SUNDAY BREAKFAST

intimationsofimmortality:

The one that has annoyed me most of all is the talk of abolishing the provocation defence.

Basically, in NZ, successfully arguing that one was provoked turns what otherwise would be murder into manslaughter.

Now there are many argument both for and against it, and I am not a big fan of the defence, but the idea of just abolishing it with no other changes made seems short sighted and populist. The problem is, there are circumstances where the defence does make sense. Equally, however, there are circumstances where raising provocation as a defence can be both shocking o any sensibilities but ultimately successful. I do not think it should be able to be used in cases of spousal murder or in cases of ‘gay panic’ (where men have successfully used the defence in cases where the overt sexuality of the victim was the provocation).

The trouble is, by simply abolishing it, the ability of judges to fairly and justly hand down a sentence may be limited since murder carries with it a mandatory life sentence. There are situations where the defence is warranted, and strange or extraordinary as the circumstances may be, a life sentence may simply be unjust.

I think we can abolish it, perhaps if the mandatory life sentence is only in cases where there was no provocation (albeit with a curtailed statutory definition) or perhaps if we introduce degrees of murder.

It’s probably worth having a look, if you haven’t already, at the Law Commission’s 2007 report on provocation. They recommended that part of the Crimes Act allowing for the defence be repealed and that provocation issues should be dealt with in sentencing.

The report deals with your concern about judges handing out a just sentence. If I’m reading the report right, god knows I’m not a lawyer so correct me if I’m wrong, the Sentencing Act states, as you said, that murder carries with it a presumption of ife imprisonment. According to the Act though:

” … the presumption can only be displaced if a sentence of life imprisonment would be manifestly unjust; the burden of displacing the presumption rests on the defendant; and the court of appeal has consistently held that the standard for rebutting the presumption is high.”

The report goes on to say that the Court of Appeal ruled that this would only happen in exceptional cases such as mercy killings or if prolonged or severe abuse has happened. There’s also room for cases where the defendant is mentally or intellectually impaired, but again this is considered exceptional, so not not all cases like this would allow for the displacement of that life sentence.

The Law Commission suggest that, yes, something like degrees of murder could be introduced, but considers it a different issue and no doubt outside their purview at the time.

But to my untrained eyes it looks like that flexibility that would allow judges to adjust sentencing (decide against life imprisonment for murder) on mitigating factors already exists.  Like always, your kind of trusting that person handing out the sentence knows what they’re doing. This is all in the report which can be found here. Most of what I’m talking about here is towards the end of Chapter 6.

So to cut a long story short; your concern is warranted, but I think its covered. :)

And yes, TV news sucks.

Take this effective smackdown of the paper’s columnist Garth George commending the Government for holding back a plan to introduce folic acid to bread. As James notes most of the debte around the issue hasn’t been focused on what the health effects of adding the stuff to our diet are, but if the Government has a right to screw with our bread, and therefore our lives.

Of note too is this little find via the comments section for David Slack’s blog Island Life on Public Address as noted by PA reader B Jones.

It’s a 2004 National Party press release from then associate health minister Paul Hutchison slamming the government for failing to act on birth defect prevention.

The Government could have helped prevent approximately 100 cases of neurological defects in babies if it had acted more vigorously four years ago, says National’s Associate Health spokesman, Dr Paul Hutchison. “The Government missed an opportunity four years ago to sign up the Bakers and Millers Association to fortify flour with folate.”

Back then it was OK to interfere with bread, but now it’s not? Sigh, when commercial space flights to the moon finally happen I’ll be first in line for a one way ticket.

The marvelous Politifact.com keeps taps on all the promises Obama made during his campaign. Some of this is stuff still in progress and obviously things down the list, but there’s some dubious things going on here.

Take his promise to make sure those working for him in the executive branch will not be able to work on matters or for agencies if they were lobbyists before entering the White House. Hell, he even signed the Executive Order on his first day.

There is, however, a waiver which according to Politifact.com Angie Drobnic Holan says:

“a waiver may be granted if “the literal application of the restriction is inconsistent with the purposes of the restriction” or “it is in the public interest. … The public interest shall include, but not be limited to, exigent circumstances relating to national security or to the economy.”

Read Holan’s original piece and her updates and you’ll see why this means that waivers are handed out if the Administration thinks they’re OK. Sure, William Lynn was a Rayethon lobbyist for six, but, y’know, he’s cool. Let’s make him deputy defense secretary.

Meanwhile back home former National leader Don Brash is appointed to the chairman position of a taskforce whose goal is to make sure New Zealanders make as much money as Australians by 2025. OK, whatever. I can take the Government’s obvious march towards the creation of a country that looks a hell of lot like New Zealand before Labour took power in 1999. They’re basically (with a few exceptions) putting it back the way it was.

