Osler's Razor

Last night was an interesting and unique night. Along with about 50-some others, I traveled down to Hearne for the showing of American Violet at the town where most of the events shown in the movie actually occurred. It was fascinating to sit among the people who had lived this experience and see them react-- it was quite emotional.

Tonight, American Violet will show at the Mayborn Museum at 7:30, free. After the screening, I will lead a discussion with my former student David Moore and Will Patton, who plays him in the the movie. You may remember Will Patton from this scene:

One of the things that has stumped me about "American Violet" is the title. Originally, it was to be called "American Inquisition," which made more sense to me. There is a scene where a main character cares for some African Violets, but that didn't seem so connected to the story for me.

As usual, I find myself blessed with friends who are more insightful than I am. Paul Larson, the Spanish Medievalist and one of the best teachers I know, offers this cogent and convincing explanation after seeing the film in Hearne last night:

We (whites) call them African Americans, but nobody calls us European Americans. By calling attention to the racial difference, we create space, racial space, that gives us power over them. We create a "lesser" American. Read Brown v. Board of Education again and you'll see that the judges, although they don't say it directly, were trying to deal with the "separate but equal" idea because they knew that that idea was specious. By dividing us by race we are invoking tacit apartheid. So the "violet" in the film is American. The plant is the "African," and it symbolizes many things such as hope, beauty and love. The title is not obvious if you haven't seen the movie, but once you have, it's really quite poetic.

As we walked out of the movie, Paul also called to my attention the fact that Regina Kelley, upon whom the lead plaintiff character is based, was wearing violet that night.

Over just the next twenty days, I will be giving talks in various places on each of the following topics (in addition to my usual classes):

Federal clemency
The history of crack
The role of victim witnesses in criminal law
Civil discourse
The role of ritual in faith life
American Violet
Abortion

Only one is at St. Thomas; of the others, four are at other universities and two are at churches.

Looking at this list, I think a fair criticism might be that I lack focus. In short, how can I be an expert on anything, if I am addressing so many different things?

I think it is true that I am not a real expert in any of these, at least beyond the first two. Two of them (civil discourse and ritual and faith life) are topics that I have hardly exemplified, in fact. So, where do I get off talking about these things?

The lame answer is that I was asked to speak on each topic by a school or group, and said "yes." Still, can I have anything to offer?

I hope so, and have been pondering this. In the end, maybe when I speak about these things that are outside my core field, the best I have to offer are my own failures as a cautionary tale and the posing of good questions. The latter of these, especially, should not be under-rated.

Those who have read this space in the past know that at the core of Christianity I see a message of humility. It's telling the way that Jesus treated the learned "experts" of his time-- consistently, when we see Christ showing genuine contempt for someone, it was for them. When I read that, I realize that I should approach the things I talk about with a sense of humility, and the honest acknowledgement that there is probably more knowledge in the audience about my topic than I have brought with me. I certainly don't know more about abortion than the women in my audience; I don't know more about civil discourse than the laypeople and clergy I will address; I don't know more about racism than the African-American people who will be in the audience when I talk about American Violet; and I don't know more about ritual than the Catholic audience I will address about that topic.

Still, perhaps I will ask the right question, and that might just be as good as it gets.

For those of you who have not yet seen it (or those who have), the Waco Community Race Relations Coalition will be showing American Violet at the Texas Life Annex building, 1000 Washington St. in Waco, on Tuesday, Feb. 16, from 5:30-8:30, including discussion with myself and some others. Dinner will be served! If you would like to come, please call Jo Welter at 836-4599 and make a reservation. (You can check out some reviews here)

If you haven't seen the movie, I think you might like it. Among the stories revealed in the film is the real-life story of one of my first students, David Moore, who comes off as the real hero that he was. To be honest, he's one of the few people I know who is the subject of a heroic big-budget film, and it is a darn good one.

Also entertaining is the portrayal of me as a bolo-tie-wearing, cotton-eyed-joe-dancing Texas guy. At least it is better than the portrayal of me that one time on Star Trek...

