I think this is all true, and I also think he’s in a class of prisoners where this is a path open to him — and likely to succeed — in a way that it is not open to many other inmates.
Myself, I plan to claim a religious objection to close proximity to concrete walls and large concentrations of metal, and a religious need for wide open spaces, fresh air and constant direct sunlight. Though probably they’ll put me in a tent in the yard and laugh at my discomfort.
Thrag
5268
Do you have a pamphlet or something? This is relevant to my interests.
I call bullshit on this response. First of all, I would be angry if I was forced to eat pork in jail, but my objection to it is purely because I think it is wrong to kill pigs and I don’t have any strong religious affiliation. To have to claim that I am devoutly kosher to prevent them from serving me only pork would be a bunch of bullshit.
You don’t get to decide what he believes either.
Page 13, Pagan. No mention of an organic requirement (just a preference for organic fruits and vegetables. And, just to be clear, I’m agreeing with your assertion.)
Ok, but I think it’s wrong to put people in concrete cells in high-violence, abusive environments, but nobody will pay any heed to that objection when the time comes. At some point getting sent to prison implies putting up with some things to which you would ordinarily object, right?
Hopefully he pisses his guards off enough that they end up giving him his organic meals in The Loaf.
Matt_W
5273
I don’t really care whether this dude gets organic food or not. But I think that arguments for or against need to be made on principle and not because we want to inflict suffering. And I think that if our principle is humane treatment of prisoners, we can’t apply it selectively. Because, you know, a significant number of folks in prisons are people who’ve done crimes.
Right, but the problem is that it isn’t open to others, not that it is open to him. And the rest of your post sounds far too similar to “I’m going to claim that my pronouns are ‘His Excellency/His Excellency/His Excellency’s,’” for my taste.
It’s prison, not a country club. It’s not designed to cater to your tastes or to some made up thing that can be entirely arbitrary.
I have an aversion to being locked up - guess you can’t imprison me either right?
RichVR
5276
How does he know if his food is organic or not?
I don’t want to inflict suffering, and asking why does this sort of preference from this sort of inmate get addressed when other sorts of preferences from other sorts of inmates fall on deaf ears is not a plea to inflict suffering.
Yes, that’s what I said.
Well, it was a joke, but a joke with a point. See my response to Matt if you didn’t get the point.
Good point. Having worm holes in an apple or slugs inside a strawberry guarantees it’s organic. (This is borne out of my home gardening experiences - if you plant anything edible, something will come eat it).
I don’t think organic existed before pagans did but that’s a good example of a religion with an established practice. There are also Jains and other practices. In this case demanding organic is just ridiculous. Now the prison has to have a Whole Foods catered for one individual.
Lantz
5280
A grand jury is not at all like a trial jury. It is an investigative body. Grand juries issue subpoena’s in their name*, personally question witnesses, and generally work to uncover whatever information they consider necessary to determine whether to indict someone. The only situations where a grand jury member will recuse is if they have a personal connection to the case and there is a reason they or the government thinks it would create a bias.
While the government agents and attorneys who work with the Grand Jury will definitely steer them towards relying on evidence that meets trial court standards (they want to win in court if they get there obviously), there are none of the protocols around whether evidence is admissible because there is no defense to raise objections. In my experience the AUSA will definitely try and make the jury know about these issues, but there’s no Judge striking things or whatever.
In a Grand Jury you will have (rarely) a juror be able to get information out of a witness or tie together a detail that they Government has yet to uncover themselves. For instance a grand jury will be presented video evidence of something that happened and then when a witness comes with a blatantly false statement the jury members will find ways to ask innocent sounding questions to encourage them to lay the perjury on thick. It’s the witnesses first time but the grand jury has generally been doing it for a while. It’s pretty common to get witnesses come in multiple times with statements that begin with ‘I was not entirely truthful in my last statement’.
More often you will have a particularly dim one suggest to an FBI agent that they should DNA test the money from a bank robbery where the cops caught the bank robber on their way out of the building, he was caught on camera, and confessed. Or make a guiltless victim of a scam cry on the stand because they are convinced that the person must have been part of the scheme because the juror finds it unbelievable that anyone could have fallen for such an obvious (in hindsight) scheme.
There’s a lot of reasons that grand jury proceedings are sealed (in particular to not slander peoples names who are not indicted) and the fact that the grand jury itself is a a group of random citizens that at times are doing their best Columbo impersonations is a definite part of it.
* In practice the grand jury will vote to delegate their subpoena power to Federal investigators, but legally it is the grand jury itself calling witnesses.
Timex
5281
Here’s the solution:
DON’T COMMIT CRIMES AND GO TO JAIL
Jail is unpleasant. You will encounter a lot of shit that you don’t like. Like, being imprisoned.
Here’s the thing… I don’t give a fuck about what he believes. Maybe he thinks that it’s only acceptable to eat steak every meal. That’s too fucking bad.
RichVR
5282
I have never, to my knowledge, purchased organic food. But one thing I’ve noticed is that the organic produce in supermarkets has two qualities. It looks like crap. It is way too expensive. So what you say makes sense.
It’s not an unreasonable request, and it isn’t some wildly rare thing like, “you must bring me the dew from a buttercup harvested precisely at dawn on the south slope of field while chanting, ‘the butter must flow,’ and rubbing your forehead with an open palm.”
I mean, it depends on the depth of his belief, but if they are able to show a history of truly believing this and if he is willing to go without food for a time rather than compromise that belief (and willing to endure the mockery that making a point of it entails), then I tend to side with the idea that this is a sincere belief.
I also think that people with extreme claustrophobia should be accommodated when jailed. And that prisons should keep prisoners from beating and raping each other.
KevinC
5284
Spirits of the wind and of the earth whisper in his ear.
RichVR
5285
Bear tells me that this is organic. Coyote as well. It will do.
No fuck this. First of all, this guy hasn’t been convicted of anything so this definition of “commit crimes” is extremely ripe for abuse. Second, this attitude of dehumanizing criminals is also horrific. It is horrific when applied to illegal immigrants and POCs and it is still horrific when applied to MAGA terrorists.
