Eva Joly On Strauss-Kahn Perp Walk: Translation?

“…c’est beaucoup plus violent que pour un quidam.”

Quidam n.m. un certain individu (qu’on ne peut ou qu’on ne veut pas désigner avec plus de précision).

The ritual display of the accused in handcuffs for the TV cameras is hard to defend, although it happens as a result of the notoriety of the case, not simply because the defendant is rich and powerful.

Tom Delay has his mugshots all over the internets, and when he turned himself in he basically controlled the republican money machine. Hard to imagine if Delay couldn’t keep his mugshots out of the news any politician could, so no, I don’t think being a powerful US politician helps you at all.

John Holbo said:

The argument against a perp walk, because it is inconsistent with presumption of innocence, is cogent. And obviously famous/powerful people like IMF directors are the people who risk losing their presumption of innocence in this way. So we have that rare case in which formal equality amounts to effective bias in favor of the weak and powerless.

Come come now, every body knows that what the NYPD and NY DoJ crave above all things is landing, what Tom Wolf calls, the “Great White Defendant” [GWD]. The pleasures of schadenfreude at DKS’s fall from grace are great. Although they would be greater if the GWD were German-Christian & Right-wing rather than Franco-Jewish & Left-wing.

Let the wedging begin!

More generally, does anyone but knee-jerk civil libertarians take the defendants “presumption of innocence” seriously? At ones most charitable, a fair & reasonable observer should be agnostic about the guilt or innocence of the defendant. This is the position of the French inquisitorial system.

But the British system of bending over backwards to presume the innocence of the charged person is obviously biased and insulting to both police and prosecutors. True, false positive are costly, but so are false negatives. My judgement is that the British system allows alot more of the latter than the former.

But the British system of bending over backwards to presume the innocence of the charged person is obviously biased and insulting to both police and prosecutors. True, false positive are costly, but so are false negatives. My judgement is that the British system allows alot more of the latter than the former.

Question: Why is the British (and Commonwealth) legal system regarded as the best and fairest in the world?
Answer: Because of absolute, unyielding dedication to due process and presumption of innocence.

Another in the simple answers to simple questions series.

Long live the English legal system!

Bingo! The alleged victim is black. Another big data point in favour of the Great White Defendant perp-walk theory, at least as far as the NYPD/DoJ’s presumption of DKS’s guilt is concerned. The NYT reports that the alleged victim is an African immigrant:

The police have provided few details about the woman at the center of the case beyond saying she was 32 and an African immigrant…The woman lives in the Bronx with a daughter who is in her teens. The building’s superintendent said she moved in a few months ago.

This adds racial fuel to the class fire. Tom Wolfe would be rolling in his grave if he were dead.

More generally, the story illustrates the revealing racial and gender priorities of the media in high-status crime cases. Always and everywhere crimes involving high-status white persons are front-page news. But the media priorities depend on whether the perpetrator is male or the victim is female.

High-status (powerful) male perpetrators are subject to the Great White Defendant [GWF] media syndrome. Of course extra brownie points can be garnered by showing the perp is a limousine liberal and the victim is poor & black, proving the hypocrisy & general odiousness of the perp.

High-status (beautiful) female victims are subject to the Missing White Female [MWF] media syndrome . The OJ Simpson case is sort of the exception that proves this rule, given the complicated way it cross-wired class, race & gender.

I interpret this according to Darwinian-Weberian socio-biological principles: the media focus on the race & gender of crime perps & victims is based on the public’s perception of the evolutionary conditions for status-competition. Those aspiring to higher-status like to know the state of the ladder.

The GWD syndrome shows how the (white-dominated) media love cases where a powerful white guy is caught with his pants down, since this opens up productive opportunities for other competitive whites.

Conversely in the MWF syndrome shows how the (male-dominated) media obsess over cases where a beautiful white female is victimized, since this closes down reproductive opportunities for competitive males.

There is plenty here for both conservative and constructivist cultural theorists to mull over. Mull away!

John Holbo AT 7:

I don’t think that translation gets it quite right: it suggests that the speaker has some particular individual in mind. Reading it that way makes it an insinuation that maybe someone else should be facing a perp walk. That’s not what the French implies.

‘Un quidam’ means something like ‘some random individual’. I’d translate it into English English as something like: ‘It’s different for the head of the IMF from how it would be for Joe Bloggs’.

When will he have to race against Jason Statham in The Death Race? Or was that Gotham?

I had to google “perp walk”. Seems pretty barbaric, but also seems like a glaring abuse of process – the most the police get away with doing in the UK is issue a statement saying they aren’t looking for anyone else in connection with the alleged offence.

That said, presumption of innocence doesn’t mean quite what some commenters think it does. The point is that legal guilt carries a penalty in terms of status as well as more directly – Joe Bloggs enters the court a free man, and he will either walk out again as Joe Bloggs, Free Man or as Joe Bloggs, Offender. The latter is a very big deal (the thinking goes), so it needs to be nailed down in every particular – and until the last nail goes in, you’re still looking at Joe Bloggs, Free Man.

The police don’t work on this basis and arguably can’t – the nature of the job would knock it out of them. The police work on the basis of a presumption of guilt, but factual guilt rather than legal guilt – in other words, they work on the assumption that, all things being equal, they’ve probably got the right guy.

Whether the system as a whole works the way defence lawyers would like it to (making conversion of Free People into Offenders as onerous as possible) or the way the police would like it to (turning perceived factual guilt into legal guilt as seamlessly as possible) varies from one system to another. But there are always pressures both ways. In the context of England & Wales, it’s seriously misleading to talk about “absolute, unyielding dedication to due process and presumption of innocence” without recognising that the courts are only one part of the criminal justice system, and not always the most visible or influential part.

the most the police get away with doing in the UK is issue a statement saying they aren’t looking for anyone else in connection with the alleged offence.

Well, formally, yes. Informally, leaking seems to be nodded at, given the tabloids’ habit of being well informed about the police’s view.

Surely at least an arrested (accused) psycho-killer needs to be handcuffed, and so why should other suspects be treated differently? And what would be the criteria?

Likihood of using violence or fleeing? If the suspect shows no signs of aggression, has not resisted arrest, and there is no reason to assume that the suspect might disappear when doing a runner, then handcufs are mostly there for the symbolism. I’d say handcuffs should be the exception, not the standard that needs criteria to deviate from.

Richard – the police leak like a sieve, but there’s substantial concern about this at the moment & resistance to treating it as normal (cf. Joanna Yeates’s landlord). Either we’ll be resigned to it in a couple of years, or they’ll end up not doing it – it could go either way.

