History Shows No Surprise in Anthony Acquittal

The Casey Anthony case, the latest trial of the century, ended this week with a not-guilty verdict.  That has led to a flurry of explanations of “what went wrong.”

Actually, nothing did: the jury simply didn’t find her guilty.  Her peers heard all the evidence and concluded that the State had not proven that the defendant had committed murdered her daughter Caylee.  The jury said Casey lied to police about her daughter, but that did not prove that she killed Caylee.

CNN then launched a poll asking readers if they were surprised by the results.  At last count, more than 70 percent said they were.

That isn’t surprising. 

Too many people simply do not know history.  If they did, they would have been shocked if Casey had been found guilty.  In high profile murder cases, defendants almost invariably walk.

Go back to 1893 in possibly the most notorious trial in the 19^th century.  Elizabeth Borden was accused of killing her mother and father with an axe, leading to a still-repeated rhyme:

Lizzie Borden took an axe

And gave her mother 40 whacks.

When she saw what she had done,

She gave her mother 41.

Still, she was found innocent.  A recent study of the case found that Elizabeth could not have been guilty.  Instead, a handyman probably killed her parents.

In the 1954, Dr. Sam Sheppard was found guilty of murdering his wife, Marilyn, in an incredibly notorious case.  It was the basis for the TV show and movie, The Fugitive.  After serving 10 years in prison, he was exonerated in a second trial and released. 

Multiple books have been written on the Ohio case.  The latest, by Bill James, famed baseball statistician who is also interested in murder cases, argues that Sheppard did not kill his wife, but paid the actual assailant to do it.

Regardless, Sheppard was only found guilty because of extreme behavior by the media and legal authorities.  In a less-biased hearing held in 1966, he walked away.

Even defendants drenched in publicity in non-murder cases are rarely found guilty. 

Take John Mitchell, former U.S. attorney general caught up in the Watergate scandal of the 1970s.  Few people have endured such incredible publicity when he and Richard Nixon Finance Committee Chairman Maurice Stans were indicted in 1973 on federal charges of obstructing an investigation of fugitive financier Robert Vesco following Vesco’s $200,000 contribution to the Nixon campaign.  However, in April 1974, both men were acquitted.

Later, without the same intense publicity shield, Mitchell did spend time in prison for his part in the Watergate cover-up.

In 2005, pop singing star Michael Jackson was charged with child molestation.  Under the media glare, Jackson was acquitted.

Maybe jury members want to show their independence.  Maybe publicity hides weaknesses in cases.  Whatever the reason, the results of the Anthony trial were predictable, not surprising.

Bill Lazarus is an historian who writes about current events.  His books can be found on Amazon.com and Kindle, in bookstores and via his website, www.williamplazarus.com. 

Facing the Truth

Bill Lazarus writes both serious and humor columns.  This is one of his funny stories. You can find his books on Amazon.com, Kindle, his website, www.williamplazarus.com or via bookstores like Barnes & Noble.

Soothing the Savage Beast

SLACKJAW, MI --  Chris Janison was angry.  Her hat was askew; her woolen coat unbuttoned; her face red and her eyes narrow slits.  That was before she stomped into Agnes Borkland’s office at 8 a.m.

Less than 20 minutes later, Janison emerged.  She was smiling.  The cause of her anger forgotten, her mood upbeat, her gait cheerful and content.  She calmly buttoned her coat, said hello to anyone and everyone in sight and, whistling a carefree tune, sauntered into the May sunlight. 

Behind her, Borkland waited for the next angry person to march into her office.  Day in, day out, Slackjaw’s director of the Commiseration Center sees dozens of residents from this Upper Peninsula community.

All of them enter upset frustrated and, often, incoherent with rage, barely able to swing open the office door and charge inside.

Some can no longer tolerate the persistent cold air.  Others are finally overwhelmed by the immense isolation.  There’s no way for anyone to get here.  Trains, scheduled in 1876 to run through Slackjaw from Lac La Belle to Laurum adjoining state route 41, never were built.  Even buses avoid this small community.

Some mutter about the state officials who consistently relocate Slackjaw around the state map.  A situation that irritates residents upset about being placed at various times near Detroit, Grosse Point, Lansing and Kalamazoo.

