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Show The Salt Lake Tribune, Saturday, March 9, 1974 19 Anthony Lewis Law Shaping U.S. Political Future In President Impeachment Move New York Times Sen ice WASHINGTON The cerernonul courtroom of the U.S. Courthouse rang w ith phrases about the historic character 'f the case. 1 This is the first time in 100 years," Philip Lacovara of the special prosecutors office said to John J. Judge that the Sinca, country has faced the possibility of impeaching a Presi- dent. scene may have been somethng so acin our culture that it went without cepted being remarked upon. That was the simple fact that the political future of the United States was being shaped by considerations cf law Tested ' President Nixons lawyer, James St. Clair, agreed that it was indeed an unusual case," bringing before the judge representatives of the three branches of government: himself for the executive, John Doar and Ubert Jenner for Congress Lacovara for a grand jury and thus the system of justice But the most remarkable aspe"t of the in Law Americans have been turning political issues into questions of law and the Constitution for so long that we no longer realise how unusual that is. The reach of the federal government and the states, and then prothe right to limit tect the freed blacks, the power to tax all these and a hundred and spend other great political problems have been tested in terms of law in our history. Just now the Bnttsh have had what they call a dilemma: whether constitutional Prime Mi'ister Heath should re'ign ePer an inconclusive general election. But no one in Britain would have dreamt of putting the question to a court. No country does such things. William Raspberry Parole Setups Fail Miserably In Both Theory, Practice The Washington Post WASHINGTON Parole is a tragic failure and ought to be (A) drastically reformed and (B) abolished. - That, in a sentence, is the conclusion of a Citizens Inquiry into Parole and Criminal Jus-tic- e after a year and of looking into parole as practiced in New ork state. one-ha- lf but as the report summary observes, the usual response to the gap between the image and the reality of parole is to assume the validity of the theory and to recommend reforms in the way, practice. It is the theory that is wrong. The we dont know what personality flaws turn people to crime in the first place, so Wc dont know what kind of treatment program is likely to work, or when we are close enough to cure that we can rely on the services of parole to finish the job. truth is, rf Rate Not Much Different Nearly every of the Lading group, headed by former Atty. Gen. Ramsey Clark, can be applied to parole systems in every state as well as to the federal system e In a summary of its study, released this week, the citizens Inquiry condemns parole as poorly conand ceived, inefficiently implemented arbitrarily administered and contends that it does little or no discernible good But you cant just wipe it out. To abolish parole because of its demonstrated irrationality and harm and leave the rest of the process as it presently exists would cause even more harm, the report concludes. Fault Lies in Theory The major fault of parole is the fault of corrections theory generally: The notion that criminality is treatable on a medical model. It begins with the assumption that criminality is the result of personality defects or disorders in the individual criminal. Correctional institutions (which turn out to look very much like prisons) are established to diagnose and treat those disorders. And at the optimum moment in that treatment process the moment at which an offender is least the oflikely to commit new offenses that is, he is refender is paroled leased into the community, but under benevolent supervision in order to help him complete his readjustment to good citizenship. Everybody knows it doesn't work that don't know much of anything, really, except that the rearrest rates for former inmates released on parole is not encouragingly different from those released after full service of sentence. We Let me offer a quickie test for those confused over the applicability of medical models for criminals: Would the "patient pay for the services being offered if he had the money? Send a man to a hospital fer treatment of. say, tuberculosis; then retain him as an outpatient during his rehabilitation, and he is likely to suppose that you are doing it for his good as well as for society's. And If he could afford it. he would pay for the service, or something very close to it. But make the disease a predisposition to criminality; transform the sanitarium into a correctional institution, and substitute parole for outpatient care. Would anybody in his nght mind buy it? Of course not, and not for the reasons that most parole reform efforts address. There