Comments on: Shock: Is SNAP Advocating Violence Against Elderly Accused Priests?

By: Publion

Publion — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 18:43:13 +0000

A local attorney has just put up an assessment of the Lynch-Lindner case dynamics on the ‘San Jose Mercury News’ blog site.

You can read it here: http://www.sanjoseinside.com/news/entries/7_10_12_priest_william_lynch_jerold_lindner_trial/

I don’t quite agree with it.

In CA, he notes, the difference between felony and misdemeanor A&B is the severity of the injury inflicted on the victim. For a felony the possibility of ‘great bodily harm’ is required, whereas for a misdemeanor-battery one need only touch somebody without their consent or “in a rude or insolent manner”. But in the Lynch case, we have a self-admitted A&B that involved striking the victim and inflicting sufficient damage as to require EMS and stitches. And when you strike an elderly person, surely the possibility of great bodily harm is intensified.

So this attorney’s effort to claim that the jury was well within reasonable limits not to adjudge the A&B felonious is not – to my mind – credible. And that’s without considering the facts admitted by Lynch (the lie concocted to gain ‘access’ to his victim, wearing gloves, asking the victim to take his glasses off before he whacked him) which indicate – to my mind – deliberate and premeditated A&B.

The attorney then raises the point that the jury can easily be forgiven for not trusting a case where the victim’s (Lindner) testimony cannot be considered. But in this case there was no doubt as to the fact of the A&B (the defendant Lynch himself admitted it) or the extent (as far as we know; old folks can develop problems later on since their physical systems are more fragile) of the injuries resulting from the defendant Lynch’s actions. And, as I said, it seems pretty evident that some amount of planning on the part of the defendant went into this entire attack.

Thus too, this attorney leaps far too optimistically (and – I think – slyly) to the conclusion that once Lindner had taken the Fifth (about the sex abuse alleged to have happen decades before) then the jury was justified in not trusting the prosecution’s case because the star-witness/victim was unreliable. But you didn’t need the star-witness’s testimony since you had a) the medical reports and police reports and b) the defendant Lynch’s own admission that he had committed the crime. With all that, what more did the jury need to know to adjudge the Charge(s)?

Thus too this attorney’s marvelously (and slyly) disingenuous statement that without Lindner’s testimony the prosecution could barely place Lynch in the room, “much less how the priest had come to suffer his injuries”. Willy Tango Foxtrot? Lynch admitted to going there and hitting the priest; and how else would the priest have gotten his injuries?

And the attorney admits that the jury was sympathetic to Lynch from the outset because the defense had been allowed to play Lynch’s videotaped dramatic story-telling about the 1975 assault as part of the defense’s initial presentation. As I have said in prior comments, this was completely irrelevant material to the trial at this stage; it might have been legitimately introduced in mitigation at sentencing if the jury found the defendant guilty, but it was utterly irrelevant and prejudicial at the opening of the trial – and especially if Lindner had always denied it and the allegations contained in Lynch’s story had never been investigated and their veracity somehow established. The operative legal theory apparently inherent in the presentation of the Lynch story at the outset was that if somebody is sufficiently victimized, then any violence they commit against their putative victimizer decades later is not really a crime; the tactical courtroom strategy – successful, apparently, in this case – is that the jury can be rendered sympathetic to the defendant for whatever reason.

The attorney then claims (and perhaps he has managed to get the jurors to talk to him, although they have remained resolutely silent in all other respects) that the jury didn’t think that Lindner’s injuries rose to the level of a felony. Although clearly they do in terms of the statute; and if anybody had hit an elderly person on the streets of San Jose and that elder required stitches, would any jury consider that merely a misdemeanor? I doubt it very much. Which goes to show that the jury was looking not at the crime Lynch clearly committed (and quite probably with malice aforethought) in 2010, but rather at the unproven story Lynch was allowed to tell about alleged events in the year 1975.

The attorney then claims that defendant Lynch need never have taken the stand in his own defense (because of the weaknesses in the prosecution’s case above-mentioned) and that he did so – waittttt for ittttt! – merely because he heroically wanted to confront Lindner in court and tell his story – above and beyond the videotape – under the pains of perjury. But who is to say that Lynch didn’t perjure himself in telling the 1975 story? That story has never been tested. And perhaps now never will.