When arrested suspects needed to be transported in cuffs, there was a practice of covering them with a blanket so as to conceal their identity, but that seems to have fallen out of use some time in the last few decades.

Reportedly there is physical evidence, so there might be more to the trial than “who can afford the best lawyer?”.

I don’t believe in giving a free pass to big shots, be they left-wing or right-wing. I hope the case goes strictly by established legal procedure. It shouldn’t matter who is rich and who is poor, who is white and who is black. I know that in practice many cases fall short of the ideal, but since the spotlight will be on this one, it’s time to go by the book if ever it was.

If the suspect shows no signs of aggression, has not resisted arrest, and there is no reason to assume that the suspect might disappear when doing a runner, then handcuffs are mostly there for the symbolism.

The guy being arrested is obviously stressed. He can try to run, he can attack, he can try to commit suicide, he can expose himself, bite, who knows. People, in extreme situations, often behave unpredictably and irrationally.

If this happens, and the guy – I dunno – pushes the guard away and jumps under a bus, it’ll be your fault.

“The French inquisitorial system is much fairer since it aims at the impartial pursuit of truth, rather than the partisan presentation of the best case.”

Whats the record of the inquisitorial system in convicting the good and the great?

I think I agree with roac et al (including Myles at 14, which means I’ve found something to agree with in comments by Myles and Brett Bellmore in one day, where the heck’s Daragh McDowell when you need to hit a trifecta?), but

If the suspect shows no signs of aggression, has not resisted arrest, and there is no reason to assume that the suspect might disappear when doing a runner, then handcuffs are mostly there for the symbolism.

…admittedly that I disagree with, it’s only the camera parade that’s repulsive to me. I think handcuffing is often a reasonable precaution for the police to take. But this might be purely a function of anecdata: my dad’s various stories of people who seemed calm and rational while being arrested, and then flipped out ‘out of the blue’ and tried to attack him. Or themselves. (Often with ineffectual results. Because they were handcuffed.) I think his response (if not mine) would be, “signs of aggression” are very hard to read, and if you can do something to reduce the likelihood of aggression escalating to violence, then you have to weigh that against the risk of suffering you might inflict. I think handcuffs (when properly and not maliciously-improperly put on a person) are a reasonable precaution against irrational aggression, because they inflict very little suffering. (But maybe I just don’t get why “led by the arm by a police officer” is significantly less humiliating than “led by the arm by a police officer while in handcuffs.” I dunno.)

People can behave weirdly once arrested, often enough to be a concern. They can panic, for example. Perhaps Henri’s attempting to be silly, but my dad does have a story of a guy who suddenly tried to break away and damn near ran into oncoming traffic — it’s one of his “what’s the scariest stuff that ever happened to you on the force” category stories. In general though (by Dad’s anecdata at least), a person in handcuffs who panics tends to start breathing hard and protesting vocally — a good cop can often resolve that with calm speech, a little patience. The most aggressive thing they can do is kick you or spit at you, which are fairly easily avoided or deflected with minimal harm by walking at the right place beside them. (It is amazingly hard to kick backwards effectively at a 45-degree angle. Try it.) A person not in handcuffs who panics might punch the cop, or themselves, or a bystander or whatever, and that will often call for some form of physical subdual (and potential injury to somebody).

I’m not wedded to this view, or even all that confident in it. My law enforcement experience is pretty much restricted to stuff through my dad. I don’t know if he ever put a blanket over anybody — gives me something to ask. He wasn’t in a position where he’d be arresting folks for white-collar crimes, I don’t think. So in particular he probably never had a “perp walk” experience. [Maybe that makes all the difference, but that feels awfully class-ist to me.] Certainly no media parades. But handcuffs, often, SOP. He always did take a lot of genuine concern and care for anyone he arrested, their safety and well-being. We spent a lot of time talking about that, because it interested me and it turned out to be something that mattered to him deeply. He’s just not the kind of person who claims “it’s for safety” with a sly ironic smile or whatever. But I know I’m protesting from indirect personal experience here.

The dude is now being held without bail in Rykers. I would think, as an objective matter, most people would consider that experience more violent and barbaric than getting your picture taken while being led away by the police.

…yeah. To nitpick, it’s Rikers Island. Ryker’s with a y is the fictionalized version where the Doctor Octopus and Magneto were imprisoned.

…not sure, now. I think it was because it would be weird to non-facetiously hold Zamfir accountable for a prisoner who breaks free of a guard and gets hit by traffic, so “it’ll be your fault” seemed potentially facetious at the time (which is an over-literal reading, and silly was just an awful choice of words for facetious). And the phrase “hit by a bus” just sounds unserious to me, not sure why. At a second glance it’s obvious you meant “it’ll be a consequence of making handcuffs the exception not the norm.” Sorry, no disparagement intended.

Surely at least an arrested (accused) psycho-killer needs to be handcuffed, and so why should other suspects be treated differently?

Possible response: ‘Surely an armed terrorist should be shot on sight by police marksmen so why should a 13-year-old girl shoplifting a candy bar be… ‘
Better response: DFTT

Whether or not to handcuff a prisoner is a very different question from whether or not to display the prisoner in handcuffs for the news media. The police are ordinarily capable of moving prisoners in and out of police stations, courthouses, etc. discretely, if they want to. The reason for a public perp walk is that TV needs pictures to show while the talking head reads the story off camera. Prosecutors and police who help TV put together good stories are rewarded with favorable coverage.

I don’t think “corrupt relation between press and prosecutors” is an argument against the perp walk. In the same way as intoxication is not an argument against public urination.

N.b. that the “perp” in “perp walk” itself implies guilt. I am wondering what master of jargon ever got an absurd term like “perpetrator” into the mainstream in the first place. Abstractly it sounds more neutral than “accused” — accusing people isn’t nice — but “the accused” is much preferable to a word that prejudges the guilt of the party.

You could stop electing prosecutors—and you should, obviously—but that wouldn’t stop the incumbents from using the office as a platform to campaign of other office. Which they do. No matter how they got there.

I’m not aware of this happening in Britain, where prosecutors are not elected.

Since SDK is a relevant political figure in France, I think that the idea that he coul have been framed by some political enemy cannot be ruled out.
As a consequence, IMO, the “perp walk” is worse in this case than in the “random guy” case, since it could influence the political life of a country.

Presumption of innocence is all good and well but in this case (see 53) presumption of one side’s innocence is the same as presumption of the other party’s guilt. Which is why it is not so simple; one would not want to make somebody who is sexually assaulted feel like she is being assumed a part of a scheme.

