Connecticut
Post posts about what is happening in the State of Connecticut.
The Scarlet Badge – Day Two of the Anthony Maio Trial
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 08/06/2009 - 10:02Tuesday was the second day of hearings in the trial of Anthony Maio, New Haven Police Officer accused of sexually assaulting two college students. I was at the UNESCO conference at University of Connecticut yesterday, so I could not attend the first day. On Tuesday, I dropped my daughter off at summer camp and headed down to the New Haven Superior Court building. I found a good place to park and headed in a little bit early. Initially, I sat outside the court room and did a little writing on my laptop.
One of the lawyers on the case recognized me from the Voir Dire and joked about how they had changed their minds and that they wanted to make a switch and put me on the jury. We talked briefly and I asked if he had read any of my blog posts about the case so far. He said he had read the first one, and I encouraged him to read more of my blog posts. We talked about the importance of people reading and understanding the details of jury selection and jury trials.
Painting a Culture of Peace
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 08/04/2009 - 14:09Storrs – Monday morning saw the third day of the UNESCO International Leadership Training Programme: A Global Intergenerational Forum at the University of Connecticut. Delegates from around the world gathered to hear new ideas about how to bring about some of the goals of UNESCO and the United Nations. They were mostly young, energetic, full of hope and anticipation as they established new friendships and learned about various programs.
A key theme for the day was about how to promote a culture of peace. It started off with Dr. David Adams presenting the framework for a culture of peace. Dr. Adams taught psychology at Wesleyan University for twenty-three years and has numerous publications related to understanding the psychological, physiological, and sociological aspects of aggression, war and peace.
He started off by describing how the United Nations arrived at their declaration of a culture of peace. He explored what constituted a culture of war. He referred to Margaret Mead who asserted that war is a social invention and he claimed that no other species wage war. He noted that fear, anger and greed are not key parts of the culture of war. In fact he spoke of Defense Secretary Cheney berating General Schwarzkopf during the first Gulf War for letting anger get in the way of his executing the war effort.
A few of the things that particularly jumped out at me as he described the culture of war was a strong sense of authoritarianism, the use of propaganda, and a focus on competition instead of cooperation. The opposite of this, a culture of peace, includes strong participatory democracy, transparency and the free flow of information and cooperation. For there to be wars, people need enemies and instead of miscommunication and misunderstanding, a culture of peace needs mutual understanding.
Empires rise and fall in a culture of war. Dr. Adams spoke about the fall of the Soviet Union which he experienced parts of first hand while he was doing research in Russia. He looked back to the fall of the British Empire and the fall of the Roman Empire. He expressed a belief that the American Empire was bound to fail, perhaps fairly soon. His hope was that a culture of peace could take hold before the next empire emerges, but expressed doubts and a sense of urgency of developing a culture of peace rapidly.
Yet as I look at our country, it has survived in part because of commitments to principals in a culture of peace. Yes, our democracy is not as participatory as it could, or should be. Yet there are many that work hard to make it more participatory. Our culture does not value the free flow of information or transparency as much as it should, but again, there are many that work hard for this as well. Perhaps most importantly, there are many that are working hard to promote mutual understanding between different groups of people.
The second speaker was Joanne Tawfilis, Co-Founder and Executive Director of Art Miles. The Art Miles Mural Project seeks to create twelve miles of murals, covering twelve different themes and build them into a pyramid to float down the Nile River in 2010 for the International Day of Peace. In terms of murals produced they are approximately 80% there.
Yet in many ways, the murals themselves are not what really matters. What matters is living out a culture of peace by working collaboratively to come to understand one another. The process of painting these murals is an important part of promoting a culture of peace.
Ms. Tawfilis spoke about how they have worked with people from different cultures and different locations to help them learn about one another share ideas and create a mural together. As I heard about this, it struck me that this would be a wonderful project for Beecher Road School to undertake with a sister school in China.
Many of my friends pray for peace, visualize world peace, or try to find other ways of expressing their desire for a more peaceful world. Ms. Tawfilis and her friends work for peace in a much different and more concrete manner. She recognizes that peace begins with each one of us individually promoting a culture of peace. The murals are a great way of doing this. Other great ways include working towards getting people more involved with their government from the local level up to international governance, and by people working together for a free flow of transparent information. The Internet can be a great tool for this, and hopefully this blog post will do its little part in helping people think about more concrete ways that they can work for peace.
The Scarlet Badge – Jury Selection, Part 2
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 08/02/2009 - 07:45The case of the New Haven Police Officer accused of Fourth Degree Sexual Abuse is scheduled to start on Monday. I had been selected as a potential juror and have previously written about the Anthony Maio case my experiences with the Jury Selection Process. That post talked more about the mechanics of being empanelled and the general questions.
However, I was then questioned on the stand about my ability to present a fair and unbiased opinion in the case. The questioning, I believe, presents an interesting insight into some of the complexities of the case, as well general issues of how jury trials work in our country.
Before I get into the specifics, I should pass on a joke that a friend told me when she heard I might be on the case.
Knock, Knock.
Who’s there?
O.J.
O.J. who?
Okay, you can be on the jury
While the joke provides an amusing view on the O.J. Simpson trial, as you will see, it reflects a misunderstanding about the jury process.
