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Wednesday, March 4, 2020

West Coast Observer: A Library Fire

By William Silveira





I live so close to Porterville, California, that I didn’t need to read Time’s article “Boys, 13, Charged with Murder for Fire at California Library That Killed 2 Firefighters” to learn about the fire on February 28:

Flames engulf the public library in Porterville]
[Involuntary manslaughter*] charges have been filed against two 13-year-old boys suspected of starting a blaze that killed two firefighters at a central California library.
    Police said the boys were arrested after they were seen running from Porterville City Library shortly after flames erupted on the afternoon of Feb. 18.
    The Tulare County District Attorney’s Office on Friday filed two counts of murder with special circumstances of multiple murders and arson, the Visalia Times Delta reported….
    In California, children under 14 can’t be tried as adults, even if they are charged with serious and violent felonies, such as murder.


[Note: The article used the term “murder,” but the charge was involuntary manslaughter, the doing of a grossly negligent act that reasonably and foreseeably could cause death.]
While the Porterville public library was not the ancient library at Alexandria, Egypt, it was nonetheless a valuable asset for a poor community in which the per capita income is $17,000 per year. The library’s loss was huge. Libraries are repositories of knowledge and intellectual pleasures (novels, short stories, perhaps recordings of books to read by listening, etc.). Much that might be found in a library can be found on-line, but many people need the guidance of a competent librarian to help them find specific items and also teach them how to do their own searches.
    A library is more than a repository of knowledge; it can also teach how to acquire knowledge. The existence of a library in a locale signifies that the people there, generally, find value in such things. I think it telling that when Trump made a swing through the county for a meeting with his fat-cat farmer donors, he piously acknowledged the library’s destruction, but he offered not one cent towards its reconstruction. Ah yes, hypocrisy blooms infernal.


Marylin and I went to Porterville last week to have lunch with Shirley Skufca Hickman, whose latest book about her experiences at Tulare Union High School has just been published: Rocky Road Is More Than a Candy Bar. We learned a bit more about the two boys who allegedly started the fire.
    Shirley told us that the boys had behaved disruptively on more than one occasion in the past – apparently without suffering appropriate consequences for it, like being barred from the library or maybe being barred from accompanying each other in the library. They apparently did not care for or value the things that I have mentioned or that you might mention when speaking about libraries. For them the library was a place in which they could give vent to their destructive impulses, expressing their contempt for what the library represented.
    About that “involuntary” manslaughter charge, I think it can be argued that the miscreants deliberately and intentionally, not involuntarily, committed a dangerous act (setting paper on fire in an old library), which could justify a charge of second degree murder. It can be argued that they acted with malicious intent, that they bore a grudge against the library for having been required to leave on other occasions for their out-of-control behaviors. And while they probably did not need incentive for their actions, there is evidence they were playing violent video games on a computer in the library.
    I have no idea whether the boys have any particular form of political allegiance, but I frankly think that anyone who would do such an act as setting fire to a library is no different in mentality from white supremacists – philistines and scofflaws. The act went beyond stupidity and recklessness and constituted willful, antisocial misconduct.


Tragically, the library was ill-equipped to deal with such a fire – not even a fire extinguisher was readily available. The City of Porterville should not escape some blame for the fire. While the two boys had been required previously to leave the library, after a second offense they really should have been barred from entry.
    However blame is apportioned, a poor community has lost a valuable resource.


Copyright © 2020 by William Silveira

9 comments:

  1. Bill, we are grateful that you were on hand to check into Porterville’s loss of its library and give us your measured West Coast Observation on the incident and its implications. THANK YOU! And pass on to Shirley our congratulations on the completion and publication of her book. A copy is on the way to me, and I look forward to reading it.

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  2. Dear Morris,
    I'm happy to be in touch with you once again. Bill, Marilyn and I had lunch and it was wonderful to talk to them about politics in an intelligent manner. I hope you like my book. You are in it, although only a few sentences, but I think you'll enjoy reading about the school as you remember it.

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    Replies
    1. Happy to be in touch with YOU, Shirley! As you may have learned, Jim Rix let me read the “Autobiography” he sent you, and I prevailed on him to let us expand it a bit and include it on Moristotle & Co. as a column named “My Life.” You can access its installments so far published (most recent first) by means of this link.