They bluster about the lack of jobs.  The only industry is an old mill that sells sawdust to bakeries.  They kvetch about the town’s decrepit appearance, the result of the founder’s passion for adobe and distaste for wood.  (Visitors are usually so stunned to find a community here in the Keweenaw County woods, lacking any television hookup, living in adobe huts, that the town name was changed from Russell to Slackjaw in 1891 to commemorate the common reaction.)

Borkland sees them all, comforts them with a few words and has given this small town of 3,200 souls an aura of contentment.  Fourth director of the city Commiserate Center, Borkland has spent the last two decades listening to any complaints in the privacy of her office, quickly changing attitudes and boosting spirits.

“I’m the fourth person in my family to have this job,” explained Borkland, a buxom woman with silvery hair who was sitting behind her desk.  “We passed it along generation to generation.”

She had little time to talk.  It was 8:30 a.m., and, already, more townspeople were following Janison into the C.C. office, exactly on time.  There was Hazel TerHorst, a housewife fed up with the antics of her four children.  They had started a snowball fight in the house and eventually broke the ice sculpture in the living room.

She was followed by Alex Winsburg, a tourist who was stranded here 15 years ago when his car broke down and never was able to leave.  Winsburg comes to the C.C. at least once a week.  Borkland said.  “He ran a sauna on the outside.  There just wasn’t any call for his services here,” she said.

Others trooped in: Wayne Gortsen, a policeman upset because his wife insisted on chopping wood instead of letting “a man” do it; Philamena Orgestborg, who was disappointed that her irises had died in the recent frost; young Jon Groatlund, frustrated that he couldn’t make a figure eight on his ice skates.

One by one, they came.  And one by one, they left, content, ready to meet the difficult demands of their small community.

Maybe it’s the acorn cookies that every visitor enjoys.  It’s an original recipe, Borkland said.  The shells are cooked right along with the batter.  It could be her shrill voice that seems to lacerate a listener.  Or the weapons, the pictures of starving children in Africa and the interior of decaying jails and slums, street people in New York and Calcutta, and the blunt, cynical homilies about vanity, life and death covering the C.C. office.

Or it could just be the existence of the center itself. 

“It started at a time when everyone was depressed by the train situation,” Mayor Rose Lindstrom said.  (Her office budget is smaller than the one for C.C.  If Lindstrom has a complaint about it, someone in an office above hers will be happy to talk to her.)  “Virginia Findlayson was our elementary school teacher, and she had to calm children upset because their parents were so angry.  She just told them how bad off children in other countries were, struggling with the broiling sun, insects, boiling hot sands on beaches, things like that.”

“After a while, adults started coming to see her.”

“It’s hard to explain,” said patrolman Gortsen, a burly man with blonde hair and a serious expression on his face.  “Mrs. Borkland is direct.  She tells us how much better off we are here than anywhere else.  It makes it easier to face Slackjaw.” 

Borkland doesn’t talk about her methods, although her angry tones can be heard rising through the air outside the city hall.  Occasionally, her visitors whimper and cry, mingling their plaintive sobs with her more shrill outbursts.

Her sessions are private, and the reasons that prompted townspeople to visit her remain locked in her safe.  She just nods at questions with a puppy dog look in her brown eyes.  “I’m so sorry I can’t help you,” she said in response to a question about her methods.  “I wish I could tell you what you want to know, but you are better off not knowing.  If people knew everything, their brains would explode.” 

The committee itself actually has two other members who fill in when Borkland takes a rare day off.  Neither Esther Wiedenhorst or Abdullah Sharif have the same support from the townspeople.  “It’s tradition.” Mayor Lindstrom said.  “Somehow, the truth sounds more vicious coming from Agnes.”

Several area communities have talked about setting up their own C.C. Mandan, Bete Grise, Mohawk and Fulton all sent officials to meet with Borkland.  They didn’t learn any secrets, but returned to their respective towns to report there was nothing wrong and no need for such an agency.

Today, 10 years after Mandan’s mayor and town committeeman first visited Borkland, the two men, no longer in office, still visit at least once every six months for a booster commiseration. 

