.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
The backs of my eyeballs, as photographed by my friend and optometrist, Granville Lawrence.
Happy Mothers’ Day to all you muthahs out there.
Lauren, sorry I missed attending your wedding yesterday in Chicago. I trust everybody had a good time, and I wish you and Brendan a wonderful life together.
۞
Groove of the Day
Listen to Peter Gabriel performing an acoustic version of “In Your Eyes”
It is a point of irony that, under Iowa law, Noah Crooks may suffer a more severe penalty if he is found innocent by reason of insanity than if he is found guilty. Either way, Noah will not get off scott-free.
Nevertheless, I am hoping for an innocent verdict.
The state is asking for a 60-year penalty, though I think the Iowa Legislature intended a different outcome. Under Noah’s attorney’s reading of the law, if found guilty he should be held in a juvenile facility until his 18th birthday, and then after that maybe a maximum of five years. If he is found innocent, Noah would be placed under the care of the mental health establishment until he is deemed “cured”, perhaps for a length of time extending long after his 18th birthday. You can expect a future fight around the time Noah reaches age 18.
Given this irony, why do I hope the jury will find him not guilty? The reason is, of course, that I believe we are better off long-term by placing the blame where it belongs… and that is with the doctors who misdiagnosed him. Plus, a prison system is only good at one thing, and that is punishment, not treatment.
Seems to me we see ADHD where it doesn’t exist or doesn’t matter, and this case is a prime example. Two-thirds of ADHD can be controlled with diet, for god’s sake. ADHD wasn’t so much of a problem with Noah Crooks–Intermittent Explosive Disorder (IED) is. Noah was prescribed the wrong drugs and forced by his school to be on them. His mother Gretchen is now dead as a result.
I am sick to death of the immunity that doctors and drug companies and hospitals in our society seem to enjoy. This case is an excellent place where the truth should prevail. Just as it goes against truth for a state to declare a child an adult, it goes against truth for a state to declare that an insane person is sane. It is essential for us to recognize the true state of affairs so we can deal with it… and let the chips fall where they may.
I just hope this jury is capable of sorting out the truth from fiction so we can get down to the solving of real problems, and deal with Noah’s world as it is and not as some people want it to be.
۞
Groove of the Day
Listen to Michael McDonald performing “Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing”
۞
Groove of the Day
Listen to Coldplay performing “Green Eyes”
.
Postscript:
Jury deliberations in the Noah Crooks trial were cancelled Friday morning after one juror called in sick. The panel will resume deliberations at 9 am Monday in the Wright County Courthouse in Clarion IA.
Sometimes when your own life is not defined by horror, the only way to understand what it’s like is through books and movies.
I have long observed that people never get over child sexual abuse, or that it takes a lifetime, at any rate. Seems to me there are two kinds of sexual abuse… abuse by stranger or family acquaintance, and abuse by a parent or other caregiver whom you should be able to trust. I haven’t figured out yet which is worst.
Either way, survivors of child sexual abuse find it very difficult to establish bonds of trust with others. And when it happens, it’s not necessarily forever. At least with books and movies, you can keep returning whenever you want–that is, if you want to.
But I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t. This is pretty challenging stuff.
I have already written about Inherited Rage, a book by my friend Lone Heron. But I’ll mention it again–it’s that good. Plus you may find it easier to keep an essential distance from the content because it’s a book.
It is the true story of a little girl who was subjected to the most unspeakable abuse, exploding into parricide. I talk with Lone Heron on the phone at least weekly, and she believes after 20 years she is a cured or redeemed person. And to a great degree she is (she has come so far). Yet she has so much further to go. Lone Heron is one of the angriest people I know. She’s in her 40s.
Mysterious Skin is a 2004 movie by director Gregg Araki, who also wrote the screenplay based on the 1996 novel of the same name by Scott Heim. It tells the story of two pre-adolescent boys who are sexually abused by their baseball coach, and how it affects their lives in different ways into their young adulthood. One boy becomes a reckless, sexually adventurous hustler, while the other retreats into a fantasy of alien abduction. It implies that the lives of both characters will be incredibly difficult for years to come.
