Happy Birthday, Willie Mays!

Posted on May 6, 2013 | Leave a comment

Today is the birthday of Willie Howard Mays, also known as the Say-Hey Kid.  He turns 82 today.  Mays ended his professional baseball career with a .302 average, 660 home runs, 1903 RBIs, and 3,283 hits.  He even played for my favorite team, the New York Mets, but only for 2 years (his last as a professional player) and only in 135 games during which he hit 14 home runs and stole 2 bases out of 7 attempts.  Unremarkable, yes, but no less memorable for a Met fan.

In the baseball tome, The Glory of Their Times, Willie Mays is, I think, the one modern player most often mentioned by past greats as someone who embodied the game of baseball, in his mind, in his body, and in his personality.

Now without further ado, here, for your viewing pleasure and inspiration, is some archival footage of Willie Mays who, after being knocked down by a Don Drysdale pitch up at his head, proceeds to hit the next one out of the park (footage starts at 0:50):

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Posted in Baseball

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Letter to Senators Chambliss and Isakson, May 1, 2013

Posted on May 1, 2013 | Leave a comment

Here is the text of a letter I have sent to the two senators from Georgia, my home state, concerning their recent votes to block gun control legislation.  I post it here in  hope that it might inspire others to voice their opinions to their representatives in Congress on a topic that requires the urgent attention of everyone.

VIA FIRST CLASS MAIL

Mr. Saxby Chambliss
United States Senate
416 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510

Mr. Johnny Isakson
United States Senate
131 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510

Dear Senators Chambliss and Isakson:

I live in Atlanta, Georgia and write to express my disappointment in your recent vote to block passage of gun control legislation.  I am not a gun owner, but I am a father.  And when I first learned of the mass shootings in Newtown, Connecticut, I wept.  I wept for the children who had their lives – so full of vigor and promise – senselessly ended, and I wept for the parents of these children who, in a way, also had their lives ended that day – for what else is a parent than someone whose entire life is devoted to ensuring the well-being of his or her child.  In the days and weeks following the Newtown shootings, individuals from all political and personal persuasions voiced their support for laws that would prevent another tragedy like the one in Newtown from taking place.  I do not know if you were one of these individuals, and frankly, I do not care.  You know as well any anyone that, as a United States Senator, your convictions and your beliefs are, for better or worse, reflected in the votes that you cast on the Senate floor.  As Daniel Webster once put it: “Inconsistencies of opinion arising from changes of circumstances are often justifiable.  But there is one sort of inconsistency that is culpable; it is the inconsistency between a man’s conviction and his vote.”  I assume that when you voted to block consideration of gun control, you did so because your conscience told you it was the right thing to do.  If that is in fact the case, then I am sorry to say that this country is in much greater peril than can be addressed by any one piece of legislation.

To be sure, you have a political career to consider.  And many of your constituents may very well harbor the same antipathy to gun control initiatives that others have to the current regime of loophole-laden gun laws.  Some of these constituents may even have sound reasons in feeling the way they do: the Second Amendment is, after all, a foundational part of the Constitution, and guns, like other inherently dangerous objects – cars some to mind – may serve a purpose that is legitimate, unrelated to the indiscriminate killing of adults and children.  But unlike cars, guns – whether they be pistols or military-style rifles – are designed with the sole aim of ending, not preserving, life.  Yet they receive a fraction of the regulation that cars do – in the way they are sold, taxed, operated, and yes, tracked.  This is simply incomprehensible, especially for a country like ours which so often and so vocally prides itself on the high value it places on the sanctity of human life.

I write this letter to you not because I think it will persuade you to reconsider your position on whether and how to regulate firearms in this country.  I have little expectation that it will; if there were a time and place for such reflection it would have been before you voted the way you did on April 17, 2013.  Instead, I write because I do not want to consider the prospect that the 27 individuals who died in Newtown did so in vain.  I think it reasonable to believe that their lives, and the memories they have left behind, will outlast the career of anyone who voted on the Senate floor that day.  And this will continue to be the case as long as those in Congress continue to act and vote in a way that has made it the dysfunctional and irrelevant institution that it is today.

Sincerely yours,

Albert Wan
Attorney at Law

CC:

Senator Richard Blumenthal
Senator Chris Murphy

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Posted in Personal

Balls, Bats and Bucks

Posted on March 27, 2013 | Leave a comment

Baseball season starts in less than a week.  That means leisurely days (or, more likely, nights) at the ball park with a hot dog in one hand, a beer in the other, and, if you’re like me, a scorecard on your lap.  It also means being a part of what we have come to call the Great American Pastime, witnessing feats of sometimes supernatural athleticism and, if you’re lucky, achievements of monumental importance.  For me, as a Met fan, Johan Santana’s 2012 no-hitter comes to mind.