As I've mentioned a bazillion times before, American Violet is opening on Friday in many cities (though sadly not in Waco or Detroit). This morning, there was a very good story on NPR about the showing in Hearne (the full story is at the audio link; the print version is highly annotated).

The movie was made, of course, because the writer (Bill Haney) originally heard about the case on NPR, so this is just things going full circle.

American Violet is now out on video, and you can get it here. It really is a good movie, and it (properly) makes Baylor Law seem like a great place.

If you find the movie inspiring, send a note of congratulations to David Moore, Baylor Law grad and one of the real heroes of the story. He deserves it. In this clip, you can see David's character, who is played in the movie by Will Patton.

I have received word that American Violet, the film about my former student David Moore (and which includes a few appearances by a bolo-tie-wearing, Cotton-eyed-Joe-dancing version of me) will be playing at the South By Southwest film festival in Austin on Sunday, March 15. That's the last day of Spring Break here at Baylor, but I may try to make a trip down to catch it...

National release for the movie will be in late April.

In addition to my classes (and so far they have been a lot of fun), I have three events this week:

1) American Violet showing on Tuesday, April 16

The Waco Community Race Relations Coalition will be showing American Violet at the Texas Life Annex building, 1000 Washington St. in Waco, on Tuesday, Feb. 16, from 5:30-8:30, including discussion with myself and some others. Dinner will be served! If you would like to come, please call Jo Welter at 836-4599 and make a reservation. (You can check out some reviews here).

2) Federal Panel CLE in El Paso, on Thursday, Feb. 18

Next up, on Thursday, I will be giving a talk on immigration sentencing issues to the federal criminal bar in El Paso, which I find to be a fascinating town.

3) The Texas Coalition Against the Death Penalty 2010 Conference on Saturday, February 20

Finally, on Saturday I will be addressing the TCADP at their annual conference in Dallas. I will be on a panel moderated by Michael Landauer, editor of the Dallas Morning News, along with Richard Dieter, Executive Director of the Death Penalty Information Center and Linda White of Murder Victims’ Families for Reconciliation. Linda and I testified together last June in Congress, and she is someone I greatly admire. If you would like to come to the conference, it is open to all-- simply register here.

Over at the American Violet website, they now have a solid list of what theaters will be showing the movie. It's a pretty interesting list-- but a little odd, too.

First the good news-- IPLawGuy, it will be playing right there by your old house, at the AMC Shirlington. It will also be playing at one of my favorite places, the Angelika in New York. It will also be showing all over Texas and California, where I'm sure there will be interest. There's something great about people in New York and California seeing "Baylor Law School" on the big screen.

But... here in Texas, it will be playing in Arlington, Bryan, Dallas, Frisco, Grapevine, Mesquite, Plano, at four places in Houston, in Humble, Stafford, and Sugarland but not Austin or Waco. Huh? At South by Southwest, the Austinites loved this movie! And I would think there will be interest here, giving the local angle. Weird.

Of course, in the realm of things I know nothing about, film distribution is very high on the list. It also could be that this list will change, and that a lot of other cities will be added to the list.

Ah, who knows. By the time mid-April rolls around I'm going to be well into a few new adventures... one of which saw some exciting developments today.

Some of you may remember the continuing saga of American Violet, the film which chronicles a case I worked on several years ago, and which largely focuses on the efforts of my former student, David Moore. I got to see the movie last month, and not only was it wonderful, but it portrays Baylor Law in a very favorable light. (The guy playing me wears a bolo tie and seems to be a good dancer, but I'm ok with those inaccuracies).

Last week, the film was picked up for distribution by Samuel Goldwyn Films. Given that it is a film about race and justice, I'm not surprised that this deal was completed just after the election. What this means is that the movie will make it out into theaters sometime in March.

As I have said before, what David did is a great story that deserves to be told, and the filmmakers did a great job with it.

The movie based on a case I worked on with David Moore and others, American Violet, opened yesterday at the Telluride Film Festival. Not that I know a lot about these things, but I think that's a good sign. Many great movies (ie, Juno and Brokeback Mountain) had their first showing at Telluride.

It also looks like the movie got a primo spot-- showing first on Friday at the largest theater in town (The Palm). It's also one of only two films by US filmmakers to get a showing at the festival.