The film has an excellent cast including Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Brady Corbet, Michelle Trachtenberg, Elizabeth Shue, and Bill Sage, and creates a convincing, memorable illusion of what it’s like growing up in Hutchinson KS. Made on a low budget and with production lasting only three weeks, the cast and crew had no possibility of doing retakes. Yet it is a nearly perfect film. Ebert and Roeper gave it two thumbs up. I’d give it a third.
Inherited Rage is a great but disturbing book, too.
Like all true art, you will have trouble shaking either the book or the movie, and may even develop a deeper sense of compassion for anyone who has experienced the horror of childhood sexual abuse.
Both are worth the investment.
۞
Groove of the Day
Listen to Sigur Ros performing “Samskeytii”
.
Postscript:
The Wright County jury deciding the fate of Noah Crooks has ended a second day of deliberations without a verdict. Jurors were dismissed at 4 pm Thursday after seven hours of deliberations.
The jury only made one request Thursday and that was for water and soda pop.
Lawyers for the prosecution and the defense spent the day waiting for a decision. Noah’s father William Crooks was at the courthouse late Thursday in anticipation of a verdict.
The jury will begin a third day of deliberations at 9 am Friday.
A few years ago, I was sent a book on Crohn’s Disease in which the author promoted the eating of dirt–that’s right, dirt–as a cure. He said that people who live too clean don’t give their immune systems a chance to learn and protect them.
This seems to have been confirmed by a small study of 184 Swedish babies which was published last week in the journal of Pediatrics. A minor question in the study asked parents how they cleaned off pacifiers when they were dropped by babies onto the ground.
The vast majority of parents put the pacifiers under the faucet or even boiled the “dirty” pacifiers to clean them. But a small minority of parents sucked on the pacifiers to clean them–and researchers found that these children experienced markedly less incidence of allergies than “good” parents’ kids.
Apparently parents’ saliva is good for something else besides cleaning dirty faces or making unruly cowlicks lie flat.
۞
Groove of the Day
Listen to The Charlie Daniels Band performing “A Few More Rednecks”
.
.
We Were Right All Along…
But It’s 4 Years Later!
And he’s been locked up all this time for something he didn’t do.
In a 30-page document, the Pennsylvania Superior Court ruled this afternoon that Jordan Brown, now 15, should have his sentence vacated because the court said the evidence presented was not sufficient for the judge’s verdict.
Stephen Colafella, a defense attorney for Jordan, confirmed the ruling and said the case now will be sent back to Lawrence County Juvenile Court. He said officials still are awaiting word whether this means Jordan will be given a new delinquency hearing.
According to online court records, the case paperwork has to be returned to Lawrence County Court by June 7.
“We’re ecstatic,” Colafella said. “We felt all along, the evidence in this case was very speculative.”
Jordan continues to be held in a secure juvenile detention facility in Mercer County. It is unclear whether he will be released as a result of Wednesday’s ruling.
“We’re anxious to continue to move forward in the case, and hopefully to get a new outcome,” Colafella said.
After more than a year of court battles, his case was moved to juvenile court and he was declared delinquent, the equivalent of guilty, in April 2012. Under the sentence, Jordan would have to be released from custody before August 2018, when he turns 21.
.
.
A jury of five men and seven women is having trouble reaching a decision in the Noah Crooks trial. This is good news, I think, for the defense–better, anyway, than an immediate decision, which would probably have gone against us.
The panel submitted a question to Judge James Drew at approximately 3:10 pm Wednesday stating, “Close to hung jury. What do we do?” A hung jury is a panel that has determined it can not reach a unanimous verdict in a criminal case.
Drew sent back an answer, “You should keep working.” He also referred the panel to jury instruction number 42 which states that jurors should not hesitate to re-examine their views and change their opinions if they decide they are wrong.
Drew dismissed the jury at 4:10 pm. They will return Thursday morning.
