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2001-06-23 | 12:51 p.m.

I reworked my criminals entry from the other day, trying to see if I could make it into a true essay (or mini-essay). Here's what I came up with, if you're interested. Damn, it was hard, too! Maybe I should try a little harder with this writing thing.

If you have an opinion on whether this version is better or worse than the earlier one, I'd be interested to hear it. Thanks.

Criminals

Lori Berenson. Not sure what to think about that.

Mumia Abu-Jamal. Not sure what I think about that one, either.

I can't be the only person who knows criminals. Jaywalkers, sure, but also more deleterious scofflaws and maybe even a couple of E-ticket felons. I can't be the only person who understands at the cellular level that you don't know, can't guess, what another person is capable of. We are our own best friends and still surprise ourselves. So why are there so many disbelieving neighbors? Sometimes the disbelief must be more for the benefit of the reporter at the other end of the line. We must seem a little more human, a little less evil, if we didn't see it coming. Also, shock masquerades as conviction.

When you know what someone else has done wrong and you're not telling, it gets easier and easier not to tell. Doesn't it? Criminals seem less culpable as time goes by. They blend. Without punishment, crime is merely history. You have trouble deciding which is more repellent: the felony committed years ago or the slight delivered the other day. The slight weighs more heavily. Your criminal no longer has to deny anything, except for form's sake. Freedom is a powerful denial. Golf is a powerful denial.

Some of them will deny their crimes, and in the denying, come to believe in their own innocence. Intellectually, they must remember what happened. But too often, for my taste, it seems they do not. I wonder if there is some sort of psychological Bermuda triangle; a zone between acting--I mean play-acting, not action--and forgetting. Jim and Tammy Faye found the spot. But to all appearances, the criminal forgets the crime and forgets to feel guilty. You remember. Along with everything else, the criminal forgets that you remember. You are tainted by the crime; he is exhilarated. The truth is smothered with heavy cream and sherry, breaded and fried. The criminal offers you a bite.

It becomes clear that your criminal deserves to be innocent. If not, wouldn't you have turned them in by now? You think the punishment is too harsh for your criminal; there were extenuating circumstances. As a consequence, there shall be no punishment. You're not totally happy about this last part. It grates on you. You watch the criminal live it up while you are rendered a criminal yourself. Did you imagine Perry Mason would make your criminal break down on the witness stand? Did you imagine suffering of a literary kind? Your honest criminal employs a sorry but stubborn logic: I am no longer capable of doing such a thing; therefore I was never capable of it. The moment was an anomaly. I should not be punished for something I would never do.

There will always be a few people who are tormented by guilt, but for most of us, there must be considerable external pressure to force a confession.

A father went to Sesame Place in Langhorne, Pennsylvania earlier this month and beat the stuffing out of Cookie Monster because Cookie Monster wouldn't pose for a picture with the man's three-year-old daughter. Daddy says Cookie Monster put out a furry blue hand and pushed his daughter's head back "aggressively." It takes a moment, doesn't it, to wrap your mind around the idea of Cookie Monster saying 'Talk to the hand'? But no, come to the think of it, there must be something they've been taught to do, these amusement park characters. Or maybe it's pure instinct. Stop, says the hand, supremely, telling the preschoolers silently and unequivocally that I must go, I really must go. The toilet, the cigarette, await. The head and hair must be ventilated: It's in my contract.

Big Daddy snapped, attacked, got arrested. The 21-year-old woman inside the Cookie Monster suit (which is tortune all by itself---take it from someone who once stood on a Florida median for hours on a summer afternoon dressed as the Hamburglar) now has a fractured pelvis, etc., though she is back to work already. There's your minimum wage work ethic. Daddy wants us to believe the cop wouldn't listen to his side. He says people scolded him. He swears he didn't do it. Do you believe him? Of course not. Why would anybody make this story up? Why would anybody try to pin this on him? Would Cookie Monster fake her injuries? Would the police have coerced witnesses? No, not likely.

In a case such as this, where there isn't very much at stake, it is easy to be certain of a man's guilt, regardless of how much we know about the corruptibility of police or the unreliability of published reports. We also know, or think we know, about human behavior. It takes a Lori Berenson or a Mumia Abu-Jamal to topple our certainty, extend our disbelief. We take a closer look, but our view is obscured, so we must rely on our unreliable gut. There are extenuating circumstances; that is how it came to our attention. A person who is not a common criminal is not an uncommon criminal, either. An uncommon criminal is a likable person, and a likable criminal is only inches away from being absolved in our hearts and minds forever.

Defense attorneys have much in common with cotton-candy vendors. Both spin fluff out of sugar and thin air and people buy it. A good defense lawyer can grow reasonable doubt like marijuana under a hydroponic lamp. It thrives on extenuating circumstances, flowers and blooms.

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