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THE LAW IS A ASS for 05/30/2000
DOCKET ENTRY
"The Law is a Ass" Installment # 46
Originally written as installment # 36 and published in Comics Buyer's Guide issue # 567, September 28, 1984 issue
Let me tell you a little bit about Will Eisner. He, like Carl Barks, the other comic writer-artist of the 40's and 50's whose work is discussed in the installment which follows, is a grand master in the field of comic art. If you read the Sunday funnies during the years from 1940 until 1952, you probably remember his weekly sixteen-page Spirit Section comic book. It is a milestone in the graphic arts medium. If you were in the armed services in the 50's and 60's, you saw his work in P.S. Magazine, the Army's monthly preventative maintenance comic, which Eisner edited and spearheaded. If you collect or study the graphic arts in the 70's and 80's, you make it a point to seek out and buy the graphic novels Mr. Eisner produces in the most permanent form you can find--preferably hardcover. He is that good.
So how did this grand master of the comic art form react when, in September of 1984, I wrote a column criticizing a 1946 Spirit story for numerous legal inaccuracies? He sent me an original and personalized sketch of Commissioner Dolan, one of the characters in The Spirit, and told me how much he enjoyed my column.
All that talent and class, too.
******
"The Law is a Ass"
Installment # 46
by
Bob Ingersoll
Call me Ingersoll.
Disrespectful? Me? Not on your life! I have the greatest respect for the classics. (I haven't read them, mind you, I just respect them.) That's why you've never seen me lay into a classic in my column.
Granted my title is borrowed from Mr. Bumble, a character in Oliver Twist, but other than that I've never attacked Dickens, have I? I've quoted an occasional line of Shakespeare (what writer hasn't?), but always with the utmost respect. And I will never, never, EVER talk about Pilgrim's Progress. First Thumper's mother taught me something about "saying something nice." And, second, my Daddy, the teacher, always told me to respect the classics, and I always have.
Until now.
But now "The Law Is a Ass" enters new and hallowed ground. Today I take on . . . Carl Barks. Even Will Eisner! (No, the Statute of Limitations hasn't run out on their acts. They may have written the stories committing the inaccuracies I outline in the forties and fifties, but the stories in question were recently reprinted. That renews the crime.)
******
Please believe me, there is no rancor here. I have always had great love for Barks and his work on the Donald Duck characters. In all his years of production, he wrote and drew many classics and never produced a story which was less than good, which is a lot more than I can say for the average issue of Firestorm, The Fly, or, recently, The Flash ("Sesame Street" was brought to you today by the letter F.) Never did Barks produce a story, that I wasn't glad I had read. (Incidentally, the same is true of Eisner.) I have great respect for the man's work.
So you can imagine my horror, when I read Walt Disney's Comics and Stories # 508 (which reprinted a story from issue $ 150--the March, 1953 issue--and saw a panel of Donald Duck studying Postal Law. Honest, Donald is studying for a test from a book entitled Postal Law.
Postal Law?
I know things are a little different in Donald's home town of Duckburg. I mean they have numbers like fifteen quintuplatillion umtuplatillion impossibidillion fantasticatrillion to express the size of Uncle Scrooge's fortune. But Postal Law?
Yes, I know you have to take civil service examination to become a postal carrier. And you have to pass a test on post office regulations. But Postal Law?!
(I can see it now: Postal Law. It's a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in a federal prison to deliver any magazine or periodical which has not first been run through a food processor. It's a felony punishable by up to five years to deliver any package marked fragile in less than ten separate pieces. And nothing short of the life imprisonment is suitable for the carrier who doesn't allow perishables to perish.)
POSTAL--FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!--LAW?!!
******
On May 5, 1946, Will Eisner's Spirit Section ran a story entitled, "The Head in the Desk." Let's run through this story together.