are good people on parole boards. There are attempts at making the grantby spelling ing of parole less arbitrary out reasons for denial, for instance. There are efforts to weed racial and political consideration out of the parole process. There are moves to increase the amount of investigation and recordkeeping and responsiveness For what is basically wrong is the utter inability of parole board members however and intelligent to predict whe will and who will not commit new offenses. g One advantage of a pohrcul system like Britain's, where legitimacy rests in Parliament, is that political change comes easier. A pnme minister is in one diy and out the next, and no one turns a hair. Queen and Parliament are the threads of continuity, and shifts of pow er are part of a process so familiar that it is unfrightemng. 1 f More Familiar Much has been said about the American publics fear of impeachment as a strange and untried device It is fear of the unfamiliar, really, and understandable enough. But the hearing before Judge Sinca suggested that the idea is quickly becoming more familiar, more comfortable, and that one reason is its infusion with characteristic American legalism. 4 T like you Yanks did in your last election! lesser of two evils It was striking to noike in that courtpicked room how easily the word "impeachment was Used. Less than six months ago, in that same room, Archibald Cox was arguing for the grand jurys right to hear President Nixon's tapes. The idea By Theodore M. Bernstein of presidential culpability was still so Joint possession of joint. Let's say you no problem. But borne people find it a The answer is that the sign of possessive shocking then, so novel, that it was apis placed after the second name m a couple named Molhe and Joe a know indirect (or the proached gingerly, way problem when the name common to both last of the names if more than two are Today it came through loud and clear. to want and about talk the of them :s omitted and the first names Jones you involved). Thus you would write, Mollie Lawful Process alone are used; the question concerns place where they live. If you say, und Joes home" (or Adam, Smith and Not that any lawyer would speak cas"Mollie and Joe Jones's home, there is where the upostrophie Is to be placed. Robinsons book). ually of impeaching the President of the United States. But it is no longer an unthinkable thought. The whole thrust of the proceeding before Sinca was that impeachment was a lawful and neces"an ovemding constitusary process tional responsibility of the House, as Doar put it. The recent energy crunch) is not glio (or without its blessings. In fact, we may be them for years! I refer, of course, among other things to an apparent serendipitous solution to what others and I have considered for years as an epidemic, major pubbe health problem mainly the annua motor vehicle slaughter of' some 55,OU(W'0,OUO and the injury of an additional 2 million of our citizens petrol imbro- tha.-kin- The material costs soar into the billions, but what pnee a devoted and mother or a husband, a loving fine and promising son or daughter? ehiele Homicide comparison, motor vehicle deaths are exceeded only by cancer of the lung among the various malignancies and a: almost 70 percent higher than deaths an from leukemia andor lymphoma area in which many of us have devoted most of our professional careers. Bv 1 Physicians and allied scientists have vowed to cure children with acute leukemia and to stamp out cancer in general, but fewq if any, have taken up the cudgel to chminate or materially reduce motor vehicle homoetde In the past I have written to Gov. Rampton and contacted various state safety officials about my concerns, but the replies are usually perfunctory, polite, and political. Careful Analysis Now the Arabs may have a partial but rather startling solution to our cancer. "Slow down and live" and Its speed that kills" are good but V' V four-whe- seemingly ineffec'ive exhortations. The recent and apparently dramatic reduction m Utah traffic accidents and deaths has undoubtedly been related to both reductions in traffic and also in speed It would be my guess that the latter is the chief determinant, but tins would need careful analysis by law enforcement and vehicular safety experts Editors Note: Dr. Wilson Is director of laboratories at Primary Childrens Hospital. Years ago Abraham Ribicoff, then governor, produced significant results in lowering Connecticuts motor vehicle death fatalities by means of education enforcement, and other policies. That state, with three times the population of Utah, had only about 80 more traffic deaths per year (1 e. 20 percent higher) than we did, according to recent statis- tics. Worst In U.S. Nearby Rhode Island, with a population just under a million, had less than a third the number of deaths