So on presuming innocence, on balance, I will presume that the victim is actually a victim and is also a lot more vulnerable to the effects of wrong presumptions as the person who gets all of the air-time because he happens to be rich and powerful. You can’t want to be rich and powerful for you to go all Calimero when you are treated as unfairly as others who are not rich and powerful would be treated.

the policy at every police department in the US is that when someone is arrested on a felony, the handcuffs go on. Period. No savings throw, no discretion.

Arguably, though, this is stupid.

The bigger problem seems to be collusion between police and media (eg the News of the World and the Met over the phone-hacking affair) rather than between prosecutors and media.

@55 “Presumption of innocence is all good and well but in this case (see 53) presumption of one side’s innocence is the same as presumption of the other party’s guilt.”
I never said I presume that SDK has been framed, I just said that it is possible.
On the other hand, you presume that he is guilty before the trial.
I think you are wrong here.

though perhaps not solely due to flight risk, lack of extradition treaty

Neither of which exist, aside from US judges’ visceral loathing of Polanski. The fact DSK hasn’t been bailed (given the way bail works in New York, in that people accused of the most serious felonies can normally get bail) is a pretty revolting aspect of the whole case, and a good reminder of “don’t be foreign and accused of a crime in the US, ever”.

The dude is now being held without bail in Rykers. I would think, as an objective matter, most people would consider that experience more violent and barbaric than getting your picture taken while being led away by the police.

I’d rather be locked in a hotel room with an elderly French pervert who wanted me to suck his cock than be held without bail in Rikers. While both would be deeply unpleasant, the latter would be materially better in no ways, and worse in many.

(But to be clear, I wasn’t giving an opinion on Strauss-Kahn should be handcuffed or not, just an opinion that a blanket policy using handcuffs when making arrests is unreasonable, and having suspects handcuffed [except when necessary] at trials or media appearances is seriously prejudicial.)

Whether or not to handcuff a prisoner is a very different question from whether or not to display the prisoner in handcuffs for the news media.

Since (I think) I’m somewhat in the minority with a “handcuffs are a reasonable default” sentiment, I’ll mention I agree and will add 2 items to Ebenezer’s list:

* in the case where someone else committed the crime and evidence of that emerges as time goes on, it makes prosecution of the appropriate person much more difficult, because the braggadocio expended in the perp walk becomes evidence of reasonable doubt when prosecuting anyone else

* by blurring the distinction between arrest and conviction, in addition to the already-listed ways in which that’s bad, it also serves to confuse and therefore disadvantage low-information headline-reading type folks, who are the only folks who could even conceivably benefit from having a summary photograph of the event (if photographs can lie, than these perp walk photographs are those weaselly things that aren’t quite outright lies but serve the same purpose, and are therefore almost worse than outright lies — perp walks are to photojournalism what push polls are to politics).

Period. No savings throw, no discretion.

If the Reno: 911! folks ever raid a D&D party I presume we’ll learn there are exceptions.

Arguably, though, this is stupid.

I’d kind of like to hear the argument(s) behind the arguably, not because I think there are none, but because my own attempts are a bit blunted: for example something like “arguably, teaching TSA officers to mindlessly run standardized equipment checks and enforce standard rules is stupid. If we can’t lend some trust to their judgment calls or teach them to make more appropriate judgment calls, they don’t really belong on the job. Apply the same principle to police, Q.E.D.” But that’s clearly daft for two reasons, [a] as we need a lot of cops, we need a system in place which allows for quality cops to exercise judgment but does not demand terribly high cop quality from all cops [see also: teachers], which means we need to provide the most sensible tools we can think up that are at least available as a default substitute for judgment calls, and [b] it’s reasonable to assume a much greater degree of potential hostility from an average recently-arrested person than from an average flier.

I think some pretty good jokes could be cracked at my expense over assertion [b], but I also think it’s true, so maybe I deserve the jokes.

[a] as we need a lot of cops, we need a system in place which allows for quality cops to exercise judgment but does not demand terribly high cop quality from all cops [see also: teachers]

*seriously*?

If people are going to have the power to clap me in irons or shoot me, I want them to be the most competent people in the world to have the power to do such a thing. If people are too incompetent to be trusted to exercise judgement, then I do not want them to have the power to clap me, or anyone else, in irons or shoot me, or anyone else.

The fact that you think it’s acceptable to grant people who *you accept* are useless fucknuts who don’t draw a distinction between clapping an elderly businessman in irons, and clapping a 300-pound bodybuilder who tears people’s heads off for fun in irons, is something that I find really quite disturbing. I’d actually go for pre-Hobbes anarchy over that one.

He is accused of a violent crime, so presumably that justifies the handcuffs. Poetic justice is also satisfied by a man who can afford a $3,000 a night hyper-luxury hotel and fly first class on Air France spend a night in Rikers and be treated like any other criminal suspect.

Nevertheless, the police have lately been acting with more brutality than necessary in stopping and frisking and making their arrests of ordinary people. I have myself seen them throw to the floor and put their knees to the back and handcuff behind the back inoffensive homeless people who have surrendered and pose no threat and have committed no crime other than offending people’s quality of life. And NYC police are more professional and better trained than those of other parts of the country, where they not only do this but routinely taser children and the mentally ill. I think this has to do with the climate of fear that has prevailed here. But this is a separate issue from DSK.

Neither of which exist, aside from US judges’ visceral loathing of Polanski. The fact DSK hasn’t been bailed (given the way bail works in New York, in that people accused of the most serious felonies can normally get bail) is a pretty revolting aspect of the whole case, and a good reminder of “don’t be foreign and accused of a crime in the US, ever”.

I think you are misunderestimating the U.S. justice system. This happens to U.S. citizens as well as foreigners. In fact, I don’t think the treated meted out to DSK so far has been any materially harsher than to most Americans in similar circumstances.

There are two general strands in thinking about the justice system. One is the mode of vengeance; in old Germanic law, the mode of blood revenge. One is the mode of settlement and equity; that is what had been begun by mechanisms such as weregild. The U.S. system, being one inspired greatly by the (sometimes quite violent) spirit of justice as vengeance, with a particularly gruesome Old Testament twist endemic to the Puritanism in the marrow of the country, is more in the first mode than those found in the Commonwealth.

This is merely the unavoidable barbarism of treating law and justice as the blind pursuit of vengeance; the U.S. system is not one that has been tempered by a sympathetic reading of Aeschylus’s Eumenides.

