Accidental Felon

I'm thinking about changing the name of my blog to The Accidental Felon. I keep breaking the law, sort of accidentally, and just barely missing being sent to the Big House.

You might remember that I blogged about my experiences on jury duty a couple of years ago. Well, apparently, that was a Gigantic Potentially Felonious Mistake (GPFM). Even though I did not give away any details about the case, and did not consult any outside sources, once the case was over, the defense used my blog as one of their reasons for appeal. They wanted to interview the jurors to see if my blogging had in any way tainted them. The judge said no. They appealed, and the appeals court said no.

I got a call from a reporter at the Chicago Tribune wanting to talk to me about the case and my blog. I said, sure, dude, just call me back over my lunch hour. Meanwhile, being completely ignorant about what had been happening on the case, I started googling it.

Holy friggin' crap. I discovered my name and the name of my blog and quotes from my blog in the appeals court documents. They used words like "juror misconduct" and "tainted" and "contempt." I immediately called a friend of mine who is a lawyer, and said, Perry Mason, I think I might be in trouble. I explained the sitch to him, and he said, "Do not talk to any reporters. Do not talk about the case. Do not mention my name. Just shut up." He also told me that, had the judge found out about the blogging during the case, he could have cited me for contempt and tossed me in the clink for six months without a trial. "You put your fellow jurors at risk," he said ominously.

Crap.

The story appeared in the Trib that weekend. "E. Peevie, freelance writer and mother of three, ..." it read--only it was my real name, thank you very much.

A couple of weeks later, I got a direct message on Twitter from Channel Five asking me to call or email Phil Rogers. I ignored it. The next day, they DMed me again, saying that Phil wanted to talk to me about the Metra case. I ignored it. Perry Mason would have been proud.

But then I got a phone call on my office phone from...wait for it...Phil Rogers. "E. Peevie," he said in a friendly voice, "This is Phil Rogers from Channel Five News. I've been trying to reach you."

"Um, yeah, Phil, I know who you are. I can't talk to you."

 

"Well," he said, "I'm doing a story on the Metra case, and I'm going to be mentioning your name and talking about your blog, and I wanted to give you a chance to respond."

"Thank you," I said. "You've given me a chance to respond, and I have declined it. I can't talk to you."

 

"But E. Peevie," he said, "We both went to Oklahoma State! Isn't that worth something? I just want to ask you a few questions." He had done his homework.

"Yeah," I said, "I knew that. But I still can't talk to you."

 

He asked me a couple more questions which I declined to answer, and finally I steeled myself to do the right thing. "I don't like to be rude, Phil," I said, "But I am going to have to hang up on you now." And I did. Perry Mason reminded me later that I should have just said "No comment" and hung up.

That night, on the five o'clock news, there was my giant face on the small blue screen. They had taken my photo from my Twitter account--which BTW is not a lovely photo AT ALL--and attached it to the story. And they showed still shots of my blog, and highlighted key portions where I had written about the trial. My friend Phil Rogers used phrases like "in defiance of a judge's admonitions not to discuss the case."

It went to the Supreme Court of Illinois, who thankfully decided that my blogging did not influence the outcome of the case.

Now that the Supremes have finished exonerating me, I am finally able to say that there was no intentional defiance or contempt. I thought I was being very careful to obey the judge's instructions--I was not discussing the case, just writing in general terms. Phil Rogers inaccurately said that I discussed specific testimony--but I only discussed the effect of the testimony on the witness, and did not quote specific testimony on the blog.

I am a story-teller, and I told a story. Yes, it's true that we occasionally lapsed into very brief discussions of the case while we were in the jury room--but every time, one of us would remind the group that we were not supposed to be doing it, and we stopped. I am confident that this happens in every single trial--and most importantly, my blog described it, but did not cause it.

And guess what? Sometime after the verdict against Metra was reached, the instructions that judges give to jurors were revised to include specific references to social media. That tells me that they are admitting that their instructions were previously inadequate. (My friend Officer Friendly likes to call this The Peevie Rule. I am not amused.)

I guess the state won't be calling me to jury duty again any time soon. Rats.

