Thread by @JoshuaBHoe

🧵

A bed time story

This is a story about a

1. A movie
2. Criminal Justice Reform
3. Tom Cotton
4.🐴💩 (aka B.S)
5. People
6. And the Truth

Hope you will stay with me for the whole story

1/

1. The movie

In 1982 a movie came out called "The Verdict" - it is, without question, one of my favorite movies. The movie is about an alcoholic, unlucky, often betrayed, and beyond down on his luck attorney who has gone from world beater to failed ambulance chaser

The movie stars Paul Newman and he is amazing, it is like you can see the bare outlines of what made him so cocksure in "The Sting" somewhere inside of his character, whose name is Frank Gavin, but that part is so lost, that you know he can never fully recover

So, he takes a tip from an old friend for a big payoff accident case, a case a Catholic hospital and Diocese would rather pay to get rid of than be embarrassed by....and they make him an offer....a great offer, more than the families ever expected to get....but deep down....

....deep down Frank knows the Catholic Hospital was wrong, he believes - for some insane reason - he can prove it despite their massive bankroll and world class attorneys....and without his clients telling him it was okay, he decides to turn down the deal the Diocese offered

Meanwhile, the Catholic church and their attorney - suggested to be the "prince of darkness" one of the best attorneys in the country starts paying off or threatening all of his witnesses....some of them actually leave the country....he is left with no deal and no case, broken

Broken, and with no hope, he is losing his case, the expert he brings in gets destroyed on cross-examination by the prince of darkness....he is almost entirely down and out....and then he finds - by almost pure luck - the one witness the church didn't bribe....a nurse they fired

He puts her on the stand as a rebuttal witness, she tells the story brilliantly, when the opposing attorney tries to destroy her credibility she blows him out of the water with truth so obvious....it is clear to everyone in the courtroom that the hospital was guilty

The Prince of Darkness takes a few seconds and consults with his team, and comes back with a legal argument to disqualify the witness on a technicality and the judge goes along, instructing the jury to ignore her entire testimony and threatening Frank not to bring it up again

The trial is done, he has lost every single legal argument, he has no case, all he has left is a closing argument

And here is the important part....he doesn't get up and act like he has won.....he does not act egotistical...he does not swagger....he looks sad, and tired

He gets up, speaks like the exhausted and beaten but honest man he is, and essentially tells the jury that there is a difference between the truth and a lie....between the letter of the law, the spirit of the law, and the truth

He says that at the end of the day we might not get happiness or joy, or a beautiful house and a beautiful car, but we do have is a covenant between each other that certain thing matters and sometimes we may not know everything but we know truth

He is almost on his knees, prostrating himself, by the end he is barely whispering...but what we know and what the jury knows is that the law means nothing unless EVERYONE has access to the same justice and until the truth animates the law and the courts

And despite losing every single legal argument, to the jury, he proved his case and they awarded his clients a massive judgement....one beyond what even the wildest dreams of anyone involved was.

Maybe a Hollywood ending? Maybe the truth matters?

2. Criminal Justice Reform

Over the last year and a half we have had a spike in homicides and gun violence in this country, it has happened in cities with Dem-Mayors, GOP-Mayors, progressive and reform prosecutors, and places with bigger and smaller police budgets

Law enforcement folks are saying it was caused by everything from:

Bail reform (even though homicides spiked in many places without bail reform)

to

Defunding police (even though almost nobody actually did that and it increased in places where police funding was increased)

Much like in the case of the attorney - the prince of darkness - in the movie.....you will hear every law enforcement person and every former and current prosecutor say these things over and over again...and they have access to all the shows and papers

Every movie and television show for 50 years has told you that whatever they say is true so they don't even have to give you evidence, they just have to say it is true and people believe it.

Most newspapers never ask experts to even respond to their claims and most television shows never even ask a criminologist, defense lawyer, social scientist, economist, or formerly incarcerated activist to be on the panel with the law enforcement folks.

