I got an e-mail from a blogger mentioning this post, which faults Mayor Bloomberg for urging arrested protesters to plead guilty. The newspaper article about Bloomberg’s statements says:
Everyone arrested during the Republican convention “might as well just plead guilty and go on” rather than take their fight to court, Mayor Bloomberg said yesterday.
Hundreds of people who were arrested during the GOP convention last month claim they were wrongly detained, abused by cops and held longer than necessary in order to keep them off the streets.
But Bloomberg insisted that there’s no proof that the NYPD did anything wrong. “There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that there was any intent by any law-enforcement official to hold people any longer than was absolutely necessary to process them,” he said before marching in the Mexican Day Parade on Madison Avenue.
Bloomberg pointed out that many protesters who were arrested have already pleaded guilty. “I suspect that most of them [did so] because they know they don’t have a case,” he said. “They broke the law . . . They might as well just plead guilty and go on.”
The poster proceeds to call Bloomberg and his remarks, a “jackhole,” an “unmitigated moron,” an “idiot,” an “impaired imbecile,” “limitless[ly] stupid[],” a “buffoon,” “clunkhead,” “inane,” and “plain dumb.” Why? Here’s the argument, shorn of the rhetoric. Because of the principle “Innocent until proven guilty,” “the Fifth and Sixth Amendments,” and “[t]he government[‘s being] required to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt,” it’s somehow wrong for the mayor to even urge — not force, but just urge — people to plead guilty.
Not much of an argument, it seems to me. Certainly people who are guilty — recall that Bloomberg’s assertion, which the poster does not criticize on the facts, is that the people are indeed guilty — are entitled to plead not guilty and demand a trial. But government officials are equally entitled to suggest that the cases against them are strong, and that it’s better for them as well as for the city to admit their guilt.
What’s more, presumably Mayor Bloomberg believes that the protesters are not only legally guilty, but also morally culpable. If so, then he is certainly free to argue that it’s even morally better for them to admit their guilt, rather than to waste New York taxpayers’ money and city officials’ time and effort challenging the prosecution.
That one has a constitutional right to do something (whether it’s to publish a racist manifesto, burn the American flag, get an abortion, have ten children that one can’t afford, own a gun, or plead not guilty) doesn’t mean that government officials are somehow “idiot[s]” for arguing to people that the better — better for the person, better for the City, and better morally — course of action is not to exercise that right. Naturally, one may disagree with them on the merits, by explaining why one thinks the person should indeed exercise the right; but simply saying that it’s a constitutional right hardly resolves the question whether it’s right, moral, or wise for the person to exercise it.
But beyond this, if I’m right and the poster is mistaken (and that the Mayor’s position is at least defensible, whether or not one thinks it’s clearly correct), wouldn’t it have been a little more prudent for the poster to have made his objection more calmly? First, this might have made it easier for him to notice that while the post was long on rhetoric, it missed an important logical step — the explanation for why having a constitutional right to demand a trial should lead one to think that it’s improper for government officials to urge people not to exercise that right. And, second, I know that I’d be less embarrassed to have made an error when the error led me to say “this is why I think the Mayor is mistaken” than when it led me to throw a bunch of personal insults.
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