have been reading this

Duke Students for an Ethical Duke

Dunbarton, SC

My grandfather was born in Boston, but he grew up in Dunbarton, SC. Dunbarton no longer exists because the Federal government built a nuclear materials processing center there in 1950, at the Savannah River Site.

Crack babies

Johnson v. State, 602 So. 2d 1288 (Fla. 1992)

Jennifer Clarice Johnson was convicted under a Florida statute that made it unlawful to "deliver" a controlled substance to another person. During her first pregnancy, Johnson admitted to having ingested crack on the day night before her delivery. During her second pregnancy, she had a crack overdose having ingested $200 worth of crack cocaine and was hospitalized. The next month she admitted to having smoked crack when she was in labor. Johnson was convicted for having "delivered" crack to her baby through the umbilical cord after the baby was born but before the cord was severed.

Chief Justice Major B. Harding delivered the opinion of the Florida Supreme Court overturning the conviction, in part, because:

The Legislature considered and rejected a specific statutory provision authorizing criminal penalties against mothers for delivering drug-affected children who received transfer of an illegal drug derivative metabolized by the mother's body, in utero. In light of this express legislative statement, I conclude that the Legislature never intended for the general drug delivery statute to authorize prosecutions of those mothers who take illegal drugs close enough in time to childbirth that a doctor could testify that a tiny amount passed from mother to child in the few seconds before the umbilical cord was cut. Criminal prosecution of mothers like Johnson will undermine Florida's express policy of "keeping families intact" and could destroy the family by incarcerating the child's mother when alternative measures could protect the child and stabilize the family. Johnson, 1294.

The Center for Reproductive Law and Policy represented Johnson. Litigation director for the CRLP Lynn Paltrow said "It's a great victory for public health, for women and newborns and common sense." Tamar Lewin, Mother Cleared of Passing Drug to Babies, N.Y. Times, July 24, 1992.

1. "Keeping families intact"
2. "Criminal prosecution of mothers like Johnson...could destroy the family"
3. "A great victory for...newborns and common sense"

Well it doesn't make sense to me.

My case book offers this wisdom from Prof. Dorothy Roberts:

Prosecution of crack-addicted mothers diverts attention from social ills such as poverty, racism, and a misguided national health policy and implies instead that shamefully high Black infant death rates are caused by the bad acts of individual mothers. Punishing Durg Addicts Who Have Babies: Women of Color, Equality, and the Right of Privacy, 104 Harv. L. Rev. 1419, 1436 (1991). Reprinted in Kaplan, John, et al. Criminal Law: Cases and Materials. 5th ed. 2004. p. 130.

I see.

Today

was the first day back in classes...it made me really exhausted

but some fine words from Blackstone as cited in Proctor v. State 176 P. 771 (1918): "no temporal tribunal can search the heart, or fathom the intention of the mind"

"And who is my neighbor?"

Haley v. London Electricity Board, House of Lords, 1964. [1965] A.C. 778, [1964] 3 W.L.R. 479, 3 All E.R. 185.

London, 1956. Haley had been blind for many years due to an accident and used a walking stick to help him get around in the city. He worked as a telephonist for London County Council. Every day, he walked unaccompanied the 100 yards between his home and the bus. On the morning of October 29, the London Electricity Board was excavating a trench in the pavement. Haley walked by. The London Electricity Board's workmen had put up a punner that was only about ankle height as a makeshift barrier in front of the trench. Haley missed the obstacle with his stick and tripped over the obstacle and fell into the hole. Evidence was brought forward at trial to show that there were 7,321 totally blind people registered under the National Assistance Act of 1948 in London and showed that it was statistically "likely" that a blind person would walk by while the work was being done. There was evidence that they usually used little fences to protect against similar kinds of accidents, but that on that particular day, the fences had not been delivered.. Relying on this evidence, the court held that the defendants owed a "measure of care appropriate to the inability or disability of those who are immature or feeble in mind or body" when they knew of or ought to have "anticipate[d] the presence of such persons within the scope and hazard of their own operations"

Parable of the Good Samaritan, Luke 10:25-37

And, behold, a certain lawyer stood up, and tempted him, saying, Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? He said unto him, What is written in the law? how readest thou? And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself. And he said unto him, Thou hast answered right: this do, and thou shalt live. But he, willing to justify himself, said unto Jesus, And who is my neighbour? And Jesus answering said, A certain [man] went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded [him], and departed, leaving [him] half dead. And by chance there came down a certain priest that way: and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. And likewise a Levite, when he was at the place, came and looked [on him], and passed by on the other side.But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was: and when he saw him, he had compassion [on him], And went to [him], and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him. And on the morrow when he departed, he took out two pence, and gave [them] to the host, and said unto him, Take care of him; and whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come again, I will repay thee. Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves? And he said, He that shewed mercy on him. Then said Jesus unto him, Go, and do thou likewise.