And just let me add that the same national Weltanschaaung that prompts wild celebrations in the streets over the death of some horrid little terrorist somewhere in Pakistan, is the very same that abides continually by the Old Testament barbarism of a system that permits perp walks and yet disallows bail for those who pose no flight risk.

American liberals and the left, it seems, are no less guilty of this unlikeable moralism than are the conservatives.

The difference is, the US justice system treats poor Americans and wealthy foreigners alike. So if you’re DSK or some poor sod from the projects, then you’re fucked; if you’ve both a blue passport and a million dollars, then things are altogether more agreeable.

Counterpoint: Conrad Black

(By the way, allow me to express my delight that in relentless pushing such an idiotic case as Black’s, the prosecution managed to get one of their most abused legal doctrines, “honest services,” overturned by the Supreme Court. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer bunch.)

He was also allowed beforehand, IIRC.

One is the mode of vengeance; in old Germanic law, the mode of blood revenge. One is the mode of settlement and equity; that is what had been begun by mechanisms such as weregild.

These are not, historically, opposites, but two aspects of the same system. Read the sagas. The right of the victim’s kin to vengeance had a cash surrender value. The community, in most cases, pitched in to broker the transaction.

JohnB: The US justice/legal/police system varies enormously from state to state, and even within states. Generalising in such a way is not terribly helpful and probably doesn’t help any case you’re trying to make.

Given the way the NY Police often treat suspects, DSK has nothing to complain about. He’s still breathing, no visible bruises… And while I’m no fan of the perp walk, I think its even likely to be fixed if it only applies to the poor and powerless.

The US justice/legal/police system varies enormously from state to state, and even within states. Generalising in such a way is not terribly helpful and probably doesn’t help any case you’re trying to make.

Gosh, really? Thanks for the advice.

Having studied the US justice system in some depth, having been engaged to an academic whose PhD involved studying the US prison system, having spent some time deciding on which countries and states I’d consider living as an expatriate, I’m aware of this. The fact that we know each other from elsewhere makes presumptions of BACAI harder to avoid than would be the case for a stranger.

But yes. The US legal system varies enormously from state to state. In every state I’m aware of, foreigners get treated worse than US citizens, in a way that’s frankly bizarre and disgusting to people who follow these things who are used to the judicial systems in the UK, Canada and Australia. I have never met anyone from anywhere suggest that the US judicial system was fairer to non-citizens than the judicial system of any non-US country.

My suggestion is that this is systemic rather than coincidental, and reflects the general perception that US citizens have of non-US-citizens as inferior beings. Oh, and also the fact that *its own fucking constitution extends rights to citizens that are not extended to others*. On the other hand, it may be random chance, and the US judicial system may be perfectly delightful to everyone, and especially to people who live in the US and don’t choose to sign up to be members of that particular club.

I wonder whether anybody here can explain the legal theory behind this.

If you’re talking about what I think you’re talking about, it’s an extension of my previous comment: non-US citizens don’t have any rights in the US, the constitution is solely about protecting the chaps (and more recently, chapesses) with blue passports with an eagle on the front. Of course the fact that the US won’t allow you in if you’ve been arrested and acquitted is a revolting betrayal of everything the country says it stands for; but that’s because the US is run on the principle that US citizens are aces; anyone can become a US citizen if they try; and anyone who chooses not to become a US citizen is a treacherous scumbag who barely deserves the time of day.

US citizens have of non-US-citizens as inferior beings. Oh, and also the fact that its own fucking constitution extends rights to citizens that are not extended to others

Not true, unless you are talking about something like the right to vote or run for president. The basic guarantees of due process and equal protection apply to all “persons,” not just citizens.

Re presumption of innocence: In the German media, I recently read shortly before the verdict in the Demjanjuk trial that “the court was expected to find him guilty”. I don’t think an American newspaper would ever publish such a statement.

I disagree – I have been fairly shocked to see US papers routinely describing people who had been arrested and charged with crimes but had yet to face trial as “the shooter”, or whatever; this would be the cause of a severe legal thumping in the UK.

I’ve always thought that if one were to be treated as second-class persons in a foreign country, one should make it Singapore or Dubai instead of the U.S., as they are at least honest, upfront, and consistent about it (steer well clear of Rule X, Y, Z in Singapore, and you’re fine, etc. that sort of thing), and don’t reach for inane moral justifications of ill acts.

There’s a lot to be said for getting rid of the perp walk generally. There’s not much to be said for getting rid of it for DSK and the like.

I am SHOCKED that Myles is a fan of Lord Blacks. Shocked I tell you.
/Not actually shocked.
//At least you are consistent in your toadying Myles.

I am SHOCKED that Myles is a fan of Lord Blacks. Shocked I tell you.

If I were actually such a fan, I would actually used his baronial title. As is, the whole thing (not the least of all, his title) reeks of opera buffa.

But the principle is an important one, regardless of how personally attractive or not Black is. I simply don’t think there ever was enough “stuff” there to send him off to jail; he might have well been unethical, but it was so clearly on-the-line-in-the-sand stuff that trying this as hard as the American prosecution did was clearly a form of masochism. The legal system is not a sandbox for idiotic prosecutors to play silly ego games; it deserves far greater regard than that.

As it were, the prosecution got their asses handed to them by the Supreme Court, as they well should have. Don’t waste millions of dollars chasing implausible and pointless cases (hey, any Hollinger shareholder done better after the idiots kicked Black to the curb? He was at least a competent manager, unlike all of his successors), and if you are monomaniacal enough to insist on doing so, you deserve all the defeat you get. If you manage to get one of your handiest legal doctrines (“honest services”) nullified by the Supreme Court, no less, in the process, well, it hardly speaks to the persuasiveness of your prosecution.

Richard Posner, who isn’t at all sympathetic to Black, advised the prosecution to hang up their hats and devote their energies to worthier cases. It’s very sound advice. Perhaps instead of wasting everyone’s time and money chasing non-cases like Black, they should take it.

Myles 96, that is a different issue. The question is whether we take the presumption of innocence seriously or not. If an arrest is taken as cause for adverse action without waiting for the court system to come to a verdict, and maybe even after a not guilty verdict was reached, that is a violation of presumption of innocence. After all, you may have a rule against joining fraternities but can you have a rule against being innocently accused?

Presumption of innocence is not a formality. It is a basic right and a civilizational achievement. Sadly, this is not as widely appreciated as one would hope it is.

Piglet: absolutely.

