Word: kunen
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...James S. Kunen was 19 and a Columbia University sophomore when he wrote The Strawberry Statement, a wry account of Columbia's 1968 student strike against the Viet Nam War. The book's instant success transformed Kunen into one of the spokesmen for the rebels of his generation. Since then, Kunen, now 37, has served as a conscientious objector, worked as a public defender in the Washington court system, been married and divorced. Now a senior writer at PEOPLE magazine, he was asked by TIME to comment on what has happened to him and his protesting peers...
...narrative or any grander scheme. He speculates that all FBI agents might not use electric razors and cologne because one-eighth of them are accountants. We also learn that the U.S. has more prisoners per country than any country except the Soviet Union and South Africa and then Kunen goes right along writing about...what...
...Kunen quickly--and probably inadvertently--dispells the myth of public defenders as ethical gods. "Deception is not deceit," Kunen says, "Lawyers and magicians practice deception. Dishonest people practice deceit." With that said, Kunen brazenly describes a client's parole status at a sentencing hearing. All of which proves Kunen doesn't need a top partnership to be a sleaze. If Kunen dispels the popular myth that public defenders are somehow more ethical than higher priced lawyers, he only adds to the impression that they simply got the thin envelope from law schools that would offer them more than a shot...
Similarly, Kunen pursues a discussion of the controversial exclusionary rule--a court-concocted device that excludes illegally seized evidence from the court--by mouthing the generic legal rights justification. "Of course it's terrible for guilty people to go free," Kunen writes. "That's the price we pay for not having cops crawling in and out of our houses. Everybody wants something for nothing." That the United States didn't have cops crawling in and out of Court earlier this century merits neither observation or reflection...
Something for nothing, ironically, is what Kunen presumably got for this, his third book. The issues Kunen alludes to in his rambling and sleep-inducing narrative imply certain important questions and he shows one of many ways not to answer them. He solemnly quotes Adams saying "Better that Many Guilty Shall Go Free Than One Innocent Should Suffer" which sounds fine the first twenty times one hears it in third grade American History, but rapidly declines in enchantment value from then on. Inevitably the problems with justice in the streets will be debated nationally and will hopefully receive the full...