Yesterday, in A citizen's day in court, I passed on a description of the conclusion of a misdemeanor arrest of my friend Joel, for doing ballot petitioning outside a post office. Joel could have avoided the arrest, by simply petitioning somewhere else. I'm afraid that most of us would have chosen to avoid the arrest, especially if we had known how much trouble it would turn out to be, and how difficult it could have been just to get a decent hearing of the issue.

I'm not an attorney, but I find it impossible to understand how it can be illegal to perform what is really a public service, on public property. Petitioning to get a candidate on an election ballot is required by law, unless you are fortunate enough to be one of the political parties who make the laws in that state. Such petitioning is more than legal, it's an integral part of the election system as defined by lawmakers. While "major" parties can place candidates on the ballot by just filling out a form and paying a fee, alternate parties, are, in most states, forced to gather a varying number of signatures and other information from potential voters. Petition signatures are often challenged on the basis of legibility, completeness, or residence of the signer. Petitioners, who are usually volunteers, try to petition in locations where there is a steady flow of people who aren't in a great rush to get somewhere else. Outside a post office is a good location; visitors to a P.O. have probably already allowed themselves enough time in case they have to wait in line, so they're not likely to be in a particular hurry. They're already in a "government mood", so petitioning may not seem out of place.

All that notwithstanding, Joel was told to move on... not to stop petitioning, nor to change the manner in which he was doing it, but to do it somewhere else. Legal activity, done in an agreeable manner, but done on government property. It really is a ridiculous idea that he should have been asked to move... or rather told to move. The police have no way of knowing whether their command was legal or not... no way of knowing whether Joel or the P.O. supervisor was correct, so they took the side of a minor government official rather than an ordinary citizen. Once they took that position and asked him to move, they were committed to that result, regardless of how much force it might take to insure compliance. Joel was calm and polite, despite believing that his rights were being violated, and the arrest was peaceful. If Joel had offered resistance of any kind, you can be sure that as least as much force as needed would have been used to arrest him.

Once in court, the "case" was a case only to Joel, who took the issue seriously, as a matter of rights. The prosecutor's office was, as we read, unprepared for their day in court, scrambling to even understand why this was a court case. They offered a plea agreement almost immediately... plead guilty in exchange for 90 days of "probation".

Consider... if the case had no merit, why should the defendant, who has already suffered through inconvenience, an arrest, and waiting for a court appearance, be willing to plead guilty and accept a "probation" period? In that context, a normal citizen is not going to be eager to even hear about the alternatives to the plea agreement. Prosecutors can get nasty, and they have resources that dwarf what most defendants can bring to bear. Joel was facing, if convicted, a $1200 fine... possibly worse. Still, he wanted his day in court. Convinced he had been within his rights, he rejected the plea agreement, meaning the case would have to be heard by a judge.

The unprepared prosecutor asked for a new trial date, and the next available was another 3 months into the future, with Joel living under the threat of somehow violating "good behavior" for still longer. At that point, Joel requested the original plea bargain and accepted it.

Nobody can be sure how the case would have been decided if it had eventually gone to trial, but it would have been a further waste of taxpayer money at best... all for a case that never should have been a case. A post office supervisor made the call, and then went back to work while the "case" went on to suck in an expanded list of characters, each required to play their role.

As in this case, we as citizens are expected to cave in to "authority", regardless of the circumstances. Could the police have ignored the demand from a federal employee? Not likely. There are so many thousands of laws in force that the police have no way of knowing what is legal and illegal, so they "enforce" by guesswork. They don't have to be right, but they don't want to be wrong, so they enforce whatever MIGHT be a law. Once an arrest and charge have been filed, the prosecutor's office is on the hook. They could have dropped the charges, but they need the "plea" so that the case isn't a total sham. It's obvious that the case was just an embarassment to them, but they pressed forward, willing to involve everyone, including the judge, in yet another trial date.

This relatively innocuous case illustrates so many problems in our criminal justice system... the confusion, the lack of common sense, the various layers of bureaucracy each doing their own thing, resulting in a time-eating, expensive ordeal. However, understand that each government employee was being PAID for their involvement. Joel was not. The government employee who instigated the whole silly mess got her way, right or wrong, and started a small chain reaction that personifies government action. It's difficult to fault most of those involved... except the nitwits who insist on writing so many laws that NOBODY can even guess what might be legal or illegal.