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THE LAW IS A ASS for 02/22/2000
DOCKET ENTRY
"The Law is a Ass" Installment # 32
Originally written as installment # 22 and published in Comics Buyer's Guide issue # 548, May 18, 1984 issue
By the time I wrote this installment, I was closing in on the end of my first year of writing "The Law is a Ass." When I started the column, I wondered whether I might not run out of material about this time. Fortunately, as long as there are writers willing to scribe stories such as the one described below, I haven't had anything to worry about on that front.
******
"The Law is a Ass"
Installment # 32
by
Bob Ingersoll
All right, class, get out your pencils and a of sheet of paper. We re going to have a quiz.
Stop complaining! There's only two questions. Three if you count filling in your name at the top of the page, and that one's extra credit. It is, however, an essay, which means you have to read an essay written by me. Again, stop complaining, if you didn't want to read my essays, boy are you on the wrong web page!
Last week we discussed criminal insanity. In case you missed last week's column, go click on the hyperlink for last week's column and read it. You think I wrote it to be ignored? No, that's what I write court briefs for. I expect you to read my columns. It's the price you pay for coming to this web page. (Unless, as I hinted before, you're on the wrong web page. Just because the word "Ass" is in the title, doesn't mean this is a porn page.)
Okay, for those of you--Tony--who haven't mastered mouse clicking: a quick review. Criminal insanity exists when, and only when, a mental illness so affects the reasoning, that the criminal either does not know that what he is doing is wrong or he cannot refrain from doing it. Keeping in mind that definition of insanity, here's the fact pattern: Jonathan (The Scarecrow) Crane fought Batman, Robin, and Batgirl in Detective # 503. At that time Crane was in full control of all his mental faculties, suffered from no mental illness, and committed several crimes including aggravated robbery, assault, kidnaping, and attempted murder. (Thank goodness they did away with those back-up features in Detective. Can you imagine Scarecrow trying all that mayhem in a simple twelve-page story? Nowadays, that's enough crime for an entire mini-series) He does it with a typical Scarecrow trick, a fear-inducing pheromone designed to incapacitate his victims so that they will be easy pickings. At the end of the story, in typical comic-book poetic justice, Crane accidently receives an injection of his pheromone, which turns him into an unthinking, phobic zombie, incapable of speech, independent movement, and even thought. He was catatonic, more vegetable than a spinach souffle. Not unlike me, after I read Nancy.
Got that in mind? Good. In Batman # 373 we learn that Crane was diagnosed to be insane and was committed to the Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane. According to the story, when the doctors at Arkham determined Crane was rehabilitated--or restored to mental health, to use the actual, correct phraseology--they had to release him from Arkham's padded parlors as the law demands.
Got that in mind? Then here is the quiz.
1.TRUE OR FALSE, Jonathan Crane was insane as a result of what happened to him in Detective # 503?
2.TRUE OR FALSE, When Jonathan Crane was rehabilitated, the law required that he be released from confinement and returned to society a free man?
Finished? Now let's grade the quiz. The answer to the first question is FALSE, Jonathan Crane was not insane. The answer to the second question is FALSE, when Crane was restored to mental health, Arkham did not have to release him as the law demands, because the law makes no such demand.
So, how did we do?
Good. I see that almost everyone got a one hundred. I'm sorry to say that the writer of Batman # 373 got a zero. He answered both questions wrong, when he wrote Batman # 373.
When Crane committed his various crimes in Detective # 503, he had no mental illness. which affected his reasoning or kept him from knowing that stealing people's money was wrong, So, he could not have been insane. He didn't get exposed to the fear pheromone and go eggplant on us until after he was finished with his crime spree. What happened to Scarecrow after he committed his crimes had no bearing on the question of his sanity at the time he broke the law.
Crane's exposure to the fear pheromone might have made him phobic and mentally ill. It might even have left him so unsettled that he had to be institutionalized in Arkham. But he did not have the mental illness at the time of his criminal acts--it came after--so he was not insane.