Myles: separate point, best not conflated.
I agree 100% that if I’d been a Hollinger or AIG shareholder, I’d much rather have trusted in Black or Greenberg to deliver me returns, rather than having somebody destroy my investment in my alleged interests. In general, the US approach of trying to regulate the cowboy-fun-fest that is the stock market by locking folk up is nonsense, whereas the UK approach of basically assuming that folk shouldn’t be locked up is the right call.

There are some ridiculous hyperboles in this thread. First of all, the “perp walk” may be demeaning, but the first guarantee of justice is that the jury takes its job seriously. A good jury will disregard any media BS and focus on the trial. As someone mentioned, the policy is for people who are accused of violent crimes to get cuffs. Other than a few special cases defendants do not appear in restraints at trail, and if they have any they are hidden under the table (for reasons that are obvious).

“as currently interpreted, I think the US constitution makes a distinction between non-citizens, who can be imprisoned and executed without trial, and citizens, who can’t.”

I think you’re wrong. It depends on the wording in each case, but all criminal defendant rights in the constitution use the phrase “no person”, or “the right of the people” which is not limited to citizens. The two issues that may not go through the full trial by jury areas are immigration law, where someone is in the country illegally and so they are imprisoned prior to a deportation hearing (which they may only be going through at all because they are appealing deportation) and the whole national security GitMo boondoggle, which IMO, isn’t legal under the Constitution but is exceptional in any case.

My issue with inquisitorial systems is the same problem Britain had under Chancery courts where the procedure can not be stopped unless the judge wants it to be stopped. Under an adversarial system, the prosecution can decide to drop the case because they settle, or because new information comes up and the judge has less leeway to keep the case open. However, I’m sure France has probably evolved procedures to keep this from happening.

Perp walks are not necessarily limited to the famous and powerful. If the crime itself is spectacular, there will be a perp walk. Why should spectacular criminals have their rights protected? We don’t know the person arrested is a spectacular criminal. If you are innocent, you are just as innocent no matter how heinous the crime.

john b @76 In general, an American with money can get bail in situations where it would seldom be granted in most other jurisdictions.

Yes, actually most defendants have the opportunity to post bail. However the purpose of bail in New York State is to ensure that the defendant appears at trial. A defendant with enormous means and with powerful friends in the US and abroad, who is accused of violent felonies, can pose a flight risk. This is especially true if the defendant’s home country does not extradite its citizens abroad, but rather tries them at home.

So the judge acted very reasonably in denying bail. The notion that DSK was treated differently out of some animosity towards foreigners is misguided.

Myles @73: The U.S. system, being one inspired greatly by the (sometimes quite violent) spirit of justice as vengeance, with a particularly gruesome Old Testament twist endemic to the Puritanism in the marrow of the country, is more in the first mode than those found in the Commonwealth.

This is wrong. That DSK was denied bail, and was (horrors) photographed while walking with handcuffs, provides absolutely no basis for your comment.

Frankly, entirely too much is being made of the “perp walk.” DSK was widely reported to have been arrested and charged. A photograph of DSK with handcuffs implies that DSK has been arrested – nothing more. The idea that such a photograph will taint the jury pool is without much foundation; certainly the taint will be no more so than the media reports on his arrest, and there are ways of dealing with that problem during jury selection.

Barry, not everyone who blogs, reads or comments at CT lives in the USA.

In the jury pool, what percentage of the people do you believe will have seen the perp walk televised?

(And the ‘X & Y actions of DSK ex post facto were suspicious’ might be plausible to an ignorant jury (which the defence hopefully will rectify if exigent), but honestly it shouldn’t be. That he felt suspicious has no necessary relation to what kind, and what degree, of wrongdoing he committed. He might have committed a very minor wrongdoing, and felt tremendously shaky, or vice versa.)

I see that Bloomberg is displaying a fairly elementary misunderstanding of the principles of criminal justice: “I think it is humiliating, but if you don’t want to do the perp walk, don’t do the crime.”

(see http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/17/imf-chief-dominique-strauss-kahn-resign )

Myles: “By the way, the whole “DNA evidence” thing is a bit daft. If there was no actual intercourse, how could there be credible (rather than just accidental or inconclusive) DNA evidence? The notion is confounding.”

The maid says Strauss-Kahn forced her to perform oral sex on him. I’m sure a few Google searches (best not done on a work computer) could suggest what DNA evidence might exist.

How such DNA evidence could be “accidental” or “inconclusive” I will leave Myles to explain himself.

Myles: “So all we’ve got really going here is the account of the alleged victim. Well, in any kind of a civilized legal system, that shouldn’t be enough to produce a conviction.”

The standard of evidence needed for an arrest is, quite properly, rather lower than that required for conviction. Strauss-Kahn has not yet been convicted.

In addition to the testimony of the “alleged victim”, there is the alleged perpetrator’s behavior. I would be curious to hear Myles’s explanation of what sequence of events led to his attempt to flee US jurisdiction.

Myles, you are an idiot.

Entirely possible.

There could be all kinds of DNA evidence resulting from a struggle: saliva, hair, blood.

There’s nothing which has gone into the news so far that suggests struggle of this nature has taken place.

And this is not getting started on the credibility-of-alleged-victim issue. I have no personal opinions on the matter, but the defence lawyer, Benjamin Brafman, will presumably make judicious use of the fact that the alleged victim is a 32-year-old mother of a 16-year-old. It will be unfortunate, but it’s inevitable.

The only thing I’m worried about at this point is NYPD, if push comes to shove, fabricating evidence. Which is not out of the question given that it’s the NYPD.

Accounts of victims are considered perfectly excellent evidence.

That’s not going to be anything to build a proper legal system on. In this case, I wonder how excellently the court will consider the account as evidence after Benjamin Brafman, of all people, is done with it.

It’s curious that I would rate DSK’s chances pretty good in a Commonwealth court, but somewhat less in an American court. Not a slam against American justice as conducted in courts, but most a feeling that the NYPD and the American prosecution are not above skulduggery when they want somebody in jail really badly. Which they seem to, with regard to DSK.

If I were him, I would start digging not just on the alleged victim, but also on the cops and the prosecutors themselves, just to make sure (to the extent possible) that they don’t get up to something very very problematic indeed.

I think Myles is implying silliness by DSK there…? Isn’t he the one demanding DNA evidence?

Salient, that situation sounds terrible but I don’t think it’s the correct example. The breach of the presumption of innocence occurs when a person does something unrelated to their job and loses their job because of it. So, a better example would be that the student gets charged with assault for spitting on a Vietnam Veteran who you don’t know, unconnected to the school, and then the school removes him from your class even though he never spat on you.

