawn maintenance man and a mutual acquaintance of both employees to whom they gave contemporaneous accounts over the years, gave descriptions that were rich with detail.

“There is a level where devil worshippers were once interred,” my guide told me. “It’s complete with devil statues, pentagrams and an area where worshippers conducted weird services.”

Continuing down there is another level said to be dedicated to some of Los Angeles’ original and very wealthy industrialists and their families. They rest down behind ancient hardcore steel gates off to each side of a long main corridor.  These are the departed rich who wanted to spend eternity away from the prying eyes of common citizens. Families with names like Williamson and Wilkinson and Miller. According to my sources, the Miller family, of Miller beer, has ancestors interred in these underground spaces.

Another subterranean area, according to the guide, was set aside as the final spot for wealthy gypsy families, the figurines on their crypts otherworldly, and as recently as the 1960s, my sources say, their families would stage elaborate get-togethers to honor their dead relatives. Many doors remain padlocked deep within this labyrinth but when two workers opened one they discovered a room lined with shelves holding crematory urns for military men, police officers, nurses and city workers who were cremated gratis and held all these years because there were no families to claim them.

Both men told me that when their duties required them to be in these underground spaces they often felt the eerie presence of some of the forgotten occupants.

“I’m not a supernatural, ghosty kind of guy,” the guide told me as we continued our tour, “but more  than once when I was down in those places I felt cold and clammy fingers brush against the back of my neck. I knew I was alone down there--but I wasn’t really alone, you know?” Sounds like a real life "Thriller" location--and one whose history would likely delight Michael Jackson.

Photos courtesy of Wikipedia Commons portal.

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Our Youngest Lifers – Disposable Children

by Diane Dimond

Quick, a question: What does the United States of America have in common with the African nation of Somalia?

Answer: They are the only countries to refuse to sign Article 37 of the 1989 UN document entitled, “Rights of the Child.”

What’s that mean? Translated, it means America stands shoulder-to -shoulder with a primitive East African nation in routinely refusing to acknowledge the rights of children. And, America is also the only known nation in the world that allows children under the age of 18 to be tried as adults and sentenced to prison forever–with absolutely no chance for parole. In a majority of U.S. cases the child is charged with murder but sometimes they have simply been in the company of someone else who committed murder.

Hey, wait a minute!

Aren’t we the country that touts our progressive stand on human rights? Isn’t America the nation that cajoles others–Egypt being the latest example – for unreasonable treatment and imprisonment of citizens? Yep, that’s us. So, how do we possibly explain the more than 2,574 inmates currently in U.S. prisons who were sent there as children and who will remain there for the rest of their lives? (By the way, the undisputed figure of 2,574 comes from the latest Human Rights Watch annual report.)

Is it okay with you that we, as a society, routinely toss kids into the deep end of the adult pool of criminal defendants? Understand that upon conviction they are, in effect, lost forever – thrown away as disposable kids–in a prison system that will surely expose them to sexual abuse at the hands of other prisoners and turn them hard and mean forever.

Every mental health expert will tell you a child’s brain isn’t fully developed–specifically, in the areas that control decision making, risk taking and impulse control. We’ve learned these young kids kill for a variety of reasons including prolonged emotional or physical/sexual abuse, brain damage or mental illness sustained during gestation from their addicted mother or a perceived threat to their way of life that their young brain cannot accept.

So when they kill are they really responsible for their behavior?

To be sure, there are some under the age of 18–vicious teen-aged members of street gangs–who are keenly aware of their actions and who richly deserve to be locked away to protect society. But many of the defendants within that group of 2,574 aren’t like that at all and some are single digit young. One boy in Arizona was just 8 when he took a gun and blasted ten bullets into his father and a male tenant in their home. The state is still trying to figure out what made that child snap. The boy pleaded guilty and the state ordered him to undergo psychiatric evaluations, a great step, in my opinion. However, if he doesn’t respond this boy could still be sentenced to hard time.

Coming up soon in the Pennsylvania court system is young Jordan Brown. He shot and killed his father’s pregnant girlfriend as she lay sleeping so Jordan was deemed a double murderer at just 11 years old. The judge in the case has declared that since the boy has expressed no real remorse he must be tried as an adult. Jordan will likely become the youngest offender in American history to be sentenced to LWOP – life in prison without parole.

Quantel Lotts was 14 years old when got that sentence in 2002 in St. Francois County, Missouri. What started as horseplay with his older stepbrother later turned deadly when Lott impulsively grabbed a knife. He was tried as an adult for first degree murder with predictable results. Quantel will live the rest of his life behind the bars of a prison in Bonne Terre, Missouri.

In many states judges have no discretion in sentencing adult defendants. Take a life and you get LWOP–period.

It wasn’t always like this. Before the late '80s, children were seldom prosecuted in adult court settings. Their fates were determined by juvenile courts which many believed were much better equipped to deal with these minor’s unique problems and get them psychiatric help. But the system often simply set the offender free at age 21 providing little or none of the security net they had come to rely upon. That scared folks and somewhere along the line it became easier to just lock up these kids and throw away the key.