.
.
Whitebear and Lynn both called this morning to tell me that my best friend out here, Michael Heidebrecht, died this morning at about 5:30 am in Wichita KS.
I don’t have anything brilliant to say. I learned so much from his example. My life will be impoverished by his absence. Goodbye good friend.
۞
Song for Michael
Finally the truth comes out. According to Trevor Hook (above), William Kutmus’ co-counsel, yesterday’s testimony couldn’t have gone better.
In Iowa yesterday in the trial of Noah Crooks, the defense called to the stand Dr. Donner Dewdney MD, the leading child psychiatrist in the state. He testified that Noah Crooks’ diagnosis of ADHD was almost beside the point. He admitted the drugs Noah was prescribed were all wrong and may have even made things worse.
The correct, underlying, most severe diagnosis is “Intermittent Explosive Disorder” (IED). The drugs which should have been prescribed were things like Lithium, which may have actually done some good. Gretchen Crooks would likely be alive today if the doctors had gotten it right.
“I think this was a pretty depressed kid who was feeling socially very isolated from his peers,” said Dr. Dewdney. Dewdney has been a child psychiatrist for nearly 50 years. He met with Noah Crooks four times last August, five months after the shooting.
“The more important problem which was an underlying mood disorder.” Specifically, Intermittent Explosive Disorder (IED), which is characterized by sudden, violent outbursts.
Noah crooks was reportedly addicted to violent video games, but his mother had taken away his video game controller because of his bad grades. About one hour before the shooting, she again said *no* when Noah Crooks asked for the controller back.
Dr. Dewdney said it could have been the event that sparked Noah Crooks’ rage. “It’s a discharge event and he needs to keep repeating the event over and over and over again.” He also testified that he didn’t believe Gretchen Crooks was initially the target, that Noah Crooks needed to vent his rage and his mother was there.
Noah told Dewdney he felt a command to shoot the rifle in a rage. “When he started shooting he couldn’t stop,” Dr. Dewdney testified.
Defense attorney William Kutmus asked if Noah was thinking that what he was doing was wrong while he was allegedly shooting his mother.
“There’s no room for that thought. There’s only room for one thought: Follow the burn,” Dewdney testified. “When Noah is in the middle of a rage there is no capacity, no room for him to figure out whether this act is right or wrong,” Dr. Dewdney said.
An aspect of IED is hypersexuality, said Dr. Dewdney. This explains Noah’s behavior after he shot his mother. “Rage continued on, only now it was expressed sexually. The fact that it’s his mother has long since disappeared from his consciousness,” Dewdney testified.
He explained Noah was shocked back to reality when he unbuttoned his mother’s pajama top and saw the bullet wounds on her chest and neck. Noah couldn’t go through with the act. He came to his senses and immediately regretted what had taken place, as the court could hear in the 911 phone call. He feels remorse for what he did and will have to live with it for the rest of his life.
The state called two expert witnesses to rebut Dr. Dewdney’s testimony: Dr. Michael Taylor, a Des Moines psychiatrist (who almost always testifies as the state wishes), and clinical psychologist Anna Salter of Madison WI. Dr. Taylor said Noah was not suffering from any diagnosable mental health disorder at the time of the shooting, and Salter agreed with him. Both said Noah knew right from wrong, feels no remorse or responsibility for the shooting.
Taylor interviewed Noah for about 90 minutes on May 23, 2012. Salter did not interview Noah at all.
“Noah was able to calmly and without any change in his demeanor whatsoever describe for me the hours in which he decided to shoot his mother,” Taylor testified. “He felt he didn’t need his mother.”
Taylor said Noah told him he went upstairs to the family’s computer room where guns and ammunition were kept, loaded the rifle and then headed downstairs. But when he got to the bottom of the stairs his mother was in the kitchen with her back to him. “He didn’t think it was right to shoot her in the back so he chose to go back upstairs and wait,” Taylor said. Noah eventually came back downstairs and shot his mother on the couch.
