Voice Of The Victims Trial Illustrates Shift Toward Giving Victims More Power In Trials Of Assailants

The most compelling, and misleading, courtroom drama of the year may stand as the one starring Colin Ferguson, not O.J. Simpson.

For sure, as April 17 New Republic concedes, there have been few more gripping moments than those in which a judge allowed the victims of Ferguson, the Long Island commuter train gunman, to cathartically vent their rage after his conviction but prior to sentencing.

“You’re nothing but a piece of garbage. You’re a (expletive) animal. Five minutes. That’s all I need with you. Five minutes,” said a man who’d been shot by Ferguson, the gunman who represented himself in court, to the macabre, if weirdly engrossing, astonishment of most.

The consensus among journalistic legal observers was that we’re viewing a distinctly positive development with such victim-impact statements.

Such statements are now allowed in 36 states, though usually via statements written by probation officers or other court officials asked to give a neutral assessment about a victim to a judge.

The weekly political magazine demurs, contending that criticisms of such statements as vehicles for merely inflaming juries and judges “have been understated.”

“Yelling epithets in a courtroom may indeed be therapeutic for victims, but personal therapy is not a defensible purpose of criminal trials, which are conducted in the name of the people at large,” it writes.

Correctly, it notes that judges and juries have to be impartial, not deciding cases based on sympathy or distaste for one party.

Victims’ statements, presented in a raw, unexamined way, can constitute lawless emotionalism, “part of a broader, Oprahesque trend in public life, whose creed is, ‘I feel, therefore I may judge.”’

Quickly

April Playboy’s good interview with playwright David Mamet touches on his fascination with con men: “I’ve always been interested in the continuum that starts with charm and ends with psychopathy. Con artists deal in human nature, and what they do is all in the realm of suggestion. It is like hypnosis or, to a certain extent, like playwrighting.”

Playwrighting?

“Part of the art of the play is to introduce information in such a way, and at such a time, that the people in the audience don’t realize that they have been given information.”

April 10 Business Week interviews John Malone, boss of giant Telecommunications Inc. and, thus, the king of the cable-TV industry. Asked about the clear desire of the regional phone companies to get into the video market, Malone is typically understated: “That’s like Hitler invading Russia and assuming there would be no retaliation.”

April Governing is fascinating in “Good Government, Bad Government,” an attempt to explain how Phoenix’s government, hailed as one of the nation’s finest and most efficient, can sit across the street from that of Maricopa County, of which it’s a part, but one of the worst. What’s the difference? In large measure, it’s their respective basic structures. ($4.50, 2300 N St., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20037.)

If you want to be a lawyer, go to Harvard. But if you want to be a big-time backpacker, April Backpacker suggests the American Alpine Institute in Bellingham, Wash., the Nantahala Outdoor Center in Bryson City, N.C., the National Outdoor Leadership School in Lander, Wyo., and Outward Bound, which is headquartered in Garrison, N.Y. (For example, the National Outdoor Leadership School tuition varies from $1,800 for a two-week hiking course to $7,200 for a semester in Patagonia.)

Romeos and Juliets, take note: May Country Living has a guide to sensuous bed sheets.

And, finally, the fitness and health column in April Bicycling includes a 59-year-old reader, who rides a touring bike 2,000 miles a year, complaining of “frequent urination and dribbling.”

A doctor responds that prostate enlargement may be causing his urinary obstruction and that other than maybe using a much wider saddle, there’s not a whole lot of relief other than finding another mode of transport, given the inherent compression of the prostate that takes place on a bike. Sounds like you’re best off staying off a bike so you can enjoy those sensuous sheets.