But something troubles me about the game, and at times, it makes me feel like I would be better off just forgetting about baseball altogether.  But then what would my wife and I listen to as we puttered around the kitchen on many a summer night with the day’s heat then dissipating and our conversations turning to who is hitting what and why isn’t he doing better.  In any event, my concerns are no different from those that a lot of other people now have, and, probably have had since the inception of modern baseball: overpriced players, overpriced tickets, interminably long games, lackadaisical play, too many strikeouts, and ballparks that are called PETCO Park and U.S. Cellular Field.

But I do wish things were different.  For example, I wish that a player that you never heard of (assuming you follow baseball, of course) did not make millions of dollars each year where the average joe makes a fraction of that and then has to suffer the indignity of having to pay a part of that player’s salary if he or she wanted to watch him in-person, and increasingly, on a screen.  I also wish that baseball organizations were less concerned about their bottom line and more about what could be done to make the game more fan-friendly (hint: shrinking the confines of a ballpark so the home team can hit more home runs is not one of them); the two, it seems to me, never appear compatible in theory or in practice.

Despite all this, I think the integrity of the game is still intact.  Players still play because they love being on the field and not because its just a way to make a lot of money without really working (another great American pastime).  Managers still get peeved when players don’t hustle to first base on a sure-out grounder.  And fans still recognize and respect players who play the game with passion and heart rather than those who simply show up to collect a paycheck.  So I look forward to the baseball season.  At the very least, it will allow me to realize a dream I have long had: taking my son to his very first baseball game.

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Posted in Baseball, Personal

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Odds and Ends (Post-Chaidez edition)

Posted on March 14, 2013 | Leave a comment
  • We have what might be our first guide on how to seek Padilla-based postconviction relief in the wake of Chaidez.  This “advisory” was co-authored by the Immigrant Defense Project and the National Immigration Project and can be downloaded here.  While the advisory is detailed and well-researched, it is still an advisory, and should not be a substitute for independent research and an individualized assessment of the case at issue.  
  •  The Sentencing Law and Policy blog picked up on an interesting law review article entitled Deporting the Pardoned which discusses and criticizes the lack of deference given by immigration laws in the deportation context to individuals who have had their convictions pardoned.  You can download the article here.  
  • The 11th Circuit today released its decision in the case of Chadrick Calvin Cole v. U.S. Attorney General, in which it held that a conviction under South Carolina’s Youthful Offender Act is a conviction for immigration/deportation purposes, even where the law gives the defendant the ability to expunge his conviction at some later date.  You can download the decision here.

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Posted in Clemency, Collateral Consequences, Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, Immigration Law, Postconviction Matters

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Another Cert. Worthy Candidate to Expand the Reach of Padilla? (UPDATED)

Posted on March 7, 2013 | Leave a comment

In its latest review of cert. candidates that have been relisted by the Supreme Court, SCOTUSblog noted some unusual activity with a case out of the Seventh Circuit that involves the application of Padilla v. Kentucky.  The case is Mario Reeves a.k.a. Rio v. United States, No. 12-8543 (7th Cir case no. 11-2328).   SCOTUSblog seemed to think  that the Court relisted the Reeves case in light of its recent decision in Chaidez.  Reeves is an example of efforts by individuals to expand the scope of Padilla to cover advice on consequences of a conviction other than deportation.  In Reeves, the defendant argued that a prior state court conviction was invalid under Padilla because his attorney in that case did not inform him that his conviction could later be used to enhance a sentence imposed against him in a future and entirely distinct criminal case.  It’s an interesting argument, but one that the Seventh Circuit did not buy.    Notably, the Seventh Circuit made no mention of whether Padilla could even be retroactively applied to assess the conduct of the defendant’s attorney, whose role in the case ended some time in 2004; its decision seemed to assume without deciding that it did.

In any event, the Supreme Court docket for the case indicates that the defendant is now being represented by attorneys from Northwestern University and Sidley Austin.  Perhaps this plus the relist is a sign of good things to come for Mr. Reeves.  If anyone has a copy of the cert. petition in Reeves, I would really like to read it.  In the meantime, the Seventh Circuit’s decision can be downloaded here.