Okay, that takes care of the first question. Why did I say that Arkham didn't have to release him, after his mental health had been restored to him? Aren't people who are institutionalized released when they are no longer mentally ill? Usually, but it depends on why they were institutionalized in the first place. We know that Crane wasn't insane--couldn't have been insane--so that wasn't the reason he was in Arkham. And that, the real reason Crane would have been in Arkham, moves us from last week's dissertation of criminal insanity to this week's topic of mental health and the legal system: competency to stand trial.
In our criminal justice system, mental illness can affect more than a person's ability to know right from wrong. It can also affect whether he can even be brought to trial. Our system of justice says that a defendant should be able to assist in his own defense. After all, the defendant's attorney was probably off somewhere chasing ambulances so wasn't even present at the time the crime went down. So he has no idea what happened. The defense attorney needs the defendant's input and knowledge to assist in cross-examining the State's witnesses. (State's witnesses--especially co-defendants--have been known to alter the facts so as to lessen their own involvement. Sure it's perjury, but they've already committed enough other crimes to make them co-defendants Do you think they'll stop short at perjury?)
Okay, so a defendant has a constitutional right to assist in his own defense. But if that defendant is so mentally ill that he doesn't understand the nature of the proceedings against him, then he can't assist in his own defense. When a mental illness so incapacitates the defendant's reason that he can't assist in his own trial, the law says he is incompetent to stand trial.
Turning back to Dr. Crane, if we accept that mentally he had become the functional equivalent of a Green Giant entree, then he could not have assisted his attorney in defending himself against the charges against him. He would have been ruled to be incompetent to stand trial.
Like defendants who are found not guilty by reason of insanity, defendants who are found to be incompetent to stand trial are also institutionalized and treated until their mental health is restored. So, yes, Crane would have been committed to Arkham until such time as he was restored to competency. But he would not be released after he was "rehabilitated" as Batman # 373 posits.
People found not guilty by reason of insanity were acquitted of the criminal charges against them. For that reason, once they have been restored to mental health, the justice system has no legal right to hold them. They were found not guilty, remember? People found to be incompetent to stand trial, on the other hand, haven't been acquitted. They haven't even stood trial yet, because their mental illness made them incompetent.
When people who were ruled to be incompetent to stand trial are restored to mental health, they are--surprise, surprise!--competent to stand trial. These people aren't released, they're returned to the court so that they can stand trial for their crimes. Turning back to Crane, even if he were rehabilitated, that is his competency restored, Crane wouldn't have been released. The law wouldn't have required that. It would have required that Arkham ship him back to Gotham to stand trial for his crimes. If the director of Arkham can't tell the difference between an incompetent patient and an insane one and what to do with each, we've all got troubles.
Okay, we do have problems with Arkham, but they're probably not from the director's deficiencies. Given the escape rate at Arkham, it's walls must be made of non-reinforced cardboard. So it really doesn't matter if the director doesn't know which patients should be released and when. The patients aren't there, anyway, they've all gone over--or more likely through--the wall.)
Batman # 373 also tells us that the Child Welfare Department is about to investigate the relationship between Bruce Wayne and Jason Todd. Didn't I suggest this possibility weeks ago? Mind you, I'm sure this story was plotted, long before my column saw print. Still, it is rather a coincidence. Just remember, you read it here, first.
Finally, according to Batman # 337, the Joker faces a hearing at the Gotham Deportation Center. Why is Joker being deported? Deportation is what the government does to illegal aliens or dangerous aliens that it wants to send back to their countries of origin. You don't deport an American citizen, you expatriate him. Joker is, as far as I know, an American. He cannot be deported.
True, in Batman #'s 365-366 and Detective # 532, Joker did initiate a coup d'etat to try to take over Guatemala; where revolutions per minute has nothing to do with LP's. He wanted to turn the entire country into an amusement park called Joker-Land or some such nonsense. But even then the Joker was still an American citizen, who cannot be deported. So why is he having a hearing in a Deportation Center? Because the same writer who wasn't competent enough to know what competency was didn't do his homework yet again, that's why.