The classic being: a cricketer is accused of sexual assault that probably really happened, but is found not guilty (possibly with the connivance of the police and/or fellow team members) and gets removed from the cricket team (with a commensurate massive loss in salary).

If the crickter had assaulted a woman in his workplace or at the pitch, then his removal would be justified even if no charges were laid (it’s an industrial matter). But if it happened in his private life…?

Myles, people are convicted on the testimony of the complaining witness ALONE all the time. This is true in the US, UK, Germany, France and everywhere. You are watching too much CSI if you believe that witness testimony is not sufficient to convict someone of crime.

In any case, if reports are correct we have the assaulted witness (enough to convict alone even in France) as well as additional other physical evidence.

Myles: “[Strauss-Kahn] might have done something quite minor, but feel quite sketched by it, so he starts acting in a silly way by fleeing and being very rushed and so forth. ”

Yes, that’s the kind of behavior pattern that gets one into a job like head of the IMF. Running around like a chicken with your head cut off at the slightest provocation.

“Or he might have done something very bad, but felt very calm about it.”

I believe this can be ruled out, based on what did and didn’t happen. If Strauss-Kahn had been very calm and decided to get our of NY, he’d have come up with a better escape plan (e.g. stay away from places like airports).

“Either way, to say “oh he behaved in a suspicious way afterwards” is just silly.”

Particularly so in the case of (hypothetical) calm deliberate action, which would be unlikely to be detected in time to come across as suspicious.

I’d be curious to learn what kind of “quite minor” thing Myles thinks Strauss-Kahn might have done which led him to conclude he should upset his schedule and flee back to France. Seems like causing that much bother to yourself and others implies that something not “quite minor” happened.

Salient, I don’t think companies should ever be able to sack you on the basis of things in your private life. Even serious crimes. The fact that I murdered a couple of people a few years ago doesn’t make me a worse statistician. In theory, obviously. What I do in my private life is only relevant when it affects my job performance, and in the majority of cases most crimes don’t relate to most jobs. e.g. if you’re found guilty of shop-lifting then fair enough, shop owners shouldn’t employ you. But if you work in an all male job, where you don’t face customers, who really needs to care if you’re a misogynist woman-hating rapist? On the off chance that you do come into contact with women at work, then your behaviour should be conducted according to workplace policy and provided it is, then you should keep your job; if you deviate from workplace policy you should be warned/fired/thrown down the mine shaft in accordance with policy. But if you’ve been following workplace policy for years and then you happen to prove you aren’t so ethical in your private life, why should that change your workplace situation?

Obviously the examples above are a bit extreme, but in general I think that we should adhere to three principles: a) you’re innocent till proven guilty (as applied to unproven crimes); b) your workplace performance should be judged on your workplace performance, not your private life; and c) if you’ve been punished by the judicial system for a crime you shouldn’t be punished all over again by your peers/employers/society generally. And if your employer thinks you “got off lightly” they should tell that to society at large, and try to change the law, rather than going all vigilante on your arse.

Maybe if you’re found guilty of shop-lifting then shop owners indeed should employ you, like IT security firms employing hackers…

I think you could make a strong case as an employer for not hiring people if doing so would conflict with your requirements to provide a safe working environment free from sexual harassment. The rise of CRB checks in the UK seems to have proceeded on this basis.

sg, in what sense is rape simply a private affair?

Where’s the evidence that the perp walk prejudices juries?

If the government wants to parade suspects for all the world to see, then it is up to the government to argue that it won’t prejudice juries. If the government wants to control citizens in a certain way, then it (or its supporters) must make the case.

You keep asserting this, but you don’t have anything to back it up.

In a sense, he is right, in that civil law systems have no concept of jury nullification. Personally, I think they should do, but when he says that the “inquisitorial system focuses on getting to the truth”, I don’t think that’s what he was talking about.

I don’t know if anyone’s said this, but the presumption of innocence might better be described as the presumption of liberty.

If a potential juror believes that to be arrested is to be guilty, then – unless that juror perjures himself during selection – he will be excused from serving on that jury.

Moreover, the jurors, observing the defendant in the courtroom, have to be aware that he was, most likely, arrested at some point. If informing the public that someone has been accused/arrested amounts to jury pollution, then the system is doomed to failure, no matter what you do.

Au contraire, I think most people would expect that Ron Paul is guilty.

In his case, the presumption of guilt not only precedes the trial, it precedes the accusation.

The UK has notoriously low rape clearance rates

It also has a high reporting rate, and a broader definition of rape than say the USA. Do you think these things could be connected?

CRB checks in the UK were introduced on the back of panic over a case where a known but minor offender moved house and job and ended up killing two schoolgirls. So the politicians promised to do something, and the worry worts mistook CRB checks for something, rather than a waste of time.
CRB checks are separate from and newer than merely asking your job applicants whether or not they have any criminal convictions, something I am sure I recall on application forms years before CRB checks were invented. As for whether they actually do any good, I don’t know, but there are flaws in the system and injustices have occured, and meanwhile I havn’t read of any major successes, and women and girls are still most at risk from people they know, who naturally wouldn’t get caught by CRB checks.

Oh, nonsense. They’ve acted with perfect propriety with respect to DSK. NYC certainly has no animosity towards DSK, and every incentive to be very, very careful in proceeding against him.

We are talking about the motherfucking NYPD here. They aren’t exactly schoolchildren. And they are certainly not above making evidence up out of thin air and hiding adverse evidence when it suits them. They’ve done it before.

Idly speculating about what kind of dirt might be dug up on the victim while professing to have “no personal opinion on the matter” just makes you look like a weaselly little shit

I actually don’t think the fact that the alleged victim was a teenage mother, as well as any possibility that they might be experiencing money troubles, actually make the accusations any less credible.

It is Benjamin Brafman’s job, however, to cast as doubt on the accusations as possible and to maximally reduce the credibility of the alleged victim, even if that means noting facts that might not impact the case materially but could be made plausible for doing so. Thus I presume that those facts will play out in the proceedings, even though I don’t think they should count. Benjamin Brafman is a first-rate lawyer, and he will do whatever is necessary to keep DSK out of jail. Limning the reputation of the alleged victim in a particular way is the least of it.

Where’s the evidence that the perp walk prejudices juries?

Nobody gives a shit whether the perp walk prejudices juries. If we arrest you and sequester the jury from media access and then run banner ads across every TV station mossy: Murderer and Rapist Arrested, to Face Trial then it wouldn’t prejudice the jury, but wouldn’t you feel your rights are being violated?