Borkland, however reserves most of her time for her fellow residents.  “Slackjaw is heaven,” she said between interviews.  “Plenty of fresh water, woods to play in, snow.  Who needs television?  It just ruins the mind anyway.  And books?  Whoever succeeded reading a book?  Movies?  I tell you, we have more entertainment in one snowball fight than Hollywood ever thought of.  And it’s free, too.  Just think about it.  It’s all free.”

She slammed a small clenched fist against her wooden desk, sending cookies flying.  Behind her, a framed picture of Nazi concentration camp victims glistening in the sunlight.  “It doesn’t get any better than this.”  Borkland said firmly.  Her eyes were narrow and hard.  “You’d better believe it.”

The residents of Slackjaw apparently do, without complaint.

Religion Still a Senior Problem

In my high school in Akron, Ohio, we were all required to take a class called Senior Problems.  I don’t know what exactly the problems were, but the course contained a comparative religion element.   In it, we were introduced to many of the world’s religions.  In classes filled with children of many beliefs, teachers would talk about how a particular faith developed and how it spread.

Somehow, that seems so long ago.  Today, the  faithful in one religion are inevitably taking potshots at believers in another religion.  Somehow, we have forgotten how life was in past eras.  People of different faiths used to live and work side by side with little concern. 

At one time, Jews served as advisors and heads of state in Muslim countries.  Christians and Jews worked together in Catholic Spain.  Christians lived in harmony with Muslims in the Middle East.

Once, Jewish and Christian icons were included with the Ka’baa, the holiest religious object in Islam, located in Mecca, the holiest city in Islam.  Even today, Jerusalem hosts the Dome on the Rock, a sacred Islamic mosque, side by side with the Wailing Wall, the last surviving piece of the great Jewish Temple that once existed there.

Visitors to Jerusalem, the capital of Israel, can see religious Jews, wrapped in prayer shawls, trudging along ancient streets along side Moslems and Christians.  Overhead, the cry of the Islamic muezzin, calling the faithful to prayer, rings out along with the tolling bells of Christian churches.  The flag of Israel with the Star of David in its center flutters in the same breeze.

Such situations are too rare.  Members of the three great monotheistic religions seem to fight more than they pray together. Over time, Judaism, Christianity and Islam have become separate by seemingly unbridgeable chasms.  Actually, they are very much alike.

·                They share a common heritage.  They each tie their history to a single event and a single person who lived maybe 4,000 years ago.  All of them say that a Chaldean named Abraham was to first to recognize God.  Jews begin their religion’s history with Abraham.  Christians link Jesus to Abraham via extensive genealogies.  Muslims do the same thing with Muhammad, the founder of their faith.

·                They each believe Jerusalem is a sacred city.  Jews identify the city with David, the founder of the largest independent Jewish state and a biblical hero whose son built the Temple, God’s home, there.  Christians revere Jerusalem as the site of Jesus’ crucifixion and ascension into heaven.  Muslims call it the third holiest city in their faith and the place where Muhammad arose to visit heaven.

·                They worship the same God.  Jews call the deity Yahweh.  Christians identify His human manifestation as Jesus.  Muslims call him Allah, but that’s only the generic Arabic word for God.  Actually, Jewish and Christian missionaries used the word Allah to describe God to Muslim pagans,.  As a result, Muhammad simply thought Allah was the same God worshipped by Jews and Christians.

·                They have similar holidays.  Easter, for example, the holiest day in the Christian calendar, is tied directly to Passover, the most significant holiday in Judaism.  In fact, virtually all Christian holidays are linked to either Jewish or pagan sources.

The only Muslim holiday, Ramadan, is also tied to Jewish and Christian holidays.

·                They each have religious leaders trained in their faiths.

·                They all believe in the efficacy of prayer and foresee rewards for true believers after death.  Christians and Muslims add a hell to punish apostates and opponents.

·                They all include angels in their beliefs.

·                They each have sacred books that encapsulate their beliefs and give it an historical context.  The Jewish Bible is the base of the Christian text.  Christians scoured the Jewish holy books to find evidence to support their own beliefs.

·                All of the early Christians were Jews.  Jesus died around 33 A.D.  Christianity as a religion separate from Judaism did not start until at least 60 years later.