The Scarlet Badge – Jury Selection, Part 1
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 07/30/2009 - 08:07It was a rainy summer morning as I headed to the New Haven Superior Courthouse for Jury Duty. I had various concerns on my mind. I would like to be on a jury; I take my civic duty seriously. However, the next day I was supposed to be heading off for vacation. I hoped that I would either get picked for a jury that would start after vacation or that I would at least fulfill my responsibility and wouldn’t have to report the next day.
In many ways, I am an unlikely jury candidate. I am self-employed and a long trial would present a significant hardship. I am a blog, and a friend of mine who is a defense lawyer said she does not like to get bloggers on her juries. With close relatives that are retired law enforcement officers and numerous other situations, I did not expect to end up on a jury.
It had been many years since I had performed my last jury duty. That was in an old court house in Stamford. The jurors were led to a dungy basement room for their orientation and to await selection. Back then, I commented about how jury duty is important and jurors should be treated with more respect.
The New Haven Superior Court House was very different. We took the juror’s elevator, specifically designed to keep jurors away from discussions in the court house halls to one of the top floors of the court house. The seating was nice as was the views. They provided coffee, but unfortunately, I could not find any decaf, so I abstained. Various people worked on their laptops or chatted on their cellphones as they awaited instructions. I had considered bringing my laptop, but had decided against it and I never did find out if there was open WiFi there.
The orientation video and the various speeches by judicial officials were quick and not annoying despite the appellation of indoctrination that a friend of mine used. The friend also had claustrophobia and the small closed in rooms for the jury ended up getting her excused. I did not find the rooms so constraining.
As I waited to be called, I placed various phone calls and got a surprising amount of work done.
The trial I was selected for was of Anthony Maio, a New Haven Police Officer accused of fourth degree sexual assault. I remembered reading about this in the New Haven Independent, although I didn’t recall a substantial amount of details.
Initially, a group of about eighteen potential jurors were lead into the court room. We were told the names of lawyers and potential witnesses and asked if we knew anyone. Many of the witnesses are expected to be police officers and one of the potential jurors was a former police commissioner who knew many of the police officers. He was asked if his knowledge of the officers would affect is ability to render a fair and impartial decision, and he said he did not believe it did. The judge explored the relationship between the commissioner and the officers and in the end decided to err on the side of caution and excuse the former police commissioner. Others spoke of minor acquaintances with various lawyers or potential witnesses but these relationships were not significant enough to warrant excusal.
The next question to the whole pool was if being on the case would result in extreme hardship. The case is scheduled to start on August 3, so it would not mess up my vacation and it is expected to only run for a week or two, so the lost consulting income could be minimized. I deliberated in my mind about whether the hardship it would produce would be extreme and I decided it would not be. A few people spoke of extreme hardship and were questioned individually. I believe they were excused, but I do not know for a fact.
With these questions out of the way, the judge then excused a few more potential jurors that he believed could not be interviewed simply because of the amount of time available for interviews. The rest of us were broken into two groups. One group was to stay and be questioned immediately. The other could leave and return after lunch. Since one of the lawyers had a conflicting court appearance at two, the return time was scheduled to be three.
I was in the second group, so I returned home and did a little bit of work. My wife was home, so I chatted briefly with her about the case, and I responded to various comments on Facebook and Twitter where I had posted bits about the first part of my jury experience.
The Scarlet Badge – Jury Selection in the Anthony Maio Case
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 07/22/2009 - 10:41I spent yesterday in jury duty and was selected for the Anthony Maio Case. New Haven Police Officer Anthony Maio is accused of two counts of Fourth Degree Sexual Contact without Consent and two counts of Second Degree Unlawful Constraint in an incident where he allegedly groped two Yale Students in a private bathroom at the nightclub, BAR one evening.
During Voir Dire, I was questioned by the attorneys and Judge Blue about my knowledge of the case and my ability to deliver a fair and unbiased decision. It was a very interesting set of questions that I think are very illustrative of the considerations that should be made in selecting jurors and I hope to write a detailed account later.
I had a certain amount of knowledge about the case before being empanelled as well as a friendship with the Mayor and certain reporters that have covered the case. While I believe that I could most likely have separated in my mind what is presented as evidence and what I know beforehand, what the law says and what is right and any feelings I have about people involved in the process, including journalists and politicians, it would be reasonable for people to doubt if I could be fair and impartial and I believe that the judge did the correct thing in excusing me from serving on the jury, as much as I would have been interested in serving on that jury.
During my questioning, I mentioned my role in 2005 as BlogMaster for Mayor DeStefano’s Gubernatorial campaign, and last night people search on this and read my blog post from when I started in that role. I hope that people who read that will come back to read future posts about the case.
Besides writing about my experience in the jury selection process, I am considering attending parts of the trial and writing about it, if I can work it into my schedule. The trial raises many interesting questions that I believe would make good material for blog posts.
I will be off at the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival for the next several days. After I return, the trial is scheduled to start on August 3. However, there is a UNESCO conference at UConn the same week and I am sure I will have plenty of other things to work on, so I will have to carefully balance my schedule.