With that goal in mind the Government does what it thinks it needs to do to make it a reality. Including throwing away any original or innovative ideas. National cycleway? It wouldn’t magically solve every problem in the country, not even close. But I bet it would reinvigorate towns along its path by bringing tourists on their cycles. Those are the kind of people who spend a good bit of money while they’re away on a biking holiday. It was a different idea and not a bad one (albeit an expensive one) , yet somehow it’s floundered and doesn’t look like it’s on the agenda.

And now John Key says he won’t accept any hardline or unpalatable ideas from the taskforce: this he says at a time when innovation and looking at different ideas is needed. Of course, by unpalatable he means anything that might cost them votes.

The conspiracy theorist in me can’t help but think its a move designed to placate ACT. Key can now reject anything Brash, the ideologue, throws up. Key has after all, just told us he will. That’s a pretty expensive rubber bone.

P.S. Russell “It’s just a wee dram” Brown has whacked up a post about the taskforce and who might be a good addition.

It’s an issue that pops up from time to time and in the past few years it’s been thrust above the water by visits from Dr Philip Nitschke, an Australian doctor who supports and campaigns for voluntary euthanasia to be made legal. In fact, he and others were successful in getting a legal euthanasia law passed in the Northern Territory only to have it over turned by the Federal government.

Since then he’s been holding workshops showing the ill, elderly and the curious how to end their lives. I attended a presentation he made in Auckland a few years ago where, without specific details, he went through how one can successfully kill themselves with the least amount of discomfort. He showed a video of some elderly people at a euthanasia camp where they all chipped in, chatting away furious and having a great time mixing chemicals to instructions on how to make a pill designed to kill in ingestion. If you were squinting you’d probably think they were at a work bee putting the final touches on a new deck.

The presentation was a curious mix of morbidity and black humor, people tend to cope best by joking about death. There were visibly ill people in the audience, still mobile but clearly interested in clawing back some dignity that their illness had taken from them.

Nitsckhe’s been back in New Zealand and, never afraid of publicity, has launched a new drug testing kit. The kit is designed to make sure that the drugs a person is planning on using to do themselves in will do the job.

It’s a purely practical aim, if you’re going to kill yourself best to make sure what you’ve got won’t leave you alive and possibly in worse condition than you were before. Curious then is Lesley Martin’s opposition to Nitschke’s methods.

“What we’re seeing now with Dr Nitschke’s methods is a continued re-packaging of suicide methods. What people need to understand is that they are illegitimate, backyard, amateurish efforts.”

I’m pretty sure Nitschke’s trying to help people avoid “amateurish efforts” (and charging a reasonable amount for it, 75 bucks for the kit) by providing them with information and tools to make a considered decision. Something Martin’s Dignity NZ Trust aims to do as well. The Trust is all about palliative care administered by professionals in Trust “Havens.” That’s under a presumed future where this is all legal. I think the counter-argument is that in an environment where its not sanctioned by the state, people who want to end their life because of illness and lack of dignity don’t have access to information on how to do that. They’ll do it anyway, regardless of what the law says, so isn’t it a good thing that they can have tools that will help them to do it right and not extend their suffering through a botched suicide?

intimationsofimmortality:

sundaybreakfast:

intimationsofimmortality:

Just because one of the actors from GI Joe is black, it doesn’t necessarily mean that he is from ‘the hood.’

You make me feel awkward when the focus of your story is the fact that he was poor growing up and couldn’t afford a GI Joe. You make me feel more awkward when you ask him ‘do you go back to your hood and show them the doll?’

Oh geez. Who was this?

Amanda Gillies. There’s actually a video on the three news website of the interview, and as it turns out I got the wording of the question wrong, so that has been corrected. It’s still a bit shocking though.

And here’s the offending video: http://www.3news.co.nz/Video/Entertainment/tabid/312/articleID/113418/cat/55/Default.aspx#video

intimationsofimmortality:

Just because one of the actors from GI Joe is black, it doesn’t necessarily mean that he is from ‘the hood.’

You make me feel awkward when the focus of your story is the fact that he was poor growing up and couldn’t afford a GI Joe. You make me feel more awkward when you ask him ‘will all the kids down in the hood be jealous now you have your own action figurine?’

Oh geez. Who was this?

It’s the one thing we can all agree on: people who look different, speak in a different language and whose food smells funny are usually up to no good.

http://gawker.com/5318723/henry-louis-gates-jr-arrested-for-disorderly-conduct-claims-racism

http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/australia/2612441/Aussies-arrest-Maori-good-samaritans

http://blogs.straitstimes.com/2009/7/17/stereotypes-breed-racism