Media is in a strange period where they have little money and lots of pressure to produce stories and police and prosecutors have PR departments and media officers...they are trusted and reliable witnesses and people respond to stories that scare them...if it "bleeds it leads"

Meanwhile, in over 34 states, criminal justice reform and increased public safety have gone hand in hand, study after study shows that things like bail reform have actually made communities more fair and safer....but you don't hear those stories very often, only the feat tactics

3. Tom Cotton

Enter Senator Tom Cotton, who like the angel of death, has always played with house money. He has never met a prison sentence he didn't want to be harsher and pushed for more and more and more incarceration at every single opportunity

Tom Cotton is a man who believes that the best way to address the injustice of people who have been in prison for thirty years on crack - while people with the exact same amount of cocaine got out decades earlier - is to increase the length of sentences for cocaine

Tom Cotton, when presented with evidence that we have a racially disparate system that incarcerates by far the most people in the world.....thinks America has, and I quote, an under-incarceration problem....and b/c we have a homicide spike the answer is MUCH MORE INCARCERATION

4. 🐴💩 (AKA BS)

Tom Cotton is full of 🐴💩

I could go in to the specifics, but let me just say, no data backs up any of his claims...as I mentioned before nothing about the spike in homicides matches up with any of his stupid, cruel, and uninformed takes

He is just mean

5. People

I was having a conversation with someone earlier tonight and he said something like, even if you tell people the truth, what they want is an answer and to feel like someone is doing something.....Maybe......but I have a theory....and here is where the movie comes in

6. The Truth

I am not a Senator, hell, I am much more like the broken down, and hated ambulance chaser.....I am a formerly incarcerated person on the registry....but I have one thing on my side....I am telling the truth

So here is the truth.....we have NO DAMN IDEA why homicide and gun crimes are spiking......we have some theories but NOBODY KNOWS

We know it wasn't caused by bail reform, by Democratic mayors, by defunding the police (which almost nobody did), or by progressive prosecutors

But here are some other things we do know, and I believe that people are tired of being lied to, are tired of the same old nonsense, and are tired of these stupid arguments that put political parties and TV ratings before PEOPLE

A) We know increasing policing and incarceration isn't going to fix the problem

We spend more on police than all but three countries spend on their national defense, we incarcerate far more people than any nation on earth

If this were the answer...why do we have a problem?

B) We know mass incarceration doesn't make us safer....long term studies have concluded for years that even accounting for the time people are incarcerated, the net effect of incarceration is MORE CRIME

Incarceration = more trauma and instability = more crime

C) We know that the funding we give to police does not go to solving major crimes.

About 5% of crimes get solved, clearance rates are abysmally low, police invest in solving misdemeanors, gear, and mass surveillance

In fact, when the federal government cracked down in Operation Legend, they tallied massive arrests and homicide continued to spike in the places where they cracked down

People like Tom Cotton and the talking heads on TV will give you "answers" but I think, deep down, as much as we have been trained to believe police propaganda, we know it is not really the answer....it is just the only answer they know and they have nothing else to sell

I don't have an answer for you, just a lot more questions and like Frank in the verdict, I don't have fancy legal education, or the ability to manipulate the court through fancy media maneuvers or powerful friends...but what I have is the truth....deep down, that is what matters

At the end of the day, the law only matters if it seems like justice not only to the powerful but also for the people who live in impacted communities

Let me tell you what they think, to finish this up....

A few months ago, the Philadelphia police went full-Tom Cotton against incumbent reform @DA_LarryKrasner - they lobbied against him, endorsed his opponent, and even put a Mr. Softee truck outside of his office

What was the result?

Larry Krasner, telling the truth, won as much as 80% of the vote in the parts of Philadelphia most impacted by gun violence

He didn't have all the answers, but he had the truth....and those people had smelled enough 🐴💩to know why that mattered after 50 years of tough on crime

I hope that all made sense, if anyone made it through to the end....Thanks for listening to my bedtime story