“It was clear to the jury that everyone, including the prosecutor, believed that Father Lindner molested Lynch”, says the attorney. But this is slyly deceptive. Yes, the prosecutor clearly believed it – with what justification is another question altogether, and not an insignificant one – but aside from the prosecutor and the defense attorneys perhaps, what other relevant “everyone” were in the courtroom.? Except the jurors themselves. But the attorney apparently doesn’t want to impeach the jurors’ impartiality by saying that they were influenced by their belief in an unproven assertion claimed by the defendant as a justification for his crime.

And then the attorney finishes up his presentation by posing a couple of “difficult questions” of what the prosecution will now do next: retry Lynch on a misdemeanor charge or not. No matter which way the prosecutor’s office goes, the attorney bleats, somebody will be unhappy. Neat!

And yet the attorney’s presentation has clearly raised more questions – and more vital and compelling and fundamental questions – in trying to explain-away what happened in the case.

So my take on this local attorney’s presentation is this: he wanted to get everybody off the hook and make it seem that the Santa Clara legal system was precisely not a kangaroo process specifically tailored as a pretext for simply validating the principle that self-proclaimed victims can assault their alleged victimizers with impunity and malice aforethought, whenever they want, even decades later.

In the process, this attorney slyly tailors his assessment to let everybody off the hook: the defendant, the defense counsel, the prosecutors, and the jurors. All local folk, as is this local attorney.

And – but of course – leaving the actual victim of this (premeditated) crime, Lindner, as the mule, blamed for it all.

Phooey and baloney.

By: Julie

Julie — Mon, 09 Jul 2012 21:15:19 +0000

Publion, I think you are right. And I especially think SNAP is an oz-like organization like you said. Because they announced the next SNAP conference on that blog. And I asked, How many people attended the last conference, to which Laustenau replied, "You so funny." Which I suppose means not many people attended.

By: Publion

Publion — Mon, 09 Jul 2012 13:49:28 +0000

In re the 'Lostaunau' comment:

I wonder how much this type of comment reflects the 'thinking' that actually goes on in the SNAP-type meetings.

And that might have been insinuated into the jury deliberations as well.

And I still think SNAP is a sort of OZ-like entity that actually comprises very few actual people and that it is merely media-attention that gives it its semblance of Big-Player status.

But even so, it is this Attitude more than any solid insights that are the characteristic 'signature' of SNAP. And Clohessy has already acknowledged that there is very little therapy that goes on, and that very little money is spent on it in their declared-budget and that there are no formally-trained and accredited therapists on-staff (and that he himself, although CEO, does nothing more than handle press-releases and such).

By: Julie

Julie — Mon, 09 Jul 2012 12:24:04 +0000

Frank Lostaunau, you are the same person who called me a "ho" when I commented in earnest on a blog. You have no credibility whatsoever. Publion, I would say that is too much thinking for Frank.

By: Publion

Publion — Sun, 08 Jul 2012 21:55:53 +0000

And when somebody decides to come after you for whatever victimzation – not necessarily sexual – you may have intentionally or unintentionally caused them at some point in the past, then what will you do? Have you any idea what the legal precedent implies in this case? Or is that too much thinking for you?

By: FRANK LOSTAUNAU

FRANK LOSTAUNAU — Sun, 08 Jul 2012 17:59:58 +0000

I am delighted that Will Lynch kicked his butt! I couldn't be more tickled! tee hee hee…
I advocate kicking butt if your children are raped. BEAT THE RAPIST…NO MERCY

By: Publion

Publion — Sat, 07 Jul 2012 02:51:05 +0000

Some further thoughts about this Lynch trial.

I think that the former jurors owe the public some sort of explanation. Since they chose to take so dangerous (though legal) a route, so rife with potential and even probable consequences for the entire system of justice in this country, then they owe the public some explanation as to just how they came to open so lethal a cage, why they opened the Gate that kept Kong on the other side.