Sadly, I don't think Baylor ever gave permission to use its name, which is too bad since we do come off as the good guys in this one.

The whole thing just makes me want to go skiing.

Over at Samuel Goldwyn Films' website, they now have some stills up from American Violet, including this one which shows our characters doing a little church-dancing. Christopher McCann (playing "Professor Joe Fisher") is in the middle, while David's character ("Sam Conroy") is played by Will Patton, on the far left.

While Will Patton does a pretty good David Moore impersonation, you may notice some dis-similarities between "Joe Fisher" and myself. In addition, David's role in both the movie and the actual case were much larger than mine. Nonetheless, I'm proud to note that the blond in the middle seems to think I'm the better dancer.

There were some great haiku last Friday on a subject never covered before: Prince.

Fan fave the Medievalist offered this one:

Now doves are crying,
The great purple one is gone,
In his red Corvette.

Rene had a good story:

When I met him,me
In flight goddess guise,Hulk Hogan
His body guard,mouthpiece,

He wore violet
Knickers,& lavender poet
Shirt. "PRINCE would like a

Coke," Hulk said. Prince had
Eyelashes coated with gunk.
He was petite. This vignette

Rubbed me the wrong way.
So I did not make myself
Vulnerable to his music.

So did David Best:

Jehova's Witness,
few knew he was. But one day
he knocked on their door.

They were orthodox Jews,
it was Yom Kippur, but they
were fans, pleased to talk.

Love as faith and love
as sex, the metaphors mixed
freely for this man.

But my favorite was this, from "Anonymous:"

Heartbreak Hill mantra
April, nineteen eighty five
I would die 4 you.

This morning, I had this piece on the op-ed page of The Minneapolis Star Tribune, my new hometown paper. Check out the comments-- very different than the type of responses I get in the Dallas Daily News or the Huffington Post (which are often wise and insightful, but also often pretty harsh). Here is a tidbit:

We may need to make minor personal sacrifices if we want drug abuse to go down. For example, the most promising effort in combating meth is what we have seen in Oregon. In 2004, there were about 400 incidents involving illegal meth labs in that state. In 2008, there were 20. Oregon made the cold medication pseudoephedrine, which is a key ingredient in illegal meth, available by prescription only. This kind of regulatory approach doesn't fill the prisons, but it does solve the problem. So why don't other states follow Oregon's lead? In part, because people don't want the hassle of getting a prescription for a cold medication.

Through former student Jim Dedman, I also had an interview on the Abnormal Use Blog yesterday. Jim was in my very first class on Criminal Practice, along with David Moore. Interestingly, Jim went on to make an excellent movie about the Baylor Law experience ("Pleadings"), while David became the subject of a major motion picture which was set in part at Baylor Law ("American Violet," which I mention in the interview). Here is an excerpt:

5. If you could offer young lawyers beginning their careers one piece of advice, what would it be?

Pick the right mentor. Find someone with enthusiasm for what they do, who views his or her work as a calling of some kind. Do not accept a jaded mentor, or cynicism about the practice of law. If there is no one like that in your firm, you are not in a good place. If that’s where you are, well, we have room for you in criminal law, where there are plenty of true believers on both sides of the bar.

Yesterday I went to a funeral. Dawn Harrell was an author and minister, editor, mother and wife. She contracted cancer at 48 and leaves behind my friend Daniel and their daughter Violet, who is in fifth grade.

In a recent post, Daniel mentioned that his wife was a believer in "letting darkness do its work," in the sense of letting grief be whole and real. There is deep truth in that.

I know people who treat everything like a funeral: they see sadness in everything, and are attuned primarily to the tragedy that is always present or near. I also know people who tend to treat everything like a wedding. Both of these views encompass a fair amount of denial. Both darkness and light need to do their work.

In a very literal sense, we are never in total darkness. Nor are we ever completely in light. There is darkness about us, in shadow, on the brightest day. Even the darkest night offers pinpricks of light.

But there is a time to mourn, and a time for joy. And we must let each do its work.

Several months ago, I mentioned that I was working on a big project. Today, that project is finally unveiled.