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  3. Bill, as a former judge, you might have heard this story from a retired lawyer in Colorado?:

    A small claims court judge told me the following story some years ago.  The Chief Justice of his state’s Supreme Court requested permission to sit in the courtroom and observe a session of the small claims court, which he agreed to.  One of the cases that arose that session was a woman who sued her male neighbor claiming that his dog, which was a mutt, had raped her certified pure bred dog, resulting in a litter of mixed breed puppies, which reduced the value of her dog.  When the case was presented, the CJ  started to snicker.  Then my friend asked the obvious question of the plaintiff, “How do you know that your dog didn’t consent to the advances of the neighboring dog?”  Her answer was. “My pure bred dog would never consent to having sex with that mutt.”  At that point the CJ burst into laughter, and my friend had to have him removed from the courtroom.  When he talked to the CJ afterward, he agreed that he had lost it and my friend was correct in removing him from the courtroom.  Moral of the story: judges may also have trouble containing themselves when weird things arise in court cases.

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  4. And here are a few examples of things people actually said in court, from a book titled D i s o r d e r  i n  t h e  C o u r t.  They are said to be word for word, taken down and published by court reporters that had the torment of staying calm while the  exchanges were taking place.

    ATTORNEY: What gear were you in at the moment of the impact?
    WITNESS: Gucci sweats and Reeboks.
    ____________________________________
    ATTORNEY: Are you sexually active?
    WITNESS: No, I just lie there.
    ____________________________________
    ATTORNEY: What is your date of birth?
    WITNESS: July 18th.
    ATTORNEY: What year?
    WITNESS: Every year.
    _____________________________________
    ATTORNEY: How old is your son, the one living with you?
    WITNESS: Thirty-eight or thirty-five, I can’t remember which.
    ATTORNEY: How long has he lived with you?
    WITNESS: Forty-five years.

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  5. A few more:

    ATTORNEY: Now doctor, isn’t it true that when a person dies in his sleep, he doesn't know about it until the next morning?
    WITNESS: Did you actually pass the bar exam?
    ____________________________________
    ATTORNEY: The youngest son, the 20-year-old, how old is he?
    WITNESS: He’s 20, very close to your IQ.
    _________________________________________
    ATTORNEY: Were you present when your picture was taken?
    WITNESS: Are you shitting me?
    _________________________________________
    ATTORNEY: So the date of conception (of the baby) was August 8th?
    WITNESS: Yes.
    ATTORNEY: And what were you doing at that time?
    WITNESS: Getting laid
    _________________________________________
    ATTORNEY: She had three children, right?
    WITNESS: Yes.
    ATTORNEY: How many were boys?
    WITNESS: None.
    ATTORNEY: Were there any girls?
    WITNESS: Your Honor, I need a different attorney. Can I get a new attorney?

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  6. And yet a few more:

    ATTORNEY: How was your first marriage terminated?
    WITNESS: By death.
    ATTORNEY: And by whose death was it terminated?
    WITNESS: Take a guess.
    _________________________________________
    ATTORNEY: Can you describe the individual?
    WITNESS: He was about medium height and had a beard.
    ATTORNEY: Was this a male or a female?
    WITNESS: Unless the Circus was in town, I’m going with male.
    _____________________________________
    ATTORNEY: Is your appearance here this morning pursuant to a deposition notice which I sent to your attorney?
    WITNESS: No, this is how I dress when I go to work.
    ______________________________________
    ATTORNEY: Doctor, how many of your autopsies have you performed on dead people?
    WITNESS: All of them. The live ones put up too much of a fight.
    ________________________________________
    ATTORNEY: ALL of your responses MUST be oral, OK? What school did you attend?
    WITNESS: Oral.

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  7. And, finally:

    ATTORNEY: Do you recall the time that you examined the body?
    WITNESS: The autopsy started around 8:30 PM.
    ATTORNEY: And Mr. Denton was dead at the time?
    WITNESS: If not, he was by the time I finished.
    _________________________________________
    ATTORNEY: Are you qualified to give a urine sample?
    WITNESS: Are you qualified to ask that question?
    _____________________________________
    ATTORNEY: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?
    WITNESS: No.
    ATTORNEY: Did you check for blood pressure?
    WITNESS: No.
    ATTORNEY: Did you check for breathing?
    WITNESS: No.
    ATTORNEY: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy?
    WITNESS: No.
    ATTORNEY: How can you be so sure, Doctor?
    WITNESS: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.
    ATTORNEY: I see, but could the patient have still been alive, nevertheless?
    WITNESS: Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law.

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  8. Here’s a link to the book Disorder in the Court: Great Fractured Moments in Courtroom History (1999), from which those interchanges were said to be taken.

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