Radio Debut

Question: What do the second amendment, the Chicago Police Superintendent, parental responsibility, and unreached people groups have in common?

Answer: They're all topics that Dave and I discussed on last Friday night's stirring episode of The Dave and Chris Show, brought to you live on The Internet. You would have known that if you had tuned in.

At one point we had upward of four listeners at one time. As a virgin substitute radio host, I have to say, it was exhilarating. Well, OK, not exhilarating. But definitely fun.

We even briefly spoke to my brother DeeDee in Buenos Aires. We called him to ask his opinion about the likelihood of the existence of dozens of tribes un-touched by modern civilization, mostly in South America. He's the closest thing to an expert that we could come up with on short notice.

Plus, when I got home, Mr. Peevie said I had a deep and sexy radio voice. "Your voice on the the radio was deep and sexy," he said, "I was like, 'Whoa!'"

And then I made him say it again. A girl can't get too many compliments like that, you know. I'm used to hearing my voice coming out kind of shrill, in a yelling-at-my-kids kind of way, so I was pleasantly surprised.

Dave is having technical difficulties with posting the recording, but I'm confident that it'll be up soon and you can squander a perfectly good hour and a half listening to my radio debut.

Capital Punishment and the New Covenant

In light of the Supreme Court's recent ruling upholding the constitutionality of lethal injection as a method of capital punishment, I thought I'd reprint here an essay I wrote ages ago for our church newsletter:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, do not resist an evil person; but whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also..You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” Matthew 5:38-39;43-44

Murderers deserve to die. So do adulterers, liars, gossips, thieves, selfish people, parents who yell at their children, inconsiderate drivers, and everyone else who breaks God’s law.

So that’s not the issue. The question is who gets to decide when somebody dies. The answer is God alone.

Throughout the pages of the New Testament, foreshadowed in the Old, the Bible turns our hearts toward redemption and reconciliation—and allows opportunity for rehabilitation. The first person to receive mercy instead of death for a capital crime was Cain: the Lord put a protective mark on him so that he would not be put to death (Genesis 4:15).

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus turned civil and personal ethics on its head. When the Author of life talks about the sanctity of life, we all stand convicted.

The Sermon—and, by extension, all of Jesus’s teaching—“raises the ante by radicalizing the demands of the Law” (R. Hayes, The Moral Vision of the New Testament, 1996). We are called to a counter-intuitive and paradoxical lifestyle of meekness, mercy, peacemaking, and non-retaliation.

Not only his words, but also Jesus’ example of non-violence and mercy preclude capital punishment. Jesus didn’t call for the execution of his own executioners, but instead called out for his heavenly Father to forgive them.(Luke 23:34) He did not condone armed resistance at his own arrest, but told his disciple, “Put your sword back into its place; for all those who take up the sword shall perish by the sword” (Matt. 26:52).

Consider Jesus’ response to the woman caught in adultery, which was a stonable offense back in the day (John 8). First, He reminds the self-righteous tattletales of their own hypocrisy: Let him who is without sin cast the first stone. And instead of calling for the Old Covenant penalty, Jesus demonstrated a dramatically different New Covenant response. He told her “Go, and sin no more.”

Paul reiterates the radical instruction to forsake self-protection in Romans: “Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay,’ says the Lord. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”(Romans 12:19-21)

Abandoning violence and retaliation on both personal and civic levels does not mean abandoning all forms of societal justice, punishment, and restitution—just the violent ones.

Why is it better to kill murderers than to imprison them for life? Incarceration provides an appropriate and just punishment for capital offenders. (As Christians concerned with justice, we still have to deal with the fact that human justice systems are skewed by politics, race, and economics. It’s not possible in a fallible human government to execute justice perfectly. But in the absence of capital punishment, if we make a mistake, it’s reversible. It’s better to let 10 murderers go free than to execute one innocent man.)

Ultimately, we are to be lovers of people, letting God use us as messengers of redemption and reconciliation. Killing someone, even a confessed serial murderer, is not compatible with loving him. When we allow the state to execute him, we cut off the possibility that he will find peace with God.

And only God has the right to say “time’s up.”