Last April, Baylor Law student Sid Earnheart did an amazing thing. He organized a meeting in Washington DC that involved some of America's top appellate lawyers, advocacy groups, experts in the pardon power (including a former U.S. Pardon Attorney), and lobbyists. The purpose of this meeting was to start a project in which we would push President Obama to use the power of pardon and commutation in a principled way. Specifically, we wanted him to use that power to correct the oversentencing of many people in crack cases. The administration already had asserted that they thought that crack should be sentenced in the same way as powder cocaine cases.

In starting this project, Sid and I were reacting to the unprincipled way that the two previous administrations have used that power.

Today, we will file the first petition for commutation on behalf of Hamedah Hasan. This petition was prepared (extremely well) by lawyers at the ACLU's Drug Law Reform Project, with whom I collaborated previously in the case that ended up being chronicled in the film American Violet.

To check out the Hamedah petition and get an idea of what the project is all about, check out the web site.

Yesterday's talk at New York Ave. Presbyterian Church in DC was a wonderful adventure. I loved the church and the audience. During worship service, they graciously asked me to sit in Lincoln's pew, which was a strangely moving experience. I think that, and the sincerity of the service itself, helped me to amp up the lecture a notch.

In more local news, Julie Hays at KWTX-TV has put together a great two-part series about the Hearne case which served as the basis for the movie American Violet. The series will run on Tuesday and Wednesday of this week at 10 pm on Channel 10 in Waco. Here is one of the promo spots for the series:

Yeah, I'm still obsessed with the Sham-Wow ad.

But before we get to that... Samuel Goldwyn Films has provided me with a bus to go see American Violet in Hearne on St. Patrick's Day, which is Tuesday, March 17. Will Patton and some of the other actors in the movie will be there, along with the director, the writer, and several of the people portrayed in the movie. The bus will leave from the front of the law school at 4:30 pm. If you want to ride the bus and see the movie (all for free), either say that in haiku form below, or email me at mark_w_osler@baylor.edu.

Here are this week's topics:

1) Panda with a sham-wow
2) Sham-wow stimulus
3) Pandas in 1989
4) Walter Matthau's sham-wow
5) Bad News Pandas
6) The Fugitive Disentitlement Doctrine


Or, whatever the heck you want.

Here is mine:

Vince, the Sham-Wow guy,
I hope you sell a billion
Maybe I'll take two.

Now it is your turn...

Last night for reasons I can't explain I stayed up late watching "Fast Times at Ridgemont High," which has to be one of the most interesting kinda-bad movies ever. The story is just so wrong in so many ways-- teens doing all kinds of things they shouldn't, with no consequences-- but you still like them.

The cast is astounding. One strange thing is that the two male leads (Brian Backer and Robert Romanus) had careers after that, but nothing like many of the people who played other characters. Besides people you wouldn't expect, like Bruce Springsteen's sister Pamela, Nancy Wilson of the band Heart, and Lana Clarkson (the woman Phil Spector was just convicted of killing), the film features all of the following in roles large and small (mostly small):

Sean Penn
Phoebe Cates
Jennifer Jason Leigh
Nicholas Cage
Judge Reinhold
Forest Whitaker
Eric Stoltz
Anthony Edwards

So there you have it-- a stupid stoner sex movie that includes three Oscar winners for best actor (Penn, Cage, and Whitaker). Wow!

So, here's the haiku:

America calls
To you, Spicoli! We need
You (and your bagel).

Now, it is your turn...
[And while you are thinking of movies, if you saw American Violet in Hearne feel free to hop over to Yahoo movies and give it a review]

American Violet (you have to check it out, the national reviews are GREAT):

New York Observer
New York Times
Washington Post
Washington Times
Los Angeles Times
Entertainment Weekly
Roger Ebert
Examiner.com

Jesus on Death Row:

MTL Magazine
Beliefnet
iMonk
United Methodeviations
Publishers Weekly
Between Sundays
Hearts and Minds
W & M

Spears v. United States:

Baylor Line
Waco Trib
Simple Justice
Sentencing Law and Policy
Fifth Circuit blog
Supreme Court blog