Mr. Patterico has offered to debate me regarding the statements I have made about two of the cases included in his post; Roper v. Simmons (banning execution of juveniles) and Atkins v. Virginia (banning execution of the retarded). The debate to take place on either my blog or his. He also questions Miranda having a role in my police roust escapade. I appreciate his graciousness and wish I had to tools to debate the law as he suggests.

1. I ain't a lawyer and am not schooled enough in the trade to debate a person trained in the law. All I can say is that I'm glad that we are not allowed to slaughter the retarded and pot shot the very young; if that is activism from the bench, then I approve of it. I have a "real job" in the investment field and just don't have the time to do the scholarship involved in order to debate you the way somebody ought to debate you. Putting myself up against you in a debate would be the same as daring to shoot it out with Billy the Kid if he called me out on the street; The Kid is a professional gun slinger and would kill me. I'd be crazy to take him up on his challenge just to save my "manhood," which would be lying in the street full of hot lead. Similarly, you would take me out unless I had the time to prepare, which I do not.

2. Regarding Miranda in my case: I immediately hired a lawyer and he bombarded the court with "discovery requests" and included a request for the reading of Miranda before they questioned me after arresting me. The reason for Miranda was that during the time of my "grilling" I was rude as hell as one can imagine, calling the main cop just about every name you can think of. It was my "threating" language that was to be the basis of the 34 charges of resisting arrest, but they had NOT "Mirandized" me and the DA refused to prosecute based on that failure. Now it's probably true that once the DA's office got hit with the discovery requests they found that the cops had behaved in a usual LAPD way, which is illegally, and dropped the 34 resisting arrest charges. When I showed up in court for my first hearing on the charges the judge looked at us and informed us that all charges had been withdrawn. My entire record had been expunged. The "crimes" for which I was accused happened in the police station after my arrest and booking, and since the cops claimed "cause" for my original arrest on the street they had to Mirandize me before continuing with their "questioning."

So based on my experience there and another one I had later, I support Miranda in every way because my exposure to the reality of the legal system tells me that the cops have no problem stomping on the rights of anyone they go after, if and when they can. After a century of police abuse--see the old movies where they routinely beat prisoners---they Goddam well should have forms to fill out.

I appreciate the offer of a fair fight Billy, but I left my guns at home.

I'm posting this on my blog as well