·                They all believe in the basic philosophy of peace, justice and mercy.  Jews city a great sage, Hillel, who said, “Do not do unto others what you would not have others do unto you.” Christians quote Jesus as saying the positive side of the Golden Rule.  Muslims have no phrase similar to either, but espouse the same teaching.

·                All three believe in helping others. One of the five basic tenets of the Muslim faith involves giving alms.   Jews consistently give a higher percentage of their income to charities, and Christians are famed for helping the poor and needy.

As you can see, there are many more links between the three faiths than differences.

The passing years have clouded how much Judaism, Christianity and Islam have in common. 

Part of the reason is that all three faiths claim to be the exclusive purveyor of  God’s wishes.  That alone will guarantee disagreements.  In addition, members of the faiths seem unwilling to learn about each other’s beliefs, preferring exclusivity to mutual understanding.

Perhaps we should have realized that was going to happen while in high school.  The Senior Problem class was ended because Christian parents complained the course did not accurately reflect their beliefs.

Bill Lazarus is a religious historian who teaches and writes about religious history.  His books are available on Amazon.com, Kindle or through his website, www.williamplazarus.com.

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July 4 in An Unchristian Nation

The July 4 holiday always brings out the patriotism in everyone.  We sing patriotic songs as fireworks burst in the air.  And, as is our custom, we debate political policies and the future of our country.  One issue that invariably arises is the role of religion in our nation’s founding.  People actually get into fiery debates over this seemingly innocent topic.

For many people, this is a Christian nation, based on Christian principles.  Others disagree, pointing out that the U.S. Constitution does not mention God, Christianity or any other religion.  Yet, every person who was involved in writing the Constitution was raised in a sect of Christianity.  None of them denied belief in Jesus or in the tenants of that faith.  Several, such as Thomas Jefferson, were deists – they believed in God, but not necessarily in Jesus.  However, when Jefferson edited the New Testament to remove what he considered mythology, he did not excise Jesus.

Still, overall evidence is that the United States is not a Christian nation.

Here are some basic reasons:

·                     The Constitution itself divorced religion from the political equation: “No religious Test shall ever be required as a qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States." (Art. 6, Sec. 3).

·                     The First Amendment of the Constitution forbids the creation of any laws “respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."   The only oath spelled out in the Constitution, the presidential oath of office, contains no reference to God or the Bible. 

·                     In 1797, near the end of George Washington’s second term, he approved a treaty with Tripoli that declared "the government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion."  John Adams shepherded the treaty through Congress without dissent over the wording.  Nor did the public object when the treaty was published.

·                     In a letter to a Baptist group in 1802, President Jefferson described "a wall of separation between church and state.”  That term has become commonplace in court decisions, reflecting the idea that religion has no place in government action. 

·                     Jefferson emphasized that government had no right to promote any religion or interfere with private belief.  He underlined that belief by asking visitors in the White House why he should care what his neighbor believes?

·                     Even though the vast majority of Americans are Christian – about 75 percent at last count -- the Constitution guarantees that they cannot impose their religious beliefs on others.  The 14^th Amendment also prevents states and cities from creating restrictions that would deprive minorities of their Constitutional rights.

·                     The government was not based on the Ten Commandments or any religious teachings.  Instead, our Founding Fathers drew on ideas of democracy followed by the Indians, their knowledge of European government and some original ideas. 

Many of those who believe this country is a Christian nation cite Supreme Court Justice David Brewer who in an 1892 case, Holy Trinity Church vs. United States, wrote in a personal opinion that "this is a Christian nation." He explained later: "But in what sense can [the United States] be called a Christian nation? Not in the sense that Christianity is the established religion or the people are compelled in any manner to support it. On the contrary, the Constitution specifically provides that 'Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.' Neither is it Christian in the sense that all its citizens are either in fact or in name Christians. On the contrary, all religions have free scope within its borders. Numbers of our people profess other religions, and many reject all."

That sounds like something really worth celebrating on any July 4.  Save the fireworks for the night sky and not for religious discussions.

Bill Lazarus is a religious historian who writes on current topics.  You can find his books on Amazon.com, Kindle and on his website, www.williamplazarus.com.