Dr. Salter said she believes Noah suffers from conduct disorder. It involves a repetitive pattern of behavior in which the basic rights of others are violated. Behaviors described as part of conduct disorder include bullying, cruelty to people and animals, fire setting, destruction of property and physical fights. “It’s not a form of psychosis. They still know right from wrong,” Salter testified.
She described the murder as methodical, especially when Noah decided not to shoot his mother in the back. “If he kills her that way, she won’t know it’s him,” Salter said.
She said Noah’s comments on the 911 call to the Mitchell County Sheriff’s Department showed no evidence of grief or remorse. Salter said most of the conversation involved what would happen to him, not what happened to his mother. “Very odd thinking for someone who has just committed such as horrendous act,” she said.
The jury will return to the courtroom at 11 am Tuesday to hear jury instructions. Closing arguments will begin at 1:15 pm. Then the case will go to the jury for deliberations.
.
This post relies on large amounts of court reporting by Peggy Senzarino of the Mason City Globe Gazette and KAAL TV.
۞
Groove of the Day
Listen to Sublime performing “The Wrong Way”
Anyone who watched TV or listened to the radio in the ’50s and ’60s will know the music of Leroy Anderson (1908-1975), the American composer of light concert pieces that were used as the theme songs of countless shows.
I’ve wanted this album for the longest time, and I finally broke down this weekend and bought it.
It will also give you an idea of how sick I am. This blog gives me a good excuse to buy music which normal people today wouldn’t think of touching.
But I love it.
۞
Grooves of the Day
Listen to Leroy Anderson conducting “Fiddle-faddle”
Listen to Leroy Anderson conducting “The Syncopated Clock”
Listen to Leroy Anderson conducting “Bugler’s Holiday”
Yesterday my friend Rusty commented about how some people get so mad when you mention chemtrails or how they’re manipulating the unemployment numbers. He told me about one guy in his experience who became spitting mad when Rusty told him what kind of world he’s living in.
“Why do you think that people react like this?” he asked.
“We live in a world of lies,” I said. “Expose one lie that touches a nerve, and everything one believes comes into question. It challenges a person’s self-image.”
Biting into the apple of knowledge is not necessarily a pleasant thing to do.
۞
Groove of the Day
It finally stopped snowing in Iowa, and they held court again on Friday.
The defense in Noah’s trial began in the afternoon by calling to the stand three school friends of the 14-year-old Osage teen accused of shooting his mother to death in March 2012.
A 14-year-old boy from Osage said he played the video game, “Call of Duty,” with Noah over the Internet. He testified that in 2012 Noah would become aggressive and violent, occasionally stabbing classmates with pencils. The boy said the incidents would happen once or twice every few weeks and then not happen again for days or even months.
Noah threatened to kill other students and his mother, he testified.
A 14-year-old girl, also of Osage, said she and Noah became friends in the seventh grade. She remembered her friend talking about suicide last year. In March 2012 his behavior changed, she said. “He got angry quicker,” she testified. “In P.E. he’d get mad at things he wouldn’t usually get mad about.”
The prosecution rested its case at about 3:15 pm Friday after calling a series of witnesses from the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation crime laboratory in Ankeny. Dr. Jonathan Thompson with the State Medical Examiner’s Office said it is impossible to know which of the 22 gunshots Gretchen Crooks’ sustained was the fatal shot. Thompson said she suffered two wounds to the head, four to the neck and 15 to the chest.
Noah’s father, William Crooks, testified Friday morning that Noah and Gretchen Crooks had a loving but sometimes stormy relationship.
William Crooks, 41, said he was at a going-away party for his boss in Mason City on March 24, 2012, when he got a text message from Noah about 7:30 p.m. The message said, “Dad this is Noah. I killed Mom accidentally. I regret it. Come home now please.”
William thought his son was joking and responded, “OK. Just throw her in the grove. We’ll take care of her later.”
Around 7:50 pm, Mitchell County Deputy Jeff Huftalin called and told him there had been an accident and he needed to come home. William arrived at the rural Osage home about 8:20 p.m.
