The Maximum Leader asks a very interesting question.
Since our Maximum Leader is a cheapskate who would prefer to buy lightsabers and Darth Taters instead of chipping out for some blogging software that enables comments, and who is too lazy to put freebie Haloscan comments on his blog, I find I am forced to bring this over to my blog. cough cough, link whore.
To answer the Maximum Leader's question: yes, his friend should have given the relative up. No offense to Joe for having principles, but a year of hard time in a federal penitentiary and a year on work release is too much to pay for said principles. He should have saved his own ass, particularly since his relative wasn't owning up to his part in the whole matter and it was obvious they were going to do their darndest to make him cooperate because they had no other evidence against the relative. (Although, one does wonder about how they knew to show up at Joe's door.) The law of self-preservation reigns supreme when dealing with the criminal justice system.
And believe me, I know about these things.
You cannot trust prosecutors. You cannot trust public defenders. You cannot trust anyone other than the lawyer you hire (and you'd better hire a good one, even if you're an auxilary portion of any case) and yourself. That is the extent of it. No one other than yourself matters.
Is this selfish? Yep. You bet. I'm sorry for it, but that's just the way the world works, particularly the legal world. And people will take advantage if you're not looking out for yourself. This is how I suspect Joe wound up in a world of hurt over a plasma tv. I also suspect Joe is regretting this decision every day of his life. The poor guy.
I don't like the idea of rewarding tattlers, like the school system in the Max Leader's original link is advocating, with parking spots and other school perks. Methinks that the kid who parks their car in the designated tattler spot will get their ass kicked sooner rather than later. No one likes a narc, after all, nor should they, and kids are remarkably good at sussing this sort of thing out. In that situation, the tattler is doing it for perks, rather than because it's the right thing to do. But when you must save your own ass? Well, that's a different deal altogether. You are in trouble and you have suddenly found yourself with a piece of very much wanted information: this is your bargaining power. You must use it to save yourself. You must.
Why?
Because if the shoe was on the other foot, you could bet your last dollar the other guy would be spilling the beans.
Posted by Kathy at April 27, 2005 12:34 AMJust so you know... My template does not accept Haloscan comments. I've tried them. They do not work. I'm investigating a site redesign and moving to MT.
Posted by: The Maximum Leader at April 27, 2005 08:49 AMHALLE-FREAKIN'-LU-JAH!
Seriously, I'm glad to hear this. Sorry if I prodded a sore spot :)
Posted by: Kathy at April 27, 2005 09:04 AMSorry if I prodded a sore spot :)
Don't be. Someone needed to light a fire under his Maximum Arse.
Posted by: Brian B at April 27, 2005 09:59 AMWell, I kind of agree with you re: Joe's situation. Any family that would not only require but demand that kind of loyalty isn't a family anyway so the loyalty/tattling thing would have been moot. I also agree with you about trusting authority. Did Joe entirely trust what he was being told by the authorities? What kind of credibilty, street or otherwise, do the authorities have in his neck of the woods? And just why wasn't there any bargaining chips anywhere around? Next question: what did Joe do to his relative after he got out of jail? Surely Joe must have had his suspicions when the cops came to his house. Was said relative anywhere around to absorb any sort of retribution? Or did the cops finally nab him on some other charge all of which would have negated the action against Joe? That is, if the authorities knew how to function at all let alone with any sense.
Some time ago I was a member of a graduate school class which was told by a pre-eminent professor that sometimes the worst thing you could do was to call the authorities to resolve a child endangerment situation. One had to first look at the track record of the police and the social service unit, then decide. That may have been what Joe was kind of doing.
Posted by: Maggie at April 27, 2005 10:52 AMMy policy? I figure that you should stonewall for awhile hoping that your deadbeat relative comes clean. No way in he-double hockey sticks do you do the time for another person's crime, unless you were an accomplice. I've always heard that pilots and other military personnel who are more likely to get captured are told that resisting torture is impossible - the best they can hope for is to hold out long enough for the information they have to become worthless.
I've never been in this situation, so I've never had to put my money where my mouth is. I've been on both sides regarding light vandalism back in my teenage years (soaping windows, etc.), and I took the whole load on myself when I got caught. No big deal, we didn't break anything, so all I had to do is clean up a mess. In the instance where I wasn't the one to get caught, I wasn't even involved with the deed - the guy who was driving got braced by the cops & started naming names in a panic. He named everyone who he'd spoken to for the last month, at least 20 people. The cops thought they'd broken up a freakin' cult until they started questioning us one by one.
Oh, yeah. That's probably too much information, right?
Posted by: Russ from Winterset at April 27, 2005 03:00 PM