OLEAN -- It is a growing contention in my mind that the American justice system, among other segments of our society, is screwed up beyond belief.
Over the weekend, I noticed a story about some guy in Patchogue on Long Island who was sentenced -- if you could call it that -- for shooting a Masonic Lodge initiate and father of five point blank through the nose last March with a .32-caliber handgun. It killed the initiate.
The shooter, a past master of the Masonic group, got five years probation.
Albert Eid, 77, in pleading guilty to criminally negligent homicide, said he mistakenly pulled the loaded gun from one pants pocket instead of a .22-caliber pistol filled with blanks from the other pants pocket during a secret initiation ritual designed to scare the new member.
Ahhh, the old wrong pocket excuse. Works every time. Never mind that the shooter had owned the larger caliber weapon for 53 years and should have known what it felt like in his hand.
And what was he doing carrying a loaded handgun to a lodge meeting anyway? The explanation offered -- that it was to be shown to the novice to make him understand the weapon was real and was loaded -- doesn't make much sense.
Would anybody sit still in a chair seriously believing they were about to be shot? Higher state Masonic poohbahs said loaded weapons are not a sanctioned part of their initiation rituals.
The victim, a mapmaker named William James, 47, was sitting about 20 feet in front of Eid, facing him. Beside the novice's head was a small platform with tin cans on it. Behind him, out of sight supposedly, was another Mason with a stick. When the gun went off, explained Eid to the cops, the guy behind the initiate was supposed to sweep the cans off the platform with a stick to make the initiate think actual bullets had been fired.
Gee, how clever and scary can you get? Does Stephen King know about this? Turns out Eid didn't need the guy with the stick.
A few days earlier in the Buffalo News was a story about a 60-year-old Clarence man who last May stabbed his wife to death in their bathroom for no apparent reason. He copped to manslaughter and got six years in prison. He'll be out in about five, having been given credit for time served. The Erie County District Attorney allowed the plea bargain. The stabber had a history of mental problems, said the story, but had never been diagnosed with long-term mental illness, nor spent any time in an institution for it.
A few pages away, in the same edition of that paper, a story described how a 22-year-old high school dropout and former special-education student was sentenced to 22 years in prison for invading a home at the behest of a friend who thought a rival drug dealer was there -- and for shooting someone (who recovered) with a .22-caliber rifle after forcing others present to engage in sex.
OK, fair enough. But aren't capital crimes supposed to be the more serious in our system?
One can use the Internet to quickly find other examples of questionably disparate sentencing. They usually turn on what segment of society the perp belongs to and how well-connected he is. Yes, dear reader, some strata of American society are more elite than others.
Let's look at the Masonic "mishap." The Long Island cops also found a guillotine, a wooden plank and some mousetraps in the Masonic Lodge induction room where Eid plugged the initiate.
The mysterious Masonic rites are supposed to be secrets kept since the Middle Ages and are said to revolve around a theme of birth-death-rebirth. One of the Long Island members, however, told a British newspaper that initiates were instructed to hold two mousetraps while being told one worked and the other did not.
When another member would touch the first, it would not snap, leading the initiate to believe the other trap was the more dangerous one. He would then be commanded to put his finger in the second and still-loaded trap -- which also turned out to be broken. This, said the member, was designed to move the initiate to believe he was in good hands and had nothing to fear.
Well, ahem. If this all sounds incredibly silly to you, don't feel alone.
My father was in the Masons. I never took much notice of his membership, except at Christmas when he'd take me to his lodge's big Yuletide party, where scores of kids would be handed swell toys and games by a fake Santa.
My father was a fun-loving man, yet a serious, independent and intelligent paper mill manager. I can't see him sitting still while some blustering poser waves a handgun in front of him just to intimidate. I once saw him clock a guy boasting about taking "sound shots" (exceedingly stupid and dangerous rifle shots at unidentified noises that might be deer in the woods) during hunting season. So I'm halfway ready to believe the state Masonic officials who say that gunplay is not routine during induction ceremonies.
On the other hand, Long Island members told police the initiation custom of using guns with blanks goes back almost seven decades. Maybe it's a regional thing.
Talk about elite. Many of the founding fathers were in the Masons, and there have been 16 Masonic presidents, including George Washington, Andrew Jackson, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman. You can find references to George Bush the Elder and his son President George W. Bush as Masons, but they are not.
They were sworn in with a Bible that belonged to a famous New York City lodge, leading to some reportorial confusion. The other factor leading to this mistaken belief is the father-son membership in the secret and powerful Yale University society Skull and Bones, which also has closely guarded induction ceremonies filled with mumbo-jumbo and supposedly scary rituals.
Bonesmen, as they are called, during initiation purportedly have to give long, detailed accounts of their personal sexual histories to their peers, and neophytes are subjected to lying in coffins and watching fake killings, while older members run around with swords and skulls and such. There are only 15 new members each year. Dubya's unsuccessful opponent last November -- Democratic Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts -- is also a Bonesman. Neither Dubya nor Kerry will talk about Skull and Bones, except to acknowledge lifelong membership.
There are many other famous Skull and Bones members now deceased: President William Howard Taft, New York Gov. Averell Harriman, Oklahoma University President and U.S. Sen. David Boren, "Time" magazine founder Henry Luce, author William F. Buckley and catsup magnate John Heinz II. The new head of the Securities and Exchange Commission appointed by Bush is William Donaldson, a fellow Bonesman.
I've only belonged to one "secret" organization -- the Order of the Arrow in Boy Scouts.
Some senior scout "taps" you out of a ring of peers sitting around a roaring evening bonfire at summer camp by smacking you over the shoulder with a heavy arrow.
You are sternly lectured about looming adult responsibility and self-sufficiency, and then led away into the woods to spend the night alone (you are allowed a sleeping bag). You have to find your way back to camp the next morning, which isn't too hard, since you're only a couple hundred yards away. Then you have to spend the day in manual toil on some scout project. Mine was clearing a field of wild raspberry bushes with my bare hands.
Then you are taught a secret handshake and a secret identifying greeting, supposedly in Native American dialect. (I can't remember the exact pronunciation.) Oh, and they give you a nice red-and-white sash with an arrow on it to wear atop your Boy Scout uniform.
This all happened about half a century ago, but I've been surprised at how many new acquaintances in adult life -- usually "successful" individuals -- were also Order of the Arrow members.
The point of all this is to note the egalitarian ideal that was drummed into us in eighth-grade civics class -- that all Americans stand an equal chance in the criminal justice system under our laws -- is in tatters. Oh, I know -- I'm naive and dopey and pinheaded and blind to the need for special measures in perilous times.
All I know is this. If I'm asked to bet which of three perps charged with the same serious crime -- a Mason, a Bonesman or a dropout street kid -- gets the longest sentence, I'll bet on the street kid every time.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | Jan. 11 2005 |