UPDATE: The Supreme Court denied Mr. Reeves’ cert. petition on March 18, 2013.

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Posted in Collateral Consequences, U.S. Supreme Court, Uncategorized

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Ralph Ellison Turns 100

Posted on March 6, 2013 | Leave a comment
Photo of Ralph Ellison courtesy of California Newsreel

Photo of Ralph Ellison courtesy of California Newsreel

On March 1, 1913, Ida Millsap gave birth to Ralph Ellison whom she and her husband named after Ralph Waldo Emerson.  Ellison would go on to become a notable figure in his own right after writing and publishing The Invisible Man, in which he chronicled the journey of a young black man much like Ellison himself who left the Jim Crow South for New York’s Harlem only to find disillusionment wherever he went.  The title of this blog belongs, of course, to Ellison’s novel and the difficult theme it sought to explore on how the history of an “invisible” minority  is dealt with and reflected in modern American life.  In tribute to the Ellison centennial, The New York Review of Books has posted some pieces about Ellison which have appeared in the publication.  The tribute begins with the following quote from Ellison:

Perhaps more than any other people, Americans have been locked in a deadly struggle with time, with history. We’ve fled the past and trained ourselves to suppress, if not forget, troublesome details of the national memory, and a great part of our optimism, like our progress, has been bought at the cost of ignoring the processes through which we’ve arrived at any given moment in our national existence.

Those interested can read more of NYRB’s tribute to Ellison here.

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Posted in Civil Rights, Personal, Social Justice

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A Pictures Is Worth A Thousand Words (Or, If You’re Justice Sotomayor, More Than A Whole Slew of Statistics)

Posted on February 27, 2013 | Leave a comment

Today the Supreme Court hears oral arguments in the much-publicized case of Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder. Some have described the case as having the kind of ramifications for the Voting Rights Act that Citizens United had for campaign finance laws: law that was once settled and based on sound reasoning has now come under imminent threat of upheaval.

On Monday, Justice Sotomayor issued a “statement” in a case, Bongani Calhoun v. United States, No. 12-6142, involving the racist remarks of a federal prosecutor in Texas. The statement came as the Court declined to hear the case for mostly procedural considerations, but Justice Sotomayor felt it necessary to write separately so she could “dispel any doubt” that the Court’s decision “be understood to signal [the Court's] tolerance of” the “racially charged remark.” “It should not,” Sotomayor bluntly stated. After taking the Government to task for its conduct, both with respect to the remarks and to the way it approached the case as it wound its way to the Court, Sotomayor ended her statement by warning or perhaps lamenting that she “hope[s] never to see a case like this again.” Only Justice Breyer joined Sotomayor in her statement.

That Sotomayor decided to issue such a statement at this particular time in the Court’s sitting is not, I submit, a coincidence. Instead, Sotomayor’s brief yet emphatic statement may have been her way of alerting her colleagues on the bench that now is not the time to be tinkering with or, worse yet, altogether scrapping the prophylactic measures that have been enacted to protect minorities from the kind of racism that, to Sotomayor, is as much a part of America as baseball, apple pie and barbecued ribs. And she did so in vivid almost picturesque fashion, none of which can really be captured in the raw data and statistics that will be thrust at the Court as it considers whether to overturn the Voting Rights Act, or at least a key part of it.

True, Sotomayor’s colleagues may decline to heed her warning or disagree with her view that things are still as they were back when Congress first passed, and then continued to renew, the Voting Rights Act. But even in pure temporal terms, we are only a mere 50 years removed from a time (1963; the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965) when many thought that the country could not survive as a democracy without measures like the Voting Rights Act — a time when George Wallace, Alabama’s then Governor refused to de-segregate the University of Alabama, in direct defiance of President Kennedy and and a time when an owner of a segregated restaurant in Maryland felt fit to physically humiliate individuals who knelt in front of his restaurant to call attention to their message of integration. (These pictures are from a series of 50 photos taken in 1963 that was recently posted on the website for The Atlantic.) To argue that such racism, or more appropriately, its remnants has been purged from the fabric of this country is at best inaccurate and at worst irresponsible. Knowing that this view will probably not hold sway with the majority of the Court, however, my thoughts turn to those, like the Maryland protestors, who through their dedication and sacrifice helped put on the books laws like the Voting Rights Act, and without whom our country would be even more segregated than it was in 1963.

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Posted in Civil Rights, Social Justice, U.S. News, U.S. Supreme Court

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