Tracey

The Seattle criminal justice system is even worse than you imagine. So much worse. The Goosby case is bad, but ANOTHER murder case stuck in the mental-health defense loop in Seattle makes it look like a model of justice. On August 20, 2024, Jahmed Haynes, a 48-year-old career criminal, carjacked Ruth Dalton, an 80-year-old woman - as Dalton was about to drive to a nearby dog park (she worked as a dog walker). Haynes threw her out of the car. People at the scene confronted him and tried to stop him, but he backed into her, crushing her to death with her own vehicle. After fleeing he drove to a park where he stabbed her dog Prince to death - as people at the park watched - and ditched Prince's body in a recycling bin. The cops arrested Haynes the next day. He had a bloody knife and her car keys on her, and his fingerprints were found in her abandoned car. Haynes has a long history of violent felonies - including ANOTHER case where he hit and killed a man while driving drunk. Open and shut case, right? Not in Seattle. Haynes has a history of mental illness which his defense attorneys say leaves him incompetent to stand trial. And he refuses to take medicine for it. So the state has to go to court to medicate him over objection at a forensic hospital so he can stand trial. But once he's medicated, he's moved back to jail, refuses the medicine again, and again becomes "too sick" to stand trial. Keep in mind this has NOTHING to do with the question of whether he was legally sane at the time he killed Ruth Dalton - which should be easy for the state to prove, considering he clearly intentionally stole her car and fled. A trial was initially set for January of 2025. But by refusing to participate in his defense, Haynes has kept the case from moving forward for almost two years - and paved the way for a chance at an insanity plea like Goosby's. Haynes is facing life in prison and seems committed to dragging this out as long as possible, for his own amusement if for no other reason. As Dalton's granddaughter said: “This state is all about their rights, the criminal’s rights... He doesn’t want to medicate; you can’t make him… He doesn’t want to appear; you can’t make him… He doesn’t want to do this; you can make him, it’s his choice... "The scales are not even in our justice system. They are heavily in favor of coddling people like Haynes, and they completely are forgetting about people like my grandmother." Meanwhile, the main concern of the judge overseeing the case seems to be Haynes's privacy - the judge asked the media not to show Haynes's face at hearings (and they complied). I wish I were making that up. Here's Jahmed Haynes's face.

The Iran war reminds me very much of the Covid lockdowns - it was clear within days we'd made a terrible mistake and couldn't solve the problem with the tools we had. The only question was how long policymakers would need to admit that truth, and how much damage they would do.