of Utah. While it may be hazardous and difficult to compare driving statistics of the east versus the west, the latter region ap- pears definitely more deadly. Ihe 1972 annual death rates for Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Utah for 109,000 vehicle miles driven are 2 6, 2 5, and 5.7, respectively My favorite state, Montana, possesses an ignominious annual rate cf the worst in the nation 7 3 So. we should leant from the Arabs and the Jews. They are trying to tell us something! The continued blood on otr highways is blood cf our own doing Per- N the just just Bernstein on Words The question is whether the Amencan public generally will adjust to living with the idea of impeaching a president. Law and lawyers will certainly help in ihe adjustment, if it eomes. For Amencans, the picture of lawyers calmly arguing m courtroom or committee room makes anything seem more natural Law and its forms provide our equivalent of the legitimacy and familiarity that the British draw from queen and Parliament Will Fresh Proceed What is clear now is that the proceeding is going to go ahead. The House committee will not be stopped from investigating and deciding whether to recommend a bill of impeachment against Richard Nixon. Any doubt about that ended when St Clair announced that the President would give the committee all the White House tapes and documents previously provided to special prosecutors Cox and Leon Jaworski. The President who had resisted any disclosure for long months was now making at least a limited affirmative response to a House request for ev idence. Miloraanifes! Qtetn fewer-Lawr- j and Qsrden Rant && W83bJ? Organic Notes Change Asked why, St. Clair said there had been a change m circumstances. He must have meant both political and legal The House committees request, supported by Republican pleas to the President to cooperate, generated great pressure to comply And St. Clair must have advised the President that a refusal would have lacked adequate legal grounds and might itself have brought impeachment. The battle for evidence has not ended At his news conference hours after the court hearing, the President made clear that he would resist any further requests for tapes and documents which the House committee will almost certainly make. tbod. IfA 33 SO lbs ... nmoGEhi easy to use - Arnmi peicer Excel lerVC for wihtrlybird spplicafio,i, -- Clay fats! '"av Pots Gocejewt. cam feat Rjts sound or peq c-- a v Square 010 3 ibrOnly r, sioaa ftsMite ! Saistss! Fay cf Sunshine ftir ycor tiome. . Spring fresh haps Gov. Rampton will be galvanized to insist, and not just hope, that the speed limit is never nosed again above the current 55 mile an hour limit, if this is indeed shown scientifically to be the major factor in what appears to be a most gratifying reduction in our highway vehicle deaths Enlighten Minds DaffaUU Daisies I Terrarium pLcrfts ItePb PLSrtts 2CJ4 hirsute and demonstrators of pseudoanarcliists the past decade will again stage massive but this time to complain protests about our preventable 55,000 vehicular deaths, a number which far exceeds in one year all of those killed in the entire Vietnam campaign. Hopefully the electronic media locally will continue constructive programs of arousing public opinion about this senseless carnage, as they have dune so well on other major issues Lastly, perhaps others of my profession will individually and collectively enlighten their minds, raise their voices, and use their talents to do something about this largely preventable disease. The medical profession as a group would be tarred and feathered if it were to permit the existence c a health problem which took almost 400 Utah lives a year and which co'ild be largely Controlled. STOCK mi mrwnniinrr KegSH irfacfc. Ante 70 UMITCQ nwm (Copy nght) Maybe even the Cut: CARNATIONS Res special Colovns! All A M D , ft Auto Death Reduction: Thank the Arabs Arab-relate- d 10 US? T Crunch Has Blessings By John F. Wilson, Ji ir W ssis! V7Abc P5!a lare 15p Sefcastfer of betti have, Cfva'ity, Jare&est3rki Germination fhmt Seedsffef . and ficu Americas q g2 Black Magic emvse potting Soil fJi & Parkins Seeds! odct m fyntCMMpjdilrp ovr Carden today(- Tutwbo, iawe Our past track record is completely unacceptable to me. The final decision, however, is up to all citizens, as potential victims. Do we have the Intellectual desire to investigate and become educated about this problem, and then the will to do something about it? In short, are we willing to learn from the Arabs and he Jews? liwe 1. setkXSoA Kese Guilds. Z'nKt lYeWgwworv. of healthy, full of life. 1 . iJe. have. fed rs4 arWpve. Oelijfy cSihiJ, llJe. Sis3 UaWicps! tejj SBciufiVe , Oa (?,. Pc r(umct pkot. clikty0roh)4 Ml ro Od f&mtes - GREENHOUSE, FLORAL & NURSERY 5TH SOUTH & llTH WEST CASH & CASJtY 3S4-53A- 4 V V V |