And did anybody imagine that this frakkery would remain limited to sex-cases? If in 1975 somebody you claim to have been drunk killed your brother and injured you – not just metaphorically as the sex-victims love to claim (‘my soul was killed’; ‘my spirit was murdered’; I was – like – a victim of a holocaust’; I am dead as a human being … and so on) – then are you justified 37 years later in perpetrating a deliberate assault against that person? What about people who have been victimized by bankers and stock-brokers who aren't being prosecuted?

Yes, Lynch apparently did little enough damage and claimed large enough purposes (he did it for past and potential victims; he just wanted to ‘publicize’ things) that a jury might feel that in this one case – just this one – they could afford to be nice and cut some slack.

But surely at least a few of them must have been intelligent enough (at least one of them seems to be an engineer, used to systems-thinking) to realize that you can’t introduce such a lethal dynamic into a system and then expect that you can control the consequences and that those consequences will only be your good-intentioned and best-case consequences and not anything less or worse. (That was the type of thinking that got this country into the Iraq war.)

And such post-trial reflections by the jurors would also give us some idea of how the verdict was finally decided and on what basis. Was the case decided for Lynch or against Lindner? Meaning: was it that Lynch so impressed them or that Lindner so repelled them? Were they primarily concerned for this case? Or were they concerned to ‘send the right message’ more generally?

Were they predominantly and/or immediately all in agreement? If not, what elements initially created the questions that they then had to thrash out?

And how did ‘jury nullification’ come up for them? And how did they handle that possibility? And how did they reach the point where they embraced it?

It seems to me that the jury-deliberations would be as useful to the public as the trial testimony and claims themselves. Perhaps even more.

The jurors owe Us. And that – I would say – will become even more evident as the consequences of what they have now gone and done become more obvious and clear.

By: Publion

Publion — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 03:39:00 +0000

The jury in the William Lynch trial in Santa Clara County, CA has nullified the Charges against him and he is thus let off.

The judge in the case, Judge Cena, deserves tremendous credit for his steadfast integrity in avoiding the antics displayed in the Philadelphia trial (the outcome of which, those defense attorneys have declared, will be appealed, and on some solid Ex Post Facto grounds).

But the jury in Santa Clara somehow got nullification into its mind and that opened up a last-ditch (but perhaps not unforeseen) gambit to somehow steer things that way. Possibly, somebody coached in nullification (it’s not a widely known option for juries) was among the jurors.

Curiously, the jurors have now requested anonymity (although now that the trial is over, I can’t see the need for it … unless they figure that they haven’t really done the right thing).

Apparently, the jurors presumed that Lynch’s testimony about the alleged assaults in 1975 were credible (although his claims to have duplicitously initiated the assault sequence without premeditation and the intent of violence, and his claims of some even more whacky variant of repressed-something-but-not-memory, hardly appeared credible).

The role of the prosecution in this case is most likely a strong contributing factor that pushed the jury over this dangerous precipice of a verdict. From the outset it was clear that the prosecutors – already schooled in victim-friendly jurisprudence and clearly supportive of it – made their distaste for the victim of the assault – the priest Lindner – evident. The case may well have been fatally compromised from the moment when the female prosecutor, in her opening statement, asserted that Lindner would lie on the stand and deny he committed the 1975 abuse against Lindner. Why should the jury have hewed to first-principles when the very prosecutors obviously found it distasteful to do so?

The case is being billed as a victory for the victimists and for SNAP specifically. I would say that it is legitimately a victory, but only in the most narrow of perspectives.

In a larger sense, this trial is going to exercise a baleful significance: the decision of this jury (which, again, now suddenly wishes to remain permanently anonymous) creates both a) a legal precedent and b) the grounds for any weak-minded, strong-willed self-convinced victim that s/he can exercise vigilante justice ‘because the jury will understand’ or something to that effect.

Nor are the pious but sly bleats of SNAP-types sufficient: we deplore vigilante violence but consider this case a victory. This case is not simply a defeat for the first-principles of modern Western Constitutional justice; it is an indictment of victim-friendly law and the professional formation most law schools have embraced for over 20 years now. And this precedent, a demon summoned forth by the victimists on the witless assumption it could be controlled, will not remain limited to sexual-abuse matters.

And it has breached open a terrible Gate that once was considered closed, and summoned back a violent past in the darker Ages of the West that had been considered left behind with all the other primitive practices that once passed for ‘justice’ among the tribes long, long ago.