And if you feel that’s wrong, then what’s not wrong about a picture whose function it is to say the same thing? It’s not like TV watchers are careful to distinguish “alleged” from “convicted” when looking at a picture. And the people publishing or disseminating that picture are under no obligation to clarify. The whole point of the picture is to make sure that people think of the person pictured as a perpetrator, as a criminal, regardless of conviction or exoneration.

You just never stop, do you

This is how the adversarial system works (I think).

so your beef is with the media, not the police, then?

Yes! As I said before, it’s the photo op, not the ‘cuffs, that bug me.

And how do you suggest this could be rectified?

I’m a little hesitant to enthusiastically endorse France’s solution without understanding it better, but “can’t publish photos depicting person as criminal (specifically any law I’d write would be limited to, they can’t publish photos of a person under police custody) until such person is convicted” seems pretty reasonable to me. Hell, I think it would be okay to say “it is not legal to publish and disseminate photos or video of a person that were taken while that person was under police custody without the person’s consent.”

@HV 156

From the article linked in the post:
“As justice minister, Ms. Guigou, now a parliamentarian, oversaw the passage of a law prohibiting the publication of photographs of handcuffed criminal suspects. “

“it is not legal to publish and disseminate photos or video of a person that were taken while that person was under police custody without the person’s consent.”

I don’t think such a law would be possible in the US; and anyway they’ll publish your graduation photo under the banner ‘Murderer and Rapist Arrested, to Face Trial’.

I suspect it’s one of those things that can’t legislated; you just have to live with it.

#153- “Nobody gives a shit whether the perp walk prejudices juries.”

Really. You don’t think the prosecutor cares? You don’t think that the DA is pleased that this story is #1 on the tv local news and the handcuff photos are on page 1 of the tabloids? The perp walk is an orchestrated display that exists to create images for the purpose of prejudicing the jury. It’s advertising for the prosecution. That’s what it’s for.

#162 – “where you come down on this reflects whether or not you think the guy is guilty.”

Where you come down on this, if you have any understanding of what is actually going on here, is whether you believe that prosecutors should be required to try their cases in court, and not in the press through leaks and photo ops.

If taking snapshots of people is outlawed, only outlaws will have snapshots.

I’m with sg here – I’m pretty confident DSK is guilty. That’s exactly why I think taking it as an opportunity to discuss the perp walk is a good idea – because I’m talking about a person I don’t particularly like and who I think is guilty.
I feel like it might be hard to address the problem legally in the US, but would there be any hope to address this through voluntary codes of conduct in the media and/or prosecutors office? But I guess either of those is hopeless, too?

Every perp is walked from a police building out to a police vehicle in order to get to arraignments. But nobody cares about most of them.

I myself like perp walks because if a perp can walk without limping and his face isn’t busted up then I can personally be more assured that there wasn’t abuse or corecion in the interrogation room.

Do we need to structure police stations so there is this little private bay that cars can pull into to load up these perps so that nobody sees the person, under arrest, who was reported by the police to be under arrest?

We want the police to be transparent in everything they do, except the transportation of people arrested to central booking, which we want them to do in secret?

There is something so, French, to all of the concern here.

If you read what you (some of you) write, you start with the perp walk but then write about everything else. The picture of DSK I see the most is not the perp walk photo, but the one of him in court. So would you outlaw that, too? Outlaw photographers and tv cameras in court? Outlaw the DSK feeding frenzy in the media that has also made the life of the accuser hell? How are you going to do that? I see to some extent the objection to the perp walk, but it seems the least of the problem and to me, at least, the least prejudicial and humiliating.

So you would just allow a child rapist to go work in a school?

sg specifically excepted cases where the previous offense is related to the job in question. See comments 123, 129.

… if a perp can walk without limping and his face isn’t busted up then I can personally be more assured that there wasn’t abuse or corecion in the interrogation room.

If a prisoner can walk without limping and his face isn’t busted up, still, that does not indicate whether the prisoner was waterboarded.

OTOH, just because the prisoner has been charged with “resisting arrest” and “assaulting an officer”, still, that does not indicate whether the prisoner truly deserved his obviously broken bones and smashed face.

The key question, really, is whether the confession is admissable.

Mossy, fair enough. I’ll think some more about how to explain the position I take. My intuition says that it would be unsurprising if DSK is guilty, and surprising to me if he is innocent. I’m hesitant to declare his guilt more confidently than that, but I definitely don’t intend to stick up for the rights of the accused just ’cause I think they are guilty or innocent.

The picture of DSK I see the most is not the perp walk photo, but the one of him in court. So would you outlaw that, too?

Yes. A thousand times yes. In my view of how it should be, the state cannot allow it, unless the defendant grants permission — in which case I would make it the law that the state cannot object to it, except in exceptional cases. I’m not going to go into detail about what would be suitably exceptional; that’d take a lot of careful thought.

I would also subject the defendant-granting-permissions process to Miranda type rights. An accused has the right to attorney before granting permission for non-secrecy, so the attorney can explain what it would mean. They should also have the right to later revoke permissions, in the sense that they should be able to say “ok from now on no more new photos or media access to new things.”

Maaaybe whether the defendant has waived his or her rights to various forms of privacy should be public information. Maybe not. I can’t figure out if that’s a good idea or not.

I definitely think statements of fact about custody such as “so-and-so is under arrest” and “so-and-so is in police custody” and “so and so has been charged for this list of crimes” should always be public information and should always be divulged to the media as quickly as possible. So the defendant’s right to privacy is not absolute (weirdly, demanding this information always be public is protecting defendants and accused persons: they cannot be held in secret).

And the media should have the right to interview the accused face-to-face, if the accused consents. Again, to protect the accused against state secrecy.

Outlaw photographers and tv cameras in court?

Same answer. Defendant’s choice, rare exceptions where needed.

Outlaw the DSK feeding frenzy in the media that has also made the life of the accuser hell?

That might be harder and it might cross the free-speech line we need to maintain. I think it would be possible to outlaw certain aspects of that frenzy that are damaging, but again, here we need more exceptional caution to avoid outlawing talking about stuff. It’s too broad a question and I would much rather only outlaw specific aspects.

How are you going to do that?

Hard question. Ideas: Make dissemination of such things a crime, punishable by fine? Write civil code to make it easy for the accused to sue publishers for damages? There’s possibilities and I don’t want to commit to just one. Any such law would have to be written carefully to [a] make sure it protects and reinforces the rights of the defendant to their choice of secrecy or nonsecrecy and [b] doesn’t stifle the ability of people to discuss the publicly known facts of the case.