There is one possible out for the story, if a story this silly deserves an out. If an American citizen becomes ruler of another country, he forfeits his American citizenship, as the late Grace Kelly did, when she married Prince Ranier. Maybe the Joker, by attempting a coup in Guatemala, also forfeited his citizenship. In that case, he could be deported.
Of course this does bring up an entirely different problem. Joker's latest crimes were committed in Guatemala, but for some reason he was brought back to America, where he now faces deportation? Why did the United States bother extraditing Joker back to the United States, just so it could deport him? If it wanted to extradite him so that it could try him for his crimes in America, that's one thing and perfectly understandable. But it seems like a waste of perfectly good money to bring the Joker back, just so we can send him packing again. If we didn't want him in the first place, why didn't we just leave him in Guatemala and let Guatemala's non-reinforced cardboard institutions try to hold him?
(How do I know the United States went to all the trouble and expense to extradite Joker? Because it had no legal right to bring him back without first extraditing him, that's how. The Batman couldn't simply have flown the Joker back to Gotham without first going through the proper diplomatic channels, that would be kidnaping and illegal. And the Batman wouldn't break the law, would he?)
Finally, speaking of wasting money, is there really such a thing as a Deportation Center, I mean an entire building in which nothing but deportation hearings are held? I've heard of featherbedding, but that is ridiculous. A floor or a wing of a federal courthouse or office building should suffice, but an entire building?
With spending like that, I can understand how the Army drops ninety odd dollars a piece on wood screws. (Excuse me, slotted, conical, spiral-inclined-plane wood fasteners.) Hey, Feds, I've got a gross of Eberhart Faber # 2 word processors I can let you have for only $500.00 a piece. A real bargain!
Actually, just in case there really is such a thing as a deportation center, I called Tony Isabella, who used to live in New York City. (Despite the fact that Gotham City keeps shifting from being an analog of Newark to one of Chicago, it's still patterned after New York. Or have I let a trade secret out?) I asked Tony whether there was a deportation center in New York. He said he didn't think so, but he couldn't be sure, as no one ever tried to deport him. He did tell me that Marv Wolfman and Don McGreggor once sealed him up in a crate for several hours. (Marv, it seems, is bigger than Tony--big deal, so is your average Smurf!--and Don is feistier. So that's how they caught him in the first place. Moreover, Tony thinks Dave Cockrum was helping.
Gee, thanks for sharing that with us, Tony. Next time keep your boring anecdotes in your own column, okay?
******
I didn't like Batman # 373 very much. But, that was just the warm-up. Now I take on the Masked Man story, "The Trial" from Eclipse Monthly # 6
First, did you see how they dedicated the story to me? They're scared of me. They knew what I would do to their dumb mockery of the American legal system. They tried to placate me with that piddling little dedication.
Well, it won't work!!!
Nothing will stay my hand from tearing this story apart. The story was one misconceived, overworked courtroom cliche after another. The innocent man found standing over the deceased with a smoking gun in his hand is falsely accused and standing trial. The private attorney who is allowed to substitute for a duly elected district attorney, so that he can avenge the murder of his friend, the victim. Defendants acting as their own attorneys. Witnesses breaking down on the witness stand and admitting their perjury. The District Attorney being called as a witness. The real murderer cracking under pressure and confessing his guilt, while testifying. Where have we seen these before? Better yet, where haven't we seen these before?
These are such cliches so old and hackneyed that Perry Mason let itself be canceled rather than recycle them for another season. They are old! They are overworked!! They are stupid!!! And we get them strung together like pearls on a necklace!
No plot! No character development! No beginning, nor middle, nor end! Just beaded banalities! Then, they dedicate the story to me, hoping I won't attack it for the schlock it is!
I say thee nay!!!
I'll denounce this so-called story with every fiber of my being. With my every breath. With every last vestige of my strength. With...
[EDITOR'S NOTE: Oh calm down, Bob. The story was a satire, a joke. It intentionally used all those cliches to ridicule the usually bad and overly melodramatic portrayal of the American courtroom in the media. They dedicated it to you, because they thought you'd get the joke and appreciate seeing all the cliches getting what they deserved. DON AND MAGGIE]
Oh.
That's very different.
Never mind.
BOB INGERSOLL
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