Assistant Iowa Attorney General Denise Timmins asked him what he saw when he arrived.
“Chaos,” William said.
William Crooks also talked about teaching his son how to handle guns including the alleged murder weapon, a .22 caliber Ruger semi-automatic rifle which belonged to Noah. Gretchen Crooks purchased the gun for her son in 2010.
During his testimony, William Crooks said his wife was the disciplinarian in the family, which often led to fights between mother and son. “They’d have their issues but then the next minute they’d play games together,” Crooks said.
William said Noah did once say he wanted to kill his mother. “I guess I didn’t take it as a threat at the time,” he testified.
Testimony will resume at 10:30 am Monday.
I’ve only received a few negative comments about this case, from two readers. The first of these comments reached me on a bad day, and my reply wasn’t very understanding, though I do understand where the commenter was coming from. The murder of Gretchen Crooks was a terrible thing, particularly the sexual abuse part. That makes it even more emotional than it would otherwise be.
I am not condoning the murder–far from it. I have talked with William Crooks on the phone, and my heart goes out to him about how his world was turned upside-down that terrible night. But he has stood by Noah through all of this. He knows there was no rational reason for this. He knows, terrible as Gretchen’s death is, that you don’t punish mental illness, especially in your child.
You treat it.
.
This post relies on large amounts of court reporting by Peggy Senzarino of the Mason City Globe Gazette.
۞
Groove of the Day
Listen to Vladimir Horowitz performing Schumann’s “Curiose Geschichte”
From my vantage point here in the US, it appears that all of the British Isles are going Gingerich-crazy.
Even though they were not to have released it until after the June 4 waiver hearing, Channel 4 in the UK made the independent decision to air a film by Zara Hayes about the crime, the decision and sentence, and our appeal, last night at 10:00 British time. The media picked up on it, and early indications are that the effect has been explosive.
Google “Paul Gingerich” and you will find stories galore in the British press about Paul Henry. Europeans cannot believe that we in America can maintain the fiction that a child can be tried as an adult. They agree with Nicole Gingerich’s observation that if an adult with the brain-capacity of a 12-year-old were put on trial for a serious crime, that adult would not be tried as a normal adult. So why pick on kids?
I say it’s because they’re vulnerable and because, in a legal system that is more concerned with winning or losing (rather than doing what’s right), somebody’s got to pay. Kids are an easy mark. And too many prosecutors are morally spineless cowards.
Most of the kids we serve are not criminals, but survivors. Even though you or I would be able to figure out a better way (we’re adults after all), kids look at the murder of their abuser as the only way out. And even though it is generally the abuser who has paid the ultimate price for his/her sins (normally sexual abuse), to the spineless prosecutor this is not enough. And kids are thus held accountable for the sins of the adult. The victim is victimized yet again.
I am sick to death of our system which allows this to happen. I am sick of cops who return runaways to their abusers. I am sick of child protection workers who let too many throwaway kids fall through the cracks. I am sick of a system that only acts after-the-fact and only makes things worse. More than once I have had non-punitive therapy, on a full-ride scholarship that won’t cost jurisdictions a dime at the best facility in the world, cock-blocked by jealous bureaucrats who will not cede control of a child they were unwilling or unable to protect.
Sometimes I wonder why I am engaged in such frustrating work. Very few others are willing to do it. But then there are some glimmers of hope like Paul Henry and Monica Foster and Bill Kutmus. It feels like we are on the cusp of a change.
Though the pressure has been intense, we are not granting any interviews or otherwise stoking the fire. The media fury will hit the US in July when Zara’s film runs on A&E’s Bio. It is actually a better film, a half-hour longer. Prosecutors all over the US should be put on notice that it takes more moral courage to do the right thing for kids than to exact vengeance for a crippled society.
Prosecutors are more than they see themselves. They can be our teachers. But they first must learn some values that are worthy of being taught.
۞
Groove of the Day
Listen to William Ross performing “A Call to Courage”
