Bermuda ain't got nothin on Chicago

I'm not talking about weather here, though we did play tennis outside yesterday. No, I'm talking about corruption. My mom used to tell me stories about the old president of Taiwan and how he stole hundreds of millions of dollars while in office, still got re-elected and was loved by half the country. It was almost unbelievable. How could people do stuff like this and get away with it? Even Blagojevich was re-elected. This stuff should only happen in places like China, North Korea and the other non-democratic countries. People have voices!

Well, apparently this stuff happens every day here in Bermuda. Crime has been on the rise in the last couple of decades. People here talk about how the island used to be so safe, people would leave their doors open at night, feel free to walk around after dark, there were no guns, no shootings, no murders. Now there's like a shooting almost every week. The funny thing is that guns are illegal on the island, yet people still manage to get their hands on them.

Once in a while, the cops will actually arrest someone for these crimes (Apparently it's hard to make an arrest when the guy you're trying to catch is shooting at you but you don't have a gun to shoot back with!) Convicting them is another thing. Since the island is so small and every one knows each other, more often than not the jury consists of your friends, neighbors and relatives. So you're not going to throw your brother or cousin or father-in-law or neighbor's nephew in prison. I'm not even joking. Someone on that jury will know you somehow. Whenever we're on a flight to Bermuda, it's like that scene in Die Harder where the two groups of soldiers are on the plane talking to each other and having a party (guess what movie I watched in Breckenridge while Sandy and Co. boarded that second day). It's like playing that Kevin Bacon game. There's prolly at most 3 degrees between any two people on the island. Side note: I should conduct a study.

The sad thing is that every one already knows this! The latest murder trial was at a college party by the beach. One guy took another guy's chain. Guy tried to get it back but gets stabbed in the chest with a knife three times. Thief's friends come and stab him some more with a screwdriver and hit him with a bat. Guy dies. At the end of the trial, the jury acquits him of murder and only charges him with manslaughter. The reasoning? "Whereas murder is defined as intent to kill someone or cause them grievous bodily harm, manslaughter is an unlawful act which causes a victim's death."

Wow. What do you think will happen when you stab someone in the fucking heart with a knife three times?! Even if you don't intend to kill him, surely you intent to cause them some bodily harm, no? I think getting stabbed in the heart would cause a lil pain, a lil harmful. I've never had it happen before, so I can't really say for sure. Maybe that's what his jury pals were thinking. Or they were influenced by the defendant's six witness friends who said he didn't do it. Unbelievable. When I think of manslaughter, I think of accidentally hitting someone with a car. Key word is accident. I don't think you can accidentally stab someone in the heart three times. "Dood, I was just holding my knife out, showing my friends, when the guy ran into it three times."


Speaking of car accidents, there was a trial for one of those this week too. This one though involved an expat from the UK working here as a truck driver. He was driving a truck when he hit an oncoming car. That car burst into flames, killing the driver. The two passengers were able to get out beforehand. Some nice tidbits: 1) the truck driver was only licensed to drive a small truck, but the truck he was driving was a big rig. 2) forensic evidence shows the truck was in the wrong lane 3) the truck driver and his passenger fled the scene 4) the guy that died was Bermudian, killed by a non-Bermudian 5) the truck driver was found to be more than twice the drink-drive limit 6) and here's the kicker, the driver also had cocaine in his system. Sweet! I'm no lawyer, but that looks to be some pretty bad mojo against you.

Just listening to the details, that's at least gotta be manslaughter rite? Guess what's happening to the guy? He gets to go back to the UK! After originally being convicted, they went back and threw out the case cuz the judge incorrectly directed the jury on how to weigh the evidence in the case: "the judge wrongly equated dangerous driving with careless driving, when they are different things in law...dangerous driving means someone must be guilty of a "marked departure" from the normal standard of driving...Armstrong was not guilty of that, since he was only guilty of a "momentary lapse" at worst, as there was no evidence his manner of driving was dangerous in the run up to the collision."

"Momentary lapse"?! Are you referring to the moment his truck slammed into the car head-on...as opposed to the moments he drank and snorted coke and got into a truck and started the truck and drove the truck for however long? Seems like a lot of moments. Yeah, his driving wasn't dangerous. It was only dangerous during and after the collision. The rest of his driving was perfectly safe. It would have been OK for him to drive had he not killed someone.

Holy shmoly. Looks like they found another loophole. I dunno. When I think of careless driving, I think of talking or texting on a cellphone or eating while driving. Or playing with your radio. Or smacking your kid around. Getting behind the wheel after drinking more than 5 beers AND snorting a couple lines of coke is a lil more than careless. I consider having both alcohol and cocaine in your system to be a "marked departure" from the normal standard of living, let alone driving. This guy must have super powers. Most mortal men would be a lil affected by 5+ beers and cocaine. Most people prolly couldn't walk or talk straight, let alone drive a big ol truck. I guess that's why they brought this superhuman over to drive a truck. Wait, isn't cocaine an illegal drug?! Or maybe I'm just a tight-ass.

Looking at all the facts of the case, I coulda sworn this guy would get screwed. Bermudians hate expats on the island and here you are killing one! It's not even like he was an executive or something with power or connections. He was here as a truck driver (why you'd need to bring in a foreigner to drive a truck is beyond me. You really couldn't find someone on the island qualified to drive?!) The taxi driver I hit was pissed cuz I was on the wrong side of the road, and I barely scratched his car. He didn't even burst into flames! He was driving the truck illegally. He was on the wrong side of the road. He ran from the accident! That's a hit and run...and you killed a guy in a burning vehicle! Aren't those big no-no's? Plus he was drinking and drugged and driving! Should be an open and shut case. At worst, it'd be a re-trial like the murder suspect above. The first trial was a hung jury, so they just retried the case. This driver's actions directly caused the death of another human being. There should be at least a lil jail time involved! My take, Bermuda bows down to the UK cuz it used to be a UK-country. The motherland prolly applied a lil pressure on behalf of one of their own and the lil island quickly folded. I hate to think what woulda happened had the driver been a handsome Chinese boy.