Once upon a time

There was a young child who was murdered by its mother. It is a sad story, made sadder still by the facts of the case. The mother told a multitude of lies concerning the child's whereabouts, the grandparents were mad with worry, the mother's brother was used as a distraction, and there was blood, tape, plastic, a shovel, and a late-night trip to a deserted and lonely place. Sounds familiar, doesn't it? It should because many of the details of this case mirror the circumstances surrounding the death of Caylee Anthony in Florida, but this is the story of Logan Tucker, and a jury who got it right.


Logan lived his brief life of six years in northwestern Oklahoma with his mother, Katherine Rutan, her roommate, and Logan's younger brother. By all accounts, Rutan was an uncaring mother; in fact, the roommate said, "He was a pain in her side. It made her mad because having a child didn’t let her do the things she wanted to do, so she got rid of the problem.” Rutan had tried at least twice to give both of her children to the DHS, the last time three days before Logan disappeared.  


On that day, and every day after, his mother told so many lies, it's difficult to keep them all straight.

• To the roommate: He was in the back room, he was in the basement, and he was sick.
• To the roommate's daughter: DHS had taken him.
• To various others that day: DHS had taken him, he was with his father, and he was in a mental hospital.
• To a nurse at a counseling facility: Logan had been placed "elsewhere."
• To his grandparents: DHS took him, and later, he was in a treatment facility.
• To the DHS: Logan was camping with her brother in Vermont or Pennsylvania.

More than two weeks after he was last seen alive, his grandparents contacted the police for a welfare check. During a number of searches, police found masking tape with hair stuck to it, bloodstains, cotton rope, plastic sheeting, and drain cleaner; a cadaver dog "hit" on the passenger seat of Rutan's car. Searches for Logan's body have been conducted through the years, but he has never been found. 


Four years after his disappearance, his mother was charged with first-degree murder. The prosecutors alleged Rutan used "unreasonable force," which resulted in "mortal wounds" to Logan. A jury deliberated for two hours and returned a guilty verdict with a recommendation of life without the possibility of parole. 


The case against Rutan was entirely circumstantial, much like that against Casey Anthony, yet the juries' interpretations were day and night in comparison. How did this happen? While no single aspect can be highlighted as THE reason, there are a few key differences between the cases. For example, the jurors in Logan Tucker's case had something that was lacking for Casey's jury--an eyewitness. Logan's younger brother told a horrific story of riding with his mother and Logan to go dig wildflowers; Logan, he recounted, was sitting up in the back, neither crying nor talking, and his mother carried him into the woods and returned alone. It was simply too much for the jury to ignore.


Regardless of the differences, however, so many questions remain as to why Caylee will not receive her justice, as Logan finally did. Forget about the smell in the car, the duct tape, the shovel, and that she was last seen in her mother's care. The fact remains that she never reported her child missing until she was forced to by her own mother. For 31 days, she carried on as if "having a child didn’t let her do the things she wanted to do, so she got rid of the problem.” This fact alone is indefensible--not by the defense's argument of sexual abuse, not by the grief expert's ridiculous definition of normal grief, and certainly not by the jurors' confounding of confusion for reasonable doubt. 


Thus, we are left with some hard truths. No one will ever pay for Caylee's murder. Our system doesn't always work. People get away with murder every single day. 

The Real American Dream

Today, many people in the U.S. are honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In light of this, and in combination with the recent Tucson tragedy, it is apropos to remember another who forever remains intimately connected to both—Robert Francis Kennedy, assassinated shortly after Dr. King, as well as his friend and supporter. Dr. King spoke of equality, justice, and freedom; Mr. Kennedy spoke of peace, compassion, and strength. It’s time to take an honest look at where this society stands today in terms of what they tried to achieve.

Dr. King said:

Let us not wallow in the valley of despair. I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream.

It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed. "We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day out on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state sweltering with the heat and injustice of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

Mr. Kennedy said:

But even if we act to erase material poverty, there is another greater task, it is to confront the poverty of satisfaction - purpose and dignity - that afflicts us all.  Too much and for too long, we seemed to have surrendered personal excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things.  Our Gross National Product, now, is over $800 billion dollars a year, but that Gross National Product - if we judge the United States of America by that - that Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage.  It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them.  It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl.  It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities.  It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.  

Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play.  It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials.  It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.  And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.

We have achieved but minor successes in all these. Discrimination still rears its ugly head, people are still judged by their appearances, or what they have, instead of their characters, our children’s health continues to decline, and surely no one would argue that the integrity of our public officials has improved. It is a depressing fact that  their words ring quite true more than 40 years later, but surely we have progressed some small bit, haven’t we?

America in the 1960s was a society suffering from an identity crisis. We were crashing back into reality after the relative prosperity we enjoyed after the end of WWII, but more importantly, no longer were we a country made up of idealistic citizens contentedly pursuing the American dream. Instead, this era had seen the rise of another war, countercultures and subcultures, the hippie movement, the feminist movement, and the civil rights movement; increasingly, we splintered off into groups defined by our reactions to the status quo. Some actively rejected it, others sought to change it, and still others clung doggedly to it. Differences of opinions, beliefs, and ideologies were inevitable, but, too often, they were accompanied by violence, which ultimately put both men in premature graves, and continues unabated to this day. It could even be argued that our differences today are more pronounced, more divisive, and more hate-filled than in previous times. Why?

This particular form of violence is not a result of our freedoms in this country, as the Russian reporter so erroneously opined. Neither is it the result of lax gun control laws. It is a characteristic of a society that has yet to realize its potential; a desperate act perpetrated by a person who mistakenly believes that the death of one person can change the world; that it can obliterate what that person believed in, represented, and hoped for, on more than simply a personal level.

Equality, justice, freedom, peace, compassion, strength—all these are noble pursuits indeed, and truly, a common thread runs through them all—hope that all these things can be realized. Dr. King and Mr. Kennedy not only had hope, they also inspired it in every generation since. In the face of tragedy, desperation, and death, this is where our salvation and comfort lies—the knowledge that one person’s death cannot destroy their vision of what should be the real American dream.

Business as Usual

This morning, a local news station reported a story about a rather infamous state (OK) politician, Randy Terrill. His notoriety stems partly from his avid advocacy of Arizona's controversial stance on immigration law, which led to his authorship of a very similar bill in Oklahoma and earned him a loyal following. Not surprisingly, his reputation also includes allegations of wrong-doings and shady dealings. As an example, please consider that while declaring bankruptcy in 2005, he apparently misrepresented an $11,000 personal loan to his campaign fund as a "donation," which is not counted as an asset in bankruptcy proceedings. The case closed in 2006 but was reopened in 2008 when the "donation" was discovered. A federal judge found that Terrill's "explanations [were] without support and lack[ed] credibility," and ordered Terrill to repay that amount to the bankruptcy trustee Story here. 

So...back to this morning's news. Terrill is trying to introduce a bill that would deny citizenship to children of illegal immigrants, who are born on U.S. soil. This requires minimal comment beyond the obvious, which is simply that being born in this country trumps all other claims to citizenship; it is, and should remain, the least contested criteria by which citizenship is determined. After all, from where do Randy’s own citizenship rights originate?

In addition to the substance of the story, it is notable for what it failed to include. Not mentioned was the fact that Randy Terrill is being accused of bribery, in collusion with two other state legislators More info. By now, the casual reader surely will be thinking “Big deal, politicians, bribery, where’s the story?” THAT’S the point—the fact that we are so jaded by stories like these that the only thing we feel is a resigned hopelessness, rather than a healthy outrage. Did I mention that the news channel that told the tale of Randy’s efforts to “protect the rights of Oklahoman’s” with his ridiculous bill is the same one that reported his bribery charges a mere TWO DAYS BEFORE?

This is not an indictment of Randy Terrill or politicians in general (although they deserve it); however, it is an indictment of the media and our own willingness to allow them to shape not only what we think about but also how we think about it. Ultimately, it is up to each one of us. We can let the media tell us one day that one of our lawmakers is charged with a crime, and then “forget” it when that same politician does something popular with the voters—never mind right or wrong, popular is what counts (such convenient timing, don’t you think?). Alternatively, we can decide to think for ourselves and stop believing that the media are bound by some mythical ethical rules that require fair or even accurate reporting. Critical thinking—we owe it to ourselves.