Eh, come on Salient. Does Brad Pitt have the right to take a nap in his backyard without being photographed? You get arrested, that’s a news, tough fucking luck. You’re the IMF chief and you get arrested – that’s a big news. That’s life. Don’t get arrested.

Thanks, Salient, for your extensive answers. There are a great many conflicting values here, so I can’t say you’ve convinced me. But I’ll think about it.
You see, I live in Russia, where trials and everything connected with them are closed, or controlled by the authorities, so I have a knee-jerk reaction against secrecy of any kind invoked by anyone. And, I suppose frankly, here the defendants are handcuffed, shackled and kept in a “monkey cage” (a barred off cell) during the trial in the courtroom, so all this talk about the horrors of the perp walk strike as: I should have your problems. I’m not sure if I’m having a problem with all this because I’m at a lower evolutionary rung, if you see what I mean, or if I have principled objections.

mossy, I think most people here from the Commonwealth (e.g. me) remember or are still living in a time when courts were closed to all but sketch artists, and much of the trial is held “in secret.” I think we generally see this as a good thing. It’s not secret as in “stolen in dead of night and left to rot” but it’s set up to protect the dignity of those involved, and I think that’s better.

Salient, I am willing to make exceptions to my position on criminal record checks for some crimes and some jobs (obviously, child-abuse related). Though I think the laws about this issue can also go too far, e.g. having to notify your neighbours that you have such a criminal history is evil [though I guess this is only done in TV-land]. But if you make these checks available to all organizations for any crime, you basically institute another barrier to employment for poor people. Think about it in the US – some huge proportion (30%?) of black men in their 20s (?) have been in prison, in many cases for patently racist reasons. Criminal record checks are clearly going to be used more by large companies with good workplace relations and career structures, and this is clearly erecting a barrier against black men entering those companies.

I’m also extremely suspicious about how well criminal record checks actually protect children – it depends so much on how well the police and community services are protecting children.

The interest of the NYPD right now is getting a conviction, more or less as charged. Extremely so. I’m not saying they’ve done anything wrong. I know of no evidence of this. But there will be major international hell to pay if this does not pan out. Imagine if Mitt Romney were arrested under similar circumstances in France and similarly treated (no bail, etc.). The case had better be airtight. Normally, I would say this must mean they had all their ducks in a row before they pulled the trigger, but in this case they had to move fast. At this point, they are committed, so I would not put fabricating evidence beyond them, if there is a need. But it doesn’t look right now like there is likely to be a need.

Martin Bento: “But there will be major international hell to pay if this does not pan out. Imagine if Mitt Romney were arrested under similar circumstances in France and similarly treated (no bail, etc.). The case had better be airtight. Normally, I would say this must mean they had all their ducks in a row before they pulled the trigger, but in this case they had to move fast. ”

The forced speed of the arrest makes it easier, not harder, for the NYPD to back out.

Hauling the suspect from a plane about to take off gives an excellent excuse: “We had to make the arrest before the suspect left the country, but further evidence has convinced us there is insufficient evidence to merit prosecution.” This would not apply if the arrest had been made at a time and place of the NYPD’s choosing. So I don’t think this argument works.

I think it is more or less a requirement that the police or someone must tip off the media

Martin,

There’s an interesting story at Reuters Photographers blog, “Strauss-Kahn: The stakeout, the courthouse and the lookout“:

When we learned late Saturday night that Strauss-Kahn was being formally charged with attempted rape and other criminal charges, fellow Reuters photographers Brendan McDermid, Lucas Jackson and Pictures editor Gary Hershorn and I spoke at length – trying to gather together a plan and enough photographers to have multiple shooters covering multiple locations in Manhattan. All in the hope that we could get photographs of Strauss-Kahn in police custody and in handcuffs, knowing they would be of major importance and widely published.

Read the photographers’ story.

Why is it obscene to hide the perpetrator’s name after they have completed their sentence?

But I don’t think the state should have the right to provide that media if the defendant objects, except probably in some kind of extreme exceptional cases. I think we should assume that in the default case the defendant objects to non-secrecy but we should make it very easy for a defendant to demand non-secrecy and get it.

This is wrong; justice must not only be done, it must be seen to be done. What about the case of, say, a corrupt government minister? He’s brought to trial, invokes his right to secrecy, and three days later we’re told “yep, he’s completely innocent. What about all the evidence against him? Oh, that was all disproved. No, we can’t tell you why, sorry. Defendant’s right to secrecy.”

Would anyone suggest that DSK should have been treated differently, just because he is a French citizen? Everyone else is probably treated the same, but the cameras are not there, so we haven’t seen it.
Those of us who have been wronged by the elf Aquitaine machinations from the Mitterrand government where DSK was the minister in charge, enjoy every minute of it (just being human). Should he be banged up, he could probably reduce his sentence by being cooperative, i.e. finally shedding some light on the collusion between Mitterrand and H. Kohl in the elf Aquitaine/Leuna/Minol “activities”, which have never been fully clarified after Kohl shredded the documents.

To make it as clear as possible: the tendency is to regard an arrest record as part of a person’s “criminal history”. Under presumption of innocence, there simply is no criminal history unless there is a conviction. This is another area where the US judicial system is a big exception. For example, I have completed immigration forms of several countries. Every immigration authority understandably wants to know if you have a criminal conviction but *only the US asks about arrests*.

Seems that over the past decade or so there are an awful lot of reports of big-shots getting caught with their pants down. Obviously starting with Clinton, but including Gibson, Schwarzenegger etc

What gives?

Are aging baby boomer Alpha-males staying randier in the early days of their dotage?
Are the women – either kept, spurned or loose – more likely to go to the media with their story?
Is the media less likely to keep a story under wraps, due to competition from digital snoops and papparazzi?

I am sure there is nothing new under the sun, certainly going by the stories one hears about Llyoyd George and Kennedy.

Also, it sure seems like there are a lot more sex-for-sale these days, going by the proliferation of T&A bars, mega-brothels springing up in the suburbs and the suspiciously heavy traffic in hotel foyers after-hours. Yeah, I know, “worlds oldest profession” but that doesnt mean you expect it in your face all the time, everywhere.

I guess this is a sign of growing wealth and the time-stress that high-achievers are now under. Why spend all night doing the spade work on an unknown quantity when you can land a sure thing with quality assurance inside an hour, possibly at lower over all cost.

Which only raises the question, whats up with DKS, if he really needs the service he can afford to buy it. Obviously some primeval need for conquest that is driving him onwards.