California’s notorious Charles Manson, found guilty of seven murders, gets his 12th parole hearing next year. New York’s “Son of Sam” killer David Berkowitz, who admitted to killing six people when he was in his 20s has had four parole hearings so far. The system may never grant a reprieve to either of them but at least they got a chance. Meantime, at least 2,574 American kids will never get that–not even if they can prove they found true redemption and direction in prison.

There’s got to be a better way to keep ourselves safe while at the same time administering to the needs of our troubled kids. Any ideas?

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Medicinal Marijuana Laws on Trial

by Diane Dimond

In November 2007, Steele Smith and his wife Theresa were arrested by federal DEA agents in Orange County, California, for cultivating and selling marijuana. But the Smith’s aren’t your run-of-the-mill drug dealers, and the federal government has left them in legal limbo ever since.

The backstory:  In the summer of 2001, Steele was a successful self-employed marketing man who was felled by a gut-wrenching mystery illness.  He couldn’t eat and quickly dropped 40 pounds from his already thin 6-foot, 7-inch frame.  His doctors were stymied about what caused the debilitating condition.  After four excruciating months, a rare-disease specialist diagnosed a condition called Zollinger-Ellison syndrome, which pockmarks a victim’s upper gastrointestinal tract with multiple, painful ulcers.  Morphine was prescribed for Steele’s constant pain and he lived in that legally induced drug dependent state for the next three years eventually becoming an opiate addict.

In the summer of 2004, his devoted wife guided him on a journey toward detox. “It was either going to kill him or me,” Theresa told me. “I was black and blue from his outbursts. He couldn’t help it, of course, but something had to be done!”

It was an agonizing time, but Steele finally found the strength to wean himself off morphine. But Z-E is a lifelong affliction, and he was still hobbled by the lack of nourishment and the incapacitating pain. The Smith’s desperate search for alternatives brought them to information about the benefits of medicinal marijuana, made legal in California in 1996. The Smith’s sought and got a medical recommendation for Steele to try marijuana. (Under federal law, an actual prescription isn’t allowed for a so-called schedule 1 drug like heroin and, yes, marijuana)  They were directed to dispensaries in Los Angeles, an hour's drive away.

“All we found were drug-dealer types. They were all long haired, tattooed … basically drug dealers who got a store front--intimidating, like your typical head-shop,” Theresa explained.

But, miraculously, the medicinal marijuana worked. For the first time in years Steele was able to eat and manage his pain. His marketing ideas flowed again, and the couple decided to fill the void in Orange County and open their own medicinal marijuana dispensaries to bring relief to others. Their lawyer says they did everything right under California law.

“Mr. Smith set up a legitimate 501 non-profit corporation and he paid all applicable taxes,” a legal brief written by Smith’s attorney Eric Shevin asserts. “He issued patient ID cards, followed pharmacy labeling requirements. He even provided free medical equipment to his customers, like wheelchairs, walkers, porta-potties and wheelchair racks for cars. Mr. Smith allowed the Fullerton Police to document his grow operation thoroughly … and the lead officer even complimented him on the cleanliness and legitimacy of the operation.” By 2006, more than 1,000 patients were registered in the Smith’s database.

So, why were the Smiths arrested and threatened with 10 years in prison?  Because, back then, the U.S. Justice Department decided that the federal law against cultivating marijuana should trump the California law.   The Smith’s were caught up in a classic battle of a state’s right to pass its own laws.  Theresa spent two months behind bars.  The ailing Steele was held in a maximum-security jail for 10 months. Upon release, he was 20 pounds lighter and again hooked on narcotics given to him for pain.  The Smiths lost everything, including their home, cars, their savings, and they had to borrow money from Theresa’s widowed mother, who died a short time later.  They’ve lived under a terrible cloud of legal uncertainty for three years, all the while still grappling with Steele’s disease.

Today’s Justice Department looks at the state’s rights issue differently, and the Smith’s trial will surely be a landmark case closely watched by the 15 states that currently allow cultivation and sale of medicinal marijuana. It will be a milestone verdict because federal Judge Cormac J. Carney has made the unprecedented decision to allow a federal jury--for the first time ever--to hear affirmative testimony about California’s medicinal marijuana law.  This won’t just be about someone having been caught growing pot. The Smiths will be allowed to give groundbreaking testimony about why their interpretation of the state’s law led them to believe they were acting legally.

In 2008, candidate President Barack Obama told an interviewer, “I think the basic concept (of) using medical marijuana in the same way, with the same controls as other drugs, prescribed by doctors (is) entirely appropriate.” Fourteen months ago, his Justice Department instructed all federal prosecutors not to arrest medical marijuana users and suppliers as long as they followed state laws.

So, now, the feds are left squarely between a rock and a hard place with their three-year-old case against the Smiths.

Perhaps, because Judge Carney has a track record of ruling against prosecutors who he sees as overstepping their authority, the feds decided late last week to ask for yet another delay in the December 21 trial, postponing it until late March 2011.

“It’s the eleventh or twelfth delay,” Theresa Smith said in a weary voice. She sees the fight as a state’s rights issue, but also, she says, “as a patient’s issue. If it was meth or heroin or some opiate, I wouldn’t say that. But this is a plant that God put here for a reason. It helps people--so many people.”

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