Leviticus 19:14

Thou shalt not curse the deaf, nor put a stumblingblock before the blind, but shalt fear thy God: I [am] the LORD.

Woodey, Edlean, Randy, and Rhett Searle

In 1955, 19 years before their marriage sadly ended in divorce, the Searles, of Searle Bros. v. Searle, 588 P.2d 689 (Utah 1978) (Contained in Professor Yeazell's Civil Procedure textbook), were involved in an earlier suit in re a certain Abe Greenband. Porter v. Searle, 228 F.2d 748.
The Searles sold to Abe Greenband all the merchandise in their retail store, Searle's Saving Center in Vernal, Utah.

Greenband made a down payment and then monthly payments on the merchandise and the Searles held a mortgage on the merchandise. Within four months of filing for bankruptcy, Greenband surrendered the merchandise to the sellers in satisfaction of the balance due on their contract. The Searles discharged their lien and released the debtor from any further obligation. The bankruptcy trustee sought to have the transfer to the Searles set aside on the ground that it constituted a voidable transfer under 11 U.S.C.S. § 96. The trustee appealed from an adverse judgment. The court affirmed. The court concluded that the lien and the delivery of the merchandise in satisfaction did not constitute a preferential transfer. The court determined that the delivery of the merchandise to the debtor constituted present consideration for the balance of the purchase price and the equitable lien that came into being to secure the same. The court found that the merchandise was not surrendered to perfect the sellers' lien, but to satisfy the debt secured by the lien and to discharge the lien.

I don't really know what all of that means right now.

Anyhoo, the original pre-divorce Searles, in 1965, are above on the left of the picture.

The extended Searle family is involved in a sport called horse cutting. See here, too. Woodey owned a World Champion Cutting Horse named "Holey Sox". (Woodey is holding a picture of Holey Sox in the above picture)

Woodey B. Searle died on Jan. 31, 2002, survived by his sweetheart Vonetta Schanno Searle. They were married June 14, 1974. Their marriage was later solemnized in the Provo LDS Temple.

I wonder about Edlean; what happened to her.

The Highwayman-a bunch of lace at his chin

From Restatement (Second) of Torts § 31 (1965), comment d

"Even apart from such cases where the words indicate the intent of an act, there may be other situations in which the words themselves, without any accompanying gesture, are sufficient under the circumstances to arouse a reasonable apprehension of imminent bodily contact. Words are never spoken in a vacuum, and they cannot be utterly divorced from past conduct, or from the accompanying circumstances. An entirely motionless highwayman, standing with a gun in his hand and crying "Stand and deliver!" creates quite as much apprehension as one who draws the gun; and any rule which insists upon such a gesture as essential to liability is obviously quite artificial and unreasonable."

From Alfred Noyes' the Highwayman (1906):

                                    I

The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees,
The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
The road was a ribbon of moonlight, over the purple moor,
And the highwayman came riding-
              Riding-riding-
The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door.

                              II
He'd a French cocked-hat on his forehead, a bunch of lace at his chin,
A coat of the claret velvet, and breeches of brown doe-skin;
They fitted with never a wrinkle: his boots were up to the thigh!
And he rode with a jewelled twinkle,
              His pistol butts a-twinkle,
His rapier hilt a-twinkle, under the jewelled sky.

        ****

                                X
And still of a winter's night, they say, when the wind is in the trees,
When the moon is a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
When the road is a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
A highwayman comes riding-
              Riding-riding-
A highwayman comes riding, up to the old inn-door.

                              XI
Over the cobbles he clatters and clangs in the dark inn-yard,
And he taps with his whip on the shutters, but all is locked and barred;
He whistles a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there
But the landlord's black-eyed daughter,
              Bess, the landlord's daughter,
Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.