Central City Police Commissioner Dolan and the Spirit are cleaning out an old office in police headquarters. They come across an equally-old roll top desk, which had been unused since 1918. In it, Dolan finds a picture of his first arrest, "Mayhem" Mike Malloy. Dolan remembers how he, "almost pinned a murder rap on [Malloy], but he beat it! Took a manslaughter charge and got 30 years." Now that, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, is the quintessential hard cop. He popped a man on a manslaughter conviction for which the felon received a thirty- year sentence--and served twenty-eight of those years before being paroled--and Dolan says the guy beat the rap.
Dolan went on to explain how Mayhem Mike beat the rap. It seems that Mr. Mayhem killed, "a local hoodlum we all knew about," and left the poor man's headless body in his hideout for the police to find. Dolan found the head, "but on the day of trial, the head disappeared. No evidence, no conviction, so he got away with simple manslaughter."
What? I admit that 1946 was a long time ago, and the law was somewhat different then. But, believe me, Dolan's explanation wouldn't have made any more sense back then than it does now.
In another column, I explained the difference between murder and manslaughter. Murder is killing with premeditation, while manslaughter is killing in fit of rage. You remember that, don't you? Good, the next time you see Will Eisner, tell him.
What possible bearing does producing the actual head of a headless body have on the question of: did Mayhem Mike kill the victim with premeditation or in anger? I mean, "We have the head, so it must be premeditated," versus, "Oh fudge, we lost the head now we can only prove fit of peaque?" It makes no sense.
If they needed the head for identification purposes, Dolan, who saw the head, could have testified whose head it was. Or they could have fingerprinted the corpse. As he was a known hoodlum, his prints should have been on record.
Killing is killing; be it premeditated or in anger. If without the head there was no evidence of murder, then there shouldn't have been a manslaughter conviction either.
Obviously, the head wasn't necessary to prove Mayhem Mike killed, he was convicted of manslaughter. It is impossible for me to conceive of how the severed head could have had any evidentiary worth on the issue of premeditation.
(This story reminded me of a late 1930's Boston Globe headline, that my father swears he read, MURDER HINTED AS HEADLESS BODY OF MUSICIAN FOUND. Boy, you can't put anything past those Boston cops!)
Dolan suddenly remembers that he locked the head in the roll top desk, where it sat for the past twenty-eight years. (Central City cops you can put something past. Didn't they suspect something after that head had been sitting in the desk for a month or two. The old office had to be getting pretty gamey by then.)
The remainder of "The Head in the Desk"--well most of the remainder, anyway--revolves around "Mayhem" Mike's stealing the desk from police headquarters, before Dolan can find the key to open it. Dolan, meantime, tries to get the desk back. Why? Sentimental value? He wants to audition it on Antique Road Show? No, Dolan wants the desk so he can get that head. Mike wants it to keep Dolan from getting the head.
Why? Sentimental value? Dolan needed a prop for a road production of Hamlet? No, with the head Dolan can get enough evidence against Mike so they can re-try Mike and convict him of murder this time instead of manslaughter. That's what Dolan wants to do and what Mike wants to avoid.
Problems with that? Only a major one, like the fact that Dolan couldn't bring Mayhem Mike to trial again, even if he had the head. There's this little thing called the Constitution, and it has this little clause about double jeopardy. (And, no, that's not like in, "I'll take Geography for $200, Alex.")
The Double Jeopardy Clause is found in the Fifth Amendment. It forbids a state from bringing a man to trial twice for the same crime. In other words, after Mike went to trial for murder and was convicted of manslaughter, he couldn't be tried for the same murder years later, simply because someone found the victim's head. One bite at the apple is all the state gets. One killing nets one homicide conviction only. If that conviction is only for manslaughter and not for murder, that's tough.
As you can see, my sympathies are not with the state here. "Mayhem" Mike got away with murder. He duped the system and only served twenty-eight years on a manslaughter rap. He got off easy.
Al Capone should have gotten off so easy!
BOB INGERSOLL
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