Perhaps the jurors realized this. And wish now to wash their hands of it.

But now that it has seen the light, this Thing will not so easily be washed away. Or put back behind the Gate. Vigilante justice, if pretexted as being in the service of some fancied or even real victimization, again walks the land.

Such progress.

By: Publion

Publion — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 18:32:21 +0000

With all due respect to the commenter 'Jane Somerville', I think that what you see in the above exchanges is a classic example of the problem that infects so much of the victimist discourse: one or several sweeping assertions are made and an emotional 'conclusion' is thus clinched. Then, when asked for verification of the assertions, you get something that really doesn't do the job at all.

So in this case: the Jesuit house on the hill in Los Gatos is not "basically a place where they stash the pedophile priests". There may be some there – how many more than the victim Lindner I don't know (nor, I imagine, does Somerville) – but it's also used for other purposes as well. Although what the relevance of its being a "retirement home" is in the first place isn't quite clear to me.

Then there is the bit about the "majority of men" in the CA prison system being "molested as kids". Asked for verification (and Somerville responds to the request, which puts her in a class well above the usual victimist commenter), Somerville says that another commenter was/is a victim's-advocate and has "interviewed many male victims of abuse". In prison? Somerville doesn't say. And if in prison, how did the advocate distinguish between self-interested confabulation and truthful recall? And how, in the first place, did the advocate define "molesting"?

All of this – to the SNAP-py mind – is just thinking-too-much and confusing-the-issue. Which is why, I would say, SNAP-pers are always so befuddled when their assertions aren't believed: they have very very low thresh-holds and criteria of verifying and logically-constructing their 'facts and numbers'.

And I also point out the mimicry of scientific or professional style: "what I have found [is] that" … as if one were listening to a seasoned professional researcher or clinician making a formal report.

And what Somerville claims to have "found" is that a) "most victims repress a good portion of what happened to them" and that b) those same 'victims' possess one or two painful memories of abuse and that c) "there might in fact have been instances of being abused seventy times".

But did Somerville thus do sufficient and sufficiently-careful research to justify the assertion that "most victims" repress all that "good portion"? And is Somerville distinguishing between a repressed memory of abuse and a repressed emotion about that memory? And the key to (c) is the (sly?) subjunctive mood of the verb: there may have been "seventy" (or seventy times seven) but by the same token there may have been zero-zip-zilch-nada instances of being abused in any specific patient or research-subject.

Then lastly, the standard 'personal experience' of a single individual that by the most amazing coincidence just happens to fit every assertion the asserter is asserting.

And the claim asserted is truly odd: that an adult (how old now? how old when he saw the child-psychiatrist? how much time intervened?) could recall only four visits although records "show" that the man saw that clinician "for five years" (weekly? monthly? annually? I doubt Somerville knows either).

This, lastly, brings to light a new twist in the repressed memory Standard-Presentation: that some victims will (finally) recall one or several instances of 'abuse', but that actually there is 'proof' that there may have been many many more. This is selective and self-serving insinuation masquerading as detached scientific induction.

All very illuminating, I would say – but it establishes very little foundation for Somerville's assertions.

And on the basis of that hodge-podge, Somerville then opines that she "doesnt know what I'd do" if she had gone through what Lynch had gone through. Gee whiz. Maybe she would have decided to remain law-abiding and not perpetrate a premediated A&B. Or maybe, as I believe Lynch did, she would decide that she could perpetrate the premeditated crime and then claim that her 'painful experience' either made her do it or justified it. Gee, maybe she'd do that.

At this rate, victim-friendly and SNAP-py types are dragging things back to the Dark Ages. Such progress.

I'm hoping that a) people like Somerville learn how to really research issues rather than simply mimic research-style or, failing that, I'm hoping that b) the wider public begins to look more carefully at all the stories and assertions that folks like her make.

By: TheMediaReport.com

TheMediaReport.com — Wed, 04 Jul 2012 22:51:33 +0000

Jane Somerville wrote, “I do know that the majority of men in Calilfornia state prison have been molested as kids.”

Very interesting. Do you have a source for this?